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. 

 

Our Longage of Expectations

Recently, I was asked my opinion of a podcast conversation.  Since I find that kind of request to be flattering, I took some time to study the podcast transcript.  The two men having the conversation were Chris Martenson and Nat Hagen.  I didn’t know either one, but they seem to be accomplished so we travel in different circles.  Some of their points agreed with a few I had made in earlier posts, so I judged them to be intelligent and insightful.  But, really, it was the concepts new to me that were fascinating.

The whole thing is available at http://www.chrismartenson.com/page/transcript-nate-hagens-were-not-facing-shortage-energy-longage-expectations.  And, I recommend it.

 They discussed the economy in terms of oil production and consumption.  They pointed out that for as long as humankind has engaged in economic activity, the goal has been growth.  Bigger and bigger, more and more.  Standing still means falling behind.  Today, however, we are rapidly expanding into a wall.  Oil is a finite commodity and as tantalizing as the other sources of energy are, none of them are even remotely ready to replace oil. 

Hagen used the example of ethanol.  We currently produce about a million barrels per year which takes more corn than is used for food.  And, barrel-for-barrel, ethanol produces only 70% as much energy as oil.  Meanwhile, we consume 19 million barrels of oil a day.  So, if my math is correct, we could take a year’s worth of ethanol and replace oil for roughly an hour and twenty minutes.

He went on to explain that the government’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) has statistics on Energy Return On Investment (EROI).  Of course they do.  EROI is how much energy it takes to produce one unit of energy.  Seventy or eighty years ago when a wildcatter could find an oil field, stick a pipe in the ground and get a gusher, we would invest one barrel of energy to harvest a hundred barrels of oil.  That was a pretty good business plan and led to the primacy of the internal combustion engine.  By the 1970’s however, that one barrel of energy would only bring thirty barrels in return.  Still not a bad investment.  Then while the world worried about computer crashes in Y2K, the EROI came in around 10:1, and “the EIA stopped producing data on how much energy it takes to get energy.”  I wonder whose idea that was?  Who didn’t want us frightened by statistics?  Hagen doesn’t speculate on the who, but he reasonably estimates that our return on that barrel of energy spent is in the single digits today.

 We may be forgiven for believing that as oil becomes more expensive, drillers will go to greater and greater lengths to find it.  But, Hagen asserts that “you eventually get to a point, even if oil is $100,000 dollars a barrel, or $1 million dollars a barrel, if it takes one barrel of oil to get out [one] barrel of oil, you’re kind of out of gas at that point.”

What happens to our economy then?  What happens when we can’t grow our way out of our problems?

Martenson and Hagen go on to talk about how the issue shouldn’t be the shortage of oil or fresh water or anything else, it should be about the “longage of expectations.”  We, as a society, nation and planet, need to plan how we will get along when growth has been replaced with contraction.

Here is where they lost me because they went on about living on a smaller carbon footprint, and buying locally.  The elephant in the room, gentlemen, is that what needs to be downsized is us.  There are simply too damn many people.  If the available stuff doesn’t stretch far enough now, it sure won’t if the population keeps ballooning.  Back when society could get 100 barrels by spending one, there were only two and half billion people to use it.  This year we have or will top seven billion.  And, as development in China and India has proven, they all want cars.   Given the chance, like Jay Leno, they won’t stop at one.

Current projections are for population growth to slow--but not stop--toward the end of the century--as we approach nine billion hungry consumers.

We can prepare for the crash mentally—as Martenson and Hagen advise.  We can stockpile goods, which they say won’t do us much good since we can’t possibly cover all the bases.  Even money and gold will have little value when we run out of stuff to buy.  Does that sound bleak?  Remember that everything we use comes to us courtesy of oil—in trucks, planes, ships, and trains.  Run out of oil and we run out of everything else, too.

There is a school of thought that expounds belief in human ingenuity.  Pushed to the wall, we will invent a way over.  It’s a nice thought. 

 

Living Long Enough to Regret It

This morning, I flipped the channel to Bloomburg news just in time to hear the CEO of something drop the final sentence in an interview.  He pointed out that we are cutting benefits to the elderly, I don’t know whether he meant private companies or the government, but both are on the chopping block.  What that means is that everyone is going to have to save more money to prepare for getting older.  In an economy that is driven by consumer spending, that means recovery will be much slower.

From another source, I learned that the average American has $52, 000 in retirement savings.  Assuming that you are average, how long is that going to support you?  Better spend less and sock away more.

 And, how long will that savings have to last you?  The BBC reports that the a baby boy born in Britain today has a one-in-four chance of living to be 100.  A girl has a one-in-three chance.  Of course we Americans don’t have so much to worry about.  The average American male will live 1.5 years less than the average Briton.  Canadians, Australians, and Japanese outlive us by even more.  And, the gap is growing.

 If I may, I will quote from the article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-14070090

 "We weren't surprised that we had lower life expectancies than other countries, but we were surprised by the fact that we were falling further behind," says Dr Ali Mokdad, professor of global health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

…But the US is a big country, and while parts of Mississippi have a male life expectancy of 67, behind nations like the Philippines, women in areas of Florida live as long, on average, as the Japanese, who top the longevity rankings.

It is precisely this kind of inequality that goes some way to explain why the US - and the UK to a lesser degree - lag behind other countries, according to Danny Dorling, a professor of human geography at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

He believes a more even distribution of wealth, even if the average were lower, could mean longer lives for everyone.

Meanwhile: Elderly Americans have a higher chance of surviving heart disease and many cancers than their counterparts in other rich countries, she says. Where the US lags behind is what happens at a much younger age.

That brings us back to being able to pay for longivity.  Those who want to be able to afford to grow old will not be spending the money necessary to provide jobs for the rest.  Funded pension plans are going the way of the dinosaur.  Social Security was never intended to support people in their old age.  It is a supplement, and one that conservatives want to reduce.  Meanwhile, putting our money in stocks and mutual funds seems to be riskier every day—unless you happen to manage stocks and mutual funds. 

Isn’t freedom great?  Slogans beat soup any day.

 

The Self-Deception of the Right

Recently, I’ve had a little down time and realized how the conservative movement has deceived itself—or let itself be deceived by those who would use it.  You may be ahead of me on this, but the thinking seems to be that the economy is down—especially where jobs are concerned.  Taxes are a pain in the rear.  The national debt is worrisome.  The government gives money to people who don’t deserve it.  And, society seems to have lost all sense of order.  What to do?

 Well, let’s cut taxes until the problems go away.  And, deport or lock up all those with disturbing behavior.  Slash the regulations on business so it comes back to America.  That’ll fix it.

 And, while we’re at it, let’s bring home all the troops from everywhere.  Those foreigners don’t know how to fix their problems, so let them kill each other until they figure it out.

 This is the same thinking that drives the Taliban.  Reject innovation and cling to an earlier age when privilege was reserved for a few at the top.  Life is less confusing if everyone knows his/her place.

 There is a natural hunger for easy answers to intractable questions.  There aren’t any.  I toilet-trained three children.  Each one required a different approach.  With that in mind, look at any social problem with its many facets and the numbers involved and you have to know that multiple strategies are necessary for everything.  Along the way, there is going to be waste and frustration, and that is just how it is.  Try and try again.

 As for taxes, back in the 1950’s, taxes on the wealthy were 70% or more.  Corporate taxes were also higher.  And, we had an economic boom.  Job creation all over the place.  Go back to the Great Depression.  The wealthy didn’t end that, government spending did.  It took a world war to get a consensus, but it was the massive wartime spending that beat the depression.  The debt that was created resolved itself in the post-war economic boom. 

 Now, it is also true that the great social programs and environmental regulations came along later, but, that is not what soured the boom. Strong regulations create jobs.  Increased opportunities expand the economy.  We also had strong tariffs.  Duties paid on imported goods kept domestic manufacturers competitive.  When the duties came down, there was an incentive for manufacturers to send their factories overseas.

 If the wealthy have a low tax rate, who are they going to hire?  Another gardener?  The wealthy don’t create jobs.  One could argue that low corporate taxes would create jobs—except that they don’t.  Look what happened with the stimulus.  Companies bought each other, handed out bonuses, and built factories overseas.  Individuals and corporate boards are always going to spend or save money in ways that are selfish.  As a stockholder, that is what you would want.  Corporations and those who run them will never conspire to act in the public interest.

 Tell a CEO that you are going to reduce his taxes by $10 million next year and ask him how many jobs he will create with that.  You will never get a straight answer, unless he says, “I don’t know.”  Taxes don’t determine if private companies will hire, the marketplace does.  Unless he sees a sustainable increased desire for his product, the CEO is not going to invest in hiring.

 I could go on.  The right has it exactly backwards.  This is no accident.  Some are dazzled and deceived by their rich supporters.  Others are firmly in the deep pockets of the privileged.  I’ve said it before. This is a war on the middle class.

 

The Weight of Greece

Back in my traveling days, I visited or stepped in 42 foreign countries.  When someone asks which one I liked the best, I always say Cyprus.  I only saw the Greek side, but the people there were the warmest, most hospitable folks I have ever met.  I could also go on about the food, historical sites, excellent roads, etc. but then I would wander off my thought-path.  If someone asks what is the country I liked least, I don’t hesitate there either.  It’s Nigeria—for reasons I won’t go into.  The second least-liked country on my list is Greece.  Like Cyprus, the food and sights are also stellar—and individually, the people I met were very nice.  However, the shopkeepers, taxi drivers and other service people that a visitor depends on spoiled the experience.  They would prefer that tourists stay home and mail them the money.

When I read about the problems that Greece is giving the European Union, I have to say that the Greeks will not put their financial house in order—not within the lifetime of any Greek currently drawing breath.  They should be cut loose and left to sink, or they will drag the rest of Europe down with them.

 I was sent there on a training mission to help with a problem they had.  Forgive me if I am vague and cryptic, but this was a mission sponsored by our State Department, and deserves some discretion.  The senior officials that I met all agreed that problem was serious.  They would puff out their chests and boast that all of Europe was looking at them.  Each time, I would wait for the next sentence in which I expected to hear them say that they were taking action, but there never was a follow up.  Europe was looking at them, and that was enough.

 About the problem?  Well, the consensus seemed to be that it was the fault of foreigners.  Greeks would never do that.  Law enforcement officials who took their jobs seriously would be transferred to the farthest reaches of the country.

 I met a Greek millionaire.  He and his American wife took me to dinner and for a ride in his speed boat.  Good people.  He lamented about how easy it was for him to cheat the system.  He explained that if he were stopped for speeding or any other violation, he only had to tell the officer who he was, and he would be released without a ticket.  Corruption extended beyond the necessity to pay a bribe, just mention your name or who you knew, and that was enough.

 I don’t recall the numbers, but a high proportion of the work force were (and probably still are) employed by the government.  Their benfits were extraordinary.  Governments were elected on the promise of more giveaways.  Even when I was there, pre-EU, experts said that the economy was unsustainable.

 Until the bottom falls out completely, the people will not allow the government to make the adjustments that are necessary to balance the budget.  Maybe when the money runs out, they will wake up.  Of course, even then, they will blame it all on foreigners.

 

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.

 

The Israelis have a word for it

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress and was applauded, I assume, for his chutzpah.  Imagine if I picked your wallet from your pocket, and when you demanded it back, I accused you of threatening me.  “Calm down and we can negotiate.  To show my good faith, I will give you a photograph from the wallet.  Now, if you give me something I will give you your driver’s license.  Of course, you have to admit that the wallet is mine, and then I will think about giving you something more, maybe a credit card.”   That is the Israeli concept of negotiations.  Their idea of peace is stealing land without complaint from the rightful owners.

 The news kept repeating Netanyahu’s assertion that before 1967, Israel was only 9 miles wide, and that was not wide enough for security.  Someone should tell him that 900 miles is not wide enough if your neighbors hate you.

 He wants other Arab countries to absorb Palestinian refugees.  Arabs have strong tribal ties.  Making citizens of large blocks of outsiders would destabilize the balance of power in the neighboring countries.  Current events over there show what can happen without adding Palestinians to the mix.

Some people believe that there must be a Jewish state because for centuries the end of the Yom Kippur service and the Passover Seder was, “Next year in Jerusalem.”  I can appreciate that.  But,Jews need to understand that the other Semites, the Arabs, have memories that are just as long.

 There will be no piece until Jerusalem is divided along 1967 lines, until there is a right to return or reparations or some combination of the two, and no peace until the Palestinian state has contiguous territory.  Let the settlements remain, but turn them over to Palestinian control.

 Israel can be an engine for real progress in the new Middle East, but it has to take steps to resolve these conflicts.  They are not the final issues, they are the only issues.

 Meanwhile, the United States needs to stop enabling this paranoid penchant for self-destruction.  Take away—or at least begin with a serious threat to take away aid.  Friends don’t let friends drive delusional.