May 31^st

Today the local paper published an obviously political column without attribution; it was obviously right wing because it was critical, very critical of universities which protected their students from contrary opinions. What the author clearly meant was protected them from right wing opinions. The column did not have an author’s name attached so the author was a mystery, but not for long. Columnists have their own styles and their own vocabularies. At one point this author writes the following sentence, “Fortunately, a saving clerisy, a vanguard composed of the understanding few, know where history is going and how to help it get there.” Wow! A saving clerisy; who would have thought? I looked it up and it is rare; about 1 in 180,000 words; a synonym for it is intelligentsia. Who would write “clerisy” in a column if intelligentsia would do as well? Can you say George Will? Yes, George did it.

His thesis was that major universities protect their students from disagreeable ideas by limiting speakers and controlling certain topics. The complaints about this bias began more than sixty years ago when William F. Buckley wrote “God and Man at Yale:” Buckley’s thesis then was that Yale’s faculty was a bunch of Godless communists inflicting their views on their poor students. The book made Buckley’s reputation as a conservative but not everyone bought his pot of message. McGeorge Bundy was also a recent Yale graduate and he savaged the book’s exaggerations in an Atlantic article that same year. Bundy said that Buckley’s book was, “dishonest in the use of facts, false in its theory and a discredit to its author and the writer of its introduction.” The right wing was happy to buy it anyway and has reverenced Buckley ever since.

The problem Will has is that his complaints about academic bias are all one-sided. He is gloriously unconcerned about the bias shown by conservative institutions erecting walls around their students’ beliefs. Liberty University has thrown their Democratic student club off campus. Is Will concerned? He mentions primarily Ivy League schools. I guess the rest are beneath him. Many fundamentalist Christian schools demand that a prospective student describe their relationship with Jesus Christ as a condition of admission.  All faculty members must sign a profession of faith instrument as a condition of employment. Biola University has a debate about whether a Christian can be a Democrat. Rules from Leviticus are cited as evidence that Christians would have a problem here. (That’s right, Leviticus! Can you imagine using Leviticus to determine the rules for Christians?) Will and the protectors of free speech groups he references have no difficulties with any of this. If they have it is never mentioned.

Bob Jones University that professes to be Christian declares that the Catholic Pope is the anti-Christ and that Catholicism is a cult. I guess for Mr. Will this is not nearly as scandalous as the university cancelling the invitation of a prochoice speaker. Not to worry George, that invitation will never be offered.

May 30^th

Cal Thomas’ column today is concerned with the high murder rate which results from blacks killing blacks in many of our major cities. He tells us that Chicago, Baltimore and New York, all of which have high murder rates of blacks by blacks, have in common Democratic Mayors and Democratic majority city councils. It would appear that Cal wants to persuade us that electing a Democratic mayor will cause black people to kill each other.

Other cities with high crime rates, Miami, Anchorage, Oklahoma City and Indianapolis all have Republican mayors. The rape rates in Anchorage and in Alaska are by far the highest in the country. South Dakota has the second highest rape rate of any state and South Dakota has a Republican Governor. Alaska’s new governor previously ran and lost as a Republican but is now an Independent. The state has had for years, had a Republican governor the most famous of which was Sarah Palin.

The point of this exercise is that the Democratic mayors of high crime cities are no more responsible for the crime there than are Republican governors of Alaska and South Dakota are responsible for the intolerable incidents of rape and sexual abuse in their states.

Thomas contrasts the crime rates of New York under Bloomberg and then as it increased under Democrat De Blasio. Of course we had a similar lid on crime with the Democratic mayor of Baltimore, Michael J. O’Malley, but then when the ACLU folks and other evil constitutional rights groups came along, the stop and frisk whomever you please was abandoned, as it was in New York City, and crime went up in both places. Again this has nothing to do with the political party in power; it has to do with whether or not you want to honor the constitutional rights of the citizens and in doing so risk an increase in crime. I’m afraid Cal Thomas does not understand this issue.

Other variables are obviously involved in crime rates, variables that surely have more relevance than the political party allegiance of the civic leaders. Has Thomas looked at unemployment or at population density? Not likely, Thomas is not interested in solving problems; he is only interested in blaming Democrats for them. Unfortunately this seems to be a typical conservative position and it will solve nothing.

 

May 29^th

Today we’ll look at Dr. Charles Krauthammer who is close to apoplexy over some new health care rules. He is incensed about the Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) requirement; this interference with the doctor’s time costs the general practitioner as much as 48 minutes a day. Heavens, what a waste of time! (Note the weasel words, “as much as.” I guess the 48 minutes is the top time cost Krauthammer could find.) But when I moved from one town to another twenty years ago my regular physician gave me a copy of my records to take to my new physician…who promptly lost them. Eventually my new physician got what he needed but now, with EHR, your health records and all test results are available to any physician; an ER man who has to care for you after an auto accident or a heart attack will have all your health records right now!. But hey, a GP could see another couple of patients with that 48 minutes and so boost his gross by several hundred dollars a day. (But then it isn’t clear why typing notes into an electronic record system should be more complicated and take more time than hand written physician’s notes.) Krauthammer doesn’t explain; he just complains.

Krauthammer claims that EHR makes it easier to commit healthcare fraud but then one can cite contrary evidence: “Ann Arbor—Concerns that nationwide electronic health record adoption could lead to widespread fraudulent coding and billing practices that result in higher health care spending are unfounded, according to a study from the University of Michigan Schools of Information and Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health” or “… EHRs appear to be making it harder to get away with fraud.” This is from “Fortune,” which is hardly a cozy liberal journal.

There is still plenty of fraud by physicians and none of that seems to concern Krauthammer: consider a 97 million dollar fraudulent program run by two M.D.s who referred patients to very expensive Partial Hospitalization Programs and got very rich for a short time through kickbacks. Then there was Dr. Robert Glazer who nicked the government for 33 million dollars from 2006 to 2014. How about 19 million for fraudulent home visits. The big one here is the physician who misdiagnosed cancer in patients so he could prescribe chemotherapy and expensive brain scans to see how his patients were doing. Dr. Farid Fata made about 35 million until the Feds caught up with him (Those awful interfering Federal authorities!) In his case a new nurse watched what he was doing for about ninety minutes, was disgusted and quit. She turned him in to Michigan State authorities in 2010. The state said he was doing nothing wrong and so he continued the scam until 2014 when the federal government finally caught up with him. The nurse was delighted.

Krauthammer says nothing about things like this and the reason is obvious; some physicians are overcome with greed even risking the health of those they are sworn to serve if doing so will make them money; then, in this instance, the clear inadequacy of state government to correct the problem required a federal intervention, a federal intervention that Dr. Krauthammer clearly despises.

May 28^th

Thomas Sowell’s column today is suffused with pity for the poor college graduates exposed only to liberal opinions. To counter this outrage he provides a reading list to right the imbalance. High on this list is Ann Coulter and very high is Walter E. Williams. Then there are quarterly publications like “City Journal” and “Hoover Digest.” Sowell wants to slant student reading toward the right presumably to counter the awful biases of left-leaning universities; topics like “Social Security as a Ponzi Scheme” are hardly neutral nor is anything produced by Ann Coulter.

Sowell apparently does not understand that many campuses are also dominated by the right wing in this country. Liberty University where many Republican presidential aspirants have announced their candidacy has eliminated its Democratic Club; its values were just not congenial to the purpose to the university. Perhaps Sowell can tell us which of these awful major universities, if any, have thrown their Republican Clubs off campus.

Then we have Biola University: This interesting institution admits only evangelical Christians. I would hazard a guess that any course in comparative religion has a very nervous professor. They do have a “Democrat” Club and a recent campus debate centered around the question of whether or not you could be a Christian and a Democrat. This debate is hard to imagine but it is the truth. Many arguments were advanced against the notion that it was possible to be both.

Other four year colleges and universities also have requirements that students submit a “Profession of faith statement” to gain admission. Mr. Sowell doesn’t seem to think that any of these schools need to have their students’ broaden their social/political point of view. If one seriously believes that Christians cannot subscribe to the principles of the Democratic Party then that person knows nothing about Christianity and nothing about the Democratic Party.

Finally, Sowell says nothing about Gunnar Myrdal the Nobel Prize winning economist; it is hard to believe that Sowell is not familiar with the author of “An American Dilemma” which SCOTUS cited in their destruction of the separate but equal myth. Myrdal shared the prize with Hayek a right wing type, so Sowell surely knows about him. Myrdal is responsible for the “Swedish Miracle,” a buoyant economy with enormously beneficial social programs, high marginal tax rates and low unemployment. Sowell on the other hand seems to welcome unfettered capitalism, get as much money as you can as fast as you can and blame the poorest twenty percent for their poverty. That’s Christian?

May 27^th

Cal Thomas today tells us that he skipped the commencement speaker’s address when he graduated from The American University in Washington D.C. From the content of Cal’s column he probably skipped a number of classes on the way to his graduation ceremony as well. His angst is about the poor Coast Guard graduates who had to listen to President Obama address them on the ramifications of climate change. But at least they aren’t obliged to read the claptrap he puts in his column

President Obama pointed out in his address that the byproducts of climate change, severe drought for example, has led to instability in Nigeria and an opening for the terrorist group Boko Haram. Now Cal joyously confronts us with a State Department spokesperson saying that lack of jobs is what turns people into terrorists but President Obama claims it was the drought and crop failure. This Cal sees as a discrepancy and it allows him to crow, “Which is it?” Cal fails to understand that events can have multiple causes and, unfortunately, that’s not all he fails to understand.

He tells us that, “No amount of evidence will dissuade a climate change cultist that he is wrong but for students who might Google the topic for a term paper let’s try.” And the first thing he Googles is Marc Morano’s climatedepot.com, a sub-set of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFAST). Cal tells us that Marc Morano runs this outfit. (That might be news to the CEO, David Rothbard.) This committee is funded by the Koch Bros. and the oil industry and its highest paid employee ($150,000/annum) is Marc Morano.

 Morano is a publicity guy; he has no training whatsoever in climate science but that’s just fine with Cal Thomas because Cal has no training in this area either. This does not keep either of them from citing the fringe of climatologists who find that there is a buck to be made from the oil and coal industries for those with agreeable opinions. Thomas cites Remote Sensing Systems as claiming that, “Since December 1996 there has been no global warming at all….” This is a very legitimate climate outfit but nowhere on their website can I find any such quote. There are other quotes aplenty but Cal apparently has not read them. Here is Carl Mears an RSS scientist commenting on the “denialists.” “Does this slow-down in the warming mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is no longer valid?  The short answer is ‘no.’” The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation.  This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.”

Then Thomas turns to a truly reliable source on California’s climate, Carly Fiorina. Carly tells us that (1) California has suffered from droughts for centuries and (2) this water problem is entirely the liberals’ fault for not building more dams. Why more nearly empty reservoirs would help California Carly doesn’t say, and not saying is most unusual for Carly Fiorina.

 

May 26^th

Memorial Day is over. It is instructive to look back at the public’s attitude toward military service people over the years. The 16 million veterans serving in WW 2 never heard “Thank you for your service.” I never heard that during the first sixty years following my discharge from the AAF. The veterans then did what we thought we needed to do. There was no more expectation of a thank you then than for our children to thank us for their dinner.

 The Korean War (excuse me, police action) was about the same. Except that MacArthur was so full of himself and eager to bomb China that Uncle Harry had to cut him down a bit. There were 5.7 million veterans of that war and those veterans were largely ignored when they came home. They got the GI Bill and other help but no one thanked them for their service. A few people thought that we had no business opposing the North Koreans or their assistants the Chinese when they invaded South Korea; if they thought that did they kept quiet about it.

The next major conflict was in Viet Nam and that was a very different scenario.  We began there by trying to salvage French interests. (French Indo-China) This escalated while we were told that the whole region would become communist if we did not roll back the North Vietnamese. Perhaps another hundred thousand troops would be needed. There were never enough; by 1968 the number of troops in Viet Nam was over half a million and 65 percent of those were draftees. The draft was enormously unpopular; if you were smart enough and reasonably wealthy you could get a deferment until you finished college and if you majored in religion and became a preacher with your own church your deferment was permanent. If that didn’t work you moved to Canada.

A large part of the problem was that the administration was not telling the public the truth about the war. This, along with other problems, led to the war’s unpopularity. The unpopularity finally led to some members of the public literally spitting on returning service men. Poor training and poorer leadership sometimes led to barbaric actions in Viet Nam by American soldiers. The public, after learning about the My Lai massacre, was not favorably impressed by American troops. In one case a young woman meeting her husband’s casket was told that he deserved what he got! There was no “thank you for your service” for these returning veterans

Now comes the all-volunteer army; on closer examination the “volunteering” is really bought and paid for. The government now provides enormous incentives to young men and women if they volunteer for military service. If you serve for three years, even if you see no combat, you are entitled to 27 months of college tuition (that’s four years of college). There are other incentives as well. Keep in mind that the odds of being shot if you serve three years in the military are slightly less that the odds of being shot if you were a civilian of that age.  Even so we should thank these volunteers for their service just as we should thank the Chinese for buying the bonds that finance our wars, wars that we refuse to pay for with increased taxes, thanks to Grover Norquist.

 

May 25^th

Dr. Charles Krauthammer has a recent revisionist column claiming that Obama lost the “victory” in Iraq by withdrawing our troops in 2011. Here is a quote from his column:

“[Victory,] which Obama proceeded to fully squander. With the 2012 election approaching, he chose to liquidate our military presence in Iraq.…We surrendered our most valuable strategic assets, such as control of Iraqi airspace, soon to become the indispensable conduit for Iran to supply and sustain the Assad regime in Syria.”

Krauthammer’s utterances here are absurd on their face: “Liquidating our military presence in Iraq” (his term) was arranged by George Bush in a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government in 2008. Bush agreed to withdraw all US forces by December 31, 2011. This agreement was made before President Obama took office and he honored what his predecessor had agreed to. Well, shame on him, right Krauthammer?

We might have left a small force in Iraq if the Iraqi government had allowed our troops’ offenses be tried in our military courts. They refused that request so Obama removed all troops as previously agreed. This is how Obama lost the Iraq war that Bush had won.

Then we have the next page from the Krauthammer imagination, that we have lost control of Iraqi air space. What Krauthammer has done here is to conflate our abandonment of Iraqi airfields with abandonment of their air space. Dr. Krauthammer should stick to psychiatry; well maybe not, he’ll probably cause less damage writing right wing columns than he would if he were treating vulnerable people.

There have been literally thousands of sorties flown against various targets in Iraq since we supposedly “lost control of airspace.”  Everyone has seen the helicopter supply drop of food and the rescue of Yazidis in the Sinjar Mountains near the Kurdish section of Iraq. Isn’t it amazing that United States forces could do that without control of the airspace?

I appreciate the terrible trauma that Krauthammer has endured but perhaps he should, as a psychiatrist, have found enough self-knowledge to sublimate his aggression and redirect it to a more worthy target than President Obama.

 

May 24^th

George Will today is writing about war legitimacy. Mr. Will has only a distant acquaintance with war, having been a college student majoring in religion at Trinity University in 1962 and hence probably draft exempt during the Viet Nam War. His involvement now is entirely on the political side, rather like the boy who, hoping for a spectacle, says to his friend, “Let’s you and him fight.” (I must apologize here to the Council of Oxford University for mistakenly asserting in a previous blog that Mr. Will had earned a doctorate from Oxford University. He earned only an M.A. there; his doctorate was from Princeton University.)

Mr. Will is concerned that the Congress does not exercise sufficient control over our military involvement abroad. He cites the Kaine-McCain legislation as a way to more completely involve Congress. This isn’t likely to matter. Seventy percent of Congress voted to approve Bushes’ invasion of Iraq. The reason was the administration’s insistence that Iraq had, or would soon have, “methods of mass destruction,” WMDs; by that they meant atomic weapons.

Some in Congress didn’t believe the CIA briefing; for example Congressman Ron Paul claimed the CIA man’s body language convinced him that the man was lying. Lincoln Chaffee, the only Republican Senator to vote against the resolution, claimed the metal tubes presented as evidence could have been bought at any hardware store. Well, maybe, but the main point here is that regardless of the power Congress wields, its members will vote according to the intelligence they are given; control the intelligence, which any administration does, and you control how Congress will vote.

In an attempt to bolster its position that Iraq had, or was planning to produce, WMDs, the administration sent a senior diplomat, Joseph Wilson, to Niger in search of evidence that Saddam Hussein was buying yellow cake uranium, a basic material for the production of WMDs. He came back without it; indeed convinced that they were doing no such thing. This so infuriated the administration that Robert Novak, a right wing talking head, took his revenge against Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent. Novak’s outing of Valerie Plame would ordinarily be a treasonable offense but not for those as well-connected to the Bush-Cheney government as Robert Novak.

Ultimately no WMDs were found, and that’s in spite of very intensive searching. Now there is a revisionist position that those who claimed the Bush-Cheney people were lying about WMDs were themselves lying. What next?

May 23^rd

So what’s the deal with global warming? There is hardly any doubt that the globe is warming but there have been variations in global temperature going back thousands of years. We know this from taking ice cores in Greenland. Recently a scientist has determined that the variation of temperatures observed this way shows that we are currently slightly less than one standard deviation above the mean temperature recorded over this period. Presumably we should take heart from these data and start firing up our coal furnaces.

The temperature of the earth is not as hot as it has ever been but it is much hotter than it has been recently and it is moving in the direction of getting still hotter. Let’s consider an analogy: There is a blood test for prostate cancer called the PSA test. If a man’s PSA is higher than four or five it considered a danger signal for prostate cancer.  This depends on the man’s age and other things. However, if this man’s PSA has been hovering at less than one and a year later is at three we have what’s called PSA velocity to consider. In short, the absolute level may be less important than the rate of change and that may also be the case with global warming. Our scientist does not discuss this. His opinions are recorded on a right wing site devoted to fostering a “What, me worry?” attitude about climate change.

Our recent Vice President Al Gore has produced a movie about climate change called, “An Inconvenient Truth,” and consequently Gore features prominently in all the global warming denier’s (GWD) comments. He has become the favorite target for all the right wing GWD folks. I would guess that Gore is not the least bothered by this. No one produces any evidence to refute Gore’s warnings; it is apparently enough that Gore produced the movie and that’s sufficient for the right wing to pile on.

There are major industries which would benefit if GWD were a hoax as Senator Inhofe claims. It was cold enough in Washington DC for Inhofe to step outside and bring a snowball into the Senate chamber proving for all time that global warming is a hoax. This might prove something quite different; that at 80 years old Inhofe’s continuation in the Senate is an embarrassment to his party. So who benefits from the GWD view of the world? Most all coal companies will benefit, oil companies will benefit, gas companies will benefit. If that pesky carbon tax could be scotched just think of the benefits to fossil fuel companies. No wonder they like to fund GWD research.  GWD folks maintain that government research contracts are the source of funds that keep this “hoax” in business. Nobody ever got rich on government financed research contracts particularly when the Koch Brothers and the fossil fuel companies are pouring  millions into funding the other side.

 

May 22^nd

A letter to the Record-Eagle editor this morning deserves comment. It spouts the usual right wing talking points without a shred of original thought. The writer maintains that if you invested a million dollars in the stock market you could have lost it all rather than making 87 thousand dollars as a previous writer had posited. True enough, but it would have required either incredible stupidity or the willful desire to lose money.

This writer suggests the market is a gamble and it is; if you lose money in this gamble, unlike other gambles, you can deduct up to 3 thousand dollars of your losses each year from your income for tax purposes and you can carry forward any additional losses to succeeding years. Very neat if you confine your gambling to the stock market. You can’t do that with other gambles.

Then the writer tells us that “near 50% of all tax filers paid no income tax.” The writer doesn’t understand that the country was in a deep recession and incomes for many people who were out of work simply disappeared. Then there were many retirees living primarily on Social Security an amount too low it incur any tax liability.

The writer apparently does not know, or is not willing to admit, that more than 15 thousand households with incomes over 200 thousand dollars a year also pay no income tax. How is that possible? Just put your capital in municipal bonds. That income is not subject to any federal income tax. Indeed if you buy municipal bond funds investing only in your state, you’ll pay no federal or state income tax. If you invest 10 million dollars (hard earned by going to the office every single day) in muni bond funds you’ll get about 350 thousand dollars a year totally tax free. Then, with the absence of any meaningful inheritance tax, you can pass this fine lifestyle on to your children and grandchildren. Is this a wonderful country or what?

Of course many poorer people pay no income tax as well. In addition to retirees there are breadwinners out there who are earning $12.50 an hour. (This is substantially more than the minimum wage for Michigan which has generously been raised to $8.15 an hour.) A family of four, mom dad and two young children, with the father earning $12.50 an hour and working 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year will earn 26 thousand dollars a year. That family will pay no federal income tax. They will even qualify for 238 dollars a month in food stamps. Thus does the taxpayer subsidize the businesses paying low wages and many pay much less than $12.50 an hour.

The Republican led legislature apparently thinks $8.15 an hour is plenty for a living wage. They’ve already recommended cuts in the food stamp programs as well.  Parents can just feed their kids sawdust sandwiches; think of all the wholesome fiber they’ll get.

May 21^st

Now we have the distinguished senior senator from South Carolina, Lindsey Graham, announcing that he will subsequently announce his candidacy for the President of the United States. How many Republican candidates, declared and undeclared, are there? (Keep in mind that there some arcane regulations that control your campaigning once you declare, so the reluctance of some candidates to officially declare is not necessarily the result of timidity.)

As of today the number of people seriously advancing themselves as candidates is fourteen to seventeen. Of course that number is increasing almost daily. Perhaps this is seen as a weak field and weak fields always attract more entrants; this is true for any competitive event even arm wrestling.

This large field which may get even larger (Sarah Palin’s hat is not yet in the ring, nor is Newt Gingrich’s.) in the next couple of months. There are now so many candidates that Fox news, which is to host the first debates, has declared that they will limit the stage to just ten candidates. If you assume a two hour debate show that means each candidate will get about ten to twelve minutes to hear and answer questions. Perhaps Governor Perry will write down somewhere which government departments he wants to eliminate so as to avoid time spent in puzzlement. (But let’s remember he had to remember the names of three departments. Not an easy chore for a Texas governor as we might surmise from our recent experience with a Texas governor in the White House.) I would guess there will be an all-out sprint to do well in the next several polls for the polls will determine who the top ten debaters will be. Those not invited to the debate might as well close up shop; it’s hard to imagine anyone contributing to their campaigns if they can’t get on stage for the first debates.

We already have significant disagreements among some top candidates regarding appropriate US foreign policy as well as immigration policy and whether or not a national standard in education, the Common Core, is a good idea. Senator Graham believes we need “boots on the ground” from Libya to Iraq to counter ISIL. Naturally he has the backing of Senator McCain who is not a candidate this time around. Graham is an Air Force veteran but not a combat veteran. He served in the Judge Advocates Office briefing pilots on the rules of war.

Then there is Senator Rand Paul who believes, equally firmly, that we have no business sending our troops anywhere unless we are attacked. These two have other issues; Graham is not a fan of the Tea Party folks, he believes the party should be more inclusive. He is famously opposed to gay marriage and asked Attorney General Loretta Lynch why gay marriage could be approved by the court but not polygamy. Lynch was too smart to bite on that one but Lindsey polished his far right creds with the question. Rand Paul weasels a bit on gay marriage; he thinks it should be up to the states but then what happens if you move to a different state?

This battle of the pipsqueaks will be fun to watch. Paul and Graham do not see eye to eye on much of anything except an agreement that whatever position President Obama takes on anything is clearly wrong!

 

May 20^th

Cal Thomas has many not very nice things to say about George Stephanopoulos (GS) and his donation of 75 thousand dollars to the Clinton Foundation. GS was interviewing Peter Schweitzer the author of “Clinton Cash,” the book is a strident attack on the Clinton Foundation, without disclosing his own contribution. Presumably his contribution renders his interview biased. Really? GS has a very long association with the Clintons and I can’t imagine that this donation could have suddenly swung him from an unbiased interviewer to a biased interviewer. Still, his “failure to disclose” his contribution has heightened the criticism about him from the right.

Cal makes a considerable point of complaining about current news people and their dearth of news gathering experience, GS being a shining example. Cal reminds us of his own long apprenticeship and the current emphasis on the TV news person being a girl, being blonde, having great legs and flawlessly reading a teleprompter. Heavens, which cable news channel could he have in mind? It certainly isn’t PBS.

Mr. Schweitzer, an associate of the Breitbart School of Journalism, has published, with Harper Collins, a book purporting to record the grievous sins committed by the Clintons in pursuit of donations to The Clinton Foundation. Schweitzer claims in his book that Hillary Clinton could have vetoed a Russian uranium mine deal. Then he claims that maybe “veto” was the wrong word. Various examiners have found as many as 20 errors of fact in this attempt at a hatchet job.  Cal Thomas mentions none of these lies and distortions, which is curious given that Cal boasts about his old timey training as a news man. Could Cal be even more biased than he claims GS is?

Cal firmly believes that donations to the Clinton Foundation are designed purely to get favorable treatment should Hillary become President. One can make unlimited contributions to 501 c 4 organizations and these outfits while not supposed to promote a politician can never-the-less promote issues. Perhaps “No more shrubs around the White House” would be permissible. Unlimited Super Pac contributions are also OK and they can openly advocate for a candidate. The only drawback is that contributors are identified. So why would anyone contribute to the Clinton Foundation if these other, more direct, routes to curry Clinton favor are available?

But the big bugaboo is the foreign contributors; they have not been adequately reported and according to law that’s a no, no. They aren’t illegal; they just have to be reported. This failure to observe the letter of the law has brought out those ready to accuse the Hilary of favoring the governments responsible for these contributions. The evidence for these favors? It doesn’t exist but when did that stop a paranoid accusation by the right?

There is no evidence that even one thin dime of these contributions, from whatever source, have found their way into the Clinton’s pockets. That won’t stop the Breitbarts or the Schweizers from trying to imply Clinton’s serious wrongdoing. 

May 19^th

Mona Charen is very, very annoyed with President Obama today. Indeed she is so beside herself (I never understood that expression but it seems apt here) that she accuses him of everything from disrespecting his colleagues to abusing the poor.

Her tirade begins by citing the President’s tendency to refer to government officials, high and low, by their first names. Then she points out the one exception (she claims) is Iran’s Ali Khomeini who is always referred to as “supreme leader.” Mona claims Khomeini has “never been elected to anything.” Try to get your facts straight Mona; he was elected supreme leader by the “Council of Experts” a theological group and he had once been president of Iran. This man is a cleric and perhaps gets an honorific from the President, as I imagine Pope Francis does too. If you want “an unelected to anything leader” pick the late Shah of Iran whose SAVAK secret police terrorized Iranians for years. But then he was one of our boys and had no need to be elected to anything.

Then Mona criticizes the President for wanting to increase the tax on hedge fund managers. Many of these people have arranged to pay just a capital gains tax on their immense incomes and avoid the income tax rates the rest of us pay. So how much revenue would increasing the tax on these folks raise? Mona cites a CNBC pundit who claims it wouldn’t raise much because these managers would just figure out another way to avoid the tax. Are these folks buying into the American dream or what? They couldn’t do that if we had a flat tax of 50 percent on all income over 1 million dollars a year from whatever source.

Then Mona goes after the President for his remarks about the “…bifurcation of society not realizing how much he embarrasses himself.” This embarrassment is caused by the President attending Punahou School, a private school on a scholarship, starting when he was in the fifth grade. Surely he should have known when he was eleven that he would one day be embarrassing himself by going there while pointing out the bifurcation of society. His daughters now attend private school too; made necessary by easier secret service protection for them caused by threats on their lives. So Mona, anyone threaten the lives of your three children? Who’s embarrassed now?

Then Mona apparently believes the President’s defunding of DC’s Opportunity Scholarship Program disadvantages the poor. The program, which the right was quick to refund, gives government money for scholarships to private charter schools. That’s just fine with the right wing who would convert (monetize?) every public facility, from highways to national parks to the Library of Congress to private control. Many of these so called “not for profit” schools give the administration of the school over to for profit administrative companies and these folks clean up with taxpayer money. Mona might want to look at Options Charter School as an example; three million dollars diverted to private use.

Beyond that, every newly funded private school student is one less public school student and that reduces the money available for public school students. Mona points out that, “…Boehner personally saw to it that the program was revived. So who is judging whom when it comes to the poor?” she says.  And the poor kids left behind in DC’s festering public schools; what about them?  They aren’t even a blip on Mona’s right wing radar.

May 18^th

You might remember the cartoon contest is Garland Texas where Pamela Geller was exercising her free speech rights by sponsoring a contest certain to infuriate Muslims. It did that of course, just as planned, although no great intelligence was required in the planning. Two Muslim fanatics made a road trip all the way from Phoenix to Garland, Texas to avenge this insult to the Prophet. Geller had provided ample protection for this event which implies that she expected the fireworks that resulted when both Muslims were killed as they opened fire trying to get into the venue. We do not know where Ms. Geller was at this point. I would guess that wherever it was she was well protected.

Then came the comments: Greta Van Susteren of Fox news fame chastised Geller, not for provoking mayhem, but for endangering the police whose business it was to protect the public in such situations. Van Susteren was right of course but true to Fox news tradition her concern seemed to stop with the safety of the police. Ordinary humans could look out for themselves.

Geller has a history of harassing Muslims and tries mightily to persuade herself, and anyone else who will listen, that she is just exercising her “free speech rights.” She has now become sufficiently provocative that she is banned from visiting England.  Geller will exercise her free speech rights no matter who dies.

Now shift gears to another Texas venue a few weeks later. A chain restaurant manager invites three biker gangs to come visit. The restaurant is Twin Peaks and the venue is Waco, Texas. The gangs accept this invitation; they had to accept or lose face and self-respect. The result was a shootout in the restaurant parking lot that left eight bikers dead. When police were asked why they didn’t stop what everyone knew would happen, they said that the restaurant manager had invited the gangs and it was his right to do that. Of course it was also the gang members right to show up with guns, this was Texas you know.

So what did Twin Peaks’ manager gain by this? Well, he got the restaurant’s name in the national press and he got eight dead men in his parking lot. Apparently, like Geller, he didn’t give a damn about who would get killed as a result of his action, he and Geller wanted publicity and they got it.

Perhaps in the next couple of months we’ll have another similar episode. I’m constantly amazed that anthropologists call us homo sapiens.

May 17^th

George Will reminds us today of just how close Rick Santorum came to winning the Republican nomination in 2012. It is a shame that Rick lost because President Obama’s reelection would have been even easier against Santorum than against Mitt Romney. Will suggests that Santorum is in a great position try again because he came so close last time.  I think it would be wonderful if he won the nomination this time around!

 Last time, in 2012, I recall Santorum speaking with nostalgia about the calluses on his coal miner grandfather’s hard working hands. His grandfather was an immigrant from Italy in the 1920s. Rick says nothing about grandpa’s politics but Mussolini was not taking kindly to liberal/socialists and his heavy handedness with folks who disagreed with him sent the most visible of them scurrying out of the country. Grandpa Santorum was as red a communist as one could possibly be; maybe that’s why Rick prefers to discuss his hands, but not his politics.

Rick also says that when his grandfather arrived there were no government help programs and no benefits for immigrants. Actually there were veterans benefit programs, aid to poor mothers and others and there were small benefits for immigrants. Factcheck calls Santorum’s statement untrue; that’s a nice way of saying he was lying! There a host of other “untrue statements” from Santorum, so many that it seems he might be addicted to producing them. (Perhaps it’s caused by a conservative virus.)

Santorum is most noted for his concerns about sex; in particular his opposition to homosexual sex and to gay marriage. The Senator is convinced that consenting adults should not have the right to what he considers sexual excess simply because they confine it to their bedrooms. He maintains that this privacy policy would permit bigamy and much else which would lead to the destruction of civilized society. I must admit to being puzzled by the bigamy claim. Perhaps he assumes that if the sex police were allowed to search bedrooms without a warrant the incidence of bigamy in this country would decline. I really don’t know if that’s what he means and Santorum isn’t saying.

Santorum is clear that sexual activity should be confined to heterosexual married couples. Of course that still leaves many options. Santorum hasn’t pontificated on this point but I would bet that any sexual activity that couldn’t result in pregnancy, even between married heterosexual couples, would be on his prohibited list. I believe that if Santorum had his way only the missionary position would be approved and that might not be approved if it had any other name.

May 16^th

Today I’d like to rant about freedom of religion. Ms. Parker’s column in yesterday’s paper forced the subject to my attention. At the signing of the Treaty of Tripoli, John Adams, a devout Christian is supposed to have included in the treaty the statement that, “The United States is my no means founded on the Christian religion.” Adams was trying to point out that this country did not, because of its religion, have any continuing beef with Tripoli, a Muslim country. Well, that was then, as they say. No such politicians as President Adams are around today.

But what about religious freedom in a democratic society; is it possible? (Yes, yes I know; we are a representative republic.) I don’t believe it is possible and I don’t believe we have it. If one religion, or sub-set of that religion, has, as its premise, the destruction of all non-believers unless they promptly convert, then there is no religious freedom there. Either the subset is stymied by law from imposing its will, or believers in other religions lose their freedom or their lives. This extreme case seems obvious. In this country you do not have the right to kill people who do not believe as you do.

All right, short of that extreme, what is the situation? Consider marriage: Muslims are permitted four wives at one time; in this country we are allowed only one at a time. Of course it is not unusual for Americans to have as many as four or more wives, or husbands, just not all at once. Mormons at one time believed in plural marriage, that is more than one wife per husband, certainly not more than one husband per wife. That belief was changed when Utah wanted to get into the union. In 1890 the LDS church banned polygamy and Utah’s admission to the Union followed in 1896. The freedom to practice polygamy was denied the Mormons if they wished to enter the Union although some Mormons still observe the practice with private and unofficial marriage ceremonies. Certainly the Mormons did not have religious freedom if they had to give up certain religious practices to join the union…and some still don’t.

While no denomination in this country suggests its members either kill or convert non-believers, there are religious groups that insist their members, if elected to public office, push the churches’ agenda regardless of their constituent’s wishes. The church, in a real sense, forces its beliefs on non-believers although not by threat of death. The result is not as bloody although the principle is the same.

Then we have the strange situation of businesses, or churches, refusing to pay for insurance that provides contraceptives because the business owner, or church, claims such an insurance provision violates their religious beliefs.  Indeed the worker can still use some of his pay, money provided by this same employer, to buy contraceptives and thus stymie the business owner’s attempt to control.

There is no government church in this country so no money is given to any particular denomination, although religion is certainly supported because churches pay no property tax, They are not required to account to the government for the percentage of their income, if any, devoted to charitable enterprises

President Adams comment in the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli that the government was not founded on the Christian religion was a trifle misleading. While literally true to the extent that the country has any religion, that religion is overwhelmingly Christian. However the various sub-species of “Christianity,” from The Ku Klux Klan and the Christian Identity Movement to the Greek Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, could not possibly agree on anything except that all are self-styled Christian groups.

May 15^th

 A column in today’s paper by Kathleen Parker merits attention. Ms. Parker is concerned that politicians on the left are leaning heavily on the Christian beliefs of those on the right. She begins by admitting the obvious, that religious folks, “… come in many stripes, checks and polka dots.” Then she goes on to complain that, “Members of the Christian right—evangelicals and Catholics especially—are treated to the sneers of lefties, academics, and certain but not all media.”

I’ll try not to sneer here, but it won’t be easy because I am a leftie and a retired academic. Some of these fundamentalists are criticized not because of their religious beliefs but because of their actions. For example I have no problem with the Reverend Huckabee’s fundamentalism. He seems willing to accommodate the religious beliefs of others but I disagree with his position on gay marriage; he is opposed to it. Now I would disagree with that position if Huckabee were of any religious persuasion or no religious persuasion at all; my disagreement with Huckabee on this matter has nothing whatever to do with his religion.

As I pointed out in a previous post, Huckabee is quite willing to deliberately mislead his audience regarding the country’s unemployment situation. (I’ll repeat it here for the infrequent reader: Huckabee claimed there are 93 million unemployed. He gets that figure by counting children, mothers caring for children, retirees and others not looking for work.) His religion does come into play for he is lying and most professed Christians would maintain that lying is not Christian, so he is a hypocrite as well.

Then we have the Catholic Church hierarchy; I’m speaking here not of Catholic individuals but specifically of the church hierarchy. When Jack Kennedy ran for President many in this country were suspicious that his religious beliefs would allow the Pope to control his political agenda. He had to work very hard to convince voters that he would not permit such control. Now, many years later, Jack would have a much more difficult time. In 2007 his nephew Patrick Kennedy was told by the Bishop of Providence R.I. that it would be “inappropriate” for him to present himself for communion due to his congressional stance on abortion. In 1984 Geraldine Ferraro got exactly the same message. Even the current more liberal Pope Francis, as Bishop in Argentina forbade “wayward politicians from receiving communion.” Benedict XVI in a visit to Mexico pointed out that politicians who advocated euthanasia or abortion were subject to excommunication according to Cannon Law.  It is obvious that this Church is more than willing to use its heaviest hand to force its religious agenda on those who do not share its religious views. That behavior, for many of us, is simply appalling!

What about those whose religious convictions lead them to believe physical events that are simply contrary to fact? In many cases that is irrelevant; if you have come to believe that you can become ruler of your own planet after death, as some Mormons do, this belief can have no practical effect on your government agenda. On the other hand if as Dr. Ben Carson believes, that “evolution is a myth” then this may seriously affect his push for funding certain kinds of biological research if he is elected to any office, let alone elected to the Presidency. Dr. Carson’s fundamentalist beliefs lead him to assertions of fact which are contrary to the evidence currently influencing most biologists researching this area. So is he being criticized because of his beliefs? Of course he is, but only because those beliefs could produce unfortunate results if he achieves the Presidency.

One might ask what happens to funding for medical research if we have a Christian Science President when Christian Scientists believe that the remedy for all illness is contained in the Bible. Ms. Parker doesn’t say.

May 14^th

George Will has today commented on helicopter parenting; this is parenting where the parent is said to hover (get it?) over their children. His theme begins with the parents Meitivs who live in suburban Montgomery County and let their six and ten year old children walk about a mile home from a neighborhood park. Neighbors reported this presumed neglect, a squad car arrived and the children were not released until eleven o’clock that night. The Meitivs were obviously not over protective,, not helicopter parents and good for them.

According to Will overprotective parenting morphs into colleges protecting students from speakers the students don’t wish to hear.  He means, of course, speakers whose sermons are cancelled if rebellious students object to giving them a campus platform. He also claims that colleges have largely abandoned in loco parentis (acting in place of the parent) because “they have decided that students are possessors of mature moral agency.”  Well maybe, but this was mightily assisted by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a very militant group asserting student rights, and rulings by SCOTUS which also asserted student’s rights under the constitution regarding illegal searches of their rooms by college authorities.

Dr. Will may not know that Liberty University still functions very much in loco parentis. Liberty may be at the extreme end of this continuum but it is the very favorite spot for Republicans to announce their candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. So it is entirely relevant to Will’s argument. Liberty is also in the business of protecting students from disagreeable ideas, not ideas that conflict with the student’s ideas, but ideas inimical to the universities’ mission. In fact Liberty is so vigilant about this that they eliminated the student Democratic club from the roster of approved organizations. Their rationale was that this organization supported views on abortion and same sex marriage with which the university disagreed. Will takes no notice of this interesting view of academic freedom.

A Republican, Senator McDonnell, was so upset by Notre Dame’s offer of a platform for President Obama’s views and for giving him an honorary degree that he wrote to Notre Dame’s president complaining about it. You see the President’s views on abortion and same sex marriage differed from this senator’s and from Catholic doctrine and therefore The University should not permit him to speak. The President spoke anyway and Notre Dame survived. Whether or not the Senator now contributes to his Alma Mater is not recorded.

Will asserts that college’s rules now assume that, “… undergraduates can cope with hormones and intoxicants...” say what George? You do know that many colleges ban any drinking on campus and Liberty bans students from any expression of affection between students except for holding hands. Moreover, they are not allowed even to be with a member of the opposite sex after dark in any private place, particularly a dark private place. That doesn’t sound like Liberty believes undergraduates can cope with their hormones. I don’t know whether or not these rules apply only to mixed couples or also to pairs of male students. If they do not apply to male students then it seems that Liberty is encouraging homosexual affection. I would find that quite surprising but I see no rules about two male students sitting in a car in a dark parking lot. Maybe they’ll soon edit their handbook although I believe that they’ll find even the suggestion of homosexual affection on their campus so appalling that they won’t consider it possible.

 

May 13^th

That old reliable Cal Thomas has a column in today’s paper. Cal is chortling over the unexpected conservative win in the British elections. He has to be very careful here because Prime Minister Cameron, while a Conservative in Britain would hardly pass as a conservative in this country. Thomas admits that Cameron supports same sex marriage and “climate change.”  Thomas felt the need to put climate change in quotes perhaps because he saw it as a naughty word. He semi-excuses Cameron for these lapses by commenting that, “Not all conservatives fit a single mold.” Indeed not all conservatives are conservative by Thomas’ standards any more than all Christians are Christians by anyone’s standards. (The Christian Identity Movement is a bank robbing terrorist movement which believes that only white people have souls. For them any melanin is a no, no.)

Cameron won by promising a program that would have made any current Republican candidate faint dead away: three million apprenticeships, (Equivalent to 15 million apprenticeships here, given our five times UK’s population.) Unemployment benefits in this conservatively governed country do not have a fixed end point as they do here where they vary state by state. Then there is maternal leave in conservatively governed Great Britain: we join Swaziland, Lesotho, and Papua New Guinea as the only major countries with no mandated paid maternal leave. Then Thomas suggests that devolution, which Cameron promises to institute to quiet the secessionists in Scotland and Wales, was, “A practice conservatives here would like to see implemented between Washington and the states.” Say what, Cal? We have a constitution Britain does not. Devolution is impossible here. And keep in mind that anything the British government grants by devolution they can just as easily take back!

If the Conservatives in Britain had pushed there for the issues the Republicans here hold as non-negotiable, they would be out of power indefinitely. Cameron took language straight from Labor’s playbook when he claimed to be supporting “working people.” The Brits might believe that language coming from one of their Conservatives; Americans would never believe it if it came from a Republican and there is a very good reason for that, do you remember Romney’s 47 percent?

Do you suppose any British politician could possibly be taken seriously about anything if he claimed the earth was just six thousand years old?

May 12^th

On Sunday I watched the duck ‘n’ dodge performance of a combative Carly Fiorina on “Meet the Press.”  The woman is truly unique; she claims she regrets nothing because she has made no mistakes. H-Ps stock went down because all tech stocks went down, firings were just part of her necessary executive decisions and her own firing was part of a board room brawl. (Which is not really an explanation.) As a company executive she makes a great politician. Only one person would I rather see getting the Republican nomination and that is Donald Trump. If Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson or Mike Huckabee are nominated a win is guaranteed for any two-legged Democratic selection. They are all draining off support money that might have gone to more dangerous candidates. (Carly got 20 million dollars of severance from H-P but what with living expenses and all…)

Let’s look at this triumvirate and note how nicely balanced it is. Carly Fiorina is the only woman candidate in the race so far, and no other woman seems to be waiting in the wings for a nudge forward. While Carly seems to lack some of the concern for the underdog and the downtrodden we usually associate with women, there is no doubt that Carly is a woman. Score one for Republican diversity.

Then there is Ben Carson and there is no doubt that Dr. Carson is Black. It is also clear that he has been a very well regarded pediatric neurosurgeon; and it is clear that he now practices a profession in a hospital which, fifty-five years ago, before the liberal efforts of the sixties, would have had him cleaning the restrooms instead of working miracles in the surgical suites. No matter, he regularly appears on Fox news to bash the political party which allowed him his profession and doing it in a very unpleasant way. Dr. Carson has some unorthodox views on science. He believes that evolution is a “myth” and that man was created just six thousand years ago. He doesn’t say why he disagrees with various dating methods that put the emergence of homo sapiens at 200 thousand years ago. It appears that Carson is much more of a fundamentalist in his religious view as Mike Huckabee, the next person I discuss.

Huckabee sees the possibility of intelligent design as a solution to the puzzle of creation. He claims that the theory of evolution is just that, nothing but a theory. It seems the Baptist University which provided his undergraduate education did not help his understanding of scientific theories. When it comes to evolution Huckabee doesn’t believe that children should be “indoctrinated” into believing it. Other kinds of indoctrination are apparently OK. Huckabee’s views on same sex marriage and other LGBT issues can be construed as “traditional.” As I have said in a previous post, for all his Christian posturing he is quite willing to present misleading data if misleading his audience is in his interests. He continues to insist that Obama is anti-religion and uses no real evidence for that claim. I’ve already noted his distortion by claiming 93 million unemployed in this country as a result of counting retirees and school children who are hardly looking for work.  Huckabee is an embarrassment to the Republican Party and to the great majority of Christians.

Even so, these three, Fiorina, Carson and Huckabee give the Republican candidate field remarkable diversity.

May 11^th

I’ll bet you’ve been told that crime doesn’t pay; that’s not true, crime pays and pays big time and it’s all perfectly legal… and no, this is not a koan. I’m talking about the folks who monetize misery at Corrections Corporation of America. This outfit owns prisons and charges state and federal governments for housing their prisoners. They are making money from crime, making a lot of money. Their symbol is CXW; CCA, a more apt symbol, was already taken by The Container Corporation of America which is possibly a more apt name!

If you have been keeping up you know that our country has about 700/100,000 people in prisons compared with less the 200/100,000 in most other so called civilized western countries. If you assume a cost of 35 thousand dollars per prisoner that comes to an uncomfortable 77 billion dollars a year spent on keeping people in prisons. From 1991 to 2011 the prison population increased 500 percent. Our national obsession with making money has attracted some entrepreneurs to participate in this vast wealth.

CXW manages prisons under contract with various government entities. Their preferred deal is to buy a prison from the government entity that has been running it, pay for it up front, with the proviso that the government agree to keep the prison beds 90 percent full. The government will pay CXW so much a prisoner for their care at a price to be renegotiated yearly. At the same time CXW lobbies strenuously for “truth in sentencing” a phrase which means no plea bargaining, no time off for good behavior, or for any other reason. CXW can’t make money if people don’t serve their entire sentence.

 The company has been doing very well indeed for they have powerful friends in the law and order camp, folks who are not big on re-education, teaching prisoners a trade or any other means to reduce recidivism. In 2013 the company grossed 1.7 Billion dollars with 300 million dollars of profit; that was about twice the profit made the year before. There have been problems: there have been prison riots over claims of inadequate food, lax health care and overcrowding. Well of course there have, any business makes more money if it can cut expenses; this business is no different than any other.

Private prisons have a long history in this country, not the corporate big business CXW types but on a much smaller scale. Early in this century southern sheriffs, particularly Texas sheriffs would pick up loitering black men who, because they had no work, could be jailed for loitering. Once the sheriff had a dozen or so men jailed for 90 days he would rent them out to local farmers to work for less than the prevailing wage. The deal was the sheriff owned the jail, his wife usually cooked the food for the inmates at the sheriff’s expense and the sheriff got to keep any money the prisoners earned as well as his salary. So monetizing misery in this country is nothing new.

May 10^th

This morning’s paper has a column by the right wing intellectual George Will, that’s Dr. George Will who holds, rather tightly I expect, a doctorate from Oxford University. Now earning that degree is no mean feat; this is not an honorary doctorate from the likes of Liberty University. Will’s tour de force this morning is an extensive commentary on Mike Huckabee. Will titles his piece “The apostle Mike Huckabee.”

Will spends a couple of paragraphs at the outset talking about Adlai Stevenson. It seems that Stevenson had been invited to speak at Norman Vincent Peale’s spectacularly successful church. Peale was vociferously opposed to Jack Kennedy’s candidacy because he was Catholic and he had been opposed to Stevenson because he was divorced. Stevenson was told that his audience had been instructed by Peale to vote for his opponent. Probably sensing that he would get no support from Peale’s people anyway, Stevenson said, “I find the apostle Paul appealing and the apostle Peale appalling.” Stevenson would have made a delightful President; his press conferences would have been at least as much fun as Jack Kennedy’s were.

Will then goes after Huckabee for a number of exquisitely idiotic assertions: Huckabee claims the massacre of school children at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012 was the result of “removing God from our public schools so should we be surprised that they have become a place of carnage?”  I suppose the fact that this psychotic killer murdered his own mother after stealing her weapons was surely due to her lax church attendance! But then Will asks if the slaughter of twelve people at an Aurora Colorado movie theatre was the result of inadequate praying at America’s Cineplexes?

At this point in Will’s comments we should probably note something:  Will is straying from, nay abolishing, Reagan’s eleventh commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.”  Reagan’s position here could easily destroy the Republican Party because if no one “speaks ill” of any other Republican the party will be frozen in time; there will be no change. The demographics of this country are very different from those in Reagan’s era but the Republican Party has not accommodated to that fact.

Will closes by saying, “For Republicans worried about broadening their party’s base there is one word for Huckabee’s stance: Appalling” He’s right of course and some of us couldn’t be happier.

 

 

 

May 9^th

We see today an amazing concatenation of political events; at least they are concatenated in the morning paper. Three of the leading right wing politicos have been caught misleading the public with their comments, or you could call it lying to the public.  They could not have been ignorant that these were misstatements of fact. When you knowingly misstate something you are lying.

Rand Paul, was asked by Greta Van Susteren about the shooting in Texas where a cartoon contest was held to see who could most effectively satirize the Prophet Muhammed. We haven’t seen the cartoon that won but there were two offended gunmen who came calling to do great bodily harm to the participants; both were killed. Senator Paul declared that this was an example of why we should secure our borders. Paul says, “I‘m not sure where they came from but we do need to secure our southern border.” Van Susteren replies, “They’re Americans.” Paul ignored her comment and went on to say that we need to secure who visits us…” They were not visitors either; they were Americans and they drove from Phoenix the day of the murders to avenge what they saw as a religious insult. These were homegrown terrorists but Paul, with his usual arrogance, insists that the remedy is securing the border and carefully screening visitors. Perhaps he has a hearing problem.

Rubio said at the Idaho Faith and Freedom Summit, “We are the only nation that is not building the aircraft, the long range bombers, the aircraft carriers, the nuclear submarines that we need for our national defense.” Rubio is dead wrong; we are building all of these and if he doesn’t know that he has not been paying attention to his primary job of being a Unites States Senator. (Amy Sherman from PolitiFact.com has provided a detailed list of America’s build up in the areas where Rubio claims we are doing nothing.)

Finally we have Governor Huckabee who apparently learns nothing from experience except persistence. The Governor has claimed that we, as a nation, have 93 million unemployed. That is true and counts retirees (like myself), college students, stay at home parents, and, quite possibly, children in nursery school. Now suppose we turn this around: there are about 6 million unemployed, ah, but this is in a nation of well over 300 million so one could say that less than 2% of the population is unemployed! Of course no liberal, even a liberal politician, would try to pull that deception. I’m not surprised that a conservative would pull this mislead (lie actually), but a minister of the gospel; for shame!

Now a confession: The facts herein stated were not gathered by me; they were all in the morning Record-Eagle. The comments and the opinions about the facts are my responsibility and I’m quite happy to acknowledge that.

May 8^th

I thought I might have a go at Cal Thomas today because he has a column in the local paper, but no, his column is all about the British election and he provided no grist for my mill. Instead I’ll look at the current obsession of the right wing with quotation marks.

Say what?  It’s true, they do have an obsession with quotation marks; for example the wealthy when writing about the wealthy always put wealthy in quotation marks as in “wealthy.” Quotation marks are used around words when the writer disagrees with their usage in a particular context. Sometimes quotation marks replace “so called” as in when the so called wealthy becomes the “wealthy.”

This tendency to put wealthy in quotation marks does not signal that the writer is ignorant of the word’s meaning but that there is a disagreement with its usage in this context. For example, here in this little quasi-resort community we have a number of retired executives and professionals. The community is expensive and populated largely by two income tiers: those in the upper tier are professionals, physicians, lawyers, dentists and financial advisors, and in the second tier, wait staff, fast food workers and store clerks. A retired VP might not consider himself wealthy if he has an income of 180 thousand dollars a year, a paid for home worth half a million and a Mercedes in the driveway. He might not think of himself as “wealthy” because his firm’s president has also retired here and he is in much more comfortable financial circumstances.

When folks on food stamps, and many of these are fully employed at minimum wage jobs, speak of the wealthy they never put the word in quotes. If they refer to the owner of the McDonalds where they work, who also owns twelve other McDonald, they’ll say wealthy and they’ll have no need for quotes. I believe that anyone who puts wealthy in quotes is wealthy and anyone who doesn’t use quotes probably isn’t. You don’t need their Form 1040s to determine their income.

Now we consider the term class warfare; sometimes these words are placed in quotes. The term usually indicates the income level of the user. The wealthy use the term to characterize people who complain about the enormous disparity in wealth between the top 1% and the other 99%. The complainers are not usually in the top 1%, those folks are usually very well insulated from the complaints of the complainers, and in any event they are rich enough not to give a fig! Those who complain about class warfare are the second tier rich and particularly those who are politically active; this included the right wing commentariate. Of course there is no class warfare, no one is issuing rifles and screaming, “to the barricades” or “up against the wall.”

Indeed the lower economic levels in our society who have been victims of class warfare seem much less inclined to mention it than the very well off. The politicians who cut food stamps, speak of raising the age for social security benefits, think a flat tax is just a great idea; these are the people who are practicing class warfare and they are clearly winning that war.

May 7^th

Today I take a different direction: There have been several interesting letters to the editor of the Record-Eagle, our local daily newspaper. The back-and-forth exchange began with a letter pointing out that “Someone lucky enough to have a million dollars invested would by now be $89,000 wealthier without having to lift a finger.” And then the writer contrasted this with the $16,300 that someone gets working at minimum wage for 40 hours a week.

In this polarized political atmosphere there was swift blowback. No one disagreed that the owner of a million investable dollars could have made over 85 thousand dollars in the market last year without lifting a finger. That is an undebatable fact. The outrage was over the writer saying “the person lucky enough to have a million dollars.” Two respondents claimed that luck had nothing to do with it; for one writer the million came from “hard work and long hours”—“paying their taxes”—“saving and investing wisely.” Then this gentleman accused the writer of “playing the class warfare card.” This writer claims the writer says “apparently greedy “wealthy” individuals…” but nowhere in the original letter does the word greedy appear. That word is perhaps inserted to validate the class warfare charge. One might also note that every time this writer uses the word wealthy he puts it in quotes. Maybe he is in a position to feel that having a million investable dollars does not make one wealthy, just “wealthy.”

So what do we know about this man who claims that it isn’t luck at all:  his name is irrelevant; his background is not He is a retired vice president of a major American corporation, retired after over twenty years of service. I’m sure he worked hard, paid his taxes and invested wisely. On the other hand, he was lucky enough to be born in America, to be bright enough to get a college degree in business and not to work for Hewlett Packard where he might, in spite of all his fine attributes, been one of the 18 thousand people laid off by Carly Fiorina. I think that luck played a considerable part in his probably comfortable retirement.

The other respondent’s letter was in today’s paper; she has a problem with reading comprehension. She quotes the original letter that claims that by investing a million dollars you could become $89,000richer without lifting a finger; so far so good. Then she adds, “How does an investor reach a million dollars without lifting a finger?” Whoops there! The original writer said no such thing; she said that once you have a million dollars you can get another $89,000 without lifting a finger; that’s quite different. Then this lady claims that if you invested just $25 a month beginning at age 25 you would have a million dollars at retirement. $25 a month for forty years will produce just $12,500. If you invested all of that in the market  forty years ago when the Dow was at about $800 it would now, with the Dow at about $18,000, have multiplied your stash by enough to give you less than a third of your million dollar target. (If you want a million dollars after forty years you must invest $150 a month, six times as much as this woman suggests, and you must get ten percent compound interest; calling Bernie Madoff!) Oh well, I’ll bet the lady is not a properly certified financial advisor and if you rely on letters to the editor for financial advice you’ll deserve what you get.

I’ll have a letter to the R-E soon in support of the original writer and I’m sure I’ll get some blowback. Stay tuned.

 

May 6^th

Thomas Sowell is writng today. As an economist he isn’t much of a sociologist but he tries.

 Sowell, like many right wing types, manages to shade the truth in his favor; witness his statement, “…the demonstrable lie that Michael Brown was shot in the back by a white policeman.” For Sowell any mistake which is not flattering to his point of view is a lie. In the heat of the moment, in a community long abused by police, anything derogatory about the police is credible so people believed erroneously that Brown was shot in the back. Mistaken beliefs are not lies. Sowell claims that there are those who believe the problems of poverty in the ghetto communities are caused by the “sins of whites” and are the “legacies of slavery.” Who are those people Sowell? He provides no names; pick any liberal.

All these evils “went up after the much celebrated sixties.” Oh come now Dr. Sowell, did they teach you nothing about logical fallacies in your economics graduate program at Chicago? Have you never heard of post hoc reasoning? Just because events occur as a sequence in time does not mean the previous event caused the subsequent event. It is certainly true that many new welfare programs began then but so did the voting rights act, school desegregation, the anti-miscegenation SCOTUS decision, the murder of Martin Luther King and the murder of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. I would bet that much of the 60s civil unrest was caused by the murder of Martin Luther King…but you didn’t even mention that. I guess you just forgot it in your zeal to blame liberal support programs.

Dr. Sowell makes another interesting point: The ghettoes and black communities were not nearly as restive in the 1920s as they became in the late 1960s and today.  Sowell likes to blame this, again, on social welfare programs, programs that didn’t exist in the 20s and began to flourish in the 60s. But there are other massive social differences between these two periods; Blacks in their ghettoes in the 20s had little hope that things might change for them or that they could do anything about their condition themselves. Although there were riots as early as 1919 in Chicago when 38 were killed and 500 injured. Some WW 1 veterans then were unwilling to take anymore segregationist abuse. Along with the 60s social programs, there was also cheaper television and with it the images of how other people lived. Now some ghetto people began to appreciate what might be possible eventually and to be in a rush for eventually to happen immediately; when it didn’t frustration finally produced the aggression seen in the ghettoes over the last twenty years or so. This was helped massively by just a few racist police.  Jelani Cobb has found that,  “With the exception of the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., every major riot by the black community of an American city since the Second World War has been ignited by a single issue: police tactics.”

Hungry people rarely attack unless you show them food and then deny them access to it; then watch out!

Is this analysis too subtle for Thomas Sowell? Probably not unless he has his political blinders on; unfortunately he is rarely without them.

May 5^th

Yesterday we had Pat Buchanan in full rant mode; he was after those lawless black folks who seem immune to all that money the liberals have sent their way. Obviously, for a conservative like Buchanan any lack of respect for money is a sin of considerable magnitude.

Let’s look at some of Pat’s comments: Pat’s first point is that if Freddie Gray had been simply left to die in the street as a result of black crime no one would care but because he was killed in the care of the police he was “credibly cast in the victim’s role.” Well yeah, Buchanan, because you see the cops are supposed to protect civilians not kill them. That’s what we pay them for but sometimes they, and you, don’t get that message.

Hillary Clinton mentions Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown as examples of racial problems; Buchanan quickly defends George Zimmerman who shot Trayvon Martin to death “while Martin was sitting on top of and beating senseless this neighborhood watch guy.” Buchanan conveniently leaves out the established fact that Zimmerman had called police about Martin and was told to stay in his car and not to follow him. He disobeyed a police order. If Treyvon Martin had a gun he could legally, according to Florida’s stand your ground law, have simply turned and killed Zimmerman on the spot. Zimmerman was following Trayvon Martin because he was walking in the neighborhood and he was black.

Then Buchanan tells us about his version of Michael Brown’s death; that Brown was a hoodlum there is no doubt. There is also no doubt that he was killed unnecessarily by a panicked cop. The cop, as I’ve said elsewhere had been disrespected by this enormous black kid, in fact, he’d had his nose broken. So to recover his self-respect he didn’t wait for the backup that he’d requested, and was on its way; he started to chase the kid down and when the kid turned around and started toward him (charged Buchanan says) he fired twelve shots at him before finally killing him; twelve shots! Can you say panicked cop?

Buchanan makes the point that most black men are killed by other black men. That’s true but those black men are not paid to “protect and defend” anybody.  Cops are paid to do just that and when they don’t do that, and in fact do just the opposite, people get upset. Pat Buchanan can’t understand that.

Pat then comes to Freddy Gray who died while in police custody. The coroner said it was murder but Buchanan can’t bring himself to report that; instead he reports that Freddy Gray had been arrested a “dozen times.” But does Buchanan tell us how many of those arrests resulted in convictions for some crime? Of course he doesn’t tell us that.

Finally Buchanan bristles at the thought of releasing some of these felons from prison. We’re running about 700/100,000  population in prison compared with less than 200/100,000 for most European nations. Much of this disparity is due to our drug laws which criminalize even small amounts of marijuana. This is the crime for which Buchanan is sure early release will endanger honest citizens. More likely early release would reduce the income of Correction Corporation of America, that’s the outfit that makes a profit from long sentences for minor violations and from strict enforcement of drug laws. What do you suppose it’s worth to Correcrion Corporation of America if a judge sentences a man to a twelve year prison term for selling pot? Do you think they might support the reelection of judges who do that? Imagine, we now monetize jail time!