R.P. Barr

Evangelical Error

With Rick Santorum leading the current charge, we are once again hearing choruses of “Don’t impose your values on me. I want to impose my values on you.” That sentiment is blatantly un-American.

Religious freedom means that each person may practice whatever his or her conscience dictates as long as it doesn’t violate the rights of others to do the same. Along the way, the elected representatives of the people have set some broad rules that all must obey so that society may have some order. Laws should be as value neutral as possible.

Before you get excited about what your neighbor is doing with his or her body, I would like for you to step outside some evening and look up. You will be seeing pretty much the same sky that was there a couple thousand years ago when Middle Easterners founded three of the world’s great religions. True, they didn’t see airplane lights or gleaming satellites, but the rest was there—and probably a little easier to see without modern pollution.

In those days, a man (or woman) could cover with his thumb any object he could see in the night sky. No wonder people then believed that this teensy planet was the center of the universe, and all the rest was of little consequence or concern to the Creator.

The books these ancients wrote were about what they could see—not about what God knew. They did not write about distant galaxies, planets or moons. They did not even write about penguins, kangaroos, rainforests, viruses or electricity. God knew about all those things. The ancient holy books are splendid expressions of faith and excellent foundations for the religions that have grown around them, but they are not the works of God.

If you want to see what God wrote, look at the night sky, or a drop of water under a microscope. Every time an animal goes extinct due to man’s greed, we are committing an offence against that creature’s creator. Every time someone kills or abuses another in the name of God, it is blasphemy. If you would protect your soul, protect that which the Creator made.

Genesis 1:28 says that God gave the world, animals and plants, to man to subdue and rule—not to destroy. Personally, I find that and many other sections to be a little self-serving, but nowhere does it say that man can rip the tops off mountains to scoop out the minerals within, nature be damned.

Meanwhile, what fundamentalists everywhere should remember is that men can print thousands of books that are exactly the same. God gave each person a mind that was exquisitely unique. Which do you suppose He would want us to respect more?

Romney's Job Creators

Last week, Sears announced the closing of 120 Sears and K-Mart stores.  (Sears owns K-Mart.)  As part of the NPR report on this news, a retail expert pointed out that when Wal-Mart and Target had invested in renovating their stores, improving the lighting and layout, etc. The hedge fund that owns Sears had used their extra cash to buy up Sears stock in the expectation that a shortage of stock would drive up the price for benefit of those who owned it.  The dingy, dated stores that were left to languish did not attract shoppers.  Sales dropped off until the bean counters decided the best way to show a profit was to cut stores and personnel.

Business owners like that are the “job creators” that Romney and the Republicans want to protect from regulations and taxes.  I mention Romney because he recently proclaimed that he did not want the United States to be like Europe.  Of course, not like the Europe of today.  The direction he’s heading will make the U.S. more like the the Europe of the 15^th Century, with a handful of superrich nobles riding on the backs of the rest of the population.  That’s freedom to Mitt Romney.

Lawrence Lessig wrote Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--And a Plan to Stop It, in which he points out that the country is not run by the top 1%, but by the .05% who finance political campaigns.  The question is how the rest of us can take the country back.  The campaign contributers find that putting money in political coffers is a very economical way to get the favorable treatment that keeps them rich.  For Congressional office holders for whom elections have become so expensive that they spend half their time fund raising, the opportunities for extortion that expiring subsidies and regulations create are irresistable.  The lawmakers are not going to change the system.  They’ve legalized corruption.

Don’t look to the Tea Partiers who are more concerned with redefining Christianity as the faith that turns its back on its neighbors and squeezes camels through needle eyes.  The Occupy Wall Streeters have got to get out of their tents, stop complaining and stand for something.  Conservatives love to march in time with each other.  For them, unity is more important than truth—or thought.  Liberals can’t agree on which way to walk in a revolving door.

What to do?  George Bernard Shaw said, “The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.”  It may come to that.  If we keep going in the same direction, and can’t get focused on  political solutions, bad things are bound to happen.

Happy New Year!

 

Putting the Republic at Risk

The first coal in my stocking this Yule was the vote on granting the government power to detain anyone anywhere, including the U.S., on mere suspicion of aiding terrorists.  The first vote on this provision was overwhelmingly in favor.  This bill was the worst threat to the the United States since the British burned Washington in 1814.  It’s been watered down, but hasn’t been killed completely or universally denounced.  

 It is appalling that any Americans would think that our justice system is incapable of dealing with terrorists.  In 1862, the Sioux in Minnesota massacred some 800 settlers.  303 Sioux were arrested, tried and sentenced to hang.  Abraham Lincoln reviewed the sentences and commuted all but 39, which is still the largest mass execution in American history.  Southern sympathizers murdered Lincoln, but the system was trusted to try and condemn 8 conspirators.  In 1920 two men were murdered by anarchist bank robbers. Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were tried and executed.  When communists stole secrets of the atomic bomb, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested, tried, and executed.  I could go on.  Some of the cases are still controversial—and the rules of civilian trials were not always followed--but the point is that none of the suspected terrorists walked away free.  Our record of catching the bad guys is excellent.  We have more people in prison than any other country.  (The pros and cons of executions can be saved for another time.) We don’t need to broaden our detention rules.

 Besides that, we have a reputation (somewhat tarnished now), of being fair.  Our enemies tell their recruits that we are cruel and barbarous.  Reinforcing that prejudice is not helpful to our cause.    Americans like to think of ourselves as the good guys, and our men and women in uniform have proven that to be true in combat zones all over the planet.  The exceptions to that practice have been, in fact, exceptions.  We cannot allow a bunch of millionaire dilettantes in Congress to endanger our troops and diplomats by throwing out the Bill of Rights in an effort to appear tougher than the men and women who actually go into harm’s way.

 Of course it is really less about terrorism than it is an attempt to shut down debate and the free exchange of ideas.  If someone disagrees with a government policy, he is, by definition, an enemy of the state who is giving comfort to the foreign powers who hate us, and should be locked away.  That can be any one of us, depending on who is in office at the time.  And, detention without trial means that you or I don’t even have to disagree with the government.  If I object to the charges on my credit card statement and make a stink about it, the bank manager could make a call, and I disappear.  Take away the matter of credit cards, and that is how some detainees wound up in Guantanamo and spent years trying to fight evidence held in secret.  We must give our enemies benefit of our Constitution in order to protect ourselves.

 

Occupy This

Having left the Occupy Wall Street folks alone until now, their eviction from parks around the country creates an opportunity to reflect that I would like to address.  Squatting in public places is a good attention getter, but alone, it is not going to accomplish anything.

 Not every opinion spouter offers full disclosure, but I do.  Therefore, I admit that I have not attended a demonstration since 1969, although I did march in a union picket line a few years ago.  And, to be honest, in ’69, I was on the other side as a Military Policeman.

 That perspective inspires my first point.  The police are part of the 99%.  Embrace them.  (Not literally, of course, that could get ugly.) I’ve heard several protestors on the news say things to the effect of “Now I’ve seen a police state.”  That is a bad direction to go.  For centuries, the rich and privileged have pitted groups of the oppressed classes against each other.  When the French peasants stormed the Bastille, they could not have succeeded except for the soldiers who were sent to crush them and instead joined them.

That may be a little too dramatic to expect on American streets, but think of staging a day of protest in defense of first responders—police and fire and EMTs—who have seen their numbers cut, their pay and pensions cut, and who still go out every day, often risking their lives for the rest of us.  Tell the cops that “We’re doing this for you.”  Some won’t appreciate the gesture, but some will.

 The thing to remember is that cops don’t like disorder.  In part, that’s why many of them joined the force—to bring order and sanity to a brutal world.  More than that, every cop knows that losing control of a situation can cost him his life.  And, we’re not being hyperbolic as in, “I got killed in the stock market.”  So, tell the nice policeman what you are planning to do.  Apologize for making him arrest you but explain that you need the publicity to fight the bastard bankers who are screwing with his retirement savings.

 And, remember the Bastille!

 The other lesson to take from the French Revolution is what happened after the Bastille fell.  The Committee of Public Safety couldn’t agree on much except that there were always more heads to cut off.  That chaos led to the rise of Napoleon.

So, the movement needs to coalesce around some basic goals and then do what it takes to achieve them.

Allow me to offer a few:  1) Re-instate the Glass-Steagall Act which was instituted after the Great Depression to prevent a recurrence of financial collapse—and it worked right up until it was repealed.  Bring it back. Get the hot dogs out of banking and make that industry dull and reliable once more.  2)  If you or I went into a bank and took one of their chairs we would be arrested.  Bankers have taken entire houses from people who never missed a payment on their mortgages.  Insist that the Attorney General employ the RICO statute to prosecute the conspiracy surrounding those thefts.  Put the offending bankers and their bosses in prison.  3)  The reason Congress is a mess is because financing for campaigns has become more important than votes.  We need some tough campaign finance reform.  Money is inherently corrupting.  Separate the financing from the politicians.  5)  In line with that, let’s have a Constitutional amendment that defines a person as an individual, biological human being.  Corporations are not people.  They do not have the same rights and privileges.

There you have it.  Treat the police as brothers and sisters, and pursue five simple goals.  Getting there won’t be easy, but forming a community in a city park isn’t easy either. 

 

Quote: Warren Buffett

These excerpts are from In the Loop with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television.   Liu was in Sun Valley to interview Warren Buffett.

 Betty Liu: Is it misguided in many ways to look to the White House to try to help create jobs.  I mean,                 Obama’s got this jobs council—you know he keeps creating these councils to create jobs—is it                 misguided in that way?

 
 Warren Buffett:  People get their expectations too high.  I mean, if you                 look at these 15 recessions  we’ve had since we became a country.                  During half that period, at least nobody knew what monetary policy                 or fiscal policy was.  I mean,we cured ourselves and the system                 cures itself.   And, I would say that’s the biggest single factor.                  Government can do things to make it worse and they did in the                 Great Depression.  And, government can help some.

 Betty Liu:  Is the president making it worse?

Warren Buffett:  No, no, no.  We know the things to do that can help, but they                 are not, in my view, the prime determinant.  There are things to                 work through.  If you have too many houses, what can government                 do?

         …Government gets blamed too much and it may get too         much credit when things do improve.  Government’s a factor, but by far the biggest factor is correction of the business cycle over time is what would call the natural regenerative powers of capitalism.  Capitalism works.

[Later in the interview]

Warren Buffett:  It takes some cooperation from Congress, but [Obama] has ideas about what America can and should be                 that are in sync with mine.  Some of it is social justice and some of it is distribution of wealth, and that sort of thing.

Betty Liu:  Like what?  What are the lot of issues?”

 Warren Buffett:  Like I think, for example, that we’ve had a period in the last 15 years whee the 400  top tax payers in                 the United States—we have to go back 15 years—they had an average income  of about 45 million.  Now, they                 have an average income of 350 million, in the most recent figures, whereas their tax rates went down from                 27% down to 16%.  That’s not my idea of America.  I mean I want everybody to get rich, but I think that the                 rich have a responsibility to pay higher tax rates.

 Betty Liu:  So that when you hear him say targeting the millionaires and the billionaires, you’re saying  “Go get ‘em.”

 Warren Buffett:  Yeah.  

 Betty Liu:  Yeah?

 Warren Buffett:  Yeah, I am.

 Betty Liu:  But, don’t get me--

 Warren Buffett:  No, I look around at my friends here who are paying lower tax  rates than the                 people who are serving us the food—

 Betty Liu:  Do they agree with you?  When you’re here at Sun Valley talking to them, do they agree with  you?

 Warren Buffett:  I think some do, yeah.  And, many don’t.

 Betty Liu:  And are they still talking to you?

Warren Buffett:  Oh, yeah, they talk to me.  They figure I’m harmless and eighty.  This guy will only be  around a few                 more years.  

[So, if you are not a billionaire and plan to be around for more than just a few years, it is time to decide what kind of America you want to live in.  In the next 15 years do you want to see the income of the 400 top taxpayers rise by another 777% and their tax rates drop by another 40% while your numbers remains the same or worse?  The rich have already made their choice.  What are you going to do?]   

 

Questions for Presidential & Congressional Candidates

Budget cuts are coming, I’m reconciled to that.  However, I am weary of all the talk about how many trillions/billions, etc. will be involved.  I want to know the real numbers.  Anyone who advocates big cuts should be able to provide the real numbers.  The U.S. government has the best statisticians in the world and can count and predict almost anything.

So, Mr/Ms Candidate, tell me, what is the cost of your program in human lives?  How many careers and businesses will be ruined by your layoffs, and cutbacks in government purchases?  How many foreclosures will that involve? How many divorces?  How many students will not get higher education due to your cuts?  What will that do to their futures and their future families?  How many crimes will be committed for want of preventive measures?  How many crimes will go undetected and unenforced?  How much public corruption will occur for the same reasons?  How many people will be injured or made ill because safeguards and regulators are taken away?  Let’s make it simple.  How many people are expected to die for want of medical care, or workplace safety enforcement, or of pollution related cancers, or suicides or murders by the economically desperate?  What is the anticipated body count?

Please, put all this dollars talk into terms I can understand.  I don’t give a damn how many rings around the earth one could make with hundred dollar bills.  Cuts must be made.  Whether large or small, people will die as a result, just as some die now for want of more spending.  That’s reality.  Show some courage.    Tell us the real numbers.

Inappropriate

I do not live in New York.  Anthony Weiner is not my congressperson.  I don’t care who he sleeps with, much less who he sends vulgar photos to.  However, he should not resign.  Christopher Lee should not have resigned.  What they did may be incredibly stupid and disgusting, but not illegal.  They were elected to do a job.  Lee is gone, but Weiner should suck it up and serve out his term.  This is a democracy.  Let the voters decide.

Actually the campaign contributors get to make the first decision, and then the Congressman may decide not to run, but that is also part of the system.  Physically able elected officials who have not been convicted of a crime, and have not been expelled by their colleagues owe it to their constituents to complete their terms.  Period.  Their marital fidelity is a family matter.

 Although I stand by my “incredibly stupid” comment in the first paragraph, posting photos of oneself is not that unusual.  Try Googling for images of  “naked men.”  There are a lot of male models, but many are photos of men who are apparently not.  If you want to follow any of these pictures to their respective web sites, you’re on your own, but I would bet that the search would lead to all sorts of sordid pictures by a lot of men.  Try searching “amateur nudes.”  You will find mostly women, but a large number of men as well.  Some people make money from posting their bare assets on the web, but I don’t know why anyone else would do it.  The point is that they do, to the extent that it is now commonplace to see it, and we should not be shocked by someone posting such things.

 That brings me back to the “stupid” part.  If you enter “vintage nudes” there are pictures going back to the mid-nineteenth century.  Pictures posted today are going to be seen by the grandchildren of those who post them.  Also, the neighbors and coworkers of neighborhoods and jobs not yet dreamed of.  Nothing sent online ever dies.  If your representative is not smart enough to realize that, maybe you should find a smarter representative.

 

New Years' Revolutions

For previous New Years I have tried my hand at predictions.  These turned out to be my lamest pieces of writing.  So, this year, I will simply say what I am looking forward to following.

 Primarily, I want to see how the Tea Party meets reality.  The new Republican-majority Congress is pretty much limited to two choices. 

 They can try to do what they promised.  But, unless the Democrats really want to self-destruct, their Senate majority will prevent any repeal of Health Care or anything else done in the last two years.  That will mean that the Republican House will spend its precious 20 months before the 2012 elections making noise and obstructing progress.  Possibly even shutting down the government.  That won’t look good. 

 Or, they can put off their agenda and try to accomplish something that they can take back to the voters.  But, that will alienate their base.

 The thing to remember is that the American people (a grossly overused phrase) are pragmatic.  That is why elections see-saw between parties.  There are a few head-in-the-sand ideologues who don’t care if the world goes to hell as long they don’t have to compromise.  But, most just want the people they elect to act like grown-ups and do their jobs.  Tea Party petulance and road blocking is not going to work.

 Depending on what the conservative House does, I wonder if this is the year that folks become aware of the real class war and begin to fight back.  That should not be either a liberal or a conservative cause.

 In 2006, Warren Buffet said, “There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class that's making war and we're winning.”  The rest of us are arguing over gay marriage and ignoring our losses.

 Look at the economic “recovery.”  The big corporations are awash in cash.  The banks and brokerages are handing out seven-figure bonuses to their executives.  And, the new Congress is threatening to choke off funding to the agencies that regulate job safety, customer safety, investment safety, and protect air/water/food from contamination.  Who will that benefit?

 Jobs are being created.  But, most of them are being created overseas.  Even when there is hiring here at home, how many unemployed people have you heard of who wound up in new jobs that paid as much or more than they were earning before?  So, even working people not reflected in the unemployment statistics are less able to spend what they did before.  Less spending means a slower economy.  Not that the multi-national corporations care, they’re making money in China.

Well, it’s the government’s fault.  We need to cut back.  Lay off governement workers.  Okay, let’s throw—hmmm, say—10,000 government workers onto the streets.  We’ve saved money, right? Except that now we have increased the unemployment roles by 10,000.  How many new jobs have we created?  How long before these layoffs result in new private sector hiring?

Suppose, on the other hand, that we kept these workers on the payroll and gave them each a paycheck this week.  What do you think they would do with it?  Is it possible that spending their salaries would help the economy?  The 10,000 would not default on their credit cards, or apply for unemployment and welfare, or go to the hospital because they don’t have insurance to pay their doctors, or lose their homes to foreclosure.

The governor of New Jersey recently announced a number of austerity measures that would impact state employees.  He said that the state was in trouble and that state workers should share the pain.  Sounds fair enough.  He did not say that taxes should be increased on the wealthiest New Jersey citizens—the ones who can best afford a hit.  No, because the rich not only don’t have to share the pain, they don’t have to be annoyed by those who do.

 You’ve probably heard that raising the taxes on the rich would not solve all of our problems. That may be true.  (I personally favor 50% tax on those earing $1 million or more and no deductions allowed—except charitable). But, giving the rich a break does not create jobs.  Look around.  Government spending does.  Let’s give it a try.  And, then spread the pain around.

 

Election expectations

I wanted to post these two links before this, and before the election, but that’s another story. I especially like the story from The Onion because even though it is satire, it describes perfectly how the Democrats threw away their accomplishments and let the Republicans set the agenda.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101018/ap_on_bi_ge/us_prolific_congress

http://www.theonion.com/articles/democrats-if-were-gonna-lose-lets-go-down-running,18333/?utm_souce=popbox

Of course it’s more than that. People are dissatisfied. The problem is that they believe the media and pundits who claim that it is the fault of the current guys in power--in government power.

Let me throw another link at you.

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/11/04/pm-income-inequality-pushes-us-down-in-wellbeing-ranking/

The United Nations just issued its Human Development Index. When they created this index in 1980 to determine how nations ranked on well-being, the U.S. was number one. This year we’re down to number four. The main reason for the lower ranking is the reduction of the middle class and the widening gap between rich and everybody else.

And, it’s not just one scale. When I was a kid, the U.S. was number one in just about every category: education, wealth, the size of the middle class, etc. For two centuries, parents could say with some assurance that their children would have better lives than they had. We have slipped from that position, and that is the root cause of American dissatisfaction.  It's hard to find a category where we are still on top.  Nuclear weapons maybe.

Obama won because he promised change. He took some major steps toward shifting the direction of the United States, but when folks looked around, they didn’t see it. Everything looked the same, and the scary sense of losing was still there.

The joke of the election is that in 2012, it will still look that way. The Republicans will not have an effect that will be felt the way people want. Even the budget. The 2011 budget will be passed next month. The new Congress will pass the 2012 budget next year, and half way through 2012, they will have to start campaigning. There will be a lot of noise and unemployment will still be too high.  Homes will still be going into foreclosure.  Medical costs will continue to rise.  Will that work in Obama’s favor? It could if Democrats ever learn not to shoot themselves in the foot.

Join the Green Tea Party

Are you angry?  I am—at least politically.  It may be time for a Green Tea Party.  The plain Tea Party has been hijacked and is on the wrong path.  I can prove it.  If you have children, take notes because this is a great school project.

 All you need is a carton of eggs and a stopwatch.  I advise doing this in the kitchen, but that is up to you.  Start the time and then lift the open carton over your head and dump the eggs out.  How long did that take?  Now, start the time again and put the eggs back into the carton.  You will observe at least two things.  First it takes a lot longer to clean up eggs than to break them.  Second, the eggs will never be the same again. 

There is also a second scenario.  Imagine that you were hired to clean up the mess on the floor.  Five minutes later, you are accused of wasting paper towels, and of not completing the job.  You’re fired in favor of someone who argues that cleaning is too expensive and that if we just wait, the eggs will dry up by themselves.

 Where plain Tea Party anger has gone astray is that they want government to shrink and leave everyone alone.  We should go back to the intentions of the founding fathers.  I would agree, except that the founding fathers would not recognize today’s world.  If we could magically bring them here, they would run screaming to hide under the bed.  After we dragged them out and gave them some meds, the founding fathers would draft a completely different constitution—probably something echoing President Eisenhower’s caution to beware of the military-industrial complex.

 In 1776, people knew the cows who gave them milk and meat, probably by name.  Clothes were made by the woman down the street, if not by a relative.  The blacksmith who assembled a wagon would stand behind his work, or word would spread and he would have to leave town.

 Today is different.  In ruggedly individualistic Montana, the EPA recently held a series of town meetings to let people know that the reason their well water tasted bad and made them sick was because natural gas and oil were being extracted by blasting underground rock with water and toxic chemicals.  If big government had not been able to do the testing and research, the people of Montana would have suffered a lot more poisoning before figuring out that they would have to drink bottled water for the forseeable future. 

 Remember this past summer when a half a billion eggs were recalled over salmonella contamination?  Do you suppose that a single one of those eggs would have been recalled if the federal government had not done all the testing and investigating?

 Some years ago, when the U.S. still had a remaining company that manufactured color televisions here, one model had a defect.  Out of several million sets that were sold, a few dozen had a tendency to burst into flame.  Because the power box inside the set retained electricity even after the set was turned off, the fire could start any time.  If it did, the fire would burn so hot that it would superheat the air in the room and within seconds cause a flashover that would engulf the entire room.  People died.  But, the company did the math and decided that it was cheaper to pay off the victims than to recall millions of sets and damage sales.  So, they settled out of court, swore the victims to secrecy, and sealed the records.  -–Until a set burst into flames in the Texas State Capitol Building.  Then, government uncovered the conspriracy.

 Rich conservatives are backing the Tea Party because beneath their rhetoric about freedom and economy is an effort to misdirect anger and give the big banks and other businesses more opportunities to rob and exploit the public.

The government did not create sub-prime mortgages or toxic assets, or move jobs overseas, or raise insurance rates while simultaneously dumping the people most in need of insurance.  In short, the mess we are in is due primarily to corporate greed, and the legalized corruption that is campaign financing.

 So, join the Green Tea Party and be mad as hell at the people who profit from misery.  End corruption under the law by publicly financing elections.  Then, anyone can run—not just millionaires.  Return banking to the staid, boring business it is supposed to be.  Make the people who dump our eggs on the floor clean them up, and pay to replace them as well.