The Gadfly

Jon Huntsman for President

2011-01-01T11:59:00.019-05:00

Problem with the cast of Republican candidates for President is that they are running for leader of a United States that no longer exists. They do not seem to understand that the next President will need to don the mantle of statesman in the free world. The prudish, priggish, provincial social conservative platforms of Rick Santorum, Michel Bachmann and others of their ilk are in today’s global scenario totally irrelevant. The only candidate in the offing, Republican or Democrat, who fits the bill of world statesman is Jon Huntsman. As ambassador to China, he not only has witnessed first-hand the inner workings of our main creditor and upcoming superpower, but also has learned to speak their official Mandarin language. His opting out as a Presidential candidate was a major loss to our Nation. His appeal to independent swing voters would have surged on the merit of his message alone. alone.

Our Politicos Constitutional Ignorance

2011-01-01T11:58:00.006-05:00

It’s commendable that Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann carry around with them a copy of the U.S. Constitution. Now they should take time to read the document, or, at least have someone in their staff study it for them. They would then learn that the President is not empowered to raise taxes or declare war arbitrarily. So to talk about the Reagan tax cuts and the Reagan strong stance on national defense, their relentless appeal to conservative voters, is blatantly Un-Constitutional.

The way the system works is as follows: Taxing issues originate in the House of Representatives, the branch of government entrusted with of the nation’s purse strings (Article I, Section 7). Similarly, war must be declared by Congress. (Article I, Section 8.) Before it can be waged, and only when is so waged is the President accorded the title of Commander in Chief. (Article II, Section 2). True, as leader of his party, the President has considerable political sway. But the fact remains that legally he is not empowered to raise or lower taxes or to declare war unilaterally.

And speaking of Ronald Reagan, What was so great about the man? As governor of California, he was the most egregious tax and spend governor in state history. During his tenure as U.S. President, the national debt tripled from a mere $1000 billion to $300 trillion (rounded off in 2010 dollars), so it's quite likely that all the economic growth he allegedly spurred was due not to tax cuts, as fiscal conservatives would have it, but by lavishly borrowing to pay for it. Nor was the size of the government cut, as he had promised to do. Actually, it grew 2.5% a year. Furthermore, his second term was marked by banking scandals, recession, support of dictators, military intervention in democratically elected nations, and outright treason (the Iran Contra Affair). Yet, he got away with it all. Not for nothing he was dubbed the "Teflon President"--the studied charm of the professional Hollywood actor--.

Nor did force the economic collapse of the Soviet Union with his Star War Spending. The Soviet Union had been collapsing since the days of Breznev in the 1960's when in effect the Russian Mafia took over the Soviet government. When Reagan told Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," Gorbachev had already agreed to tear it down. I was all theatrics. Again the Hollywood actor seizing the moment.

Toward the end of his term was the onset Alzheimer's disease. History will not absolve Ronald Reagan. After his die-hard idolatrers pass on, we can be sure that he will not be ranked along with Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln as one of our great Presidents. And by association whatever legacy Michele Bachmann leaves behind will be sorely diminished for donning "The Reagan Mantel."

House Speaker Boehner's Tortured Statistics

2011-01-01T11:58:00.005-05:00

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner flatly informs us that America oppose Obama care. Now according to the latest CNN poll 59% of Americans oppose it but 41% actually favor it. So it’s false to claim that America as a whole oppose Obamacare. Aren’t those 41% who favor it just as American as the 51% who oppose it? And aren't the stats likely to change one way or another according to wind shifts in the political climate?

As the iconic Argentine short-story writer and poet, Jorge Luis Borges, once noted: “Democracy is the abuse of statistics.”

Our All-American Chicken Hawks

2011-01-01T11:56:00.006-05:00

On the nightly Fox New “Panel” program on Fox News, executive ditor Fred Barnes, political activist Liz Cheney and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, unanimously held that the U.S. must not only maintain a military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, but should also destroy Iran’s nuclear facility, depose Syria’s Assad as well, and in the process, take the world to the brink of World War III. None of the panelist, however,had ever served in the military, much less witnessed the horrors of war.

Particularly grating was Liz Chaney’s argument that the U.S. Military must stay the course that the troops killed in battle did not die in vain. How long this staying the course would go on, she did not say, but common sense alone would indicate that the more troops killed, the more staying required, until the nation ran out of soldiers. Her reasoning being particularly grating, because her father Dick, former Vice President under George W. Bush, wrangled a deferment from serving in Vietnam, claiming he had “better things to do. President Bush himself avoided the war by securing, through his family influence, a safe commission in the Texas National Guard.

And much the same holds true for media celebrities like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity. Gung-ho on war, but leaving it to lesser types to do the dying and killing--our All-American Chicken Hawks.

The Che Guevara Myth

2011-01-01T11:54:00.001-05:00

His bearded, star- bereted photo has become an iconic image among Leninists and hater of capitalism and the United States. The resolve in his eyes are real enough, but he was not the man of the people that his votaries assume.

A physician by profession (In his day medicine and law were the only respectful professions in Latin America) the Argentine born Ernesto “Che” Guevara bore no love for family, commitment to his profession, or allegiance to any particular nation or culture. His attitude toward the masses was one of total contempt. Riding in the motorcade with Castro in celebration of the triumphant 26 of July Revolution, he regarded the welcoming crowds lining the streets of Havana Revolution as African rabble, and in his travels through Latin America before teaming up with Fidel in Mexico, he regarded the native Andean Indians as savages. (The moniker he gave himself, “Che,” is Argentine slang for “pal.” or “buddy”.)

As one of the sixteen survivors, along with Fidel and Fidel’s brother Raul, of the counter attack by government forces that lay waiting for them, El Che quickly devised a way of training new recruits. Unlike a well-organized armed force, the U.S. Marines, for example, where recruits are systematically trained in boot camps, the surviving rebels had to train their recruits on the field. This El Che did by trumping up a charge of treason against some dirt-poor famer or nerdy recruit, and then ordering the recruits in training to execute them, which, El Che figured, was sure to harden them for the struggle ahead.

El Che, moreover, had taken delight in watching the executions. Later through the window of his office overlooking the courtyard of the old Spanish fort La Cabaña, he would spend hours watching executions, shades of the Nazi sadist Reinhard Heydrick.Years later, one of the members of the firing squads, a neighbor of mine in Havana, unable to bear the guilt, committed suicide.

Though he knew not a thing about banking, El Che also assumed the role of president of the national bank and nearly ruined the Cuban economy. Clearly, the internationalist non-Cuban Argentine, had become a thorn on the side of the nationalist leader Fidel Castro. Fidel was only too glad to get rid of El Che’s by financing his fanatical venture to save South America and in time the rest of the world.

Congressman's Ryan's Misguided Faith in the Private Sector

2011-01-01T11:51:00.010-05:00

On the face of it, the budget-cutting plan proposed by Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan makes perfect sense. The U.S. Government, the nation, is broke. Like a credit-card junkie out of control, it cannot possibly go on spending in excess of revenues taken in. Every government agency, every discretionary and, especially, the big ticket entitlement programs, can and must be pared back to bare essentials.

Problem is that the nation still needs a government to conduct its legitimate business, and, no matter how lean it is rendered, million, trillions in revenues will be required to keep it running. So where will the revenues come from? Surely not from more borrowing or printing worthless money. And surely not by raising taxes. If the economy is not growing—in fact, it’s shrinking—then it’s a no-brainer that taking more money out the economy would be counterproductive.

But on the tax-revenue side of the equation Congressman Ryan’s plan is not convincing. Banking on the old Reaganomics theory that by simply lowering taxes for businesses and the well-to-do, the Congressman assumes that the economy will automatically grow, and, despite the lower tax rate, the actual volume of taxes paid will increase, thereby providing the government with the necessary revenue to function without having to go into debt.
But did Reaganomics ever work? (See Post, “The Reagan Myth.”) What historical or empirical evidence does the Congressman have that entrusting the nation’s economy wholesale to the private sector would balance the budget and put the economy back on track to prosperity? What assurances can he give us that none of the tax savings bestowed on businesses and the well-to-do won’t be spent on foreign business ventures, stashed away in Caribbean banks, blown in quick-buck, job-destroying buy-outs and mergers, or gambled away in convoluted Wall Street schemes? Would government funding of the arts, say, be less productive employment-wise than lowering taxes for Wall Street speculators? Recall that it was the too-big-to-fail highr ollers of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Countrywide, et. al., not government spending alone, that triggered the current economic meltdown. To turn over the solution of the problem to those who were largely responsible for creating the problem in the first place is sheer folly.

Wholesale lowering of taxes for small business could be even more counterproductive. According to most conservative estimate, 50 % of small business in American fail or close within five years, and the main reason they do is that many of the folks who start them have no entrepreneurial instincts or skills to speak of. Too many of them are driven to go into business for themselves out of desperation, having lost or fearing they will lose their well-paying jobs and never again being able to find a comparable one. Others are or moved by a self-fulfilling desire to sell a product dear to their hearts but not much in demand, like opening book stores and novelty shops in places where few people read and are short of cash.

So whether the bounty of Congressman Ryan’s proposed tax breaks goes to large or small business, there is always a good chance that much of it would be wasted. Every effort therefore must be made to assure that it gets into the right hands in the private sector. The political fallout of identifying and excluding non-productive enterprises would, of course, be huge, but it must be done if the tax cuts proposed are to have the intended effects. And, it would be unwise, not say downright stupid, to assume that the competition-driven private sector will self-regulate. Ethics is not a key word in a hyper competitive culture where good guys tend to finish last. Laws must be passed and impartial agencies empowered to assure that the fair-play necessary for the “invisible hand’ of free markets, as Adam Smith envisioned it, can work its magic--which brings us full circle back to the role government and the problem of keeping it well funded. Too many cuts in the wrong places and too indiscriminate lowering of taxes for business and the well-to-do would be as catastrophic as a spiraling budget deficit.

Then, too, there is the time-lag factor. Even if every tax-break and subsidy were employed by businesses with one-hundred percent efficiency, it would take many years, decades in some cases, to gear up and make enough profits to contribute significantly to tax revenues. Requiring the already overtaxed taxpayers to bear the cost of breaks and subsidies to such businesses is akin to asking investors to make an investment that could only pay off at an uncertain rate sometime in the distant future. By that time, older taxpayers making the sacrifice would be in the ranks of the destitute, or names in long-forgotten obituaries.

Congressman Ryan is an intelligent and honest man, not your run-of the mill Politician. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich was out of line calling the Congressman's budget plan "right wing social engineering." But before he presses on with his plan the Congressman should mull it over in greater depth.

The Martin Luther King Myth

2011-01-01T11:50:00.038-05:00

Had Martin Luther King not been martyred and chose to run for public office, he would not have survived the vetting. The man was an unabashed plagiarist. His entire PhD. Dissertation was plagiarized verbatim, as was his high school term papers. Even his resounding “I Have a Dream,” speech was plagiarized from Archibald Carey’s speech to the 1952 Republican convention. The “Dr.” title he added to his name was a gross affectation. Legitimate Ph.D’s are not wont to use that title.

The man was a sex addict of the first order. He was given to sexual orgies with prostitutes whom he enjoyed beating up. According to Ralph Abernathy, MLK had spent the night before he was shot in one such orgy. Herman Cain and Dominique Strauss-Kahn come across as choir boys by comparison.

That such a person has been accorded a national holiday and has streets, schools, parks and libraries named after him is an unspeakable abomination. Though he did not possess a silver tongue like MLK’s, the Rev. Medgars Evers, assassinated in 1964, would have made a deserving martyr.

The great Negro leaders of the past—Fredrick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and W.E.B. Dubois, all of whom wrote their own material, would be turning in their graves had they known of the honor that that the future generation would accord to a fraud like MLK.

Time to restore the great American Presidents carved on Mount Rushmore to their rightful place on the national calendar. MLK is nowhere, nowhere at all in the same league with them.

About This Blog

2011-01-01T11:50:00.034-05:00

Politically speaking, at the visceral level, most of my fellow Americans fall into three groups: For those in Group 1, the mere mention of the word “socialism” triggers nightmarish visions of tyranny, police brutality, de facto slavery, mind-numbing indoctrination, atheism, economic ruin, hopelessness, starvation, pestilence, and worse.
For those in Group 2, the word “capitalism” invokes a hellish world of greed, injustice, exploitation, corruption, pollution, dog-eat-dog competition, job outsourcing, unemployment, and overall self-destruction. Now if folks in Group 1 were to open their minds a mite and look beyond our borders, they would learn that that the freest, most democratic, most productive, least corrupt nations with the highest standard of living and lowest unemployment rate in the world are, by definition, socialistic. Notable among them are Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands. Their stats can be readily had on the Internet. And should they take a closer look at our own United States, they would realize that many of our cherished institutions—the National Park Service, the Armed Forces, the various law-enforcement agencies, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, to name some— are wholly financed by taxpayer dollars, managed exclusively by the Federal Government and, thus, one-hundred percent socialistic. By the same token, if the folks in Group 2 were to remove their blinders, they would see that free-market capitalism, as envisioned by Adam Smith in his iconic The Wealth of Nations is the engine that generates our material well-being and, thereby, frees us to realize our dreams, “the pursuit of happiness,” as edited in by Benjamin Franklin in" Thomas Jefferson's original version of the Declaration of Independence. (The same year, 1776, that The Wealth of Nations was published.)
But deep-rooted biases, alas, are hard to change. Which brings us to Group 3. Folks in this group believe that the truth, if there be such, lies somewhere between the extremes of the other two groups. It is for these folks—call them free-thinkers, skeptics, cynics, mavericks, fence-straddlers, whatever you wish—that this blog is written. Comments and contributions, pro, con and neutral, are welcomed.
The above part of the blog blog pertains to current events. The second
part is written for future generations, as an account of what things were like, in the opinion of the author, in 2011 America.

Scrap the "Mickey Mouse" Education Major

2011-01-01T11:50:00.030-05:00

(From Substitute Teaching in Alexandria, Virginia)by C.F. Navarro

When I was a college student in the 1960’s, school-of-education courses were notorious for their lack of academic rigor. Professors in other departments mocked them, and liberal arts students looking for easy credits took them as electives. "Mickey Mouse” was what everybody called those courses.

Though I never enrolled in an education course, years later, as a professor and supervisor of student teachers at three universities, I did sit in on several that my students were required to take, and I saw for myself that the disparaging things said about them were largely true. I recall, for instance, one three-credit course on how to ventilate a classroom, arrange bookshelves and operate an overhead projector. The widely held notion that public school teachers go into teaching because they are incapable of doing anything else, no doubt originated with former college students and professors in other fields who remember those "Mickey Mouse" courses. And from what I hear, not much has changed since.

Back in the 1960’s, and in the good old days before that, the level of instruction dispensed by school-of-education-trained teachers in the U.S. may have been good enough for the majority of students who upon graduation from high school could readily find steady and life-long employment in semiskilled trades. Many did not even need to graduate. A rudimentary knowledge of the three R’s, if that, was all then required. But times have changed. Teachers bound to the traditional school-of-education “Mickey Mouse” fare lack the intellectual range and depth to prepare students for today’s, high-tech job market. And the same goes for the principals, administrators, counselors, and the slew of specialists running our public schools

The problem is especially bad at the elementary level. Elementary school teachers have to take so many education courses--40 percent of their total undergraduate credit hours on average--that most come out of college no better educated in the core academic subjects than community college graduates. Less gracious critics claim that on the average the educational level of elementary school teachers is no higher than that of a middling high school sophomore. Most, to be sure put in long hours nights and weekends preparing classes and do a great job decorating their classrooms. But intellectually speaking, very few measure up.

Consider the trouble so many American high school students of normal intelligence are having learning math. On average, only 25 percent of Alexandria public school seniors score at a proficiency level on national tests, and that despite all-out effort by schools to teach them, not math, but how to take the test.

Our school officials attribute this mass failure to the fact that our schools nowadays serve a disproportionate number of disadvantaged students A lame excuse. The truly disadvantaged are exempt from taking the tests. It's the average student who are making those low scores. The root of the problem really lies in the fact that most of our elementary school teachers do not know their math well enough to give their students the foundation and encouragement they need to master the subject in the higher grades. With few exceptions all the ones I know openly confess that the reason they majored in education (as their low SAT and GRE math scores reflect) was they were never any good at math. They so fear and hate math that they subconsciously, or perhaps deliberately, project their bias onto their students by watering down the subject under the guise of making it “fun.” Predictably, by the time their students reach middle school a good many likewise fear and hate math.

And pretty much the same holds true for science, (only 18 percent of high school seniors in the U.S. score at proficiency level) and, though to lesser degree, for language arts and social studies as well. It’s a no-brainer that if elementary school teachers were better versed in the core academic subjects, many of the learning problems and educational deficiencies plaguing school students today would not exist.

Our Aexandria schools have tried to patch up the problem with "resource teachers," specialists to whom students are sent for instruction that their regular classroom teacher cannot provide them. Thought this is better than nothing, it's not good enough, for much of the kids’ school day is wasted day shuttling back and forth between classrooms. Most of those resources teachers, moreover, are not all that knowledgeable, having received but a superficial, cursory training in how to teach their subject, rather than taking legitimate college-level courses in the subject itself.

That as many as half of engineering and science students enrolled in American universities are foreign born and educated because our high school graduates lack the interest or cannot make the grade, is not only a national shame, but a major detriment to our economic competitiveness and, possibly, to our national security. Some of those students will remain in the U.S and become loyal citizens, but many others will return to their home country, taking their skills with them, and, in short order, developing their own universities, continue on its downward spiral vis à vis the rest of the world. But the fixing cannot be entrusted to those who created the mess in the first place and have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Our public education offering, not just here in Alexandria, but everywhere in America needs fixing, and soon. The so-called improvements served up every couple of years are but rehashing of failed policies and strategies harking back 60, 70 years under a different jargon.

Time has come to scrap the "Mickey Mouse" undergraduate education program and require the new generation of teachers to earn a bona fide B.A. or M.A. degree. The art of how-to-manage a classroom can best be learned on the job and through informal consultation with experienced colleagues. “Operation Phoenix” would be an apt name for the radical change needed.

The Corporation Is a Socialistic Invention

2011-01-01T11:50:00.026-05:00

There is solid historic proof that free-market capitalism is the greatest known engine for economic growth and social prosperity. But the usual portrayal of corporate founders and CEO’s as risk-taking drivers of free-market capitalism is bogus. Private owners and partners of business enterprises are, without question, risk-taking entrepreneurs in the true sense of the word. If their businesses tank, their creditors can lay claim to their personal assets—home, car, bank account—as well as to their physical plant, equipment and inventories. They stand to lose the proverbial shirt off their backs.

Corporations were invented to avoid such risks. Constituted as separate legal entities, their creditors and investors, should the enterprise go belly, cannot lay claim to the personal assets of their founders or CEO’s, no matter how inept or imprudent they might have been. So, in effect, they take no risks, and lose little except, perhaps, their jobs and professional reputation, which can be easily regained if they had cultivated the right connections, which is often the case. Not surprisingly, most business, gigantic, small and everything in between, tend to be incorporated. Free-market votaries who deem Socialism a dirty word, might considered that the low risk, government-protected corporations that rule the world today are, at bottom, Socialistic enterprises under a different name.

Socialized Medicine Boosts Small Business Growth

2011-01-01T11:49:00.008-05:00

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The United States of American is the only nation in the developed world that burdens employers with providing health care for their employees, a practice that harks back to World War II. Because most young able-bodied men and women at the time were serving in the military, there was a severe shortage of labor throughout the nation, particularly in the manufacturing sector. So to attract workers business came up with the idea of offering health coverage as a perk. After the war ended the labor force came home, but the health insurance perk, by now an un-negotiable item in labor union contracts, had become too entrenched to be discontinued.

The high cost of private health insurance in the United States—the premiums plus the loads of paperwork involved--can be relatively easy to cover by multi-million dollar corporations. But for small business it can be a killer. Even in the best of times, much less in today’s protracted economic recession, most small business (1 to 100 employees) just can’t earn enough to keep up with the ever rising premiums exacted by insurance companies , employ the extra clerical staff needed to do the paperwork, and still cover the normal cost of running their business. Stats show that some 50% to 70% of small business in the United States fail or close within five years, and though no official explanation is given for it, one obvious reason is the health insurance burden placed on them.

Western Europe, by contrast, abounds with small businesses, some mere mom and pop shops and eateries, which have been around for decades, largely because their owners don’t have to worry about health insurance for their employees or for themselves. That cost is covered entirely by their governments. Sure, they have to pay taxes for it, but their tax burden, shared as it is with millions of their fellow citizens, is miniscule compared to the cost of private health plans in the United States.

Free-market advocates never tire of reminding us that small businesses are the main source of employment in this country. Well, one sure way to help our small businesses thrive and bring down the nation’s high unemployment rate would be by unburdening small businesses of private health insurance and adopting socialized medicine like the rest of the developed world.

In promoting the measure, its advocates could not call it socialized medicine, of course, for the word socialism has an undemocratic, unpatriotic, un-Godly ring in the ears of true-blood Americans. They would at first have to give it a different name, with an easy to remember acronym, like, say, Subsidized Medical Assistance (SUMA), or some other, vague, non-offensive moniker, until voters embrace the idea and have no reservations about calling it by its right name.

The Reagan Idolatry

2011-01-01T11:48:00.005-05:00

Conservative pundits hold that if the current Federal Government followed the policy set thirty years ago by the then President Ronald Reagan of cutting taxes across the board—income taxes, payroll taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, death taxes, and every other kind of tax—the invisible hand of capitalism would be free to work its magic, unemployment would drop, productivity would rise, tax revenues would increase, and our feeble economy would regain its legendary strength in short order. But if the solution were that simple and self-evident, why haven’t subsequent administrations followed the Reagan model? Because it’s a myth.

Macroeconomics 101 texts warn students to guard against the post hoc ergo propter hocfallacy, the false assumption that because one event occurred before another event, the first event caused the second event. The notion that the economic prosperity of the 1980’s was triggered by the Reagan’s tax cuts offers a good example. After the cuts went into effect, unemployment did indeed fall, from 7.6% when Reagan took office, to 5.5%, and the GDP grew 32%, from $4.1 trillion to $5.4.

But what really made that possible were the strict Keynesian measures implemented by Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker to check the 13% inflation triggered caused by the Vietnam War and the Great Society spending of previous administrations. By raising interest rates and drastically reducing the money supply, by creating, in effect, an inflation-busting recession, at the height of which employment reached 9.7%, Volker brought inflation down to a sound 2.2%, thereby setting the table for Reaganomics.

Another factor that Reagan votaries neglect to mention is that while cutting taxes on the one hand, Reagan disproportionately increased spending on the other. During his eight-year term in office, the national debt grew 18%, at a greater rate than under any president since (though under Barack Obama the debt is on course to break that record.) So the other side of the ledger shows that the economic growth attributed to Reagan’s free-market boosting tax costs was in large measure financed by government deficit spending.

As governor of California, Ronald Reagan was notorious for his propensity to tax and spend. During his eight-year term as governor (1967-1975) the sate budget was balanced, not by cutting taxes and spending, as he had promised, but by promoting the highest tax hike in California history. Not until he was elected President and came under the influence of his supply-side economic advisor, Arthur Laffer, did Ronald Reagan became a true believer in advocating for tax cuts.

Also unfounded is the notion that Reagan won the Cold War. His famous “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” speech was all theatrics, a performance worthy of the Hollywood actor that he had been before entering politics. Gorbachev had already informed Reagan, months in advance, that he was planning to dismantle the Soviet Union, which had long been deteriorating under its own dead weight. So Reagan did not make history that day. He just happened to be in the right time and place when history was being made, and seized the moment to aggrandize his image.

Nor was Ronald Reagan the God-fearing man that conservative Christians think His occasional church attendance was also an act. (As was the case with Bill Clinton and many other politicians.) And unlike the “buck-stops- here” Harry Truman, the arm-twisting Lyndon Johnson, and the micromanaging Jimmy Carter, President Ronald Reagan tended to relegate the grind of governing to his advisors and staff. Actually, he was more of a figurehead, a ceremonial presence, than a chief executive—which explains why he was able to distance himself from the many scandals that marred his presidency. Though over 130 administration officials were investigated and many convicted for violation of national or international law, Reagan in each case was absolved from blame by swearing under oath that he was unaware of what his underlings were up to. Not for nothing did the news media dubbed him “the Teflon President.”

Egregious among those scandals was the illegal sale of weapons to Iran, an enemy nation, under the pretext of trading arms for American hostages, and the proceeds channeled to guerillas mercenaries, the Contras, fighting to overthrow the Communist regime of Nicaragua. One of the players in the covert deal, Colonel Oliver North declared years later that the Reagan had been duly briefed and given his approval. Another player in the scandal, Robert McFarlane, tried to commit suicide. Had Reagan been a hands-on leader and owned up to his administration’s failings, he would not be the mythical figure that he has become.

During his last year in office, at age 76, Reagan waxed even more aloof, often turning off his hearing aid and dozing off in cabinet meetings, a symptom of his advancing Alzheimer’s disease. But by then it didn’t matter, as the business of governing had been discretely assumed by his wife Nancy and his close advisers.

Ronald Reagan, to be sure, was a likeable, charismatic fellow, a poster figure of the red-blooded American. His upbeat press conferences and speeches were a welcome change from the negative moralizing of his Born Again Christian predecessor. But the notion that he was one of our great presidents, worthy of a place on Mt. Rushmore, is totally groundless.
But even if Ronald Reagan was the great man that his votaries claim, he is ancient history. The world has changed radically since he occupied the White House. In his day, Communist China and Brazil were still underdeveloped nations, the European Union did not exist, and, except for the surging Japanese auto industry, the American economy had no foreign economic competition or entanglements to speak of. Even if Reagan’s supply-side model worked wonders back then, in today’s global economy that model is not just wrong, it’s irrelevant.

The complex problems facing our nation in this new century call for fresh ideas and solutions, not hero worship.

Is the American 50 State Empire Disintegrating?

2011-01-01T11:48:00.003-05:00

Is the U.S. Crumbling from Within?

Since the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Russian professor Igor Panarin has been predicting that the 50-state American nation, a de facto empire of culturally and politically clashing regions, will likewise collapse, as it was on the verge of doing prior to the Civil War.

The concern that something like this might happened harks back to the very birth of the Nation. In making his case for a strong central government at the 1787 Constitutional Convention, New York delegate Alexander Hamilton, arguing against Virginia anti-Union advocate George Mason (who refused to sign the Constitution), held that a dissolution of the Union into thirteen independent states or three or four distinct confederacies, would not only result in inner strife, but also render the nation defenseless against economic and military aggression from Britain, Spain and France, the major powers at the time. Seven score and seven years later Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union, but only at the point of a gun. And judging by the deepening divisiveness throughout the nation in our day, it would appear that Lincoln's Union didn't quite take.

Consider the growing support for the Alaska Independence Party, the Hawaiian Independence Party, the New England Independence Movement, the South Carolina League of the South, the Free Texas Republic, the Free California Republic of northern California and Oregon, the Cascadia Republic of northwestern states and western Canada, among other lesser known yet equally serious secession movements troughout the country.

Witness further the growing number of reactionary militias, “common law” courts and street gangs; the lingering racial and ethnic divide; the mistrust of government at all levels; the losing war on drugs; the out-of-control influx of illegal immigrants; the costly, open-ended trillion dollar wars on terror; the twisting of the letter and spirit of the Constitution; the Tea Party discontent; the widening rift between Republicans and Democrats, and among Republicans and Democrats themselves; thecall for a second Constitutional convention; the claiming of Federal land by states; the dismal failure of K-12 public education; the virtual collapse of the financial system; the unbridled dishonesty and greed of Wall Street; the worsening unemployment; the bursting college tuition bubble; the deepening housing crisis; the disconnect between the global stock market and the national economy; the spiking of the national debt, the proliferation of parasitical lawyers; the sway of talk-show entertainers masquerading as sages; the increasing accusations of election fraud-- among other signs of political and social cracking at the seams. So maybe Professor Igor Panarin is not the crank that he appears to be.

Ryan's Plan to Scrap Medicare Would Spawn New Businesses

2011-01-01T11:47:00.005-05:00

Congressman’s Paul Ryan’ plan to privatize Medicare would not only relieve the young and healthy of the burden of subsidizing the spiraling health costs of the old and frail, but it would spawn a new free-market, job-producing, economy-boosting service industry.

Mr. Ryan’s plan, in a nutshell, is as follows: Starting in 2022 eligible beneficiaries would receive a subsidy to purchase health insurance in the open market. Though the subsidy would cover only about one fourth of the cost, the rest would be covered out of pocket by the beneficiaries themselves. However, by negotiating with competing insurance companies, the beneficiaries could significantly reduce their share of the costs.

But because many elderly folk are not physically or mentally hale enough to spend long hours poring over the daunting legalese of insurance contracts, nor would family or friends, even if they were willing, have the spare time to help out, trained specialists would be need to do the negotiating for them. The income-tax-preparing business would serve as a good model for this new industry. When problems become too complex, create a new breed of experts to deal with them.

Of course, the elderly ill, many of whom are at or near poverty level, would somehow have to scrape up the money to pay for the services of the insurance experts, in addition to their regular insurance premiums. Maybe they can borrow the money, if they can find a lender. Some would just have to suck it up and learn to live out their short lease on life with their illness. But that’s another issue.

Homeschooling: The Optimum Education

2011-01-01T11:45:00.002-05:00

Public education her in Alexandria, Virginia and throughout most of America is hopelessly broken. For the past 30 or so years everything imaginable has been tried and retried to fix it, but nothing has worked. High-sounding titles and jargon is all we have to show for the billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at the problem-- No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, special ed., bilingual ed., English as a second language, mainstreaming, inclusion, differentiation, reading specialists, resource teachers, whole language, cooperative learning, integrated curriculum, flexible groupings, the new math, the new grammar, conflict resolution, state standardized testing, magnet schools, charter schools, talented and gifted programs, afterschool programs, preschool programs, free lunch program, rubrics, and so on and on.

Yet according to the latest international rankings, American middle-schoolers came in 31st in key subjects like math and science, about the same as 30 years ago. The students ranked were representative groups from the top of their classes in their respective nations. Had students in general been included, our representative group would have ranked even lower. Many, in fact, graduate from high school unable to read and compute above a fourth-grade level, if that.

So what can American parents do to assure that their kids get the basic education they will need to compete in today’s global job market? One option is to enroll them in private schools. But not many parents could afford that. Besides, the quality of education offered in most private schools is not that great either. For the average American family the best option by far is homeschooling.

Now it’s no surprise that the growing popularity of homeschooling has elicited vehement opposition among public school teachers, education professors, teacher unions, school boards, state, local and Federal educrats, and others with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

Their usual anti-homeschooling tirade goes something like this: Homeschooling is a sham, inferior, unnatural, off-the-wall kind of do-it-yourself instruction loosely stitched-together by religious recluses and social misfits incapable of coping with the traditional, time-tested, offering of public education. Common sense alone shows that in order to learn, develop and become socialized to their full potential, children must be taught by certified teachers in resource-rich schools and classrooms where they can interact, cooperate, and exchange ideas with large groups of peers.

Well, to begin with, the pro-public school folks, got their historical sequence backwards. American public schools as they exist today are a relatively recent development. Conceived in the 1880s to acculturate working-class immigrants and prepare them for factory employment, the schools were modeled like assembly lines in which students were grouped by age, instructed according to a regular, prescribed schedule, and processed uniformly from grade to grade. And to this day, nothing has changed.

Before that time, the typical American school was a small one-room affair serving no more than 20 students of mixed ages, the older ones helping the younger, each learning at his or her own pace, under the supervision of a single teacher independent of administrative higher-ups. The school master or mistress on those days was usually the best educated and highly respected member of the community. In sparsely populated rural areas kids were taught at home by itinerant tutors or, if none could be had, by family members or neighbors. Among the wealthy, the usual form of education for children under 12, and often into adulthood, was homeschooling.

Notable homeschooled Americans, to name but a few, include: William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Robert E. Lee, Clara Barton Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson. The lives and works of these great public figures soundly debunk the pet socialization argument of the anti-homeschooling advocates. Surely none can be accused of having being timid, reclusive, misfits.

The notion that unsocialized kids sequestered all day in a classroom with other equally unsocialized peers will somehow socialize one another, is ludicrous. And the same goes with the notion that such kids can enlighten one another by thrashing among themselves opinions on subjects of which they know nothing about. Much like those notable homeschoolers of past generations, homeschoolers today tend to spend much of their time listening to adults who know their stuff, running errands with their parents, helping out in the family business, interacting with people of all persuasions and ages, as well as with peers. All the ones I’ve met are active in the Boy Scouts, athletic teams, bands, theater, and other peer groups. None that I’ve heard of are locked up in closets or otherwise cut off from the real world. Though I have no hard stats to prove it, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting that incidents of violence, drug addiction, bullying, rape, depression, unwanted pregnancies and other such pathological problems are on average, far less prevalent in homeschools than in the best of public schools.

Also self-debunking is notion that only certified public school teachers are qualified to educate children. Elementary public school teachers in America generally are not much better educated in the core subjects than a high school sophomore. Most of their formal college education consists of courses in crowd control and teaching methodology. In effect, they are a throwback to the 1880’s when a rudimentary knowledge of the three R’s was all they needed to instruct future factory workers. Though, sad to say, many certified teachers today don’t even know their Three R’s.

Teaching a child one-one, adjusting to his or her learning rhythm as the instruction progresses, comes quite naturally to any parent, relative or neighbor of normal maturity and intelligence. A legitimate college education is preferable but not necessary for homeschooling children. A year’s worth of educational materials and background information for the tutor can be had for less than the cost of a NFL game ticket, or once the tutor gets the hang of it, from the Internet or the public library as the need arises. And baby-sitting for the kids when not being tutored usually poses no problem as most homeschooling families either have a stay-at-home parent or guardian, take turns with the kids, or share baby-sitting time with other homeschooling families. They don’t need the all-day baby-sitting service of public schools.

Another advantage of homeschooling is that much more can be accomplished in one hour of distraction-free individualized instruction than in six hours of fits and starts in a typically crowded and often disruption- prone classroom. The reason why public school students are assigned homework is that the only way most can learn is by working alone or, if necessary, with someone’s help in the privacy of their room. In effect, by homeschooling.

Note also how the jargonized programs listed at the beginning of this blog—flexible groupings, differentiation, integrated curriculum, talented and gifted, special ed.—betray the fact that the powers-that-be in public education are aware that the assembly-line model designed to mass-produce interchangeable factory workers in the 1880’s, doesn’t work with modern-day kids of diverse abilities and backgrounds. To their credit, the powers-that-be have tried to correct the problem, but hidebound as they are to that obsolete model, they can’t.

To clinch the point I wished to make, I close with a partial list of other notable homeschoolers in American and world history: Andrew Carnegie, Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, Willa Cather, Robert Frost, the Wright Brothers, Thomas Edison, Willa Cather, William Blake, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Blaise Pascal, Leonardo da Vinci, King James I, Alexander the Great, Socrates, Buddha, Moses. The proof is in the pudding.

The Only Viable Solution to the Social Security Problem

2011-01-01T11:45:00.000-05:00

Signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, the Social Security Act was one of the cleverest Congressional decisions in American history. The Act not only offered a measure of confidence to a nation in the throes of the Great Depression, but also provided the Federal Government with a politically safe way to finance other unrelated and less popular programs.

As the dean of capitalism, Adam Smith, explained: Every new tax is immediately felt more or less by the people. It occasions always some murmur, and meets with some opposition [The man was a master at understatement] . . . To borrow of a sinking fund is always an obvious and easy expedient for getting out of the present difficulty. The Wealth of Nations Book Five, Chapter Three.

The U.S. Social Security fund is that kind of expedient sinking fund. By setting the cash-in age at 65, when the life expectancy of the average American worker was 62, assured that at least one half of contributors died before they could claim benefits, and the other half would die soon after. So there would always be plenty of money in the fund to pay benefits and also for the government to garner money without having to raise taxes .

But now that the life-expectancy of the average American is 76, the cash-in age of 65 is bankrupting the fund. To replenish the fund so it can continue to pay benefits and also for the government to continue “borrowing” from it, the cash-in age must be raised, not to 70, as re-election sensitive members of Congress timidly suggest, but to 80. Moreover, either the payments or the borrowing or both will need to be trimmed back until the fund is adequately replenished.

Problem is that contributors to the fund will be compelled to keep on working until well into their 70’s, which few will be able to do, not necessarily for health reasons—many at that age still being capable of holding a full-time job—but because most employers are reluctant to retain workers, or hire new ones, once they reach middle-age. Though technically illegal, age discrimination is standard practice in the American workplace. Barring a stroke of genius on the part of our leaders, the only viable solution at this juncture is to privatize Social Security, as some economists have been suggesting for the past ten years. Let the worker buy his or her individual retirement plan, and the Government create another slush fund to covertly finance unpopular programs—bribes to friendly dictators, for example—without having to raise taxes. The poor who can't afford an individual retire plan would have to find some other way of coping.

Why We Waited Till Now to Kill Bin Laden

2011-01-01T11:44:00.009-05:00

Why did we let Osama Bin Laden escape when we had him trapped in Tora Bora in 2002? And why didn’t we capture or kill him when we always had intelligence of his whereabouts? Because we needed him to justify our open-ended “war on terror.”

The Al Qaeda, or "Foundation," organized by Osama bin Laden from a force he led of foreign Muslim volunteers fighting on the side of the native Afhan Mudajideen against the Soviet puppet government of Afghanistan in the 1980's (and supported by the U.S.) operates as a network of small, mobile cells, ideological united but strategically disconnected from each other. Capture members of one cell and no amount of interrogation can extract from them reliable information on the whereabouts or the next move of other cells. And because their weaponry and methods of combat are so simple—roadside bombs hidden in trash, brainwashed, adrenalin-drugged suicide bombers—their fighters could just as readily be trained in Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, the jungles of Bolivia or in abandoned warehouses in Gary, Indiana. Recall how two homeless misfits terrorized Virginia, Maryland and DC for weeks with nothing more than a deer rifle and an old car.

Recall further that none of the 9/11 terrorists were Iraqi or Afghan. Of the 19, 15 were citizens of Saudi Arabia, a staunch U.S. ally. They got all the training they needed by taking a few classes in commercial flight schools in California, Florida and Arizona. None could be called a professional soldier in the true sense of the word. The alleged architect of the attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is a Pakistani engineering graduate of North Carolina State University. That the terrorist managed to bring down the Twin Towers and murder nearly 3,000 Americans was for them a stroke of luck, an achievement far beyond their capabilities and expectations.

So had Osama Bin Laden been captured or killed early on, some other charismatic figure waiting in the wings would have taken his place, and the conflict would have raged on, in Afghanistan, some other part of the world, or here at home. We then would have been compelled to admit that we have taken on a hydra monster that cannot be destroyed militarily, as we did Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II. Absurd though it may seem, a healthy, mighty Osama Bin Laden, real or imagined, was a key asset in our war against terror. Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have had a point when they jested that Bin Laden was a CIA agent.

So why did we wait until now to kill him? Because our leaders have finally realize that the ten-year war in Afghanistan is going nowhere; that the average American has grown sick of the war; that we can't continue squandering trillions of precious dollars on a lost cause; that it's high time to declare whatever it was we accomplished in Afghanistan a victory and bring our troops home; that in these hard, divisive times we need a some heartening news to re-unite the nation; and, reversing the logic of our earlier policy, that a dead Osama Bin Laden is more valuable to us now than a live one.

Yet, by nearly bankrupting America, as he did the mighty Soviet Union, his game plan all along, it was Osama bin Landen who won in the end.

Stop the Pointless Killing, Mr. Obama

2011-01-01T11:43:00.001-05:00

With all due respect to you Mr. President, the surge of your so-called “good war” in Afghanistan has degenerated into a chaos of bloodshed that can only get worse. Your apologists' excuse that most civilian casualties are being inflicted by local insurgents may be factually correct, but it's not convincing. Were these local insurgents killing each other at such an alarming rate before the surge started? No. It was the surge that fueled the violence. Small wonder that war-weary civilians, the great majority of the Afghan people, loathe us Americans. Time to cut and run, Mr. President. Time to bring our troops home, and with them the billions of dollars and all the other valuable resources we are squandering in that tragic corner of the world.

War Profiteering

2011-01-01T11:43:00.000-05:00

Why did we invade Afghanistan and Iraq to begin with? Why don’t we declare the killing of Osama bin Laden a victory and bring all our troops home from both fronts? Why continue sacrificing our brave soldiers, displacing and killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, inciting sectarian violence, shoving our cultural values down other people’s throats, wasting billions in bribes to corrupt foreign officials, incurring the anger and disrespect of the rest of the world, when it is obvious that our so-called War on Terror cannot be won militarily? Haven’t we seen by now that the only way to fight the low-tech, small-cell terrorism waged by Al Qaeda and other such groups is to turn over the problem to the FBI, Homeland Security or, more effective yet, to local police departments?

On the face of it, it would seem that our leaders in Washington are either crazy, blind or very stupid. But that’s not likely. There has to be logical explanation why they insist on fighting the War on Terror indefinitely. Savvy thinkers throughout history have noted that, stripped of all political, ideological, patriotic, religious and such high-minded rationalizations, the real reason behind wars is economic: The powerful want something that the less- powerful have but are unwilling to relinquish by diplomatic means, bribes, or threats, so the more powerful find some pretext, or create one if necessary, to take what they want by force. You can wager, then, that there are powerful people, or groups of people, in the U.S. and abroad, who stand to profit hugely by our “staying the course” in Afghanistan and Iraq. So instead of racking our brains trying to make sense out of those seemingly senseless wars, we might do as the savvy suggest and simply follow the money.

We Killed Bin Laden, but He Won His War

2011-01-01T11:42:00.007-05:00

Take a close look at the videos of Osama Bin Laden wielding a K-47. The 12 lb. weapon is heavy in his hands, the image of a big but frail man, suffering from kidney failure, some sources say, not at all the guerilla warrior who, ever on the move, scaled mountains and lived in caves, as Al Qaeda propagandists, following his directions, portrayed him. The only hiding place for a man in his condition was a fixed facility with basic material comforts and ready access to medical assistance. And being the wily man the he was, the location he chose for his hideout was next door to Pakistan’s elite military academy and a short driving distance from the nation’s capital, a place too conspicuous to arouse suspicion (a ruse reminiscent of Poe’s detective story, “The Purloined Letter”). When our Navy Seals stormed the hideout, it was unlikely that the frail Bin Laden would put up much a fight. He knew he was marked for killing from the start, and was ready for martyrdom.

So, why then, was he so valuable to Al Qaeda? He did found Al Qaeda when he was a young and hale fighter against the Soviets in Afghanistan 25 years ago. But why didn’t he, for the good of his organization, later cede power to an equally zealous but physically more imposing leader? Because the organization needed his financing genius. Not only could he raise more than enough funds to support terrorist cells throughout the world, but, most important, he had learned how to bankrupt a military superior enemy into defeat. When leading the volunteer Afghan Arabs, later re-organized by him as Al Qaeda, foreigners who had come to Afghanistan to fight on the side of the native Mujahideen rebelling against the Soviet puppet government in the 1980’s, Bin Laden saw the cost-benefit of frequent, well- orchestrated hit-and-run attacks. For every thousand rubles spent on an attack, he reckoned, the retaliation would cost the Soviets millions. After nine unrelenting years of such attacks, the Soviets finally went bankrupt and were forced to quit the war. Bin Laden was said to boast later that it was he, not Ronald Reagan, who caused the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Fast forward to 9/11 and its aftermath and it is obvious that the tactic devised by Osama Bin Laden to defeat the mighty Soviets is being employed today against America, and will continue to be employed by his Al Qaeda disciples after his death. Do the math. The few millions spent by Al Qaeda on its 9/11 attack, on its suicide bombings in Iraq, Afghanistan Pakistan, on the failed Christmas Day, Times Square, and Shoe Bombers at home, is a miniscule sum compared to the trillions squandered by America on her open-ended wars against an elusive enemy, on bribes to corrupt fair-weather allies, on ever-growing and over-lapping security agencies, not to mention the incalculable costs to our economy and loss of prestige abroad. Tallying up the costs on both sides it is clear that we have thus far been on the losing side, big time. Whether the 2008 economic meltdown in America was caused by Bin Laden, as some of his admirers claim, is debatable. But that he played a significant part in it is undisputable. We finally killed him, yes, but in the end he won his war.

For an eye-opening book of the subject we refer you to Hunting bin Laden: How al-Qaeda is Winning the War on Terror , by Rob Schultheis.

Meet the Real Adam Smith

2011-01-01T11:41:00.001-05:00

The acknowledged dean of capitalism, Adam Smith (1723-1790), was by profession a moral philosopher, not the amoral dog-eat-dog economist that he has been portrayed to be. His moral philosophy was straight-forward enough: Given the fact that the primary concern of human beings was individual survival, then the natural way to assure social stability was by allowing them to freely exchange labor, goods, and services for profit: If you have something that I want and I have something that you want, and if no king or deity prohibits us from trading what we want from each other, and if whatever those wants are, are not harmful to society, then despite our religious and political differences, whether we personally like each other or not, we can live in harmony. And if others approach us with better deals, then, to maintain our trading relationship, we would have to trump our competitors with even better deals.

Taken at a mega level, it was clear to Smith that this natural competition, as if guided by an "invisible hand," would greatly benefit the whole of society (“Book four, Chapt. Two, Par. Nine”). The main, if not the sole, role of government, therefore, according to Smith was to assure that the competition was free and fair, and, moreover, that the competitors were imbued with an ethical conscience, for otherwise the competition would degenerate into self-destructive law of the jungle.

In his calm, philosophical voice, Smith noted how in his day overlong terms of apprenticeship (a form of slave labor), restrictions against laborers from outside communities (forerunners of today’s undocumented workers), excessive tariffs on imports and tax subsidies to favor domestic industries, collusion among wealthy owners of land and capital to set prices (cartels), banning the start-up of competing industries too close to home (monopoly creation), the stashing by bankers of gold deposits in their private coffers and covering withdrawls with unsecured paper notes (stealing the gold, in effect) were, among other ruses, preventing the "invisible hand" from working its magic.

Smith devotes one-third of his iconic The Wealth of Nations explaining how free-markets can work for the good of society, and the other two thirds how its abuse has had the opposite effect.

In modern-day America and comparable nations, free enterprise as envisioned by Adam Smith is largely alive and well among proprietors of shops, restaurant and other small business on Main Street. But the convoluted collusions between big government and Wall Street tell an entirely different story. The name of the game at this level is not to enable a free, fair marketplace but to manipulate it by whatever means necessary. And if the collusions at times take illegal twists, you can wager that laws will be enacted to make the twists legal. And morality, of course, never enters the picture.

Overpaid CEO's, high power lobbyists, corrupt politicians for sale, and others of their ilk have plunged America, and much of the world with it, into a deep, protracted recession. It may be argued that in some mysterious, elliptical way that only they have the brains to comprehend, these so-called champions of capitalism are contributing to our long-range economic wellbeing. Maybe the crumbs they drop after gorging themselves on shareholder and taxpayer money is reward enough for us ordinary folk at the bottom rungs of the pecking order. In the real world, after all, the losers are many and the big winners few. But those who buy that argument cannot invoke Adam Smith for support. That was not at all what he meant by the “invisible hand.”

Adam Smith, for the record, was a man of modest tastes and means. Financially, he was well-off, living comfortably from a lavish pension and royalties from his books. But the fabled guru of capitalism was himself no capitalist. He never owned a business or held a private sector job as such. His last employment was in the public sector as Commissioner of Customs in his native Scotland.

Substitute Teaching in Alexandria, Virginia

2011-01-01T11:40:00.002-05:00

(Introduction to Gadfly's new blog, Substitute Teaching in Alexandria, Virginia--http://alexandriasub.blogspot.com )

Having retired from academe and in a need of a break from my solo home improvement business, I tried my hand at substitute teaching, with the intention of gathering material for a book, the first draft of which I introduce in this blog. For two years (2001-2003) I subbed in all thirteen Alexandria City Public Schools, my local school district, covering classes from Kindergarten to AP calculus, from social studies to ESL, from physical education to life-skill for the mentally impaired, and everything in between. Friends had forewarned me that subbing in our public schools had far more negatives than positives, and they were right. Save for a few rewarding experiences, much of what I witnessed from day one was downright appalling. And from books, newspaper articles and e-mail correspondence with knowledgeable critics, I subsequently learned that the conditions in Alexandria were par for the course in most public schools throughout America. If the American taxpayer only knew the full inside story of our public education establishment, they would demand their money back. Hopefully, this blog will open some eyes.

Name the Socialist-Leaning Thinker Who Wrote This

2011-01-01T11:40:00.000-05:00

On the discrimination against undocumented workers. (Spellings of the original text are preserved.)

“To remove a man who has committed no misdemeanor from the parish where he chuses to reside, is an evident violation of natural liberty and justice . . .There is scarce a poor man. . . I will venture to say, who has not in some part of his life felt himself most cruelly oppressed by this ill-contrived law of settlements.”

On the abusive and counterproductive practices of business owners and the justification for labor unions.

“When masters combine together in order to reduce the wages of their workmen, they commonly enter into a private bond of agreement . . . Were the workmen to enter into a contrary combination . . . the law would punish them severely.”

“If masters would always listen to the dictates of reason and humanity, they have frequent occasion rather to moderate , than to animate the application of many of their workmen. It will be found, I believe, in every sort of trade, that the man who works so moderately, as to be able to work constantly no only preserves his health the longest, but, in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work.”

“That men in general should work better when they are ill fed, when they are disheartened than they are in good spirits, when they are frequently sick than when they are in good health, seems not very probable.

On the unfair advantage of owners over labor.

“The masters, being fewer in number, can combine more easily; and the law, besides, authorises, or at least does not prohibit their combinations, while it prohibits those of the workmen. . . The masters upon these occasions , , , never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with such severity against the combinations of servants, labourers and journeymen.

On the overall benefits of public welfare and health care.

”Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds make up far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconvenience to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part is of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and lodged.

”The liberal reward of labor . . .is the natural symptom of increasing national wealth. The scanty maintenance of the laboring poor, on the other hand, is the natural symptom that things are at a stand, and their starving condition that they are going far backwards.

On labor being the true measure of value and the key economic resource of a nation, more important than capital, land, management and money.

“Labour alone, therefore, never varying in its own value, is alone the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can be all times and places be estimated and compared. It is their real price; money is their nominal price only.”

On the frivolous spending and parasitical nature of the ruling classes.

“The latter species of expence, therefore, especially when directed toward frivolous objects, the little ornaments of dress and furniture, jewels, trinkets , gewgaws, frequently indicates, not only a trifling but a base and selfish disposition.

“Such are the people who compose a numerous and splendid court, a great ecclesiastical establishment, great fleets and armies, who in times of peace produce nothing, and in time of war acquire nothing which can compensate the expence of maintaining them, even while the war lasts. Such people, as they produce nothing, are all maintained by the produce of other men’s labour.”

On the folly of expecting that private business, financial institutions in particular, can self-regulate.

“. . . companies of merchants have had the address to persuade the legislature to entrust to them the performance of this part of the duty of the sovereign, together with all the powers which are necessarily connected with it. These companies . . . have in the long run proved, universally, either burdensome or useless, and have either mismanaged or confined the trade.
“Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse , the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from those rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely.
dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.”

Who said all that? No, it wasn’t Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels or Robert Owen, the godfathers of Socialism. It was Adam Smith, the acknowledged dean of Capitalism, author of the iconic An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, later shortened to The Wealth of Nations(1776). Right wing politicos and pundits have latched on to the part in Smith’s book where he convincingly explains that the closest thing to harmony in any society can be achieved only when the “invisible hand” of free markets, the basic law of supply and demand, is allowed to work its magic. But the other part of the book, the greater part, in fact, where Smith explains that when custom, corruption, dishonesty and other such factors intervene, the magic of the “invisible hand” backfires, and then book then reads more like a treatise on Socialism. That part, right-wing politicos and pundits tend to overlook, or maybe they haven’t taken the time to study the whole book. Next to the Bible, The Wealth of Nations is probably the most quoted out of context book in ultra-conservative America.

(The above passages were taken from Book One, Chapters 5, 8 and 10; Book Two, Chapter 3; and Book Five, Chapter 1.)

Our Ubiquitous, All-Knowing, Multi-Tasking Lord

2011-01-01T11:39:00.003-05:00

At the same time, at the very same instant probably, that The Lord was telling President George Bush to invade Afghanistan, He was telling Christian Zionists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to raise funds for Israel. He was also, at the same time, telling my drywall man to quit his job and start a church; a Pentecostal preacher across town to ask his congregation to double their tithing; a chronically unemployed neighbor to invest in a new suit and go looking for a steady job; an arthritis suffer to consult a certain faith healer featured on national television—and all the while The Lord was dispensing instruction and advice to thousands, millions, of individual believers simultaneously all over the World, He was able keep the machinery of the entire Universe running without a glitch--proof definitive, I suppose, that The Lord does exists and is omnipotent.

Held Bondage by Mega Corporations

2011-01-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

Something is definitely out of whack. America abounds in natural and human resources. The Stock Market is surging. Corporate profits are the highest in years. Yet, the 20%+ unemployment rate--the official 8.8% stat plus the unofficial one of people who have stopped looking for work, taken on menial part-time jobs, retired early, or have dropped out of the labor market to go back to school--remains unchanged. Moreover, the cost of living is rising faster than household income, an ominous sign of inflation. So what gives? Where is the economic recovery that politicians and bullish talk-show hosts keep talking about?

The jargon-rich explanations proffered by professional economists on the news media only confound the issue. For an intelligible clue as to what is happening in our economy a better source would be the dean of Capitalism himself, Adam Smith. In “Book 2, Chapter 4” of his iconic The Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith explains how in an open free market economy increased productivity requires a corresponding increase in labor, even when the increase is due in large measure to technological improvements. Machines could replace manual laborers, but only up to a point, because as production increases, workers would be needed to run and maintain the machines. High production and high employment, therefore, go hand in hand. But, on the side of the ledger, beyond of certain point the costs to the owners begin to rise in ever greater proportion. (The law of diminishing returns), and eventually any additional investments in materials, equipment and labor would not be worth the cost.

Casting Adam Smith’s lights on today’s American economy, it would appear that a major reason why productivity is so low, unemployment so high, and wages lagging behind prices, is because the mega corporations that control the economy have, against all free-market principles, engineered it that way to maximize profits.

But even so, one might ask, how could productivity and employment so far below capacity yield high profits? Wouldn’t the big players need to produce a reasonably large volume of products, hire enough workers to make them, and pay them well-enough to buy them, so they can make at least a minimal profit? In other words, where is their money, their billions, trillions coming from if not from actual productivity?

From many sources--stock sales, low-interest borrowing, tax breaks and subsidies, foreign investments, outsourcing production to cheap-labor countries, mergers and acquisitions, derivative trading, default swaps, well-insured speculations--none of which translate into benefits for the average working American or small business. The mega-corporations that control our economy and, thereby, our government have surreptitiously nslaved us.

The larger insight that we may draw from Adam Smith’s 900-page classic is that the “private sector” so revered by conservative ideologues in America is not necessarily synonymous with free-market capitalism.

Uneducated Educators

2011-01-01T11:38:00.002-05:00

Every attempt to upgrade the quality of education in America has failed because the members of the K-12 public education establishment—Federal, state and local educrats; school of education professors; teacher union officials; superintendents; principals, administrators and teachers — are for the most part too poorly educated themselves to know what a real education is.

Particularly egregious are the educational deficiencies elementary school teachers. As much as 60% of the typical school-of-education curriculum for elementary education majors consists mainly of crowd-control courses. Further diluting their education is the option of meeting core academic requirements with watered-down courses designed especially for them, like how to teach math to first-graders, instead of the real math.

Ask elementary school teachers why they chose to major in education rather than earn a standard B.A. or B.S. degree, and most will confess that they dreaded the math requirement. Thus it is not surprising that later, as teachers, they invariably project their fears onto their students by making math sound so dreadfully boring and difficult that they tend to sugarcoat the subject beyond recognition. The main reason why so many American high school students have trouble mastering Algebra is not so much their Algebra teachers are inept, though more than a few are, but because their teachers back in elementary school failed to teach them the fundamentals of arithmetic. And much the same holds true with science, language skills and social studies.

So given the entrenched shortcomings of the public education establishment, there is no reason to assume that Barack’s Obama’s proposed Race to the Top program to improve the quality of K-12 will work any better than George Bush’s No Child Behind, Eisenhower’s National Defense Education Ace or any such other government plan. Try as you might, you cannot get seeds to germinate in unfertile soil.

Yet something must be done, and fast, for it is clear that without a well-educated labor force, this country cannot hope to compete successfully in today’s global economy. Many scientists and engineers employed in the U.S and half of students in those fields enrolled in U.S. universities at present come from foreign countries where a solid state-supported K-12 education is top priority. But we cannot expect this brain-drain to continue indefinitely. Some of those highly-skilled professionals and university graduates will settle permanently in the U.S., but just as many are likely to return to their home countries once economic and social conditions there improve, and when their universities catch up with ours, there will no need to for their students to come to the U.S. to complete their education.

Free market advocates--the late Milton Friedman, for one--have suggested that privatizing K-12 public schools and forcing them to compete with one another would compel them to provide their charges with an optimum education in order to stay in business. This free market approach might work if education were a tangible, easily measured product like, say, houses or automobiles. But success or failure in education takes years to asses. It would not show up in quarterly balance sheets. Much like national defense and law enforcement, education is one of those intangible social institutions that doesn’t lend itself to the "invisible hand" of capitalism.

And, rewarding good teachers with promotions and higher salaries, wouldn’t work either, because, by the same token, it would takes years for a teacher’s competence or lack thereof to manifest itself. Seemingly boring, plodding teachers may turn out to be better educators than perky ones who keep their classes entertained. Nor can end-of-year standardized test scores be relied upon to measure long-range progress. So what to do? Two suggestions for starters:
One, dismantle the entire K-12 public education establishment, from the U.S. Department of Education, (which Ronald Reagan had promised to do but never got around to it), to university school-of-education departments, to local school bureaucracies. Some members of the Libertarian Cato Institute have already made a similar recommendations. State governors of New Jersey, Colorado, Nevada, Mississippi and California, among others, have, in effect, started the dismantling process by drastically cutting the fat off their K-12 education budget.
Two, require that teachers earn legitimate undergraduate degrees from duly accredited colleges and universities. Some new hires, no doubt, will turn out to be poor educators. But those who do make the grade will, at least, have the intellectual heft to do right by their students. The nuts and bolts of classroom management they can quickly, intuitively learn on the job and from informal consultation with colleagues.

That done, other corrective measures will present themselves as the need for them arise.

Limit Specialization. Rather than solve problems as they arise, the usual practice in public education is to create specialists to deal with the problem. For example, if students are having trouble learning to read, a degree or certificate in "Reading," properly couched in the latest sociological jargon, is created, Classroom teachers then send their poor readers to the reading specialist, and though the students, predictably, come back as illiterate as ever, school officials, when pressed for an explanation, will argue that by implementing the program, scientifically proven to work over time, they are doing all they can to help those students. So al in all, the only ones who benefit from the reading program are the School of Education professors who concocted the program, classroom teacher who are spared the burden of working with underachievers, and, most of all, the reading specialist, whose class ratios are small, usually one-to-one, a cushy job, to say the least. Moreover, the specialists have no incentive to solve the problems, for if they did, they would be out of a job And the same holds true for math, Special Ed, Conflict Resolution, Diversity Counseling, Bilingual Ed and ESL specialists. (As I can attest from my personal experience as a 14-year-old Cuban immigrant, foreign students naturally pick up English from their American peers, not from ESL specialists.)
Eliminate superintendents and school boards. Public school superintendents typically are outsiders who bungle things in the district where they served, and then move on to do the same in a new district, usually in a distant part the country, where their record is not well known. In their first year in office, they tend to make all sorts of superficial changes—transferring teachers and principals from one school to another, rehashing old programs, issuing gilded press releases, holding public meeting, etc.—and by the time it becomes evident, four years or so later, that these changes were no more effective, or even worse, than those made by their failed predecessors, they resign and move on to their next job.
As for school boards members, too many tend to be aspiring politicians who use the board as a means of launching a career into higher office. Many mayors, state congresspersons, and governors started out serving on school boards. Others board members are in it for personal gain, like a building contractor in our district who has made a sizable fortune remodeling schools that needed not remodeling. Superintendents and school boards may have at one time served a useful purpose, but no more. The taxpayer money spend on them is largely wasted. Their traditionally job—approving the hiring of new teachers and staff, reporting to the city council, keeping the public informed, promoting fund-raising events—could easily be done by a revolving ad hoc committee of principals and teachers, at no extra cost to the taxpayers, provide, course, that the principals and teachers are well-educated professionals educators--which takes us back to the recommendation that the entire public education establishment must first be dismantled. Teacher unions and government officials beholden to them will, of course, raise a big howl, as they are wont to do when challenged do, but they must be told in no uncertain terms that their howling is no longer convincing.

Capitalism Paradox

2011-01-01T11:38:00.001-05:00

Business folks swear by free market competition, in theory, that is, but in practice they actually fear it, hate it, and do all they can to avoid or eliminate it. Ideally they do this by providing a better product or service than their competitors: the “invisible hand” of the self-regulating interplay of supply-and-demand as prescribed by the acknowledged dean of capitalism, Adam Smith, in his 1776 classic, The Wealth of Nations. But when the “invisible hand” proves too difficult to maintain or fails altogether, many business folks are apt to resort to devious means of trumping their competitors—By lobbying government officials for subsidies and special tax-breaks; by gaining their favor, not to say bribing them, with campaign contributions; by filing nit-picking lawsuits; through false advertisement, fuzzy accounting practices, misleading information to prospective investors, and so forth. In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith devotes a good three fourths of the book to the various ways by which the “invisible hand” was thwarted in the England of his generation. Remarkably, much of what he noted back then is still current in the U.K. and common in the U.S. and other so-called free-market nations.

Wall Street Plunder

2011-01-01T11:38:00.000-05:00

As explained by Adam Smith, the acknowledged dean of capitalism, the value of labor in a free market is largely determined by the difficulty and training involved in acquiring and employing the skills in demand. Hence he deemed it fair that in his day a bricklayer earned less than a house carpenters, because carpentry entailed more ingenuity; that house carpenters earned less than coal miners, because coal mining was a dirtier and more dangerous; that coal miners earned less than bartenders, because dealing with drunks was even more dangerous than coal mining; and because hanging and beheading was the most unpleasant occupation of all, executioners were right in demanding the highest wages among manual workers. And so it went with the relative value of the work of physicians, lawyers, scholars, ministers and other professionals--The Wealth of Nations, "Book One, Chapter Ten." (1776)

Like Adam Smith in his day, We Americans in 2011 have no trouble accepting the fact that on average common laborers earn less ($24,000) than skilled electricians ($50,000); elementary school teachers less ($40,000) than engineers ($70,000); dentists ($120,000) less than heart surgeons ($300,000); and U.S. Senators ($174,000) less than the President ($400,000). Entertainment celebrities buck the general rule (Adam Smith regarded them as morally no better than prostitutes), as do sports stars, though, in all fairness, some allowances could be made for their often stressful and ephemeral careers.

Now consider the astronomical sums commanded by Wall Street financiers. In 2007, even as Lehman Brothers was verging on bankruptcy and on the brink on triggering a global financial catastrophe, the compensation package of its CEO was $121,000,000, more than 300 times the salary of the President of the United States, 400 times that of a heart surgeon, and 5000 times that of the hardhat guys who repair our roads.

So we may rightly ask. What is it that those Wall Street financiers actually do to make so much money? What do they actually contribute to the economy? What is so valuable about their credit default swaps, derivative packages, and other abstruse paper products? Now there is no doubt that commercial banks serve an important function by providing credit to local businesses and consumers. But those mammoth Wall Street financial institutions, Are they banks in the true sense of the word? Do they take risks with their own capital, as commercial banks and shop owners on Main Street must, or do they make their fortunes by gambling with their client’s money and, win lose, get their bloated pay nonetheless? Are they bona-fide private-sector enterprises, or are they, as mounting evidence suggests, a shadow parasitical cartel created to siphon off the nation’s wealth?

Their apologists argue that the millions—billions in some cases—that big-time financiers rake in are but a minute fraction of the nation’s aggregate salaries and wages. True, but what the apologists fail to consider is that so much money concentrated in the hands of few, rather than spread over a large population of business leaders, gives that small, tightly-knit group the means to buy off elected officials and civil servants in key positions, and, thereby, the clout to control, not only the national economy, but the entire government as well. The fact that government regulatory agencies saw the financial crisis of 2008 looming but did nothing about it, not even sound the alarm, speaks volumes.

Their apologists further argue that big-time financing is so complex a business that multi-million dollar compensation packages must be offered to attract and retain the rare few capable of understanding and running the business. This backward logic, of course, makes some sense: If the industry’s ruling cadre of insiders deliberately convolute, veil, obfuscate and jargonize their cultural lingo beyond the comprehension of outsiders, then it follows that only they are qualified to run their business, and being such a talented bunch, geniuses as some claim, they deserve nothing less than multi-million dollar compensations.

Though Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bears Stearns went bankrupt in the 2008 crash, their former CEO’s are still hanging around, biding their time for the opportunity to get back in the loop. With Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the two survivors of the big five, thanks to a taxpayer bailout, it’s still business as usual, as the $100,000.000 bonus awarded the Goldman Sachs CEO in 2010 will attest.

Adam noted that when an industry becomes so lucrative that its owners begin to make unusually large profits, competitors will get into the act, thereby increasing the supply of the product demanded and, by the Law of Supply and Demand, causing profits to come down to reasonable level. Unless, of course, competitors are prevented from competing, in which case, the profits of the original owners will continue to spike indefinitely. Obviously this is what tightly-knit Wall Street players have done. They have cornered the financial market, bought the necessary government influence, kept out the competition, and reaped all lucre for themselves. Why the fiscal conservative politicos bent on cutting benefits for average wage earners while lowering taxes for the very rich is cause for suspicion.

The iconic Revolutionary War flag of a rattlesnake warning “Don’t tread on me” (the Gadsden Flag) was inspired by Benjamin Franklin’s dig to the British Government that if they insisted on exiling their convicted criminals to America, then we should respond in kind by sending Britain our rattlesnakes. Perhaps today we can retaliate against the unfair trade practices of some of our economic competitors by outsourcing to them our Wall Street financiers.

Closing Guantanamo

2011-01-01T11:31:00.000-05:00

Why the fear of closing the Guantanamo Detention Center and transferring its detainees to prisons on U.S. soil? Because the Jihadist terrorists detained there are far more dangerous than the worst of our home-grown criminals? Because they might sway fellow inmates by the thousands to join their cause? Because some or all en masse are likely to escape, regroup, take over law-abiding Muslim communities and terrorize the nation from within? Such fears, whether justified or not, could be easily precluded by sending each individual detainee to a separate prison. There are in the U.S. some 800 prisons—Federal, State, and private—and only 445 Gitmo detainees. With the group broken up and dispersed from Florida to Alaska, devoid of their mutual support, the Jihadists, however fanatical, would be rendered harmless. Why our leaders have not considered this simple solution makes no sense—Unless they are deliberately keeping us in the dark for some political reason, as it’s so often the case.

The Terrorist Boogyman

2011-01-01T11:29:00.009-05:00

Had “Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid been just another criminal nutcase he would have merely been charged with the trying to blow up an airliner in flight, attempted murder-suicide, and given a prison sentence proportionate with the crime, probably with the possibility of parole after a few years if he showed he was no longer a threat to society. But Reid was no ordinary criminal. He was a self-avowed Al Qaeda terrorist. He wasn’t just trying to blow up an airliner. He was, as the sentencing judge took pains to explain, attacking America. For that, his due punishment was a life sentence without the possibility of parole plus another 80 years for good measure.

Now there is no doubt that Reid so hated America that he was willing to die for the satisfaction of killing a plane load of Americans. But to say that one not-too-bright fanatic intent on committing a single act of violence, which he failed to carry off, was by his lonesome capable of attacking the most powerful nation on Earth, is an exaggeration beyond all logic and common sense. The United States of American, an industrial and economic giant of 300 million people with the mightiest military force and most sophisticated national security agencies in history, cannot possibly be that attackable, not by any known foreign army in history, and certainly not a by a lone terrorist or a small group of terrorists. The nineteen 9/11 suicide terrorists may have succeed in bringing down the Twin Towers in New York City, damaging the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, murdering some 3,000 people and alarming the nation, but they couldn’t have boasted that they had literally attacked and wreaked any actual damage on the entire United States of America. The high-rollers of Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch did do considerable damage, not only to America but to much of the World, yet none have served a day in prison for it.

This is not to suggest that the wannabe terrorists in our midst should be taken lightly, but they shouldn’t be demonized to mythical proportions, either. To do so only aggrandizes their fanatical self-esteem and prestige among their group. Long prison sentences for them are a badge of honor. Regarding them as the losers that they really are would neutralize them.

Or is their demonization a ruse? Could it be that our leaders are deliberately creating super boogymen to scare us into supporting greater funding for national security, or to take our minds off our economic woes. If we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to invade Iraq, would it be then unreasonable to suspect to that we are also being duped into fearing a handful of misguided fools?

The Ever-Growing Bull Sh * t Mound

2011-01-01T11:28:00.005-05:00

We have always been misled, duped and lied to. Nothing unusual about that. What’s remarkable is that since the turn of this century, the bull sh*t has been piling up so thick that it has become increasingly difficult to sift it from the truth. Below is a partial list. Note the contradictions.

The U.S. Constitution champions limited government, free market capitalism, and strong family values.

The U.S. Constitution champions a strong central government, an equable distribution of wealth, human rights, and social welfare.

The original Constitution established a one-man-one vote democracy.

The Constitution empowers the President to declare war, raise or lower taxes and control the economy.

The Declaration of Independence is a legally-binding document.

The “Creator” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is synonymous with “The Lord” of modern-day Evangelicals.

The Founding Fathers were all devout Christians.

The motto “in God we trust” harks back to the Revolutionary War.

Religious leaders have a direct line of communication with the Almighty.

The Lord and I converse with each other. I know exactly what He expects from me and how His mind works; and He knows what I want and gives it to me for the asking.

If you tithe generously to your church, you will be recompensed tenfold.

Barack Obama is a born-again Christian.

Abortion is strictly prohibited in the Scriptures.

Homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of The Lord.

Our relgion is the true religion. All others are superstions.

The underlying theme in the Bible is peace and brotherly love.

We don’t torture our political prisoners or send them to countries that allow torture.

Waterboarding is not real torture.

People who opposed the war in Iraq and Afghanistan did so because they hated George Bush

We are in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for democracy, freedom, justice and women’s rights.

Our boys are over there building hospitals and schools.

The Bush- Obama Surge has brought stability to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now that elections were held and parliaments formed, Iraq and Afghanistan are well on the way to becoming full-fledged democracies.

Afghans farmers have abandoned their poppy cash crop and are now earning a good living raising tomatoes.

Our CIA had no clue where Osama Bin Laden was hiding.

We are winning the war on terror.

We are winning the war on drugs.

Smoking pot invariable leads to hard-drugs addition.

There is no recession in America, only a temporary correction.

The big Wall Street players--Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Countrywide—were not really responsible for the financial meltdown of 2008. The culprit was big government.

America is the envy of the world. Everyone wants to be like us.

The automobile and all other great inventions have come from America.

Our health care system is the best in world.

Americans enjoy the highest standard of living in the world.

America is a culturally diverse but strongly united nation.

Government regulations impacting on our personal lives are made by caring experts who know what’s best for us. They are rightly committed to save us from ourselves.

The solution to most problems is to turn them over to the private sector.

Cutting taxes for the rich induces them to invest in businesses, create jobs and grow the economy.

Reaganomics ushered in an era of prosperity.

Ronald Reagan brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Curtailing the power of teacher unions diminishes the quality of public school education.

Labor unions have undermined the American economy.

Illegal immigrants by definition are all criminals.

Terrorist posing as illegal immigrants are pouring into the country.

Hundreds of thousands of non-citizens have been issued false registration cards and paid to vote in key elections.

Barack Obama’s race was not a factor in the 2008 presidential election.

Israel is the bastion of peace and sanity in the Middle East. We are morally and politically bound to defend her at whatever cost.

Columbia is no longer involved in the drug trade.

Legality and Illegality are synonymous with right and wrong.

Adam Smith was a dog-eat-dog laissez faire economist.

Friedrich Nietzsche was an atheist.

Ayn Rand was a precursor of the Tea Party movement.

Karl Marx hated America.

Socialism and Marxism are the same thing.

Psychology is an exact science. It has developed therapies that can correct undesirable behavior and cure mental illnesses.

Juvenile offenders cannot be held accountable because their brains are too immature to distinguish right from wrong

There’s no such thing as evil.

All people are created equal therefore all are equally capable and intelligent. Stupidity is a meaningless word.

A college diploma is the only key to success.

An education from an Ivy league institution is in every way superior to one from a state university.

Liberals are enlightened humanitarians; conservatives, simple-minded bigots.

Conservatives are realistic doers; liberals misguided fools.

And as we speak the bull sh*t keeps piling up higher and thicker.

Who Are Those Gitmo Detainees?

2011-01-01T11:27:00.000-05:00

Though it has been ten years since the 9/11 attacks, we are continually warned by our government that it’s only a matter of time before the terrorist strike again, and on a greater scale. The terrorists, they warn, are making their move as we speak, some flying in from Al Qaeda training camps from remote corners of the world, others crossing the Mexican border disguised as farm workers, others already here in the U.S. holding regular jobs and attending our universities. The enemy host is everywhere and growing in numbers. We cannot let our guard down and lull ourselves into false sense of security.

O,K., the warning is loud and clear, but in order for us ordinary citizens to effectively guard against the terrorists threat, our government should share more of their intelligence with us. We would need to more about the enemy, the sort of people they are, the way they think and operate, their recruitment and infiltrating methods, their mannerisms, their cultural and religious ties, in short, how to recognize them.

Which takes us to the living sample of the Gitmo detainees. As of March 2011, there were 172 terrorists still imprisoned in Guantanamo (down from 750). By bringing them to trial in the U.S. and publicly airing the proceedings on TV rather than trying them in secret military courts, as some of our government officials insist (actually, since none of the detainees could be identified as members of a national armed force, but merely “enemy combatants”, they cannot be legally tried in military courts) then we would get a good idea of what these people are like, what exactly they did to merit the brand of terrorist. Were some simply firing at the U.S. invaders, blustering about their deeds to impress their superiors and peers, butchering non-cooperating civilians, actually planning and capable of orchestrating another 9/11?. Are they mostly stupid, brilliant, ignorant, well educated, rational, mentally deranged? What? As has been noted since time immemorial, the key to victory in any manner of strife is not superior force but greater knowledge of the enemy. Granted, there is much top secret information that our government cannot divulge without giving away their strategies or endangering the lives of our agents and collaborators abroad. But keeping us citizens entirely in the dark is not a good policy either. In democracy like ours, we the people, as the Constitution makes clear, are ultimately the ones who rule, and for that we should expect from our public servants as much information as is prudently possible.

Our Ruling Shadow Government

2011-01-01T11:25:00.002-05:00

Ignore our elected officials. Focus instead on the private interests that finance their campaigns and to the lobbyists that write their script and give them their orders. These shadow powers-that-be are our real government. The politicos we read about and see strutting their stuff on TV are but puppets on a short string. They don't matter. And We the People who vote for them under the illusion that they do matter, matter even less.

So What If We're Not No.1 Anymore

2011-01-01T11:25:00.000-05:00

Given the fact that the populations of China and India are respectively 4.5 and 4.2 larger than that of the U.S.; and that their workers are on average younger and just as well, or perhaps better, educated, then it should not come as a surprise that in the next decade their economies will, as reliable sources predict, surpass that of the U.S. Alarming news for us Americans? Not at all. Dropping from first to third (or fourth--the European Union has already surpassed us) will not necessarily translate into a diminish standard of living or unhappiness for our individual citizens. President Barack Obama’s cheerleading speech about the need to out-produce the rest of the world in every regard, at all costs, in order to stay on top, would only make sense if economics were an Olympic event. But the game to be played here is of a different sort. To win this game we need to improve our act from within, in effect, compete against ourselves, not the world. A healthy, well-employed, prosperous population will keep us on top even if our economy is no longer number one.

The Root Cause-Industry

2011-01-01T11:19:00.001-05:00

That pundits of every hue and stripe have built secure careers delving into the “root causes” of crime, poverty, prejudice, injustice, mental disorders, drug addiction, war and such other evils is not surprising. If the roots causes of evil were discoverable they would have been discovered and effectively dealt with eons ago. But because not even the greatest thinkers in history have been able to come close to offering credible explanations, the root-causes of evil remain an open question, a subject that can be at infinitum rehashed by pundits without incurring the risk of chancing upon the truth and, thereby, rendering their profession irrelevant. A recession-proof gig if you can get it.

They're not Sick. They're Evil.

2011-01-01T11:15:00.000-05:00

They who deem themselves morally correct argue that individuals prone to violence cannot be held accountable for their actions because they don’t know what they are doing. As with any sick person, they should be treated and cured, not punished.

Those good folks fail to consider that only a minute fraction of the mentally-disturbed, outright psychotics even, are violent. Some perfectly sane individuals, on the other hand--hired assassins, gung-ho mercenaries, and such--kill without compunction. It would appear, then, that the proclivity for violence is not a function of insanity or sanity. Nor does environment seem to be a factor. Some individuals, obviously, are born killers.

Psychologists and psychiatrists might be able to diagnose a mental illness (actually any lay person can tell in five minutes if someone is mentally unstable)and couch their findings in scientific jargon. After all, that's their livelihood. But do they command the science to treat and cure the mentally ill? Is there any hard evidence that they have ever cured anyone, much less a born killer?

I, for one, hold that for the good of society, the violence-prone, insane or otherwise, should be incarcerated for life, or executed, as the law allows. The trade-off should not be hard to accept: Better to make life safe for innocent people at large than to worry about the rights of a few individuals bereft of a normal conscience. If someone, sane or not, broke into my house to harm my family and I had a gun handy, I would shoot first and mull the moral issue and legal consequences later. I thank our Founding Fathers for our Second Amendment rights.

My Constitutional Right to Bear Arms

2011-01-01T11:13:00.000-05:00

As Ulysses S. Grant noted, the way to tell a bad law from a good one is that the a bad law cannot be enforced. The overly-strict gun-control ordinances in cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C. offer clear examples of bad, unenforceable laws. Considering the high incidence of street crime in such urban centers, the politically-correct policy of coddling youthful offenders, and the shortage of police officers to deal with the problem, it is not unreasonable to assume that more than a few otherwise law-abiding citizens have acquired firearms illegally, and are not reluctant to use them to protected themselves, their families, or their property. For most, that basic survival instinct takes precedence over formal compliance with the law. Given the choice of staying alive and being legally wrong, or being legally right and dead, most sane folks would choose the former.

Proponents of repealing the Second Amendment and banning private ownership of guns altogether, trot out statistics showing that that there are far more cases of gun owners using their guns on family members, neighbors and coworkers, or to commit suicide, than to take out a criminal in self defense. But what that anti-gun argument fails to consider is that acts of self defense involving guns are not officially recorded by the police or reported by the sensation-peddling news media, unless the assailant is killed or wounded. If the gun owner merely scares off a would-be by showing him his weapon or firing into the air, no one hears about it, and no stats are kept.

Street thugs, as a general rule, do not score high on I.Q. tests. Many are marginally retarded. But most compensate by developing keen animal instincts. They can usually sense, better than a person of normal intelligence, when somebody wielding a gun means business, and prudently back off.

I recall from my youth in Cuba that one of the first things that Fidel Castro did when he came to power was to confiscate all private firearms. ¿Armas para qué?, (why guns?) droned the official slogan over the state-controlled radio, and the Cuban masses, still basking in the triumph of La Revolución willingly, trustingly, gullibly, stupidly turned in their firearms. The shrewd Lider Máximo thus prevented the people from ever taking up arms against him.

The Founding Fathers who conceived the Second Amendment were more than mere intellectuals. All were also schooled in the real world, in the image of Plato’s philosopher kings. I, for one, am not about to question their wisdom.

American Justice Again the Loser

2011-01-01T11:10:00.001-05:00

That the jury in the Casey Anthony murder trial got sidetracked with legal trivialities and lost sight of justice was to be expected. There is a reason why defense lawyers select the most gullible, swayable, undiscerning, unintelligent jurors possible.

As stated in the Original Constitution—Bill of Rights, Amendment 6, defendants are guaranteed a free and speed trial by an impartial jury, not by a jury of one’s peers, as defense lawyers and liberal judges have since perverted that right. The kind of impartial jury the Founding Fathers had in mind was not one randomly made up of average folks like our neighbors down the street. Rather, it was to be judiciously selected from the better-informed, if not educated, and fair-minded members of the community, an English Common Law practice harking back to the 12th century. Unless our courts get back in line with the tradition of jury selection as understood by the Founding Fathers, travesties like the Casey Anthony, O’J. Simpson, Al Capone and other hyped-up murder trials—the list is long—will continue to make a mockery of American criminal law.

American For Profit Health Care

2011-01-01T11:09:00.002-05:00

Given the boondoggle of K-12 public education and the unbridled government waste in America at all levels—Federal, state, and municipal—one is justified in doubting the effectiveness of a government-run health care system. On the other hand, the private insurance system in place for the past 70 years obviously is not working, and the reason it’s not working, and can never work, is that the competitive, free-market mindset of insurance companies consists of cutting costs and making money for its investors, not on how well they serve the sick. That kind of competitiveness no doubt works well with producers of material products like home appliances and automobiles, where success can be clearly measured in dollars and cents on a quarterly basis, but not with providers of services like health care where success is long-range and qualitative. Entrusting health care to private for-profit corporations is no less absurd than proposing the same for the Armed Forces, the FBI or our national parks.

Consider the spiraling costs. When a patient sues a doctor for malpractice, he doesn’t sue the doctor, for the patient’s lawyer knows that the doctor, however well remunerated, doesn’t earn enough to make the legal expenses and risk of losing the lawsuit worthwhile. Whom the lawyer sues, to the hilt, is the doctor’s insurance company, the party with the deep pockets. This, then, forces the insurance company to raise malpractice premiums, which doctors, in turn, passes on to his patients’ employers by raising fees, and employers, in turn, pass down the cost to their employees by paying them less. If employers do not provide health insurance, then the employees, being at the lowest rung of the pecking order, cannot pass down the cost down any further and have no choice but to cover the costs out of pocket, which can, and often does, push an average household to the brink of bankruptcy. And if someone in the household happens to have a pre-existing condition, or has the misfortune of becoming one of the 9.6% working-age Americans unemployed (some say the actual figure is twice that), health insurance of any sort is out of the question.

Then there are the added costs, in billions of dollars, in paper work and red tape. A sizable part of a business, hospital or doctor’s clerical staff is devoted exclusively to dealing with convoluted insurance forms, further complicated by the fact that every insurance company has its own set of forms and requirements. And if a doctor doesn’t accept a patient’s insurance
policy, which is becoming increasingly the case, then the patient has to spend hours filling the forms to get benefit he is entitle to, or get stuck with the bill.

Conservative leaders in the U.S. hold that the for-profit American health care system is the best in the world, and, as proof, cite cases of foreign citizens who opt to come to the United States for medical treatment rather than rely on their nations’ state-run “socialist” system. But they conveniently neglect to mention that those foreign citizens are well-to-do individuals for whom cost is not a factor. For ordinary foreign wage earners, however, the cost of medical treatment in the U.S. would be prohibitive. A Canadian clerk earning $25,000 year, for example, couldn’t possibly afford to pay for a $30.000+ heart-bypass operation in the U.S. Though he might have to wait longer in line for the procedure, his only viable option is to rely on his Canadian public system, or even pay out of pocket under a private plan, the average cost under such a plan being one-third of a comparable one in the U.S. In countries like India, Indonesia, China, South Korea and Thailand, it would be even less, and with no difference in quality or success rate, their surgeons, hospital care and state of the art equipment being every bit as good as that in America. Maybe the American for-profit health care system is, as jingoistic U.S. leaders claim, the best in the world, but if that’s the case, Why is it that no other country in the world would consider adopting it?

U.S. Health Care Not Best in World

2011-01-01T11:08:00.001-05:00

In keeping with the conservative canon of his party, a Republican Senator from the State of Wyoming contended on national television that the for-profit American health care system is the best in the world, and, as proof, cited the case of Canadian Premier Danny Williams who opted to come to the United States for heart surgery rather than rely on his nation’s state-run “socialist” system. But the Senator conveniently neglect to mention that the Premier was a wealthy man for whom cost was not a factor. For an ordinary foreign wage earner the cost of medical treatment in the U.S. would be prohibitive. A Canadian clerk earning $25,000 year, for example, couldn’t possibly afford to pay for a routine $30,000 heart-bypass operation in the U.S. Though he might have to wait longer in line for the procedure, his only viable option is to rely on his Canadian public system, or even pay out of pocket under a private plan, the average cost under such a plan in Canada being one-third of a comparable one in the U.S. In most other countries, it would be even less, and with no difference in quality or success rate. Maybe the American for-profit health care system is indeed the best in the world, but if that’s the case, Why is it that no other country in the world would consider adopting it?

And why is it that rather than foreigners coming to the U.S. in droves for medical treatment the reverse is true? According to Medical Tourism statistics the number of American patients seeking healthcare abroad in 2007 was between 500,000 and 700,000, with the figure expected to double by 2011. And this not only because the cost of treatment abroad, travel and living expenses included, is considerably cheaper, but also because the technology in Medical Tourism centers is state-of-the art and the waiting period for treatment shorter than in the U.S. Leading Medical Tourism nations include Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Costa Rica, Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico.

Another U.S. Senator, this one from the State of Alabama, declared that the American health care system “is the best the world has ever known." He should corroborate his data with the millions of unemployed, uninsured citizens in America. Many might have a second opinion.

Ryan Health Care: Bad Social Engineering

2011-01-01T11:07:00.001-05:00

Congressman’s Paul Ryan’s plan to bring down the spiraling Medicare costs in America is, in a nutshell, as follows: Starting in 2022 eligible beneficiaries would receive a subsidy to purchase health insurance in the open market. Though the subsidy would cover only about one fourth of the cost, the rest would be covered out of pocket by the beneficiaries themselves. However, by negotiating with competing insurance companies, the beneficiaries could significantly reduce their share of the cost. The Federal Government would thus start privatizing Medicare—obviously the long-range scheme—taxpayers then would be relieved of the burden, beneficiaries would become smarter consumers, and insurance companies more efficient providers. A free-market win-win all around.

But here questions arise. For the plan to work, future beneficiaries must be required, by law, to pay into a special fund, as is the case with Social Security. But wouldn’t this fund have to be entrusted to a government or government appointed agency? And as we speak, aren’t 27 states arguing in court that a similar compulsory requirement in Obamacare is un-Constitutional? And how about the beneficiaries? Are most physically and mentally hale enough to spend hours on end poring over the inscrutable legalese of insurance contracts? Wouldn’t this spawn a side industry of pricy advisers, con men and lawsuits? And what guarantee is there that insurance companies would compete to serve senior citizens, most of whom are retirees on a tight budget? How could private insurance companies turn enough profit from it to stay in business?

Say what you will about Newt “foot-in-the-mouth” Gingrich. He was right on the money when he blurted that both the Ryan scheme and Obama care were forms of social engineering, and, one may add, bad social engineering at that.

The Balanced Budget Dilemma

2011-01-01T11:07:00.000-05:00

Conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats alike have limited the 2011 budget deficit debate to two variable, costs and taxes. The third variable, borrowing, they have conveniently ignored. In mathematical terms, the full equation is this: Government Spending = Existing Tax Revenues x Borrowing. So, if American politicos want to preserve their constituents entitlement and pet discretionary programs, while, at the same time, cutting taxes, they would have to make up for the lost tax revenue by borrowing money, thereby adding to the national debt and, in effect, kicking the problem down the road for future generations to deal with it.

This was exactly how the short-lived economic spurts during the Reagan and Bush Son administrations were engineered in the 1980’s and 2000’s. Myth has it that because taxes were cut across the board business were able to expand, earn more revenue, hire more workers, and, as a result, the tax cuts were amply offset by business and consumers paying more in total taxes though at a lower rate. A win-win all around. But what really spurred those economic spurts was borrowing. During the Reagan, the national debt tripled, and under Bush Son it doubled. “Voodoo Economics,” that’s what Bush Father aptly called “Reaganomics” when campaigning against Reagan in the 1980 Presidential primary. He knew that even if businesses took advantage of lower taxes to increase production, which business are not necessarily inclined to do, it would take years, even decades, for profits to kick in. The “Reaganomics” quick fix was really a massive borrowing spree.

But back to the 2011 deficit debate. Clearly, if Republican conservatives and liberal Democrats want to preserve their constituents pet programs without increasing the national debt, they will have to raise taxes. And if they choose to cut taxes without raising the debt, then the only solution is to decimate their pet programs, and run the risk of triggering a revolt and getting voted out of office. Given the fact that the American economy is not growing to a significant degree, if at all, that little or no new wealth is forthcoming from other sources any time soon, those are the only options. Not a good time these days to be an elected official in America.

Tea Party Constitutional Ignorance

2011-01-01T11:05:00.000-05:00

The reading of the Constitution on the House of Representatives orchestrated by newly-elected Tea Party Republicans to advance their political and social views was an embarrassing display of ignorance. Had they studied the Constitution in its entirety and the reasoning of the Founding Fathers beforehand, they would have learned that the iconic document is not the blueprint for small government, lower taxes, cost cutting, state rights, and laissez faire economics that they though. Quite the contrary, from the 1789 original through the subsequent Amendments, the tenor of the Constitution is for a strong central government, increased spending, strict regulations and ever greater taxing powers, culminating with the Tax on Income foisted by the 16th Amendment (1913). It should be noted that the most repeated phrase in the "Congress shall have the power to . . ."

As Alexander Hamilton, New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention, put it: “A nation cannot long exist without revenues. Destitute of this essential support, it must resign its independence, and sink into the degraded condition of a province. This is an extremity to which no government will of choice accede. Revenue, therefore, must be had at all events.” And acquiring revenue at all events, as the need arises could only be assured by investing a central government with the power to levy new or increase existing axes, mainly against consumption. (Taxing personal income would have been abhorrent as abhorrent to him as it was to his political rival Thomas Jefferson.) The Federalist Papers #12 (1787).

A strong “republic,” not a weak “democracy” was, what James Madison of Virginia and the other Federalist who carried the day wanted for America. The Federalist Papers #10 (1787)

Ideologically, our modern day Tea Partiers are more in tune with the state- rights Anti-Federalist delegates who lost the debate, like the anonymous Brutus, who held that under the kind of strong Republic advocated by the Federalists, “No state can emit paper money—lay any duties or imposts, on imports, or exports, but by consent of Congress . . . the legislatures of the several states will find it impossible to raise monies to support their governments. Without money they cannot be supported , and they must dwindle away, and, as observed, their powers absorbed in that of the general government.” The Anti-Federalist Papers #1 (1787)

Another Anti-Federalist with whom our Tea Partiers have much in common was Virginia delegate George Mason, who refused to sign the Constitution , rejecting the whole thing out of hand on the grounds that “This government will set out a moderated aristocracy: it is at present impossible to foresee whether it will, in its operation, produce a monarchy, or a corrupt, tyrannical aristocracy; it will most probably vibrate some years between the two, and then terminate in one or the other.” (Quoted from The Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates, Penguin Putnam, (2003)

Though he signed off on the document, Pennsylvania delegate Benjamin Franklin had strong reservation , as did Thomas Jefferson, who was at the time serving as ambassador to France.

Perhaps it would be a good idea if candidates for public office were required to pass a test on the Constitution. The thought that so many of our elected officials idolatrize yet bank on the document without knowing anything about it is disturbing. Let us hope our newly elected Tea Partiers to Congress are not as unintelligent as they are ignorant.

Our Born-Again Evangelical President Obama

2011-01-01T11:01:00.005-05:00

You have to give him credit. Our 44th President is one clever, not to say, wily, politician. But of late he has become a bit too transparent. First, following the “shellacking,” his party took in the 2010 elections, he suddenly shifted from left to right off center by cozying up to the business sector, which he had virtually ignored and even denounced during his 2008 Presidential campaign. And now, to dispel suspicions that he might be a foreign-born Muslim and, thereby, burnish his true-blood American Christian image for the upcoming 2012 elections, he recently declared:

"A call rooted in faith is what led me, just a few years out of college, to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the south side of Chicago. And it was through that experience, working with pastors and laypeople, trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace him as my Lord and Savior."

Whether the American people believe that these changes in Barack Obama are genuine or politically calculated remains to be seen. He already can count on the vote of most leftist and many independents for the 2012 Presidential election. Could well be that he may convince some Evangelical conservatives to vote for him as well.

The Revolt of the Fanatical Non-Thinkers

2011-01-01T11:00:00.001-05:00

If you are one those critical thinkers who cruises the commentary sections on the Internet seeking to engage followers of Evangelical political leaders in a rational debate, you are wasting your time. Once such leaders claim, or truly believe, that God is on their side and, by virtue of their charisma, convince their followers that they are divinely inspired modern-day prophets, then they can do no wrong. Their most egregious flaws, their biggest lies, their worst legal and moral transgressions are idolatrously rationalized or overlooked.
Bring up, for instance, Sarah Palin’s lack of education or Michele Bachmann’s false interpretation of the Constitution, and their followers will deflect your comment with irrelevant counter-comments about Barak Obama’s ties with leftist radicals, or else assail you with epithets, like “Communist, “traitor,” “fool” “retard,” and worse. Never mind that you might be a Republican fiscal conservative, a devoted student of Adam Smith, a happy family man, a decorated war veteran, and a Math Ph.D. who voted for Ralph Nader. Questioning Godly leaders is nothing less than a sacrilege.
And if you persist in your sacrilege, you are branded a “hater.” Recall how during the Bush years, right-wing talk show hosts—Limbaugh, Boortz, Hannity et. al. insisted, as if reading from the same script, that if you opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was because you hated George Bush. Never mind that you liked the guy as a person. If you thought those wars were a mistake, then you hated him. Period. Ergo, you were despicable “hater.” The same applies today to anyone who dares criticize Evangelicals ordained by The Lord to do His work.
Then usually chiming in is a group of equally devout, equally irrational left-wing types who, though they have no equivalent for the “hater” brand, they will similarly deflect criticism by dredging up the corruption of conservative politicians and call you names-- “fascist,” “bigot,” “red-neck bumpkin,” “Limbaugh ditto-head” –- if you don’t happen to agree wholeheartedly with them.
All of which would make for great entertainment were it not for the disturbing fact that such non-tinkers on both fringes of the political and social spectrum are called to serve on juries and have voting rights.

The Obamacare Repeal Folly

2011-01-01T10:59:00.000-05:00

The newly elected House Republicans that so zealously voted to repeal Obamacare might have ruined their chances for re-election in 2012. Their pitch that The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, is a “job-killing” socialistic, un-American piece of legislation may have been bought at face value by 56% of the people when the Democrats were in control of the House and the people, worried about losing their jobs, or already unemployed, were in a mood for change. (44%, it should be noted, were not swayed.) Though no one really knew the details of the mammoth 2.500 page Act, the pitch at the time rang true But now that they are in control, the newly elected House Republican, along with the Party leaders, will be compelled to explain to their constituents exactly why Obamacare is the “job killer” they say. Hard facts, the nitty-gritty in dollars and cents, not more high-sounding rhetoric, is what they will be expected to produce.

And it could well turn out that once their constituents become better acquainted with Obamacare, that many will want to keep it, at least part of it; that it is not a job killer, but a job creator, as the Congressional Budget Office suggests. In which case the new Republicans will come off as demagogues who had played on the emotions of the people to get elected. And on the prejudices of some as well. Though they won’t admit it, the tone of their rhetoric throughout their campaigns betrayed that Obama’s race and foreign name was cause for alarm.

Furthermore, since their repeal will not pass the Democratic controlled Senate, and even if it did, President Obama would veto it out of hand, House Republicans will be hard pressed to explain why they wasted so much time playing a political game when there was so much urgent Congressional business pending. And, by the same token, Republican state attorneys general intent on challenging the Constitutionality of Obamacare will have to explain to taxpayers what there is to gain for their costly legalistic maneuvering—arguing cases before the Supreme Court is not cheap--which has no chance of succeeding, either.

Republicans at all levels should take note: Most Americans in these hard times couldn’t care less about political ideology, future budget deficits, the national debt, global commitments, or other such issues which they, nor do most politicos, fully understand. And ditto for gay marriage, abortion, school prayer and other Evangelical bugaboos. The daily struggle for survival in the here and now, that’s the overriding concern of the American people. Jobs, stable, well-paying jobs, however they are created, that’s all they care about. As President Clinton’s campaign adviser James Carville famously put it a generation ago, “it’s the economy, stupid.”

The De Facto American Theocracy

2011-01-01T10:58:00.000-05:00

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” which means that legally speaking America is a secular nation, that the separation of church and state is the indisputable law of the land. But by the unwritten law of the people, the law that really counts, America is not at all a secular nation. De facto, there is no separation of Church and State in America. Since the Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock, 170 years before the ratified Constitution was implemented, America has been, spiritually, culturally, and politically, a Protestant Christian nation with a strong Evangelical bent, and probably more so today than ever.
Consider the missionary-like zeal of American leaders to foist their fiath on foreign cultures; the banning of stem-cell research and the widespread opposition to gay rights and abortion on religious grounds and, to further connect the dots, the visceral distrust of many American conservatives of Barak Hussein Obama, no so much because he comes across as a liberal, because he might be not be a bona fide Protestant Christian. Recall that John Kennedy, though to a lesser degree, was rejected out of hand by many voters for being a Catholic. The contrast between America and the secular democracies of Europe is striking.
Let us first hear from some notable true believers:
“I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."-- George Bush, 43rd. President
“God has spoken to me. I listen to God, and what I’ve heard is that I’m supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican Party.” --Tom Delay, Former Speaker of the House
“War in Iraq is God's Plan." – Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska, former Vice-Presidential candidate, aspiring Presidential contender.
"God called me to run for Congress".--Michelle Bachmann, U.S. Congresswoman, Tea Party leader. aspiring Presidential contender.
“Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”—Alabama Governor Robert Bentley
“I’m proud to say I’m a born-again Christian.” Scott Walker, Wisconsin Governor.
“Ladies and Gentleman, evangelical Christians support Israel because we believe that the words of Moses and the ancient prophets of Israel were inspired by God. We believe that the emergence of a Jewish state in the land promised by God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was ordained by God.” – Pat Robertson, TV Evangelicalleader and former Presidential candidate.
"We should live our lives as though Christ was coming this afternoon." -- Jimmy Carter, 39th President.
“I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land.” Martin Luther King, Jr. martyred civil rights leader.
Consider next how during election time TV ads of candidates for public office invariably include clips of themselves attending church with their families, (strong family values being an integral part of the Evangelical image); how they lard their talking points with allusions to the Bible and God; how in a key debate in the 2008 presidential primaries the would-be candidates on stage groped for Biblical stories and verses they recalled in answer to a question about their familiarity with the Holy Scriptures. They all knew that no matter how qualified they were to fulfill the role of President as defined by Article II of the Constitution, they would not have a ghost of chance of being nominated, much less elected, if they did not display they proper Christian credentials. Some, no doubt, were religiously indifferent, even agonistic or atheist, but they had to play along. Below are samples of religious affirmations made by high-power Americans politicians in speeches and interviews though not necessarily living up to them. Hypocrisy? Not necessarily, just smart politics:
“The Bible is the authoritative Word of God and contains all truth.” Bill Clinton, 42nd President.
“Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged. . . Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face.” -- Ronald Reagan, 40th President.
"A call rooted in faith is what led me, just a few years out of college, to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the south side of Chicago. And it was through that experience, working with pastors and laypeople, trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace him as my Lord and Savior." Barack Obama, 44th President
“For most Americans, prayer is real, and we subordinate ourselves to a God on whom we call for wisdom, guidance, and salvation,” Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and aspiring Presidential contender.
"Faith is enormously important to me personally and to tens of millions of Americans”-- John Edwards, former U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate.
“Our culture is superior. Our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity and that is the truth that makes men free.” Pat Buchanan, former Presidential candidate
"The fundamental basis of this nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teaching we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.” Harry Truman, 33rd President
"It is my conviction that the fundamental trouble with the people of the United States is that they have gotten too far away from Almighty God." Warren Harding, 29th President.
"America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scriptures.—Woodrow Wilson. 28th President
"The Bible is the Rock on which this Republic rests." Andrew Jackson, 7th President
"The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were.... the general principles of Christianity." John Quincy Adams, 6th President
"The liberty, prosperity, and the happiness of our country will always be the object of my most fervent prayers to the Supreme Author of All Good." James Monroe, 5th President.
“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.” – George Washington, 1st President.
But not all American notables, especially those of past generations, fully believed or played along:
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.” -- Thomas Paine, Revolutionary War Patriot.
“The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.—Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President.
(The “Creator” Jefferson referred to in the Declaration of Independence was the Deist creator of the 18th century Enlightenment, not the God of Christianity, as modern-day Evangelicals erroneously assume.)
"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."-- Benjamin Franklin, world-renowned 18th century American statesman and scientist, helped edit the Declaration of Independence.
"The doctrine of the divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity."—John Adams, 2nd President
"Religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together." James Madison, 4th President.
“My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them. . . The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession.” – Abraham Lincoln, 16th President.
“To discriminate against a thoroughly upright citizen because he belongs to some particular Church, or because, like Abraham Lincoln, he has not avowed his allegiance to any Church, is an outrage against the liberty of conscience which is one of the foundations of American life.” – Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President.
Needless to say, the seven last quoted would not have been elected had they run for office in modern-day America. By the laws of probability, there must be such free-thinkers around today, but we’ll never hear about them, except maybe as objects of derision on talk shows. Religious differences and practices aside, the United States of American at heart is no more a secular nation than Indonesia or Saudi Arabia.

The Dump Obama Tea Party Agenda

2011-01-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

Tea Party extremists whose primary goal is to make the “socialist, non-American” Barack Obama a one-term President are actually doing the exact opposite. The more they rabble-rouse and trumpet their ignorance under the guise of patriotism, the more they will alienate middle-of-the road independents, the critical thinkers, who, in the final analysis, will be the voters who will determine the winner in the 2012 Presidential election. Indeed, the cleverest countermove that Obama supporters could make is to donate to the campaign funds of Tea Partier Michele Bachmann and others of her ilk. This would be a more effective and far less costly way to promote Obama than the usual prime-time TV ads. -- By the way, have any of those folks shown waving copies of the U.S. Constitution at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference actually read the document through? And if some have, did they understand it?

Legalize The Drugs

2011-01-01T10:55:00.000-05:00

As William Buckley, Milton Friedman and other clear-thinking conservatives held 40 years ago, the only way to win the so-called war on drugs in the U.S. was to obviate it by legalizing the drugs. Given the insatiable multi-billion dollar demand for drugs, one can be sure that the stuff will be supplied somehow, at whatever the risks or costs.

Recall the fiasco of Prohibition. Ratified in 1917 and ratified by 46 of the then 48 states (Rhode Island and Connecticut refusing) the 18th. Amendment to the Constitution prohibited the manufacturing, transportation, sale, importation and exportation of intoxicating liquor in the United States. It did not make the consumption of liquor illegal, but by making the liquor itself illegal, the teetotalers and religious conservatives who foisted the Amendment figured that consumption would be significantly reduced or eliminated. They couldn’t have been more mistaken.

Alcoholism, admittedly, was a major health problem back then, probably more so than now. But Prohibition didn’t cure it. If anything, it made it worse. Illegal “moonshine” stills in rural areas and “bathtub gin” distilleries in urban neighborhoods throughout the country produced booze for working-class folk by the barrel. The better-heeled kept up their fine-liquor habit in floating bars disguised as fishing boats and cruise ships in international waters. Then there were frequent excursions to free ports like Havana, Nassau and Kingston, or across the border to Canada and Mexico.

So the booze flowed on illegally, and with it black market money, and following the money, corrupt government officials, crooked cops and organized crime. Gangster Al Capone earned his legendary reputation by trafficking in illegal liquor. Commanding a 7,000 strong organization and by buying off mayors, judges and Congressmen, Capone rose to become one of the most powerful men in America. “When I sell liquor,” he boasted, “it’s bootlegging. When my patrons serve it in silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it’s hospitality.”

The upshot of it all was that by the time the proponents of Prohibition realized their colossal mistake, the trafficking in illegal liquor had spawned a major industry on both sides of the law. Not only were the bad guys profiting hugely from it, but the good guys as well. Had the ban on liquor suddenly been lifted, hundreds of FBI agents and clean public officials would have lost their jobs.

With the outset of the Great Depression the 18th Amendment was finally repealed by the 21st, the only time in American history that a Constitutional amendment has been repealed. Though reliable statistics are hard to come by, there is no indication that alcohol consumption spiked, that more people died of cirrhosis of the liver, that more were injured in alcohol-induced industrial and traffic accidents, or that more died in drunken brawls, as the teetotalers had warned. Some historians opine that the overall situation actually improved. In 1931 Al Capone was sentenced to 15 years in prison for income tax evasion, and J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI turned its attention to hunting down bank robbers and Communist subversives.

Fast forward 80 years to today’s War on Drugs and the situation is remarkably similar, except that it’s now global, Like the “bathtub gin” and “moonshine” stills of the 1920’s, cottage drug businesses have proliferated throughout America and the rest of the world. No small farmer in his right mind is going to raise potatoes and chickens legally when he can make a killing growing pot, or poppy, or producing crank or heroin in a makeshift shed. At the distribution level, drug lords in the image of Al Capone, and cops, public officials, and entire governments on their payroll rake in, by some estimates, as much a $500 Billion a year--about equal to the GDP of South Africa, twice that of Peru and five times the yearly profits of Bank of America before the current financial crisis.

Like any major multinational corporation, the illegal drug industry has grown too big to fail. If drugs were suddenly legalized, the price of drugs would plummet and the sizeable number of folks who have built their careers fighting drugs—the DEA, local police departments, counselors, lawyers, moralizing pundits, to name some—would suddenly be out of a gig, along with the criminal element on the other side of the equation. As with Prohibition, the good guys and the bad guys in today’s absurd war against drugs have symbiotically joined ranks. Would it be too cynical to assume that it’s the bad guys who are funding the effort to keep drugs illegal.

Illegal Mexican Scapegoats

2011-01-01T10:53:00.000-05:00

Branding illegal Mexicans criminals simply because they lack the proper documentation, casting them wholesale in same category as rapists, murders and thieves, is scapegoat xenophobia. The reason they come into this country illegally is that they are too poor to come up with the cash to pay off the corrupt bureaucrats in Mexico who grant the legal documents. Passing a law requiring them to go back home and “get in line” at the Mexican emigration office is therefore tantamount to permanent banishment, a law they cannot possibly abide by willingly. True, some illegals turn out to be, or are driven to become. petty criminals, but not in greater proportion than among the native population, Filthy rich drug lords, on the other hand, can buy all the documents they need, come and go across the border as they please in private jets, and conduct their dirty business from executive suites in five-star Las Vegas hotels. They and their well-funded, well-lawyered henchmen, many of them American citizens, are the ones wreaking havoc in our Western states. Challenging them, however, them can have dangerous consequences. The unemployed and financially hurt by the real estate bubble in that part of the country need a convenient scapegoat for their ills, and illegal aliens, like all poor and defenseless folks throughout history, make the best scapegoats.

Consider, further, that if all illegal immigrants are to be regarded as criminals , then, by that broad definition, nearly everybody in this country—-people who drive 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, make illegal u-turns late at night when the cops aren't watching, hedge a bit on their income taxes, smoke Cuban cigars (Rush Limbaugh and Arnold Schwarzsenegger, among others) would also have to classed criminals. And how about our national heroes, icons like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and, for that matter, all of our Founding Fathers? Didn't they break the law? Didn’t King George decree they be hanged as common criminals?

Tea Party Self-Defeat

2011-01-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

Tea Party extremists whose primary goal is to make the “socialist, non-American” Barack Obama a one-term President are actually doing the exact opposite. The more they rabble-rouse and trumpet their ignorance under the guise of patriotism, the more they will alienate middle-of-the road independents, the critical thinkers, who, in the final analysis, will be the voters who will determine the winner in the 2012 Presidential election. Indeed, the cleverest countermove that Obama supporters could make is to donate to the campaign funds of Tea Partier Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Haley Barbour and others of like persuasion. This would be a farm more effective and less costly way to promote Obama than the usual prime-time TV ads.

Government Can and Does Create Real Jobs

2011-01-01T10:50:00.000-05:00

It's an article of faith among Tea Party conservatives that it was excessive government spending what caused the current economic recession, arguably the worst in American history (a depression, really). Only the private sector, they claim, can grow the economy, create jobs, and put America back on the road to prosperity. So by their lights it’s a no-brainer that by cutting government spending across the board and lowering corporate taxes, the wealth now in the hands of idle, stifling government bureaucrats, would devolve to free-market entrepreneurs endowed with the drive and know-how to compound the wealth, leverage profitable businesses and provide stable, well-remunerated employment for millions of American workers.
But if the solution were that simple, Why wasn’t it implemented years ago when the recession loomed? Because lawmakers are ignorant, in denial, fearful of taking politically unpopular measures, corrupt, closet-Communists? No, the reason was simply that the wiser among them knew that as the nation’s biggest consumers, Federal, state and local governments can and do contribute much to economic growth, and, by contrast, that not everything touched by the private sector automatically turns to gold.
Consider, for instance, how in Northern Virginia the fact that a sizeable portion of its residents are well-remunerated Federal employees has enabled them to contribute hugely to local industries, by buying new homes (average price $500K), patronizing restaurants and stores, and, thereby, spawing thousands of jobs. Then there’s the billion-plus-dollar project to upgrade the 495 Beltway and surrounding roadways, another major source of business expansion and employment. All this prosperity, to be sure, is being financed mainly by taxpayer money from other states. Yet, however unfair this transfer of wealth may seem, there’s no denying that for every tax-payer dollar invested in Northern Virginia, the economic returns there are many-fold, and because the increase in total taxes generated by the investment flows back into the national treasury, Northern Virginia is paying back what they got from out-of-state taxpayers, and then some, much as a successful business pay back its creditors with interest. Do the math. If government spending is working in Virginia, there’s no reason it can’t work just as well in other parts of the country.
This is not to suggest, of course, that all government spending is productive. Tea Partiers are right in pointing that much of it is parasitical and wasteful. But the same can be said of the entrenched ruses of the private sector. There is no guarantee, for instance, that the national wealth diverted to Wall Street by cutting government spending and corporate taxes will be not be squandered in foreign ventures, predatory acquisitions, job-killing mergers, lobbying fees, and proliferation of toxic assets. Just as the landscape of government spending abounds with museums that no one visits and bridges to nowhere, the back alleys of Wall Street are littered with trash left behind by Enron, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and others of their ilk— toxic trash left for taxpayers to clean up.
In the 2010 Congressional elections, Tea Party newcomers handily defeated their incumbent opponents by convincing voters that big, out-of-control government was wholly responsible for today’s intractable recession and high unemployment. But now that they are in power Tea Partiers would do well to acknowledge that the housing bubble that triggered the disaster was largely the work of out-of-control gamblers masquerading as free-market financiers. If the newly elected Tea Party members of Congress continue, for ideological reasons, to gloss over or, as some tend to do, turn a blind eye to the private sector side of problem, come next election they might be the ones getting voted out of office.

Rick Perry's Non-Constitutional, Un-Christian Prayer Meetings

2011-01-01T10:47:00.007-05:00

Rick Perry’s prayer meetings will no doubt score high points with his Evangelical Christian base, but if he is planning to run for President, it will likely turn off mainline Christians and secular swing voters, for these two reasons.

First, such meetings have a un-Constitutional ring to them. The powers and duties of the President as explicitly defined by Article II of The Constitution makes no mention at all of promoting religious values. The President, of course, can be a devout believer and, as such, bank on his faith to make decisions, as did George W. Bush, but he has no legal right to foist his faith on the nation. He is elected to serve as Chief Executive and Commander in Chief of the United States of America, not as head prophet or guru.

Second, Perry’s mass prayer meetings—political rallies in disguise, really--are un-Christian. As Jesus said: “And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say unto you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. (Matt 6:5-6—New King James Version)

Rick Perry might be right. The economic and social ills plaguing America might be due to a loss of spiritual values. But, if that be the case, then the problem is for God to deal with. It’s not the job of mortals, especially of mundane politicos like Rick Perry.

False Risk Takers

2011-01-01T10:47:00.000-05:00

Big-time corporate executives have perpetrated the myth that the multimillion dollar bonuses they rake in are due compensation for the extraordinary risks they take. Actually, they take not risks at all. To begin with, they money they risk is not their money. It’s their shareholder’s money. And even when they fail to turn a profit; even when they bring their companies to ruin, they still rake in their mega bonuses. And should their companies happen to be “too big to fail,” the Federal Government, i.e. we, the U.S. taxpayers, bails them out. Small shop owners on Main Street who rely on bank loans and their own lifesavings to keep their businesses afloat are the ones who take the real risks. What the fat-cats on Wall Street really do is gamble with other people’s money, and because the politicos in their pockets see to it that laws are passed to cover their gambling losses, the fat cats never lose. The just get fatter and fatter. Legalized thievery, not risk-taking, is the correct term for it.

Indolence

2011-01-01T10:45:00.000-05:00

What is the moral difference between a Communist freeloader and an amateur Wall Street investor? None, really. The socialist freeloader expects life-long benefits and security without doing anything to earn it, and the amateur investor great wealth by sitting on his posterior and simply watching his money grow. Both are equally indolent, and their comeuppance pretty much the same. Dire poverty for the freeloader and ruin for the amateur investor. Whatever happened to the old work ethic?

Why Reaganomics Couldn't Work Today

2011-01-01T10:43:00.002-05:00

Fiscal conservative pundits argue that across-the-board tax cuts, like the kind implemented by JFK and Ronald Reagan, would increase productivity, reduce unemployment, rally the American stock market, and automatically cure the economic ills plaguing our nation.

I beg to differ. The American economy prior to 1988 is ancient history. In the heydays of JFK we were an exporting economy, our manufacturing index was 25 % of GDP, unemployment was holding at a steady 5.7 %, the national debt, which had been declining apace since the end WWII, was
45 % of GDP. And because our creditors were mainly American, principal and interest payments on the debt were plowed back into our national economy. Moreover, the big chips in the stock market—General Motors, General Electric, Caterpillar, IBM, etc.—were located and operating mainly in the U.S.A, the dollar was solid, and our future global competitors had not yet recovered from World War II. For all intent and purposes we were the world’s sole economic power. Given such a robust national economy, it was a given that tax cuts across the board would benefit the nation as whole, Whatever the immediate loss of tax revenues would be offset many times over by the tax revenues generated by profits from new and expanding businesses.

During the Reagan era we started getting some serious competition from Europe and Japan, but the globalization and job exporting trend that would accelerated in the next decade had not yet set in. We were still a low unemployment, strong dollar, manufacturing, “made-in-America,” stock-market dominating nation. Tax cuts across the board, therefore, made good sense.

But fast forward to America's position in today’s 2009 global economy, and the picture changes radically. Our big players on Wall Street have long gone global. The American stock market now is American in name only. We are indebted to our eyeballs to foreign lenders, at a tune of 12+ trillion dollars, nearly 80% of GNP. That’s $40,000 per citizen. Where once we produced durable goods for exports and domestic consumption, our main industry now consists of, marketing and bundling largely nonproductive financial services. Where a sizable number of our labor force once enjoyed steady, remunerative employment in factories and construction work, now most workers have to scrounge about for dead-end hourly-wage jobs, or go back to school to retrain for jobs that might not exist when they graduate.

So there is no reason to expect that the across-the board tax cuts that worked in the days of JFK and Ronald Reagan would work in our weakening national economy. Such cuts no doubt would be a godsend to American corporations operating abroad, to labor, investors, lenders and politicos in emerging-economy countries where these corporations operate, and, to a lesser degree, to some well-connected purveyors of “services” here at home. But the lion’s share of the wealth created by across-the-board tax cuts would invariably be siphoned off to subsidize foreign interests. For the millions of unemployed and underemployed folks here at home, the scant pocket money left over for them could not begin to help them make ends meet or cover their share of the national debt. A resurrection of the JFK-Ronald Reagan tax cuts? Dumb idea.

Our Sham GDP

2011-01-01T10:37:00.000-05:00

The suggestion by some European economists that quality of life should be included in GDP as a measure of economic growth may not seem legitimate to our American votaries of Adam Smith, the acknowledged dean of Capitalism; but, then, by the same token,neither does our American version of the GDP.

As defined by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations

, wealth-creating productive labor is the kind engaged in the production of capital goods, things like tools and machinery not immediately consumed that can be used and reused for the production of other goods, and supporting service industries, like commercial banks and venture capitalist firms. Labor involved in the production of goods immediately consumed, though they may create employment, contribute nothing to a nation’s real wealth, and is, therefore, to be regarded as “unproductive labor.” No sane creditor Smith, notes, would risk lending to businesses engaged in the manufacture or trade of consumer goods. (Book 2, Chapter. 4)

Consider the preponderance of non-productive goods and services included in our GDP, from the frivolous—cosmetics, high couture, celebrity magazines—to the parasitical—gambling, derivative trading, ambulance-chasing lawsuits. Consider further the trillions borrowed to finance such goods and services. By Adam Smith's lights, then, we really have no valid case against Europeans who seek to include quality of life in their GDP when we bloat ours with non-productive goods and services.

Adam Smith, though, was quick to point out that no nation would want to specialize exclusively on tools and machinery. Life in such a nation would be insufferably dreary. The capacity of the average citizen to purchase consumer goods is the mark of a successful, happy society. All work and no play does make Jack a dull boy. But here’s the rub: the consumerism factor is valid only if consumers pay for their frills with their own money. The modern-day practice of people going into debt to their eyeballs to acquire things they cannot afford, or really need, would cause the dean of Capitalism to writhe in his grave.

Corruption Abroad and at Home Compared

2011-01-01T10:31:00.001-05:00

The cop stops you for what he says is a traffic violation. But he doesn’t write you a ticket. Instead, he sizes up you up-- the clothes you are wearing, the make of your car, your passport and documents, making sure, lest he lose his job, that you have no connections or business with local big-shots; and on the basis of his snap assessment, refined through much experience, he figures that you are good for, say, a $50 extortion, to be paid to him on the spot, preferably in American dollars or Euros, his swagger and conspicuous sidearm or Ak-47 slung on his shoulder telling you in no uncertain terms that he and he alone is the law in this matter, and that you either pay him off or suffer whatever consequences he chooses. If you don’t happen to be carrying enough cash that day, maybe your wrist watch and jewelry might do, if he hasn’t already insisted on that as well. So you pay up and drive on, chalking up the extortion to the cost of venturing into so-called “developing world.”

Here in America that kind of corruption, though it exists, is very rare. That our great democracy is a nation of laws, not of men, is indisputable. Consider, for instance, the strict traffic ordinances of the college town where I reside in North Carolina. The speed-limit here is 25 miles per hour. Exceed the limit, however slightly, and a police cruiser, of which there are many lurking about, allegedly to protect you from harm, will pull you over. An armed but well-mannered uniformed officer will emerge from the cruiser, ask to see your driver’s license and vehicle registration and, if both documents are in order and nothing more serious is involved , the officer will write you a ticket for the speeding violation, $25, plus another $100 for something vaguely called “court costs.”

The instructions on the ticket explain that you have 30 days to challenge the fine in court or to pay it by mail. As most violators, you would likely opt for the latter, as arguing the case in court would be too costly in time lost from your regular business, and probably to no avail, anyway. Traffic judges almost always side with ticket-issuing cops, major contributors, along with tax collectors, to the town’s coffers. So you decide to tighten your belt a bit and mail the $125, in two weeks maybe, when you can better afford it.

But then, the very next day, you receive an email or phone call from a lawyer saying that for $300 he can get the judge to dismiss your violation and expunge it from the public record. The offer may at first sound like bad deal, $300 being more than twice the $125 fine, but, on second thought you figure that it would be worth it, for a speeding fine might cause your auto insurance company to brand you an unsafe driver and raise your premium accordingly. The average yearly premium for normal drivers in North Carolina in 2011 was $1,164. A speeding fine could jack that up to $2,000, and needless to say, more than one fine for speeding or another other moving violations could put a huge dent on your budget. The judge, moreover, might sentence you to attend a remedial driving school, at a cost of another $400 or $500. So you pay the lawyer $300 to fix your ticket, $125 of which will presumably go to the court and the rest into the lawyer’s pocket.

Other frequently ticketed violations in my town are passing on the right in an unmarked lane, even if there is ample room and the vehicle in front of you is stopped or well in the process of making a left turn, and driving without your seat belt buckled, a big moneymaker. The cop issuing the ticket for this violation will treat you to a pro forma lecture explaining that you should feel grateful that the police department is so concern about your safety.

Scroll back now to the $50 extortion by the traffic cop in the underdeveloped country on the other side of the world and compare. Should you refuse to pay him the $50, he could, of course, threaten to beat you up or shoot you, but that would highly unlikely. Nor is he likely to compound your car or jail you, because that would mean sharing your car and you with other, more powerful extortionists who might want to take it all. What the cop would probably do is take your car keys and delay you until you give in, or, seeing that by wasting so much time with you he is missing opportunities to prey on more docile foreigners, he lets you go. And like the traffic cop on the street, so will the host of bureaucrats, clerks and others whose stamps and documents you need to conduct your business or simply move around will be holding out their hand for their cut.

So the question here arises: Is that that informal, arbitrary third-world corruption in the final analysis any worse than the formal, legalized, institutionalized schemes of our traffic courts, our IRS, local tax collectors, real estate lawyers, health insurance companies, credit card lenders and others dedicated to relieve us from a goodly share of our hard-earned money without providing much of real value in return? You be the judge.

America's Real Unemployment Rate

2011-01-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

According to the latest official statistics, the unemployment rate in America was 9.4%. But if you reckon the people who have given up looking for work, taken on menial part-time jobs, taken early retirement, dropped out of the labor market to go back to school, stayed on to earn a higher degree upon graduation from college, and embarked on a business that never bore fruit, the actual rate is about 25%, about the same as Greece and Spain.

Americans are a law-abiding but not a docile people. They are fast losing patience. If their employment situation doesn't improve soon, many are likely to lash out hard, in some cases violently, at the powers-that-be they deem responsible for the problem. A Middle East like revolt? Could very well happen in the more depressed parts of the country. Republican and Democratic politicos take heed. The unrest might already be brewing.

The Israel Albatross

2011-01-01T10:29:00.000-05:00

Though they don’t seem to agree on anything, most American politicos and pundits of every persuasion are of one mind in claiming that support of Israel is vital to America’s national security. Some go as far as to mention America and Israel in the same breath, as if one is were an integral part of the other. Yet none bothers to explain how this tight relationship works to keep America safe. If anything, America’s diehard support of Israel, financially and militarily, fully one-third of her foreign aid, appears to be a major, if not the main, reason why the Islamic world has turned against America and Jihadists terrorists are girding up for replays of 9/11.

For all his talk about change, President Obama’s pro-Israel policy is right in line with Republican and Democratic predecessor harking back to the founding of Israel in 1948. Obviously, there is a rationale for this lopsided support of a foreign nation smaller in population and size than New Jersey, and with no natural resources to speak of. Whatever that rationale is, however, has been a well-guarded secret. But we American taxpayers, the ones footing the bill, are beginning to wonder, especially now that so many of us art struggling to make ends meet, what exactly is it that we are we getting in return for the billions of our hard-earned money lavished on Israel. Or should we refrain from bringing up the issue for fear of being branded Anti-Semitic?

The Global Cultural Pollution

2011-01-01T10:26:00.005-05:00

Back during the Cold War, TV and print media in the Soviet Block abounded with anti-American propaganda so dumb, so laughable that not even the most devout Communists could it take it seriously. Were the Cold War still going on today, the bureaucrats at the ministry of propaganda, or wherever that drivel was conceived, would not need to tax their imagination. All they had to do was cruise through the wasteland of American TV. There they would find more than enough vulgarity, bad taste, sick humor, rank materialism and idiocy to fill months-worth of propaganda videos, propaganda that would be believable because it would have provided for free by the enemy itself.

Consider, for instance, the shows, current or replays of Jerry Springer, Howard Stern, Maury Povich, Morton Downy, Rick Lake, Montel Williams, Dr. Phil, and Geraldo Rivera; sitcoms like “Desperate Housewives” and “Two and a Half Men”; reality show lie “Joe Millionaire”, “Temptation Island,” “The Littlest Groom,” “Dance Your Ass Off” , “The Swam”, and Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice”; shrill, ignoramus talk show hosts; declarations by ignoramus political candidates and office-holders; faith-healing, holy-water peddling preachers; hyper-melodramatic Hispanic soap operas; 24-hour infomercials; libelous political ads; “Wrestlemania”; Tila Tequila, Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj; misogynist, angry-for-no-reason rap stars; movie-channel flicks like “The Killer Inside Me,” “American Beauty,” and “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call—New Orleans”. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Most American TV shows at the height of the Cold War, “Playhouse 90” and “I Love Lucy,” for example, and some HBO features like “John Adams” would not have made good sources of anti-American propaganda.

But the Cold War is long past, and our former enemies are now, officially anyway, our allies. They do not need to mine our TV fare for propaganda. They can flip through the hundreds of channels directly via satellite. And, much to the alarm of their cultural purists, an increasing number of their citizens are finding American TV extremely entertaining. Importing trash American shows and spawning even worse imitations have become a major industry, not only in the former Soviet Bloc, but throughout the world, including the once bastions of high culture of Western Europe. During a recent trip to Florence, my wife and I were by turns amused and appalled by the abysmal contrast between the Renaissance treasures of the city and Italian TV.

We can be sure, though, that our current enemies in radical Islam have seized on this fast spreading cultural pollution to promote their cause. On the other hand, they run the risk that their followers might succumb to it also... which, on second thought, might be a way of winning the war against them without firing a shot. Stay tuned.

The Hard Facts Supermarket

2011-01-01T10:25:00.004-05:00

Laissez Faire capitalists ground their views on hard facts. Communists likewise ground their views on hard facts. Republicans and Democrats idealists, religious skeptics and believers, the pious and the atheist, the law-abiding and the crooked, the moral and the immoral, libertines and prudes, war mongers and pacifists, bigots, humanitarians, patriots, fanatics, nihilists, environmentalists, the dreamers and realists-—Whatever it is we believe in and swear by can be readily grounded on hard, incontrovertible, time tested facts supported by theologies, legal systems, constitutions, newspapers, TV and radio talk shows, Internet blogs and legion other sources and combinations thereof stocked in the shelves of History's Hard-Facts Supermarket. There exists no market, however, for linking the facts together so that that, as a whole, they ring true. That kind of wisdom is beyond human reach, yet strive to achieve it, at least in some measure, we must, lest the sheer volume of disconnected hard facts plunge us back into the chaos from which religions and mythologies say we came.

Osama Bin Laden the Great

2011-01-01T10:25:00.002-05:00

If money is the ultimate measure of things, as our capitalistic culture holds, then the fact that the cost of hunting down and killing Osama Bin Laden was upwards of a trillion dollars would make him on of the greatest, if not the greatest, man in history.

Mobocracy in America

2011-01-01T10:24:00.003-05:00

The elitist republic envisioned by the Founding Fathers in 1787 did not pan out as planned. America eventually morphed into a one-man-one-vote democracy and, in past decades, into an anything-goes mobocracy where anyone who can afford to pay the registration fee is deemed qualified to run for public office. To win, however, they must profess to be devout Christians, and, most important, be able to raise lots of money and market themselves on television. Ideas, knowledge, experience, integrity, such old values no longer matter. By modern-day standards, any well-funded actor, comedian, retired athlete or celebrity of whatever stripe or hue is now regarded as qualified to serve not only as senator or governor, but as President of the United States and leader of the free world. How much further our great mobocracy will degenerate before it self-destructs is anybody’s guess.

The Founding Fathers Were Not Pro-Democracy

2011-01-01T10:21:00.004-05:00

Contrary to popular belief, the framers of the of the U.S. Constitution were not pro-democracy by any stretch of the imagination. At heart, they were aristocrats with a social conscience in the tradition of the European noblesse oblige. Their aim was not to create a democracy (the word does not appear anywhere in the Constitution) but to found a republic in which a minority of well-informed citizens elected wise men of unimpeachable integrity sworn to serve the country, not by pandering to the mood of ordinary citizens or to polls, but as their higher conscience mandated, a top-down form of government, not the bottom-up kind taken for granted by modern-day populists.

The “We the People,” in the Preamble did not mean that all the people were to be involved in or consulted to “create a more perfect union, establish justice, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity . . .¨ Such a momentous undertaking could only be entrusted to an elite few.

In the original version of the Constitution only members of the House of Representatives were to be elected by popular vote. (Article I, Section 2) Moreover, not all citizens were qualified to vote. When the Constitution was ratified in 1790, individual states retained the freedom to set their own voter-qualification laws, which, in ten of the thirteen states, limited voting rights to literate white male property owners. Only Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New Jersey granted voting rights to free blacks, provided they were literate and certifiable property owners, which was very rare. In all states illiterate men, white or black who owned no property, slaves, and women, literate or not, as much as 85% of the population, was disenfranchised.

The election of Senators was even more removed from the population at large, and more removed still the election of the President. Senators were to be elected by state legislations (Article I, Section 3), and the President by independent electors appointed by the state legislatures (Article II, Section I).

As Alexander Hamilton explained the process of electing the President: “It was ... desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens {i.e. white property owners} from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations. . . . Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, (Federalist Papers #68). Not exactly a populist view.

The full democracy, one-man-one vote in effect today took 181 years to evolve: In 1820 the property ownership requirement was dropped in all states; in 1840 the literacy test; in 1860 New England states granted free African American men the right to vote; in 1870 the 15th Amendment granted the rights to all black men, though Southern states bucked the amendment by imposing exorbitant poll taxes and requiring unreasonable literacy tests, like reading Chinese characters and inverted script.

In 1901 Native Americans in designated tribes were granted citizenship and voting rights; in 1913 the 17th Amendment devolved the election of senators from state legislators to the people; in 1920 the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote; in 1921 the right was granted to Mexican Americans; in 1924 to all Native Americans; in 1943 to Chinese Americans; in 1971 the 26th Amendment granted the right to 18-year-olds; and over time the independent Electoral College of the original Constitution gave way to a system where the electors cast their vote unanimously for the candidate winning the popular vote in their respective states.

Modern-day populists apparently have not studied the Constitution as originally written, or, if they have, they did not understand it.

Michele Bachmann's False Version of the Constitution

2011-01-01T10:20:00.005-05:00

Michele Bachmann has proven to social conservatives that she is a viable contender for the 2012 Republican Primary. But to attract the strictly fiscal conservative base, she should tone down her Tea Party version of the Constitution. There is no mention or any hint at all of family values, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, free-market capitalism, God or other Tea Party articles of faith she claims to have been included in the original Constitution. Nor is the “Creator” she refers to in the Declaration of Independence the same deity as her Evangelical “Lord.” Like most Founding Fathers, the writer of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, and its main editor and proofreader, Benjamin Franklin were Deists and skeptics, not devout Christians. And the phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” clearly was not referring to the rights of unborn children, as Ms. Bachmann claims. The Declaration, besides, is not a legally binding. And as to the motto “In God We Trust,” it first appeared on U.S. coins after the Civil War and was not adopted until 1956 by an act of Congress signed into law by President Eisenhower.

Michele Bachmann’s version of the Constitution, The Declaration of Independence and other iconic American documents will no doubt score points with social conservatives not familiar with them. She legitimizes in their minds what they want to hear. But to folks who have taken the trouble to read these documents through and know a little American history, Michele Bachmann might come across as a demagogue, if not an ignoramus, unfit to serve as President of the United States.

Pandemonium in the Crisis Room

2011-01-01T10:18:00.000-05:00

(From Substitute Teaching in Alexandria,Virginia, by C.F. Navarro.)

Assignment in the crisis room at Maury Elementary. No sooner had the morning bell rung than a 10-year-old-boy in the Emotionally Disturbed (ED) class facing the crisis the crisis room went berserk. A few minutes earlier he had given the ED teacher, her aide, and me a big hug. Now he was shrieking uncontrollably, his cherub face ugly with rage. What prompted the shrieking he wouldn’t say, nor could the teachers figure it out. Maybe another kid had said something he didn’t like, or violated his space, or maybe something he saw or heard triggered a recollection of some unpleasant experience.

The ED teacher knelt by the shirking boy, and, in a soft, loving voice, tried to calm him down. She offered him a coloring book, a box of new crayons, a lollipop, techniques obviously learned in ED-training workshops. But this infuriated the boy all the more. He kicked at her shins, —“Get away from me! B_ _ _ _ ”—and shrieking the epithet, broke away from her, sidestepped the aide and me—I had come in to help—and proceeded to dash helter-skelter about the room, ripping up books, breaking pencils, throwing art supplies, and wreaking all the damage he could before we could corner him.

The teacher finally restrained him by crossing his arms in front of him and gripping his wrists, the proper way, I was told, of applying a restraining hold on a child. Like most ED teachers I’ve met, she was surprisingly strong. She sat down with the boy on her lap—he still shrieking, she saying nothing—and thus they remained, while the aide did her best to keep the rest of class under control. Several of the kids had started mocking the shrieking boy and threatening to “kick his butt” unless he shut up. Others seized the moment to rip up books and break pencils that the shrieking boy had overlooked. One smallish kid amused himself by karate-kicking the cage of Ralph, the class’ pet guinea pig. Guinea pigs in normal classes tend to sleep and munch placidly most of the day. Ralph, by contrast, was a nervous wreck. He scurried about squealing and pawing at the wire walls of his cage. He also had lost much of his hair.

Meanwhile, five boys had come into the closet-sized crisis room where I was subbing. These boys were not certifiably ED, just chronic troublemakers. Regular teachers, under pressure to boost test scores, understandably, didn’t want such kids disturbing their classes, so they would sent them to the crisis room at the first hint of trouble. The ones in my charge that day had spent most of the school year in the crisis room, doing little and learning nothing. Academically all were far behind their peers.

My five charges, it turned out, didn’t like one another at all, and to express their dislike, began badmouthing their mothers. One boy told another that his mom’s hairy p_ _ _ _ stank . The other boy retorted that his mom was a “ho,” and with exaggerated hip thrusts mimed how she plied her trade. The other three joined in with like insults. That such filth was spewing from children made it all the more appalling.

I tried to calm my charges by offering to show them how to make origami birds and wallets, but my educationally correct approach didn’t work any better with them than the ED teacher’s blandishments had worked with her berserk student. Their reaction was to start pummeling one another. The sharp smack of fists on bone and flesh indicated that this was for real. I stepped in between them, now holding one back, now the other, until my co-teacher, who had just arrived, came to my aid. In the melee, one boy punched her in the stomach. Another one kicked me in the ribs, two of which I had fractured the month earlier trying to break up a fight in a middle school, and were still sore. Another one deliberately broke my glasses and tried to smash my thermos bottle. Somehow I managed to catch it before it hit the floor.

After a while the boys grew tired and went back to their seats, but not in peace. They resumed reviling their moms, then, bored with that, started in on my co-teacher and me, calling us every name imaginable. One boy threatened to stab me in the eye with a tack he had pulled from the bulletin board. Another one warned me that his daddy would follow me home and cut me to pieces. Another said he was going to sue me and reached for the telephone to call his lawyer. The kid couldn’t read or do simple math but he knew his legal rights. He knew that the law was stacked against teachers and none would dare lash back at a student, not even verbally, or in self-defense. Very, very gingerly I wrested the telephone away from him made him sit down. The first boy, meanwhile, regaled the group with a rap song, rich in F_ _ _ phrases, about the necessity of selling drugs in order to survive. I looked up at the clock. It was only 9:30. Still five and a half hours to go. Only the calming presence of my co-teacher, a saintly Christian woman—one of many such in our city schools—kept me from walking out on that assignment.

Meanwhile, in the ED room, the berserk boy tried to bolt the school and, when stopped, had so waxed out of control that the principal phoned his mother and asked her to take him home. The mom, however, wouldn’t come. Claimed she was too busy. The principal then tried, for two hours, to get hold of the Social Services employee whose job it was to take out-control kids home, but the man could not be located anywhere. So it fell on the teacher and her aide to do his job, during their lunch hour. Two regular teachers then had to give up of their planning time to cover for them. On route home, the boy tried several times to jump out of the car, and nearly succeeded. Had he gotten hurt, however slightly, the teacher and her aide would have been in big trouble. Back from the ride, the two young women looked ten years older.

A witness from another age or culture would have said that those kids in ED and crisis rooms were possessed by demons, and I would have been inclined to agree. Six months of subbing in public schools have led me to suspect that demons do indeed exist, and in huge numbers. Pandemonium—in the etymological sense of the word—was precisely what I witnessed that day at Maury Elementary.

The vile rapping, the fighting, the cursing, continued, unrelentingly, until the final bell rang at 3:00 P.M. Now and then the principal, a counselor and other teachers pulled from their planning time would drop by and try to establish order, but to no avail. There was not a thing they could do. All their training on how to deal with “needy” children was useless. Educators cannot be expected to double up as psychiatrists and correctional officers.

Those kids that ruined my day—they didn’t even allow me time to eat lunch or visit the rest room—were a pathetic lot. Most will probably end up in prison, or worse. As a parent, I felt very sorry for them. But I felt even sorrier for the hundreds of normal students whose education they had been disrupting since they entered kindergarten and would continue to disrupt as long as they remain in school.

Directly across the hall from the crisis room were two regular first-grade classes. I could not but notice how the pandemonium in the ED and crisis room, which sometimes spilled out into the halls, was affecting the first-graders. Most were markedly stressed out by it, while others, envious of the attention lavished on the troublemakers, had become inclined to emulate them. And their noxious effect was not limited to the first-graders across the hall. Over the course of the year it had spread like a virus to all other classes throughout the school. Most substitute teachers, myself now included, refused to served there, and when the school year ended, half the regular teachers, the entire office staff, the principal, and the assistant principal either transferred to another city school or quit to find work in another school district. Some, I suspect, have made career changes. How that sorry situation came to pass in one the better funded school districts in the greatest nation in the world is beyond comprehension.

Gridlock Self-Destruction

2011-01-01T10:17:00.000-05:00

The Framers of the Constitution deliberately made the passage of legislation time consuming and difficult, thereby preventing Congress from acting hastily and making regrettable decisions. Problem is that today our major economic competitor, our number one foreign threat, if you will, the People’s Republic of China, does not abide by the same Madisonian principle. While our 100 Senators and 435 Representatives mull over bills indefinitely, create gridlocks, wrangle tooth and nail for the largest possible piece of the tax-revenue pie, while they expend precious time and energy exercising their adversarial lawyerly skills to the hilt, you can be sure that the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee and the fifteen-member Full Politburo Committee of China, obedient to the designs of the Communist Party, are all on the same page, making quick decisions and outmaneuvering us at every turn.

Now, we might take satisfaction in badmouthing the Chinese, denouncing them as violators of human rights, ruthless exploiters of the common worker, exporters of unsafe toys and contaminated food, suppressors of free speech, polluters, tyrants, baby killers, and all the rest, but we might as well be barking at the moon. The fact remains that they are rapidly forging ahead of us as the world’s economic superpower, and that emerging nations will be adopting their model, not ours.

This is not to suggest, of course, that we should emulate the Chinese. What works for them in context of their history and culture could not possible work for in contrext of ours. Still, we cannot afford to go on giving them a divide-and-conquer handle against us on a silver platter. Our current financial and social crisis calls for national unity. Recall how quickly the Soviet empire collapsed once it started to crumble from within.

De Facto Segregation in Alexandria, VA, Schools

2011-01-01T10:15:00.001-05:00

(Frem (Substitute Teaching in Alexandria, Virginia) by C.F. Navarro.

The Alexandria City Public Schools were officially desegregated decades ago. Today black and white kids attend school under the same roof. Yet within the schools, segregation persist. Black and white kids tend socialize only with members of their own race. By the time they reach middle school, they eat lunch at separate tables and, though there's no noticeable animosity between them, few show any interest in crossing racial lines to make friends. Even in sports, segregation is the norm. Black kids go out almost exclusively for basketball and football, while white kids tend more toward to baseball, lacrosse and crew.

This de facto segregation in our public schools stems in large measure, not from perceived differences in skin color or culture among students, but from a class distinction inadvertently—not to say surreptitiously-- fomented by the education establishment. Not that Alexandria public school officials are bigots as such. Most are staunch liberals. Many are themselves African American. Yet the harm they do black kids under the guise of helping them would put an old-fashioned racist to shame.

The reverse discrimination was triggered in large measure by the “white flight” to private schools. Our public schools had made the mistake of construing integration as the mixing of advantaged students. mainly white, and disadvantaged students. mainly black, in the same classroom. They believed that one group would bond with and uplift the other. Well-informed parents, however, correctly saw this social engineering as a recipe for academic disaster. Though most parents were strong believers in racial equality, they drew the line where their children’s education was concerned. Many bolted for private or parochial schools, never to return. Some went so far as to sell their homes and move to another county, where the public schools were reputedly better. Many minority parents who could afford it bolted as well.

Under pressure from middle class parents who, as taxpayers, opted to stay and demand an optimum education for their children, school officials created a private school environment for them within the public school system. Most white middle-class students today are routinely classified as “talented and gifted” (the mother of all euphemisms) and placed in rigorous, no-nonsense classes. In the upper grades, T&G students enroll in advanced placement (AP) courses, earn a 3.5+ point-grade average, make the dean’s list, score high in their SATs and, when they graduate, go on to the first-rate colleges.

Black students from poor and working class families, on the other hand, had no one to deliver them from the social engineering. The bright and the not-so-bright, the hard-working and the indolent, the well-behaved and the incorregibly delinquent were all kept together in the same classes. So none could learn their full potential, and all were conveniently tagged as “needy.” Worse yet, the “neediest” of the lot, the ones who caused most trouble, were the ones bestowed the lion’s share of the schools’ resources and services. School officials had created the problem (teachers only followed orders) and now sought to correct it with even more social engineering. Instead of focusing on the able black students and creating positive role models for the rest to follow—as in the program for middle-class students, and in the real world, for that matter--educators focused on the least able. Instead of pulling them up from the top, they tried to push them up from the bottom, and by so doing kept everybody down.

Visit or, better yet, substitute teach in any Alexandria City Public School and, I surmise, most others in America, and you will be struck at once by the undue attention given to troublesome black kids at the expense of their normal peers. The worst of the troublemakers, in effect, have come to define the culture of their schools. “Dumbing down” is too mild a term for it.. Some of the schools I've subbed are more like mental health or correctional facilities than institutions of learning.

The only way to end the de facto segregation in our public schools is to give priority to the normal black kids, the vast majority. Just because they cause no trouble doesn’t mean that they can fend for themselves. Take them out of their dysfunctional classes, connect them with volunteer tutors, of which there are many in our community--retirees, Mormon missionaries--allow each student to progress according to his or her own ability, discipline and challenge them the same as their white peers, and they will integrate in short order; and when they do, many of the problems now plaguing public education will automatically disappear. As for the troublemakers, once they realize they are no longer the center of attention, some, at least, will change their ways.

What Became of the Orginal Constitution?

2011-01-01T10:15:00.000-05:00

Americans who revere the Constitution as their ironclad guarantee of personal freedom might be interested to learn that when the Constitution was ratified in 1789 many notable citizens regarded it as an insidious plot to deprive the people of their liberties.

George Mason, for one, though an active delegate in the Constitutional Convention from day one, refused to sign the document on the grounds that the kind of government it created would evolve into a “corrupt oppressive aristocracy.”

Delegate Benjamin Franklin signed it, though he had his doubts, and so did Thomas Jefferson, who at the time was serving as ambassador to France.

While the Convention was still in session, a series of “observations on the proposed Constitution, for the United States of America, clearly showing it to be a complete system of aristocracy and tyranny and destructive of the rights and liberties of the people,” appeared in various New York newspapers. The observations were subsequently published in book form as
The Anti-Federalist Papers.

It took much retorting on the part of delegates Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, in articles likewise appearing in New York newspapers to make the case that the new Constitution (the flawed Articles of Confederation being the old one) assured “nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world.” These articles were later published under the title of The Federalist Papers.

The raging quarrel between Anti-Federalist and Federalists, however, was not about basic principles, but one of degree. Neither faction sought to form a hereditary ruling aristocracy, like the kind from which they had just liberated themselves, and even less a populist regime, a “mere democracy,” in which the “inferior classes,” would rule by dint of their numbers. The compromise reached was a constitutional republic, a sort of noblesse oblige, of upper class citizens. Senators were to be elected by state legislatures and the President and Vice-president by an electoral college of learned men, ”gray beards,” selected by the states. Only members of the House of Representatives were to be elected by popular vote, and, as determined by state laws, only literate, white male, property owners were qualified to vote, in ten of the thirteen states. New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania granted voting writes to literate black property owners, but these were virtually nonexistent. Men both black and white, literate or not, who owned no property were disenfranchised, as were all women, slaves and Indians, a good 85 percent of the population. The “We the People” in the Preamble clearly didn’t mean all of the people.

It should further be noted that the lion’s share of the power was vested on the Congress. Fearful of the rise of an monarch, the role of the President and Vice-President role was purposely limited, and the judiciary is hardly mentioned.

Fast forward to 2010 and we find that the Republic envisioned by the Founding Fathers is no more. The President and Senators are now elected by popular vote. Congress has evolved into a sort of hereditary aristocracy whose members have made public office their life-time careers. The Chief Executive has usurped much of the power of Congress and become increasingly more like a monarch. The Supreme Court similarly has assumed legislative and morphed into an exclusive aristocracy of Harvard and Yale Law School graduates.

Then there’s the rampant populism fueled by ignorant, shallow thinking, fast talking, fear-mongering TV talk-show hosts, the “rife democracy run amuck.” And rather than setting their misguided constituents straight, rather than lead, elected officials pander to them for easy votes. The few true statesmen in the nation, meanwhile, take refuge in think tanks, where they talk to each other and write learned articles and books that few read.

Had the signatories of the Constitution foreseen what would become of their Republic, it’s not unreasonable to assume that some would have advocated rejoining the mother country as a Commonwealth.

Hope Not Delusion

2011-01-01T10:13:00.000-05:00

The assumption that our country will eventually bounce back, as it had always done in the past, raises hopes, a good thing in these troubled times; but, realistically, we must guard against our hopes turning into wishful thinking.

To begin with, the past generations that bounced back no longer exist; nor have their strength and values devolved down to us intact, if at all. The social and political fabric of our generation, for better or worse, is quite of a different sort.

Also different, very different, is today’s globalized world. Our economic competitors are far more formidable than those of past generations; and given our dismal K-12 public education, government corruption, Wall Street rip-offs, a skyrocketing national debt, decades of living beyond means, high unemployment, high crime rate, low productivity, open-ended wars, social divisiveness, distrust of institutions, horde of parasitical lawyers, talk-show buffoons —the list is long—it does not appear that we are about to bounce back any time soon.

Our once mighty American eagle might soar yet again, but it cannot take flight on broken wings.

Freedoms? What Freedoms?

2011-01-01T10:11:00.000-05:00

Conservatives never tire of telling us that a vote for bigger government means less freedom. But what exactly do they mean by freedom? What freedoms does an unemployed, bankrupt American citizen nowadays stand to lose? The freedom to write an occasional letter to a newspaper that, assuming it ever gets published, no one would read? To fire off emails to TV entertainers posing as sages that are immediately deleted? To phone elected officials that, at best, respond with a pro forma recorded message irrelevant to your question? To vote for one of two equally aloof, inept or corrupt career politicos? To hire a lawyer to defend you in court when you couldn’t begin to pay his astronomical fee? To start a business when you, like the vast majority of people, have no entrepreneurial skills or instincts and are too overwhelmed with daily survival to acquire them, even if you could? To apply for jobs that do not exist? To move to a place where jobs are plentiful when you are tied down to an unsalable house worth less than what you paid for it? To rant and rave to no avail? To forgo a simple inguinal hernia procedure because you can't afford health insurance? To hope against hope? Let’s be realistic. What, exactly, are those freedoms conservatives are talking about?

I wager that not many private-sector, free-market advocates, unless they happened to be financially secure, would be inclined to turn down a cushy government job if it were offered to them.

American Soldiers Killing Afghans for Sport

2011-01-01T10:09:00.000-05:00

An American soldier has pleaded guilty to being part of a "kill team" that deliberately murdered Afghan civilians for sport, and, to add to the atrocities, mockingly posing for photos with their victims and cutting off their fingers as trophies. The Abu Ghraib prison tortures in Iraq were but child’s play in comparison. To ease our collective conscience here at home we might assume that those sport killings were rare, isolated incidents perpetrated by a few rogue soldiers, but neither can we claim that there haven’t been many other similar cases, in Iraq as well as in Afghanistan, and probably Pakistan. There must be reason why so many of the people that we are supposedly liberating despise us.

Be it few or many, what these sport killings reveal (provided that the perpetrators were not already thugs before they enlisted) is the predictable, inevitable loss of moral compass by burnt-out soldiers caught in a mindless, endless war—an evil aptly depicted in "The Valley of Elah," a must-see film for wide-eye Americans who have fallen for the propaganda pitch that all our "boys" in Iraq and Afghanistan are over there building schools and fighting for democracy. The time to bring them home is long overdue.

Ignorant Elected Officials

2011-01-01T10:07:00.000-05:00

At a recent House Financial Services Subcommittee hearing querying Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Congressman Bill Posey of Florida bristled when Mr. Geithner referred to a certain tax payment as a contribution, suggesting that Mr. Geithner had deviously coined the term to sugarcoat the burden to the taxpayer. Contributions are voluntary donations, not mandatory payments, protested Mr. Posey.

The congressman obviously had no clue that in tax lexicon the term contribution refers to a compulsory tax to cover the costs of benefits for a specified segment of the population, unlike a general tax, like say, the income tax, which extends benefits to the population at large.

A prime example of a compulsory contribution is the FICA tax—Federal Insurance Contributions Act to cover Social Security and Medicare.

Another example is the compulsory monthly contributions paid by employers to the Florida Retirement System (FRS). That Congressman Posey, a former Florida state Senator and Chairman of the state Banking and Insurance Committee did not know the wording of the tax laws in his own state makes one wonder about his qualifications, and, by association, those of his fellow legislators.

The term contribution in tax lexicon is as old the word tax itself. Note the use of the term in Adam Smith’s classic, The Wealth of Nations(1776):

“The war tax, having been undertaken, it was said, in defence of the trade of the country, the merchants who were to profit by it, aught to contribute to the support of it.”

“The time of payment for the tax, being the same as for the rent, is as convenient as it can be to the contributor.” (Book 5, Chapter 2, Part I.)

The Wealth of Nations , by the way, was high on the reading list of Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and other American Founding Fathers. Members of our modern-day House Financial Services Subcommittee would, therefore, do well to familiarize themselves with the book. Those who have no time to read it could, at least, have one their staff summarize it for them, particularly the section on taxes, from which the above quotes were taken. Displays of ignorance by elected officials give democracy a bad name.

Who Raises Most Money Wins Elections

2011-01-01T10:06:00.007-05:00

Aside from formal qualifications like citizenship, residence and age, where it applies, what personal attributes are required of political candidate running for office in these United States? Integrity? Honesty? Intelligence? Wisdom? Knowledge of the issues? A sterling education? A successful career in other fields? The answer is none of the above. The main, if not the sole, requirement is the ability to raise money. Candidates who significantly outdo their opponents in raising money invariably win. No polls or expert analyses needed to predict the outcome of elections. The greater pile of cash enables the better fund-raisers to buy more newspaper, radio and TV ads; retain savvier advisers; get invited to more talk shows; enlist more bloggers and media commentators; hire the best speech writers, coaches, make-up artists and wardrobe designers—in short, make themselves more attractive to voters. For idolaters of the rich and famous the ability of candidate to raise big bucks is suffcient proof proof that that they have what it takes to lead. And once candidates are voted into office, once empowered to negotiate earmarks, dispense favors and raise money at will, their re-elections are virtually assured. And, barring term limits or gross criminal conduct, in power they remain as long their health holds out or the Grim Reaper overtakes them. We denounce foreign dictators who cling to power for life, yet fail to see that many of our elected officials end up doing the same. It’s all a matter of scope and degree. Then, on the other side of the equation, is the gullibility of a sizable portion the citizenry and the indifference of the rest. There was a good reason why the Founding Fathers sought to found a Republic governed by an honor-bound, enlightened elite, not a one-man-one-vote vulgar (the 18th century word for "popular")democracy.

Locke's Rationale for Term Limits

2011-01-01T10:05:00.000-05:00

"But in governments, where the legislative is in one lasting assembly always in being, or in one man, as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community; and so will be apt to increase their own riches and power, by taking what they think fit from the people: for a man's property is not at all secure, tho' there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good."-- Second Treatise on Government
Sound familiar?

Trial by Jury of Your Peers

2011-01-01T10:04:00.002-05:00

In our United States of America if you are accused of a crime and taken to court, you have the Constitutional right to a trial by a jury of your peers. True, you would be tried by a jury of your peers, but what the Constitution actually says is this: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. . .” (Amendment 6.) Note that nothing at all is said or implied about a jury of “peers.” The kind of “impartial” jury the Founding Fathers had in mind was not one randomly made up of average folks like your neighbors down the street. Rather, it was to be judiciously selected from the better-informed, if not educated, and fair-minded members of the community, an English Common Law practice harking back to the 12th century. In modern-day America, that tradition has taken a different twist. Jurors selected for criminal trials nowadays are not just our peers in the common sense of the word, but also, by design, the lesser informed and more gullible of the lot. For a recent rape trial in my town, three of the jurors selected were acquaintances of mine: a middle-aged video game aficionado, an auto-parts store clerk whom I’ve never seen without his NASCAR cap, and an assistant pre-school teacher who records and saves her favorite TV show, American Idol, for repeated viewing. The other nine, I am told, were of a similar ilk. All law-abiding, hard-working folk, your ideal peers. Whether a democratic trial by a jury of our peers is an improvement over the impartial jury favored by our elitist Founding Fathers is open to question. You judge.

Fighting Them There

2011-01-01T09:57:00.000-05:00

It's a no-brainer that in order to win or, rather, not to totally lose, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan our U.S. Military must first gain the confidence and support of native civilians. They alone are the ones can tell our troops where the enemy is hiding out, where their weapons and bomb-making equipment are stashed, and where they plan to strike next. The tactic of luring the terrorists into population centers, "fighting them there so we won't have to fight them here," as the Neo-com mantra had it in 2005, does nothing to gain the confidence and support of native civilians. Put yourself in their shoes. Would you take sides with an invading military power that purposely turns your streets and villages into a war zone? Would you believe them when they tell you, even as you see your loved ones blow to pieces, that they are they are doing this to liberate you? Would you hate them any less than the foreign Al Qaeda terrorists, or the local Taliban insurgents whose ranks have swelled tenfold since we invaded Afghanistan? Our only viable option now is to declare that whatever it is we have accomplished a victory, and bring our troops home, the sooner the better.

The Glossed Over, Institutionalized Sin of Usury

2011-01-01T09:56:00.002-05:00

Of the many sins enumerated in the Bible, usury is among the worst. Not loan-sharking in the modern sense of the word, but the mere lending money with interest and requiring some collateral to cover the risk, as is common banking practice today.

The Mosaic law was unambiguous on the matter: “If you lend money to any of my people who are poor among you, you shall be like a moneylender to him; you shall not charge him interest. If you ever take your neighbor’s garment as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down.” (Ex. 22:25-26.)

“You shall not charge interest to your brother –interest on money or food or anything that is lent out of interest. To a foreigner you may charge interest, but to your brother you shall not charge interest. (Deut. 23:19-20.)

“Take no usury or interest or interest from him; but fear that your brother may live with you. You shall not lend him money for usury, nor lend him food at a profit.” (Lev. 25: 35-37)
The exiled prophet Ezekiel at the time of the Babylonian captivity held that usury was one the great sins that brought ruin Israelite nation to ruin, and they who profited from this sin therefore deserve to die. “If he has exacted usury or taken increase – shall he then live? He shall not live! If he has done any of these abominations, he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.” (Ezek 18:13)

Nehemiah, the gifted Jewish cupbearer of the Persian king, entrusted to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, denounced usury as a self-destructive form of slavery among his people, no less repressive than their bondage under the Babylonians: “We are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves . . . it is not our power to redeem them, for other men have our lands and vineyards. . . I rebuked the nobles and rulers . . . according to our ability we have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were sold to other nations. Now, indeed, will you even sell your brethren? . . . Restore now to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses, also the hundredth part of the money and the grain, the new wine and the oil that you have charged them.” (Neh 5: 1-13.)

In his classic The Wealth of Nations (1776) Adam Smith noted that European monarchs, in abiding as feasibly possible with Judeo-Christian teachings, either prohibited the lending of money with interest, or set limits on the interest, usually at 5 percent, a cap which Smith regarded as financially sound. Higher rates, he held, would only invite fraud and abuse, as had obviously been the case in Nehemiah’s time:

“The legal rate...ought not be much above the lowest market rate. If the legal rate of interest in Great Britain, for example, was fixed so high as eight or ten per cent, the greater part of the money which was to be lent would be lent to prodigals and projectors [promoters of fraudulent schemes], who alone would be willing to give this high interest....A great part of the capital of the country would thus be kept out of the hands which were most likely to make a profitable and advantageous use of it, and thrown into those which were most likely to waste and destroy it." (The Wealth of Nations, Book 2, Chapter 4).

Smith also noted: "The man who borrows in order to spend will soon be ruined, and he who lends to him will generally have occasion to repent of his folly. . . Ask any rich man of common prudence, to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question. (Ibid)

And no less harmful is the practice of lowering and manipulating interest rates to lure consumers into living beyond their means. Witness the subprime mortage market. A stable interest rate is key to well functioning free market economy. Consider how the recessions, depressions, bursting financial bubbles, and crumbling houses of cards that characterize our modern day global economy have resulted in large part, if not entirely, from the pervasive sin of usury. The Old Testament sages and Adam Smith were right, as was The Bard: “Neither a lender nor a borrower be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Hamlet,Act I, Scene 3.

Armchair Torturers, Warriors and Executioners

2011-01-01T09:55:00.001-05:00

When Sheriff of Erie County, New York, Grover Cleveland, later 22nd and 24th President of the United States, was accused of lacking the stomach for hangings. To silence his critics he personally carried out the hanging of two convicted murderers, in 1872 and 1873. Former Vice President Dick Cheney should take note from Grover Cleveland’s example. His bent to waterboard terrorist suspects would be more convincing if he would preside over or, at least, witness the act himself.

And ditto for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama for sending young Americans to kill and be killed in open-ended, politically-motivated wars while they read or watch TV reports about it from the safety of the White House on the other side of the planet. The “Good War” rhetoric of the latter and the I’m-Commander-in-Chief struts of the former do not quite wash. Neither having had any military experience (Bush’s sheltered National Guard stint doesn’t count), they should have embedded themselves with an infantry unity in the front lines, at least for an hour or two, to get a taste of the sacrifice they were asking their troops to make. Political leaders with combat experience—Bush Father, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Senator John Kerry, among others,--typically tend to be less gung-ho about going to war. And it should be noted that the most strident pro-war commentators—aptly dubbed “chicken hawks”—have no military experience whatever. The highly popular talk-show host Rush Limbaugh avoided the Viet Nam draft by getting his doctor to declare that he had an intractable boil by his anus.

And the same criticism applies to proponents of capital punishment. Mosaic Law required accusers and witnesses in capital punishment cases to participate in the execution of the convicted offender (Lev. 24:14; Deut. 17:6-7). Made good moral sense.

Surge? What Surge?

2011-01-01T09:55:00.000-05:00

The American military’s much hyped “surge” in the Iraq war was in truth a failed attempt to correct past blunders. Before America invaded, Iraq had a modern infrastructure and national security forces that were holding foreign terrorists and native criminals in check. But instead of taking out the tyrant Saddam Hussein, declaring that in itself a victory and returning home with American prestige intact, the invaders stayed on with the pretext of creating a Western-style democracy and, in short order, destroying the country’s infrastructure and dismantling its security forces. In the chaos that ensued, criminals were left free to prey on law-abiding citizens, foreign Al-Qaeda terrorists poured into the country to battle the invaders, rousing Jihad extremism throughout the Muslim world, and, joining ranks with Al-Qaeda, former cops and soldiers of the dismantled security forces resurfaced as “insurgents” bent on waging guerilla war against the Americans.

Now, after blowing billions of dollars bringing Iraq to ruin, America is blowing even more billions trying to little avail to rebuil Iraq's infrastructure and bribing the selfsame insurgents that killed and maimed thousands of American troops to fight on America's side, with no expectation that they will ever deign to serve under Iraq's cobbled democracy once American troops scale back, unless America continues to finance them. The number of casualties among American troops has, of course diminished considerably, the bulk of fighting having been turned over to the former insurgents, but the sectarian violence and overall misery among Iraqis goes on unabated.

The destruction and chaos that Barack Obama's Surge is wreaking on Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan bodes to wax even worse than Bush's war in Iraq. But ultimately, the real losers are the American taxpayer, the ones footing the bill. The argument that the billions (by some estimates trillions) being squandered on those unwinnable, open-ended wars is a necessary investment in America’s national defense no longer holds water. Those astronomical heaps of money would be better invested in alleviating the recession verging on outright depression back home. American leaders get real. Blind jingoism is not synonymous with patriotism. Time to cut and run, and call it victory.

Concocting Democracies

2011-01-01T09:53:00.000-05:00

(Letter to U.S. Congressman supporting the Iraq invasion.)

Sir, I'm surprised that you, a U.S. Congressman, would have such a shallow understanding of American history. Yes, it took 11 years (not 14, as you say) from the acceptance of the Articles of Confederation by the Continental Congress (1777) to the ratification of the Constitution (1788), to fine-tune the Law of the Land on paper.
But that doesn't mean, as you claim, that Democracy did not go into effect until the final document was signed Democracy in America didn't suddenly come into being in a 11-year year period. It had been evolving for centuries, beginning with the Magna Charta in the mother country (1215) and advanced in the Colonies since the Mayflower Compact (1620) By the time the Revolutionary War broke out, the basic institutions of democracy (though not as expansive as they are today) were already deeply-rooted in American government. The ratification of the Constitution was just the icing on the cake.

So your notion that given a few more months or years a disunited tribal society like Iraq with no tradition whatsoever in democratic rule, can of a sudden come together and become a full-fledged democracy is delusional. Nor are your comparisons with post-WWI Germany and Japan valid. Those nations already had a long history of internal cooperation, cultural unity, an industrialized economy and a literate population—a sound base for democratization.

Consider as further proof that less developed nations—Cuba, Angola, Bolivia, Liberia, to name some—have tried to mimic our democratic form of government, but to no avail, though their constitutions are as well written and, in some cases, five times lengthier and more detailed than ours. Most nations—Iraq included—simply lack the political, social and economic underpinnings to sustain a true democracy. Democracies, in short, cannot be created out of nothing overnight. Or maybe you know this and, professional politician that you are, are trying to hoodwink voters into supporting the War in Iraq. If so, I suggest you argue your case from a different perspective. Not all of us voters are as ignorant and gullible as you may think.

A Make-Believe Nation of Entrepreneurs

2011-01-01T09:51:00.000-05:00

Conservative laissez faire Socialism-is-evil politicos and pundits never tire of telling us that the United States America is a nation of entrepreneurs. If by this they mean that our great economic might if the product of private businesses, small, large and huge, competing freely with one another for profits and share of the market in their particular industries, they unquestionable have a point. But if they mean to suggest that the majority of American citizens are entrepreneurs at heart, I, for one, strongly disagree.

During the course of my life, and having resided in various parts of this country—Florida, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Illinois and Maryland—I have personally known several thousand fellow Americans, and of these, only a handful could be regarded as entrepreneurs, not even in the loosest sense of the word. Most, to be sure, are disciplined, assiduous, reliable workers. Few freeloaders or malingers among them. But though they may on occasion consider becoming their own boss, not many are likely take the risk, and those that do, for the adventure of it, or, more so, driven to it by the difficulty of finding suitable employment in today’s job market, they soon learn that becoming a successful entrepreneur is easier said than done. The failure rate among would be consultants and small business owners is not encouraging. It takes a special personality and talent to start and keep a business running. Most Americans I know admire and support our creators of jobs and material wealth, but they themselves in order to survive need to work for an already established business or organization. If they can’t manage that, and soon, they might be forced to turn to the Government for assistance, and, inadvertently, crossing the threshold into Socialism. Conservative politicos seeking re-election take note.

Socialism Bugaboos

2011-01-01T09:47:00.002-05:00

The mere mention of the word “Socialism” triggers in the hearts and minds of many patriotic Americans a medley of interrelated evils: total government takeover, Soviet-style Communism (Nazism, in some cases); loss of personal freedom, media censorship, indoctrination of school children, atheism, police tyranny, inferior health care, suppression of traditional values, annulment of the Constitution, treason; stifling of free markets, economic ruin, wholesale corruption, abysmal poverty, the snuffing out of the American Dream, the boogey man writ large.

These good folks, however, would be surprised to learn that that the freest, most democratic, most productive, least corrupt nations in the world, nations whose citizens enjoy the highest standard of living, thriving private business environments, low unemployment and little crime, have a long history of socialistic policies, which include universal health care, government owned central banks, free university tuition, generous retirement plans and tight regulations of “too-big-to-fail” corporations Notable among these nations are Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Great Britain, Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands. Their stats can be readily had on the Internet.

Americans would be further surprised to learn that many our cherished institutions are financed by taxpayer dollar, run by the Federal government and, therefore, socialistic by definition. To wit, our 64 national parks; 100 + wild life reserves, parkways, rivers, museums, landmarks, monuments and cemeteries; our Armed Forces and military academies; the U.S. Postal Service; and the FBI, CIA, DEA, DHS the Park Police and other law enforcement agencies. Then at the state and municipal level, there are the highway patrols, sheriff and police departments; public libraries; public schools; street and roads, parks and recreational areas.

Yet, I doubt that any American in his or her right mind would consider turning over any of those socialistic institutions and services entirely to the private sector; nor would they want to blast away the images of Theodore Roosevelt and FDR from Mt. Rushmore. Our 26th and 32nd presidents, the one a Republican and the other a Democrat, were patriots in the highest sense of the word. Both came through strong when the country needed them. Yet, many of the measures they took to get the job done were undeniably socialistic. This is not to suggest, of course, that the U.S, should try to emulated the Austrias and Swedens of the world. But we have no reason to dismiss them as misguided or decadent, either.

The Political God of American Evangelicals

2011-01-01T09:40:00.003-05:00

Religious oppression is as old humankind. Tyrants of every stripe learned early on that the most effective way to subjugate their people was by convincing them that they were descendants of gods, if not gods themselves. Thus they could do no wrong. However unjust, cruel or stupid their decrees seemed, however depraved their life style was, the people had no choice but to revere and obey, under penalty of offending the gods, or the one God, as was the case with European monarchs well into the 19th century and, particularly, with Spanish rulers in the days of the Inquisition.

In modern times we have the example of Adolf Hitler, who portrayed himself as a reincarnated Teutonic God and was accepted as such by millions of alleged well-educated Germans. During Juan Peron’s reign in Catholic Argentina portraits of the dictator wearing a saint-like halo hung in public building, schools, and many private homes. In my native Cuba, haloed pictures of Fidel Castro, El Máximo Líder, were a common fixture in household altars alongside effigies of venerated Virgins and saints. Then there are the young suicide bombers in the Muslim world duped by a splinter faction of zealots into thinking that blowing up people at random is a sure ticket into heaven.

Here in America we have had our share of religious insanity. To wit, the Salem Witch Hunts; the Cross-burning KKK ; The Jesus-Hitler worshipping White Supremacist Militias; the mass suicide by poisoned Kool-Aid of 912 members of The Reverend Jim Jones’ People’s Temple; The ministries of Jimmy Swaggart, Jim and Tammy Bakker and other scam televangelists; Pastor Terry Jone’s convicting the Koran of rape, murder and terrorism, and executing the book by fire, in accordance to Biblical law. (Death by firing squad or lethal injection, presumably, wouldn’t have been religious enough); The Reverend Fred Phelp’s Topeka, Kansas, Westboro Baptist Chruch’s campaign to disrupt military funerals in protest of the U.S. Armed Forces for allowing homosexuals to serve in their ranks; the rumor spread by homophobic religious leaders that Hurricane Katrina was sent by God to Punish New Orleans for planning to hold a gay convention, a warning replay of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; the peddlers of holy water from the Jordan River, (Jimmy Swaggart among them), guaranteed to cure every physical, mental and emotional ailment known to man, for just $25 a quart.

But such religious perversions are relatively few. Though there are some 1,500 non-mainstream Christian sects in America with formidably long names —(the smaller and less significant the sect the more formidable its name) they tend to keep to themselves, meeting in modest buildings, often a converted garage or a mobile home, worshipping as they please, but doing no harm except maybe to the minds of the their adherents.

The same, though, cannot be said of our social conservative Evangelicals. Though their theology is grounded more on personal biases than in Scripture their moral values and ethics ring true with many level-headed Americans. But their aggressive meddling in politics, their insistence on bending the law of the land to suit their agenda is akin to the ploys of autocrats who bank on religion to ride-herd over their people. Ou Evangelicals would have fit in swimmingly with the social order of the Puritan theocracy of 17th century Massachusetts, but in our modern-day secular democracy, they have become an obstructive, retrogressive force. In effect, creating a de facto theocracy quite against the Constitutional principles they claim to uphold. Clearly, most have never read the document, and if they have, they did not understand it.

There was a good reason why the First Amendment to the Constitution begins with this clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The type of government the Founding Fathers had in mind was one in which consensus was reached by intelligent debate among the various branches and interest groups involved—the separation of powers principle. But as experienced debaters themselves they knew that once the God card was introduced in the debate, no further debating was possible. After all, how can the Omniscient, Omnipotent, Infallible Creator be questioned, much less contradicted, by worldly logic? If God is on your side, than those who are not with you are therefore ungodly, evil. In other ages and cultures—the Founding Fathers knew their history well—nonbelievers were routinely stoned to death or roasted alive. Given some panicky turn of events, this could happen in America as well. Hence the precautionary first clause of the First Amendment. Note how even in informal gatherings all conversation abruptly ceases or, worse, degenerates into a shouting match when someone evokes The Lord in support of his or her views.

This is not to intimate, of course, that our modern-day Evangelicals and their Tea Party adherents are a fanatical lot. Yet there is no denying that their political activism has done much to quell important political debate in America. Consider, for instance, the stalemate they have created in the House of Representatives over budget cuts, a matter vital to the nation’s economic survival, because that some agencies were underhandedly funding abortion, one of their pet sins (though abortion is not mention at all in the Bible.) Consider also how contrary to all sound advice and military intelligence, President George Bush asked Congress for and was granted license to invade Afghanistan and Iraq because, as he later explained “I am driven with a mission from God'. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did." Presidential hopeful Sara Palin echoed the sentiment: “War in Iraq is God's Plan." And to dispel suspicions that he might be a foreign Muslim and, thereby, burnish his true-blood American image for the upcoming 2012 elections, President Barack Obama recently declared that: "A call rooted in faith is what led me, just a few years out of college, to sign up as a community organizer for a group of churches on the south side of Chicago. And it was through that experience, working with pastors and laypeople, trying to heal the wounds of hurting neighborhoods that I came to know Jesus Christ for myself and embrace him as my Lord and Savior."

Further consider the socores political ads cropping up on TV at election time showing the candidates devoutly attending church with their family and quoting passages out of context from the Scriptures. None would dare give the impression that they are nonbelievers. And unless the economy improves and faith in the secular government is restored, come the 2012 elections the Evangelical sway will be even greater.

But maybe the Evangelicals are right. Maybe the separation of powers model that worked in the days of the Founding Father doesn’t cut it anymore in today’s fast-changing world. The nine members of China’s Political Bureau Standing Committee don’t spend months on end debating an issue. Right or wrong, they do what they think necessary after a few days or hours of deliberation. Maybe if we ratchet up our de-facto theocracy to a full-fledged one, and we all agree that the one God of the Evangelicals is on our side, maybe can react faster to the moves of our competitors abroad and preclude political stalemates at home. But that is grist for another blog.

Pass-the-Buck Benevolence

2011-01-01T09:37:00.000-05:00

For those of you who forgot or are too young to remember, we here revisit the 1990 case of Terri Schiavo, the young Florida woman whose heart, due to a rare chemical imbalance, had suddenly stopped working. Thus deprived of oxygen, her brain suffered severe damage, and she lapsed into a deep coma. Repeated attempts were made to rehabilitate her but to no avail. Finally, her doctors declared her irreversibly brain-dead. She could breathe on her own, but to stay alive she had to be liquid-fed through a tube. After 10 years, seeing that her condition was hopeless, her husband and legal guardian obtained a court order to remove the feeding tube and allow her to die with dignity as, according to him, she would have wanted under the circumstances.

Terri’s parents, however, were appalled. They insisted that their daughter was not a total vegetable, that, in her own way, she could sense their love and through eye contact and facial expressions communicate with them. They sued to keep the feeding tube connected, and during the lengthy court proceedings that followed, political leaders, and social activists and talk-show hosts of all persuasion, got into the act, most on the side of the parents.

A bill was passed in Congress would allow a federal court to review the case. The House passed the bill on a 203-58 vote after calling lawmakers back for an emergency Sunday session. The Senate approved the bill by voice vote, and the newly- elected President George Bush signed off on it. Florida Governor Jeff Bush got the state legislation to pass a law, “Terri’s Law” (later declared un-Constitutional) prohibiting the removal of the feeding tube. Talk-show host Rush Limbaugh argued that the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” clause in the Declaration of Independence made it clear that letting Terri die was both un-American and illegal. But in the end, the court upheld its decision and the tube was removed. Terri Schiavo died of starvation 13 days later. (Water was apparently administerd, otherwise she would not have lasted that long.)

At the risk of coming across as cynical, insensitive clods, some politicians and commentators raised questions that to this day have not been convincingly answered. Were the members of Congress, the President, the Florida Governor, and talk-show hosts so aggressively advocating for keeping alive a brain-dead woman whom they had never seen in person, were they really, humanly concerned about her well-being or were they using her to score points with religious sacredness-of-life voters? And if kept alive, would they be the ones who would foot the bill out of pocket for her round-the-clock care, or would they dump the burden on her insurance companies or the taxpayer? And if they did that for one person, wouldn’t they have to do the same for thousands of others like her throughout America, at a cost of billions of dollars, when it was obvious, even back in 2001, that the country was going broke? Ironically, the majority of those sanctity-of-life politicos and talk-show hosts touted themselves as fiscal conservatives, supported the death penalty, and had no qualms about sending our troops to kill and be killed in Afghanistan

Meanwhile, the so-called enlightened practice of reintegrating misfits and thugs into society went on as it had for decades, though it was noted, again by observers who risked coming across a cynical, insensitive clods, that the defense lawyers, social activists, and public school officials responsible resided for the most in well-protected neighborhoods and apartment buildings. The “society” into which they reintegrated the misfits and thugs in their charge were the poor and working class communities on the other side of the tracks. Out of sight, out of mind. Like the sanctity-of-life advocates in the Schiavo case, they scored their points, maybe eased their conscience a bit, but then dumped the burden on others. Fast forward to our day and note that nothing much has changed.

The College Loan Bubble About to Burst

2011-01-01T09:35:00.001-05:00

In his pitch for lowering taxes for middle-wage earners and extending benefits to the millions unable to find work, President Obama made the case that no economic recovery can take place unless these folks, the bulk of the nation’s labor force and consumer population, have at least enough money to pay for their basic necessities.

Adjusted for inflation in 2010 dollars (9.15 to 1), the cost of food and clothing in the United States has, thus far, remained relatively constant since 1950. Undergraduate tuition and fees (again in 2010 dollars) in 1950 was on average $5,500 per year, an affordable cost for a single working-class father earning $28,000 a year (wives usually stayed home in those days).

Today, 2011, undergraduate tuition plus fees costs at a private university is on average $35,000 per year, an unaffordable cost for even a working class couple together earning $40,000 a year. Their only option to get their kid into that private school is to borrow the money.

Consider next that when instructional and administrative costs are subtracted for total tuition paid in by students at a university with a typical 20,000 student enrollment, the university ends up, by conservative estimates, with roughly a $650,000,000 surplus. (Precise statistics, if there are any, are hard to come by.)

At state universities, tuition and fees tuition are on average one-third that of private universities, but since the other two-thirds is made up by the taxpayer, the surplus income over instructional cost is about the same as in private universities. And what is true of universities proportionately is the case with most four and two year colleges.

Admittedly, universities and colleges have other than instructional costs-- for pensions, IT equipment, lecture series, bonuses, security, publicity, PR, to name some. But they are also lavished with a goodly amount in money and kind with gift, grants, and endowments. So however one looks at the numbers, our institutions of higher learning are raking in far more than they spend on education per se.

So why is the cost of higher education in America skyrocketing while the cost of food, clothing and other necessities has over the years remained relatively constant? The cause is clear enough: A combination of unsecured financing on the part of the Federal government and private lending institutions, and over-blown expectations, not to say delusions, or wannabeism, on the part of the public that a college diploma, in whatever field, is a sure key to success.

Denouncing the excessively long apprenticeships in the 18th century Britain of his day--seven years by law--Adam Smith noted that most jobs back then, like fitting spokes on wagon wheels, could be easily learned in three weeks. (The Wealth of Nations, Book One, Chapter Ten, Part II) Much the same could be said for the majority of entry-level jobs in modern-day America, which typically require no greater skill than operating a machine, clerking, answering phones or pushing the right buttons on a computer. Yet both employers and workers alike have been led to believe that such jobs, and even the least intellectually demanding ones, require a college education. One-fifth of bartenders, waiters and waitresses, parking lot attendants and desk clerks in America today are college graduates.

Thus it has come to pass that the demand for a college degree and the cost to acquire one has ballooned exponentially, and because the average wage earners cannot afford to cover the cost out of pocket, they are have been enticed into taking easy-to-get, unsecured loans, which in in turn, fuels more demand and ever higher costs.

But the bubble is about to burst. An increasingly number of debt-saddled graduates is fast realizing that the secure well-paying jobs they assumingly were being educated for do not exist, and, therefore, will not be able to pay back their loans. So in addition to the toxic assets spawned by the subprime mortgage market, our economy will be further polluted by a new and equally toxic heap of bad loans--the high price paid for the folly of trying to leverage the American Dream.

True Christian Charity

2011-01-01T09:35:00.000-05:00

Christians who contend that a charitable nation like United States is obligated to care for the sick and poor as Jesus commanded should read their Bible more carefully. Nations, like corporations, political parties, armies, universities, Boy Scout troops, churches, organizations of whatever stripe cannot be charitable, anymore than they can be kind, loving, have sex, procreate, feel pleasure or pain, because collectively they are not constituted of flesh and blood. The human beings who comprise organizations may, indeed, be very charitable and even saintly individually, but when formally coming together they become a different animal. History repeatedly shows that when organizations pretend to be endowed with a human heart, their intended good deeds often take a undesirable twist.

Consider how a sizeable part of our tax money allocated for welfare programs is actually spent on salaries and pensions for the bureaucrats running the programs. Or how the food and supplies purchased by charitable organizations to ship to needy people in underdeveloped countries is usually confiscated at the port of entry and resold by the dictator in power. The proceeds are then used by the dictator and his henchmen to finance their lavish lifestyle, or invest in arms to further oppress their people. Sure, some of that financial and material help is bound to trickle down to the needy, and the kindly souls who contribute to the organizations can enjoy some measure of satisfaction, feel good about themselves by proxy, at least for a while. But that is not exactly what Jesus had in mind. Charity to him were individual acts by which givers and receivers formed lasting physical and spiritual bonds. Person to person, neighbor-to-neighbor directly, not indirectly through a third party or an organization.

Injunctions to that effect are common throughout the Old Testament. But in this Blogger’s opinion the premier story of charity, kindness and love, not only in the Old Testament but in the whole of world literature, is The Book of Ruth. Even the most hardened of atheists would tend to agree.

Why No New Attacks

2011-01-01T09:29:00.000-05:00

The official explanation for the fact that we have not suffered a successful terrorist attack since 9/11 is that our Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken out the enemy’s training bases, disrupted their supply lines, demoralized them and thus kept them at bay. Now, it could well be that official explanation is correct, but it doesn’t seem likely. Al Qaeda and other terrorists groups do not constitute a traditional army with fixed headquarters and a single chain of command. Much like the Russian Mafia, they operates in small, mobile cells, ideological united but strategically disconnected from each other. Capture members of one cell and no amount of interrogation can extract from them reliable information about the other cells. And because their weaponry and methods of combat are so simple—roadside bombs, suicide bomber, hidden in—their fighters could just as readily be trained in anywhere in the world, including right here in the U.S. Recall that the 9/11 hijackers got their scant flight training-all they needed to crash their commandeered jet liners into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon-- in California, Arizona and Florida. And most were citizens of Saudi Arabia, a major trading partner and ally of ours. None were Iraqi or Afghan. Recall also how two homeless misfits terrorized Virginia, Maryland and DC for weeks with nothing more than a deer rifle and an old car.

The enemy could easily have followed up on 9/11 had they wanted to, but at the time they had nothing to gain by it. For all intent and purposes, they were winning the war. They had rendered air travel in the America and the civilized world a painstaking ordeal. They had forced us to squander billions and lose face by sucking us into two mindless nation-building wars. They kept us on edge and made us suspicious of one another and our institutions. And they knew that another 9/11 would only bring the nation together under a common cause, the last thing they wanted. Of late, Al Qaeda and other terrorists groups have attempted a comeback, but in each case it was our national and local law-enforcement agencies, with the collaboration of private citizens, that have thwarted them. It’s unlikely that our military action in Iraq and Afghanistan had anything to do with it.

What Exactly Is Our Quarrel with Iran?

2011-01-01T09:24:00.001-05:00

Two ranking U.S. Senators have declared that as manifest guardian of democracy and freedom in the world, America cannot sit back and allow tyrannical groups and individuals in Iran to go on oppressing the people. How, exactly, the senators intend to carry this surgical feat they didn’t say, (by assassination?), but whatever it is they have in mind raises some disturbing questions.

One: What divine power has ordained us to impose our moral values on other nations and cultures? Is our own past and present that squeaky clean?

Two: Why signal out Iran? Aren’t there other repressive groups and individuals in the world— in Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Sudan, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, to name some? Why not target one of them instead? True, dissenters in Iran are denied freedom of speech and assembly, but is that worse than the custom of our Afghan ally and other Muslim theocracies of stoning women for alleged sexual transgressions, denying them an equal education, and forcing them to wear tent-like burkas?

ThreeAs to the fear that Iran will become a nuclear threat, wasn’t the Pandora’s box of mass destruction opened 65 years ago with the nukking of Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Today at least ten nations that we know of boast a nuclear arsenal, whether developed on their own or purchased in the open market. Should Iran cease working on or fail to produce a nuclear bomb, you can be sure that there will be some rogue organization ready to provide them with one, at a price, together with a state of the art delivery system.

FourWhy divert our energies worrying about the oppressed in Iran when so many our people here at home are hurting? The main and immediate threat to America as we speak is not Iran tyrants, or Al Qaeda, or the Taliban in Afghanistan, but our mounting national debt, high unemployment, execrable education system, organized crime, street crime, home-grown terrorists, government corruption, Wall street scams, low economic productivity (gambling casinos, law firms, TV punditry and such contribute nothing of value to the GDP) and, most disturbing, the increasing loss of faith in our institutions. These are the problems that we need to address, not what’s going on in Iran. Or are the distinguished Senators reading from a script written for them by some powerful group intent on provoking a war with Iran for material or political gain?

What the Lord Told Me About the Debt Ceiling

2011-01-01T09:22:00.002-05:00

As suggested by fellow Tea Party Evangelicals, I prayed to the Lord for insights on the debt-ceiling issue, and this is what the Lord said to me:

“Being the God Almighty, Creator and Ruler of the Universe, I am above worldly politics. But since you ask, I will give you, just this once, this bit of practical advice: Tell your fellow Tea Partiers that unless they stand as one with Senator John Boehner and strike a compromise deal with Democrats across the aisle, they will not only get that heathen Barack Obama re-elected in 2012 ( he’s a closeted Muslim, you know), but also cause Republicans to lose their majority in the House, many seats in the Senate, Governorships, state legislatures, county commissions and city councils across the land. The American people have grown sick of your mindless cut-cut-cut agenda for its own sake and hypocritical spiritual values. Steady, well-paying jobs, real world stuff, the nitty-gritty, that’s all they want to hear from their elected officials. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more important business to attend to in another corner of the Universe.”
“Thank you, Lord,” I said humbly. “I will do as you advise.”

America's Scam Health Insurance

2011-01-01T09:22:00.001-05:00

Given the boondoggle of K-12 public education and the unbridled government waste in America at all levels—Federal, state, and municipal—one is justified in doubting the effectiveness of a government-run health care system. On the other hand, the private insurance system in place for the past 70 years obviously is not working, and the reason it’s not working, and can never work, is that the competitive, free-market model of insurance companies consists of cutting costs and making money for its investors, not on how well they serve the sick. That kind of competitiveness no doubt works well with producers of material products like home appliances and automobiles, where success can be clearly measured in dollars and cents on a quarterly basis, but not with providers of services like health care where success is long-range and qualitative. Entrusting health care to private for-profit corporations is no less absurd than proposing the same for the Armed Forces, the FBI or our national parks.

Then there are the added costs, in billions of dollars, in paper work and red tape. A sizable part of a business, hospital or doctor’s clerical staff is devoted exclusively to dealing with convoluted insurance forms, further complicated by the fact that every insurance company has its own set of forms and requirements. And if a doctor doesn’t accept a patient’s insurance policy, which is becoming increasingly the case, then the patient has to spend hours filling the forms to get benefit he is entitle to, or get stuck with the bill.

Free-market-cures-all pundits in the U.S. persist in telling insist that the for-profit American health care system is the best in the world, and, as proof, cite cases of foreign citizens who opt to come to the United States for medical treatment rather than rely on their nations’ state-run “socialist” system. But they neglect to mention that those foreign citizens are well-to-do individuals for whom cost is not a problem. For ordinary foreign wage earners the cost of medical treatment in the U.S. would be prohibitive. The free-market pundits may be right. Maybe American health care is the best in the world. But if so, why is it that no other country in the world would consider adopting it? Why is it that American health insurance companies—Blue Cross, Humana, Aetna, et.al.—aren’t going global, like McDonald’s and Caterpillar, and earning yet more billions for their investors?

The Ugly Underbelly of Organized Religion

2011-01-01T09:21:00.000-05:00

Organized religions can be, and usually are, a civilizing force, a source of comfort and hope to the faithful. Yet they can also take, and often do, all sorts of ugly twists. To wit:

The thousands of alleged heretics racked, dismembered, burned at the stake, deep fried in oil, buried alive, skinned alive by order of Roman Catholic Inquisitors, with the approval of the Pope, during the Inquisition.

The witch hunts of menopausal and senile women and the countless tortures and executions inflicted by Protestant churches during the Reformation. “I should not have compassion on these witches. I would burn all of them,” declared Martin Luther. And John Calvin had no qualm about ordering the slow roasting of Michael Servetus for having the audacity to question his version of the Holy Trinity.

The racist teachings of the Mormon Church. As narrated in the Book of Mormon, the good guys, the Nephites, were fair-skinned, whereas the bad guys, the Lamanites, being descendants of Cain, were punished by God with a dark skin. (Nephi 5:21, Alma 3:6) According to Brigham Young the “flat nose and black skin” of African Americans were likewise the stigma of Cain. It wasn’t until 1978 that an African American was accepted into the Church priesthood. Then there’s the Church’s history of polygamy and sexism. Only two women figure in the Book of Mormon, and only in minor roles.

The genocidal mandates of the Hebrew Jehovah in the Old Testament (Joshua 11; I Samuel 15:1-35). The scurrilous comments against Gentiles in the Jewish Babylonian Talmud: “All Gentile children are like animals (Baba Kamma 113.a); “Gentiles prefer sex with cows” (Abodah Zarah 22 a.); "Gentile girls are in a state of filth since birth" (Abodah Zara 221-22b); "Jesus mother was a whore"(Sanhedrin 106A)

Before maligning someone else’s religion, we ought to take a close look at the ugly underbelly of our own. True, those roastings and witch hunts and bigotry of old are history, but the religious zealotry that engendered them live on, and not too deep below the surface. Given the right conditions—the threat of a global depression or a nuclear war, say—they are likely to resurface with a vengeance.

The abuse of women and children, and atrocities committed by Muslim zealots in the name of Allah against rival sects and infidels, and the centuries-old bloody clashes between Hindus and Muslims in India are still raging as we speak.

In Defense of Polygamist Warren Jeffs

2011-01-01T09:20:00.009-05:00

If Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and, most notably Paul of Tarsus, among many others throughout history, claimed without proof that they were prophets of God and were unquestioningly accepted as such by their devotees, why shouldn't Warren Jeffs be accorded the same recognition? Why should he be denied the special perks of his prophethood? Namely polygamy and underage marriage, as practiced by Smith and Young. Saint Paul, a diehard celibate, had claim to other, more important rights, like supplanting Christ as the founder of Christianity.

The Hard Facts Supermarket

2011-01-01T09:20:00.006-05:00

Laissez Faire capitalists ground their views on hard facts. Communists likewise ground their views on hard facts. Republicans and Democrats, realists and idealists, skeptics and believers, the pious and atheist, libertines and prudes, fighters and pacifists, bigots, humanitarians, patriots, environmentalists—anyone who adheres to some cause or group grounds his or her views on hard facts, of which there is no shortage. Hard, incontrovertible, time-tested facts to suit every persuasion, bias and taste can be readily found in the Bible, the Constitution, newspapers, television, movies, political ads, radio talk shows, blogs and many other sources. So whatever it is we believe in, we can go to the great hard fact supermarket and, for free, get all the facts we need to support our views.

The Leveraged American Dream

2011-01-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

Having grown accustomed to expecting an ever-increasing improvement in their standard of living, Americans are understandingly concerned about today’s lingering recession (an impending depression, really). But is it true that until now each American generation was materially and qualitatively better off than the previous one? The stats tell a different story.

In 1950, the average yearly income of a non-union unskilled American worker, was $2,700. Inflation adjusted in 2010 dollars (9.15 to 1), that was the equivalent of $24,705, about the same as the $25,000 the average unskilled entry-level American worker earns today. The 1950 worker, however, was relatively much richer. He could buy a brand new Ford (again in 2010 dollars) for $12,000, a house for $40,000, go to the doctor, or have the doctor come to him, for $30 a visit, and send his kid to a private university for $6,000 a year. Much of those costs he could fully cover out pocket by saving or working overtime, including the 20% - to 40% down-payment required for the house mortgage. If he was married with children, he could easily support his family without his wife having to work outside the home.

His counterpart today could not possibly buy a new car, a house, get proper health care, or send his kid to college without incurring an onerous debt, and that provided that he had a high enough credit score to get a loan, or else mortgage everything he owned, at the risk of going bankrupt if he lost his job, as it is happening as we speak to many like him If he was married with children, his wife would have to work full-time outside the home just to make ends meet.

The situation for higher earners today may not be quite as bad, but compared to their 1950 counterparts it’s not that good, either. Sure, many folks today have two or more cars in the driveway of their $400K house, a speed boat in the garage, stainless steel kitchen appliances, and state of the art electronic equipment. But it’s their bank and credit card companies, not them, that own most the stuff. They are just borrowing it, and at a steep price. At 4.5% interest for a 30-year mortgage loan, more the half the amount paid for that $400K home would be for interest alone, some of which may be deducted from Federal taxes for now, as the law on interest deductions is provisional. If some fiscal conservative politicos get their way, no deductions would be allowed at all. To entertain the illusion that they have achieved the American dream most Americans, at all social and economic levels, have become mired in debt up to their eyeballs. Parents who worry that their children’s future generation might be condemned to standard of living lower than theirs, should consider that they really are no better off than their own parents and grandparents. The progression they believed in could well turn out to be a veiled regression.

Collectively Not All People Are Equal

2011-01-01T09:08:00.002-05:00

When Thomas Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” (a phrase allegedly borrowed from an Italian patriot and friend, Filippo Mazzei) he obviously meant individual men and women, Indeed, it is self-evident that at the outset of life no normal individual is in any way better or worse than another. But it is also self-evident that as that each individual develops, some become more intelligent, creative, industrious, virtuous, courageous or in some other way superior to others. And it is further self-evident that when individuals coalesce as social creatures, the groups, nations and cultures that some form are clearly superior, or inferior, to others.

Compare, for example, the reaction of Haitians and Chileans to the earthquakes that wrecked their respective countries in 2010. Well-informed individuals from both countries—civic leaders, economists, physicians, priests, journalists, engineers, and such—were equally intelligent in their suggestions on how to aid the victims and repair the damage. Collectively, though, the outcome was quite different. In less than a year, Chile was near back to normal, its economy growing close to full capacity, whereas Haiti became mired in anarchy and pestilent squalor. True, the earthquake in Haiti was followed by a hurricane, but the earthquake in Chile and its aftershocks were more powerful. Diplomatic correctness aside, there is no denying that there is a virtue or strength in the collective character of the Chilean people that the Haitians sorely lack.

An even sharper contrast is evident between the residents of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Japanese people doubly victimized this year by the worst tsunami in their nation’s history and the contamination of a large portion of their coastal waters by radiation from two damaged nuclear plants. Unlike New Orleans, there was no rioting or looting in Japan. Apologists for the lawlessness in New Orleans argue that the Japanese had no reason to riot or loot because they knew that the government of a highly developed country like theirs could be trusted to help them. Well, the United States of American is not exactly an underdeveloped country. The New Orleans rioters and looters surely knew this, and that the American government would come to their, which it did, in full measure. Yet they rioted and looted nonetheless. It should further be noted that the devastation and loss of live in Japan was, at last count, a least three times of in New Orleans.

Which leads us ask: Why is it that though all groups, nations and cultures in the world have their share of exemplary individuals--collectively some are markedly richer, or poorer, more civilized, or uncivilized, more democratic, or undemocratic, than others? Why, for instance, the marked difference between Sierra Leone and Finland? Though the size of their populations is approximately the same, and though Sierra Leone is endowed with a better climate and more natural resources, the standard of living in Finland is among the highest in the world, while that of Sierra Leone among the most miserable.

And the same distinctions apply here in America: The relative prosperity or poverty among regions, cities and neighborhoods throughout the country is sharply defined along ethnic and cultural lines. And not because they inherited or were forced into their situation, but because they created it. All our talk about diversity and equality may make us feel good, but it can’t hide the truth.

For the Latest Wisdom, Read the Old Classics

2011-01-01T09:07:00.003-05:00

Do you suspect that are being scammed, manipulated and lied to by the President, Congress, The Supreme Court, Federal Bureaucrats, The IRS, Homeland Security, the Pentagon, state and local officials, talk show hosts, talk show guests, televangelists, mainstream religious leaders, Tea Party advocates, ACORN, environmentalists, oil companies, Fox News, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR Radio, Wall Street financiers, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, media-attached bloggers, foreign correspondents, TV and radio commercials, insurance companies, nutritionists, psychologists, economists, bankers, attorneys, capitalists, socialists, money managers, money lenders, stockbrokers, and authorities of all persuasion and stripes?

Well, you are probably right. There is good reason to suspect that many of the above are in the business of getting your vote and, or, relieving you of your hard-earned money. So where can you turn for reliable, unbiased information? One source could be the Comments section of blogs and on-line newspapers and TV channels that that allow them, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News, among others. Though some of those comments are far from brilliant, not to say downright, others tend to expand on or provide an original slant on the issue at hand. But here, too, there is reason to suspect that some of those comments, like some Op Ed letters to newspapers, are submitted by paid free-lancers working for some interest group.

Your best bet is to turn the Classics. Every major problem plaguing our nation and the world today—war, unemployment, crime, corruption, poverty, tyranny, you name it--is as old as humankind. And so is every moral failing— wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, gluttony, the seven deadly sins, among many others. Sages throughout recorded history have analyzed all these social and personal issues from every possible angle and bequeathed their findings to us free of charge. True, there were as many frauds back then as there are now, but those have rightly fallen into oblivion. The Classics of sages that have survived the test of time can be relied on for reliable, relevant information and sound advice. This Blogger’s favorites Classics are listed on his Profile link. You no doubt would have others. There are more than enough Classics to draw wisdom from and keep you engaged for a lifetime.

Sanctions Don't Work With Tyrants

2011-01-01T09:06:00.000-05:00

Denouncements, embargos, sanctions--They don’t work with tyrants. Sociopaths who come to see themselves and their offspring as demigods couldn’t care less what the world thinks of them or if their people are starving. They know how to shelter their wealth in foreign banks and investments so they can continue to live in luxury and retain their power. Should an arms embargo be imposed on them, they would have long before hedged their ability to obtain all the weapons of suppression they needed by establishing the right connections in the black market. Selling arms illegally to tyrants by surreptitious means is a major industry in developed nations. And the expectation that a hurting population will eventually rebel against their tyrant is illusory. On the contrary, the more a people are suppressed, the weaker they become. People reduced to scratching out a living from day to day have no time or energy left for rebellion.

History teaches that the only way to deal with tyrants is to let them be if they cause us no trouble, but if they do, to take them out as quickly and expediently as possible, as we did with Osama Bin Laden—in accordance with Nicollò Machiavelli’s real-politick advice to rulers in his 1532 classic, The Prince .

Account of Bin Laden's Killing Questionable

2011-01-01T09:03:00.021-05:00

You can be bet that once the jubilation over the killing of Osama Bin Laden dies down skeptics will be raising questions. Why, they’ll be asking, if our government lied to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, should we accept at face value their claim that a DNA sample taken from the body proves that the man killed was really Osama Bin Laden? Is President Obama any more credible than George Bush was? Even if the DNA sample were made public, who but a PhD. In forensic science could make sense of it?

And why was the body disposed of so quickly? If Bin Laden was such an evil character, then he didn’t deserve a dignified burial at sea within 24 hours, as prescribed by Islamic custom, as if he were some kind of hero. Was Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi’s corpse accorded the same respect when our troops martyred him in Iraq?

And why does President Obama refuse to release photos of the corpse? Granted, a man just shot twice in the head does not make a pretty picture. But wasn’t the corpse bathed and clad in clean clothes in preparation for the burial? Surely pictures of the body in a decent state could have been taken and made public to help dispel doubts that we got the right man. The entrance and exit wounds would further have shown which way the man was facing or moving when shot, or whether he was putting up a fight or executed point blank. The pretext that photos of the corpse would fuel anti-American passions in the Muslim world is not at all convincing. Those who hate us couldn’t possibly hate us anymore than they already do.

Then there is the mystery of why Bin Laden was able to hole up in a conspicuous mansion-bunker for five years, 30 miles from the Afghan capital, and next door to the country’s top military academy, without being detected, not only by Pakistani authorities, but also by our own high-tech, satellite-equipped CIA.

Grist for yet another conspiracy theory.