Dr. Forbush Thinks

Value, Time and Money

2009-06-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

In the innocent times of childhood we once believed that money was the reward for hard work. Based on the idea that the more hours that you worked then the more money you earned.

But, those were innocent and naïve times. Many have come to believe that fortunes were made by other means. Making a quick buck by buying a lottery ticket and having your numbers selected is one of these ways, but the same principle applies to day traders, real estate speculators and even opportunists hoping create the next marking fad. None of these characters remotely care about the social good of their actions and many destroy our society bit by bit with their actions.

In America today we still have many people who dream about working hard and creating wealth through the sweat of their brow. However, the reality of this picture is people like Bill Gates who happened to be in the “right place” at the “right time.” Microsoft products were there first and captured a huge market share, but they have never been the best products on the market. Similarly clever slight of hand was able to create a good deal of wealth in the real estate market by providing cheap high risk loans to people and lying about the actual risk of the loans. The cheap supply of cash created a demand for real estate and drove property prices to unrealistic values. The property wasn’t actually earning value. The value was created by the demand of people who didn’t make enough money to actually pay for the house that they wanted. Everyone saw their house value increase and they advised to borrow money against the equity in their house. The initial lie about the risk of these loans propagated through the economy. Risk could no longer be trusted, but everyone was happy because they saw the value of their houses increasing over time.

No one asked themselves where this extra money was coming from. Everyone assumed that money in the form of value in their houses was a “good” thing. People believed that they were richer than they actually were. This is because the value of their house was based on what people were willing to pay for their house if they were to try to sell it. And, people were willing to pay lots of money that they didn’t actually have because banks were willing to loan tons of cash to people who could never really keep up their end of the bargain.

In America we have a belief that those who scam the system will pay the price and demonstrate to the rest of us the folly of their ways. People will see the risk and will no longer be tempted to repeat these activities. Unfortunately time is involved in this process. There is always a window of opportunity in which people are able to game the system, make their money and get out before the activity becomes illegal. Some people are able to amass great wealth and pass it down to their heirs for many generations. Once one has this wealth one is able to live off the money “earned” from the principle itself and hard work is no longer required. Money earned in this way and propagated through the generations is actually contrary to the American ideal of working hard to become successful. But, the protection of this capital in this system allows people to take very low risk and earn a high return if enough capital is put into play. Special laws have been written to protect these special fortunes. We can look at the Disney empire as an example of how copyright laws have been changed to protect the Disney interest in Mickey Mouse because Mickey is still such a cash cow. Special laws continue to be written to protect other industries as well – mainly to assure that these wealthy families like the heirs to McDonald fortune will never really need to work at a McDonald’s restaurant.

The whole system works in such a way that creating a perceived value for a commodity which is much higher than the actually work involved in creating the commodity. So, creating a demand for a virtual item by advertising and marking an imagined device without actually creating the device is one way to create an artificially high value. Even if the object does not really exist one could create demand for it based on hype. A quick fortune could easily be made by selling an envelope filled with sand if the hype is great enough. Maybe many people won’t buy their second envelope of “magic sand,” but then again some people will continue to believe the hype well into envelope number ten. Imagine how much money could be made if one percent of all Americans are convinced to buy one envelope of “magic sand” for $29.95. Should the “hard work” and “innovation” of the “magic sand” dealer be praised or punished?

The free market system tells us that the people will learn that magic sand is just ordinary sand and they won’t buy it any more. But the magic sand dealer knows that he can make some money and move on to magic tonic and magic rocks and continue to make money by exploiting the gullibility of the people. Regulation is one way to put a stop to this. And, arguments between free market advocates and regulation advocates continue while the magic sand dealer figures out new ways to sell his wares cloaked in new ways until he amasses enough money to never need to sell any more. Then he passes his wealth to his children and he can loan his money and demand extremely high rates of interest until there are regulations. Those who have no morals or sense of guilt will find ways to take advantage of the free markets and live perfectly comfortably while those of us who espouse to be caring members of society will continue to be taken advantage of while the regulation free market debates continue to waste time.

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Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Paris

2009-05-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Last week I took a trip to France. When I got home I proceeded to tell people about my trip. As I was telling someone about the trip she had a very bipolar response. “How wonderful to have the opportunity to visit Paris -- not that I like the French.”

France, in my opinion, is a wonderful country. On the other hand the French actually prioritize a bit differently than the good ol’ USA. It seems like from the time that I could understand money I was taught through social interactions that money was the most important thing in life. Some people actually put God first, and others might say love or health are more important, but in practice Americans tend to behave as if money is goal number one. In fact, people who say that health is more important continue to reward those with the most money by giving them the best health care available. Those who say that love is most important continue to look down on the wealthy person who chooses a poorer lover than themselves. Women continue to seek money over love in our entertainment media. A happy ending in our culture is when everyone has enough money. Money can buy lovers, comfort, health, homes and businesses to make more money. How could anything else be more important?

Go to France and look around. Now, don’t get me wrong; money is still important in France. Fancy restaurants and hotels still cost money. But, people tend to find happiness in other things as well as money. For example, the simple ease to move around the country is subsidized by the government. The government decided that for the greater good of the society money would be collected from taxpayers and spent on an organized collection of connected transportation systems. In the USA the patchwork of inefficient transportation shows how non-directed capitalism fails at the higher level. Maybe after a thousand years the US system will evolve into something more efficient, but simply thinking it through at the beginning could have resulted in something much better. In this case efficiency ranked above money on the priority list, and it was a good thing.

Now, France is not Germany and efficiency does not always take priority. Many have argued that the French transportation system is not as efficient as the German one. All I can say is that both are much better than the US system. In France one thing that stands out above everything else is the regard for aesthetics. In the US many people do not even know what this word means, because it has been given such low priority in our culture. But, in France aesthetics ranks quite high among considered priorities.

One simple example of this contrast came at lunchtime the first day I was in France. The reason for my trip was to attend a biotech conference. I have attended many conferences of this sort in the US and Canada. A free lunch is usually served to encourage the participants to eat and wander around the booths belonging to the various companies specializing in biotech supplies. A typical lunch in the US consists of a cardboard box with a sandwich, chips, fruit, brownie and a set of plastic utensils. Lunches in Canada tend to have sandwiches stacked on a table, a fruit bowl, a couple of side dishes and a fancy desert table. In France, at least at this conference, there were place settings on a large number of tables. The plates were ceramic; the glasses were glass. Water was placed in the tables and the food was excellent. The difference between these lunches has to do with the value of aesthetics in the given cultures. Each culture defines the value of putting in the little extra effort required to make things pleasing above the practical value of nourishment alone. If the goal is nourishment and money takes priority, then we end up with the cardboard boxes filled with sandwiches.

Most people that complain about French socialism have never experienced French socialism. Socialism is a contract between the people and the government to do what is best for the people. American conservatives believe that laissez faire government is the best form of government. Of course the French actually invented the term laissez faire and the meaning has drifted over the years. Conservatives tend to think that laissez faire means let businesses rob the customers at will, and if they go to far, then the customers will realize it and stop doing business. The balance has to do with the amount of robbery a customer is willing to tolerate before the business loses that customer. Government regulation on the other hand draws lines in the sand as to where profit becomes robbery and cheating. Poisoning your customers is no longer limited by how fast they die, but by a reasonable expectation that customers should not be poisoned. After all, the government holds a stake in the outcome of businesses poisoning their customers, because the government pays for the healthcare of these poisoned customers in France.

The balance in France is between efficiency, aesthetics, social contract and laissez faire capitalism. And, because there is a balance there they don’t have the nightmare shortages of Soviet era socialism. Instead, France is actually a vacation place for many of the American wealthy who are willing to enjoy the French aesthetics, while they are unwilling to pay the small price in their taxes to have the same aesthetics at home in the USA. Its funny how that works.

Money certainly motivates the animal needs in a person. If you don’t have money and you live in the United States of America, then you could certainly find yourself living on the streets. Without money, food may only be found at a religious organization that will give you food if you listen to their pitch for their religion. Without money, you may get sick and die before you are able to get a doctor to help you recover from your illness. To a conservative, the threat of living without these basic needs should be the motivation to live the conservative lifestyle -- because it is safe.

Even after one has all one needs there are people who want more power, more things and more money. These are the people who value money very highly. And, in American culture it would be strange not to value money highly.

Another value that is often prioritized higher than money in France is education. The pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge instead of for the sake of earning power after graduation is evidenced in France by the number of bookstores doing a brisk business. A large number of titles were concerned with philosophy and art rather than business and investing. Obviously this is not a scientific study of what people study in school, but it seems apparent from bookstore displays that a large number of people seem to be interested in philosophy and art -- subjects not especially high paid or even desired in America. In the 1990s America lost the will to build the Superconducting Supercollider. Europe on the other hand has just completed building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as they spend money simply pursuing the question: What is matter?

America was not always like this. John F. Kennedy told us that we “…do not do these things because they are easy but, because they are hard” in his speech about landing a man on the moon. This was not the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of wealth and riches. Instead America went to the moon in an adventurous trip to appeal to the human imagination. Since the 1960s America has decided that the value of money trumps the value of discovery and exploration prompted by the pursuit of knowledge. Our American culture continues to suffer on these accounts as well. Slowly money has become value number one -- above knowledge, aesthetics, efficiency and even human compassion.

When I look at France I see that there is another way to order our priorities. Money does not need to be the number one issue at the top of our agenda. After all the greed that we allowed to percolate through Wall Street and the financial industries are the result of putting money ahead of everything else. The result was a few extremely wealthy people and the rest of us paying for their success. We are blamed because we wanted to be able to afford a home for our family, and they are praised for their imagination in creating new and exciting financial instruments. It only makes sense that a situation like this was bound to happen when we put money above all else. I hope that we learned our lesson.

Financially France is suffering like the rest of the world. Sales are down and people can’t afford everything that they might desire. But, I found that they are not suffering as much as we are, because they don’t place money at the top of the list. Instead they still have the love of family and friends. They are still able to share moments and build relationships. And, these things mean more to them at a cultural level than the money that they might have lost in the stock market or in the paper value of their home. In fact I witnessed a wonderful sight on my visit that proved to me that money was not the top priority -- at least for French students. I saw hundreds of students gather on the banks of the Seine a couple of hours before sunset to sit, eat and enjoy each other’s company. No one charged them to sit there. The police were not shooing them away so that the local businesses could make money off these hungry and thirsty students. The counterparts to these students in the USA are sitting around the computer or TV watching videos or playing video games -- they are working on their anti-social skills as opposed to their social skills. But, that’s what we can expect from a culture that is driven by the almighty dollar.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Trial and Error

2008-11-14T11:06:00.001-08:00

One of the major assumptions that we have in a capitalist free market system is that people acting in their self-interest will react for the greater good of our society. This assumption is flawed in several ways.

Let us look at an interesting example. During the 1970s an interesting phenomenon occurred with the birth of the Pet Rock. An entrepreneur discovered that he could market and sell rocks packed in little boxes and make millions of dollars. He acted in his self-interest to create a fad that basically moved rocks from one place to new places across the country. What greater good did this provide for society? We need to admit that this fellow was clever and creative, but his activity must also be described as a great waste of resources as well. In the end I am almost certain that very few of these rocks have been placed anywhere other than the backyard, and the container in the dump.

We could argue that people don’t buy pet rocks any more, so the system worked. Maybe we should overlook the great waste of resources created by this venture as part of the price that is paid for progress. However, pet rocks are not the only venture that wastes time, money and resources. In fact, the idea that people can make gold by selling rocks is alchemy made real today. With the modern idea that economics isn’t about the product, but only about the marketing we realize that this alchemy is the rule not the exception.

If we take a step back and try to look at the big picture we should realize that there is more to life than trying to figure out how to put more cash in your wallet. If this were the entire story then, why do we waste time following the laws? Why don’t we just go around and rob people at gunpoint? The fear of violence and jail might have something to do with that, but I would hope that people actually know that working within the system is good for our society. Even so, many people opt to take the easy way out and rob people but by hiding behind the rule of law. The seller of the pet rock didn’t break the law, but he broke the contract with society in which we try to make society better with my contribution to it.

There are so many ways that people do make society better through their area of business. Businesses make these decisions every day when they determine how they are going to develop their product. Do they consider safety, efficiency, and impact?

We only need to compare the Windows operating system to just about anything else out there to prove the point. The superiority of Apple computers to Windows PCs does not match the number of computers of each type sold. But, Apple learned its lesson when it marketed the Hell out of the iPod when Creative Technologies already had a much better product on the market. All, of the capitalist arguments for a free market don’t seem to prove the point. Instead, example seems to suggest that the biggest player with the largest backing comes out the winner, not the best product. Patents have been infringed upon and stolen from much less affluent people. Not, many people are willing to put in the same effort as the inventor of the intermittent windshield wipers was.

The point of this piece is not to argue the free market system, only to point out a weakness in it. In a fair world the free market system would most likely be a better system. In a world where people valued products that were good for society above products that were a waste of resources the system could work to make the world a better place. If people were rewarded for making society better rather than being rewarded for making a clever comment on the stupidity of the average person people would work for a better world instead of working to think up new ways to cheat the gullible out of their money.

Whether you believe it or not the average temperature of the Earth is increasing. There is clear data showing this. Similarly, whether you believe it or not more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will trap more heat. This is also clearly proven with data. As we burn more carbon based fuel that was trapped out of the atmosphere millions of years ago the thicker the blanket we have over our world. Only an idiot would not see that this is a bad combination.

Of course, a supporter of the “free market only” system would conclude that when people got too hot they would realize that there was a problem and they would no longer buy the carbon-based fuels that are causing the problem. There are several holes in this reasoning. First, how do we know when we are “too” hot? Second, how do we switch to something new when we do realize that we are “too” hot? Third, a lot of the problem isn’t the final result, but the chaotic weather patterns that result from the sudden heating of the Earth, how do we prevent the destruction? Finally, when a customer has the option to pick between keeping the world just a little bit cooler or buying a new H2 Hummer -- what prevents the customer from rationalizing that the world won’t get “that much” hotter?

The purpose of the government is to protect us. No matter what your political persuasion is I am certain that I won’t find many people arguing with me on the assertion. The problems arise from the implementation of this idea of protection. Conservatives are the first to insist that a strong military will protect us from foreign threats and a strong police force will protect us from internal threats. Imagine if conservatives followed through on their idea that markets should be allowed to work to protect us. Everyone would put up as much money as they believed should go toward external and internal threats. Or, they should invent and improvise new ways of protecting ourselves. The markets would decide the best ideas. The best ideas would get the most money -- because they would be able to attach the highest level of support.

We all know that this would not work. Criminals would refuse to donate to the police force, because a weak police force is in their personal best interest. Many would refuse to send money to the military on ethical grounds as well as personal financial self-interest. Those who own the most property obviously demand the most protection, so the wealthy would need to beef up the various agencies and branches of the military. We would have everyone walking around armed because it would be cheaper to carry a gun than to hire a policeman to protect ones property.

If the job of government is to protect its people, then why is there a continuous argument about what the government should do? This is because the question of what protection of the people consists of. Should people be allowed to starve to death because they can’t afford food? Should people be allowed to die of a curable disease because they can’t afford the cure? Should diseases be allowed to spread through a community because the community can’t afford to pay for vaccinations? Should companies get money from the government to encourage development to spur job growth? What is protection and what is control?

Why should the government pay for education? What kind of protection is this?

With the election of Barack Obama there is a lot of talk about the new “New Deal” that this liberal Democrat is about to impose on us. I have seen people writing about the USA becoming the USSA -- The United Socialist States of America. Obviously I don’t agree with that. But, I do believe that there is a role for government to lead us as well as protect us.

If you are old enough to remember George H W Bush’s defeat to Bill Clinton you will also recall that he had a problem with “the vision thing.” In fact, if a country does not have leadership, then the country will grow in a random haphazard way. People need to be lead in a direction that will result in benefit to the common good, instead of benefit to the individual pocketbook.

Just think of the creativity that went into the creation of the Pet Rock. Or, for a more recent example, the Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO) and the pooling of high risk mortgages. The creation of these financial instruments was meant to benefit the creators and the cost to society was not even considered. The lack of government concern resulted in the collapse of many of our financial institutions. Because of the web woven by these institutions the government has finally realized that allowing nature take its course is much too high a price to pay for this selfishness.

I hope and pray that the last eight years has finally taught Americans a lesson in what the role of government should be. Government needs to lead its people. In order to lead a government leads vision and perspective. Government should not force and demand what its people should do, but rather it should lead by encouragement. Based on his campaign, Barack Obama’s vision includes a new green country and a lot of work that is needed to get us moving in that direction. With the proper encouragement there are many opportunities for new ideas, new jobs and new money to be made.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Guilt By Association?

2008-10-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

One of the fundamental differences between eighteenth century European Law and American Law is the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The Bush administration has fought continuously over the last seven years to erode this fundamental right.

The Bush crew has used fear to gradually work the American public into accepting the idea that the government knows better who is guilty and who is innocent. You would think that people on the right who fear that the government might take their weapons away would also fear this new threat. However, the conservatives’ self-righteousness has been able mask this fear. Conservatives tell themselves that they are above the law because they are good patriotic Americans. Obviously they should not fear that a government might choose to arrest them and hold them indefinitely.

Progressives know this fear a bit more personally. This is because progressives and conservatives don’t always show their opposition to the government in the same way. Progressives most notably tend to gather great numbers of people to stand outside events where the opposition is gathering. Progressives like Amy Goodman who is a reporter for a “real” left wing media program “Democracy Now - The War and Peace Report” have experienced guilt by association directly. She was reporting at the Republican convention during August when she had heard that her producers were beaten and arrested. She promptly dropped everything and ran to the site of the protests where her producers were arrested and she was manhandled and thrown into jail with some of the protesters. She was with the protesters, therefore she must be one was the attitude of the police. This was a sad day in American history, and it got very little coverage in the mainstream media. How liberal is this media?

Any American from the left or right should shudder at the telling of this story. Eventually she was freed and not considered a terrorist. That may have been because she was palling around with liberal protesters and not a former 1960’s radical. Obviously there is some standard for this guilt by association that I really don’t understand. Are you guilty if you aid and abet a person who bombs abortion clinics, the Atlanta Olympics and then hide in the woods for a number of years? Are you guilty if you meet with a man that had been found guilty of a felony, served his time, changed his life and has become a force for good in his community? In the first case many pro-life supporters helped a wanted fugitive hide from the authorities while in the second case people are urged to question a presidential candidate’s ulterior motives.

Guilt by association works both ways so it makes sense that this form of slander should not be assumed to only work against your enemy. If we also consider the six degrees of separation that suggests that we are separated by as few as six contacts from any person in the country or perhaps the world we have a further need to worry about this dangerous concept of guilt by association. Where does it end? If someone you know has “palled around with terrorists” does that make them a terrorist by association. If they are a terrorist then doesn’t that make you one too?

In Biblical times guilt by association was one of the rules. People believed that they were punished directly for their sins. For example when we read about the man who was blind from birth Jesus is asked what sin he or his parents had committed. Isn’t this another form of guilt by association? Today’s Christians should remember that not only did Jesus heal this man, but he also pointed out that this man was not born blind as a punishment for either his sin or his parent’s sin.

And, what types of groups do we consider a danger to our national security? For example, a group that seeks secede portions of the country threatens the very makeup of our country. These groups exist around the country with various motivations and ideologies. Some of these groups lament the fall of the Confederacy and would like nothing better than for a new South to rise again. It would be hard to argue that a group that seeks to tear the fabric of the country apart would not be a terrorist group. After all, the main motivation behind this group is the destruction of the country, our country -- The USA.

A similar group exists in Alaska where a group would like to make Alaska an independent country. And interesting point here is that Sarah Palin, governor of the state of Alaska and current Republican Vice Presidential candidate has a husband that not only pals around with this group of secessionists but he is an active member. Perhaps we should not condemn Sarah Palin as a member of this group for merely associating with her husband. However, we should also consider the fact that Mrs. Palin does not just pal around with these people, but she also supports their cause as evidenced by her address to the secessionist party’s convention. Shouldn’t question Sarah Palin’s terrorist connections to these people?

The point of this diatribe today is to point out that it doesn’t matter if you talk to a liar, it does not make you a liar by association. If you share a meal with a thief as Jesus did, it does not make you a thief by association. If you have a business meeting with a former radical that has repented and served his punishment it does not make you a radical. The only way to prove that you are guilty of a crime is to prove it with the evidence -- Like a speech in front of radicals supporting their cause.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Tough Times

2008-10-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

When times get tough, the tough get going.

This truism might be just be right, or it might be another piece of dogma used to summon the unity of the people to work together. Either way, it would be nice to have one of leaders step up and tell us that we need to work together to solve this mess.

In reality I don’t worry about the value that I lost in the stocks I own or the house that I own. The value was based on arbitrary amounts of money that people were willing to spend to buy similar items. Actually the value was based on the arbitrary amount of money that banks were willing to lend to people who were willing to invest that money in bad mortgages that were used to fuel the economy on all of that borrowed money. People took this artificial value out of their houses to pay for vacations and home entertainment centers. The money fueled manufactures of automobiles and other big ticket items that people buy on credit. But in this world of buying everything on credit we still have the last shoe to fall -- the easy credit line of credit cards. As our credit markets get tighter the crisis won’t be over until we stop getting those damn credit card offers in the mail.

The value of the stocks of all of the companies on Earth have been based on the future earning of these companies. These companies could have huge future projections when all of those earnings were based on people running up their credit card debt into the thousands of dollars. Reality won’t strike home until banks begin to put realistic limits on the credit that they extend.

In tough times people behave in erratic ways. That might be part of what we see in John McCain’s erratic behavior as of late. But, just because some people behave in erratic ways it doesn’t mean that we want our leaders to behave that way. In fact the test of our great leaders is based on what they do in tough times, not what they do when times are easy. In tough times people act erratic and we need our leader to calm their nerves and get them to behave like civilized people. That is the difference between civilized behavior and stoking the flames of rebellion and revolution that leads us to the destruction of our civilization. When John McCain stokes the flames of his frustrated supporters at his rallies he is reacting to them and not being the leader that we need.

In tough times we need a calm and cool leader who is willing to look the problem over, consult with the experts and make the wise decisions. And, as far as I can tell that leader is Barack Obama.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Both Sides of the Greed Equation

2008-10-02T16:16:00.000-07:00

I have written about greed before, and I am sure that I’ll write about it again. In capitalism the central motivation is the magic belief in self-interest.

I have been told by the loyalists on the right that greed is somehow magic. Greed drives the markets and those markets will be driven by greed to correct themselves. I have argued forever that greed AND information are needed for a market to work properly. However, disclosing information is often contrary to the greed incentive.

Let me try to illustrate this with a recent example. Suppose for a moment that you would like to upgrade your lifestyle and move into a bigger house. Normally this means that you would need to pay a higher price in order to move into that new house. However, when a real estate agent tells a potential buyer that one can afford this new house at a lower monthly payment (albeit temporary) one is easily persuaded into buying a house by using one of these sub-prime mortgages. Many of those tempted by these dangerous loans know about the adjustment of the mortgage interest rate -- but that’s three or five years down the road. When people are living month to month, how can they realistically think about three to five years down the road. And, perhaps they are even thinking: “What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll be kicked out of my house and I’ll either find a new low rate loan or I’ll go back to living in the apartment.” Greed in this respect is obviously encouraging people to get what they can for the moment and disregard any future consequences. In this case, most of the information about the consequences of the loan are right there for the home buyers to see, but the worst case scenario is a net gain. They buyers get to live in a nice house for a few years and then they are kicked out into their old situation when the interest rate jumps. The possibility of the house value falling is inconceivable and never mentioned. In this case greed encourages bad social behavior.

Conventional wisdom has it that one person’s greed is blunted by another person’s greed. If someone is trying get something for nothing they most likely have their hand in someone else’s pocket. That person should be motivated by greed to prevent that hand from removing any property. However, the principle of “time dilation” adds distortion to the picture. The problem is that greed also plays a role on this side of the relationship.

In a loan relationship the person loaning the money is expecting to receive additional money in the form of interest and fees in return for that loan. The motivation to loan money at a low interest rate comes in the form of a promise to get that higher interest rate some time later in the relationship. In other words, the initial rate is the bait used to lure in the prey that will pay higher rates over the majority of the life of the loan.

In this case the greed and patience of those who loan the money are believed to be rewarded when the interest rates readjust. However, those who make the loans are motivated by short-term greed to sell these loans and make the money up front, instead of waiting for the interest rate to adjust. Technically these loans are expected to be repaid -- but greed prevents the true risk of these loans from being communicated to the new owners of these loans. Without knowing the true risk one who purchases these loans can not assess the values and will often pay too much for the loans. If the information was there, then the purchasers would pay the proper price, or the loans may never had been made in the first place. The problem is the lack of information transmitted in these relationships.

This current crisis is only the most recent aberration in a system that has lost its moral compass when the regulators cease to regulate. Greed motivates industrial giants to have little disregard for the community around them. Greed motivates secrecy and deception when a troubled company is trying not to let the stockholders find out the truth -- the shareowners would jump ship and the stock price would plummet.

The point is greed is a force of self-interest, but we certainly know that self-interest is not always good for the community. Markets may be a mechanism that converts self-interest into community interest -- to some limited extent. But the markets do not automatically extend to making community life better, making the environment better, making health care better or even making our culture better. It is true that we work harder for our own self-interest. It is also true that fear of being caught breaking laws is often enough to modify anti-social behavior. But, there are people who have very little fear and they may take huge legal risks in dangerous market situations. And, this same lack of fear may also result in taking serious illegal risks as well. Without serious regulation these people will always take advantage of the system -- be it real or perceived.

On the other hand regulation sends a shiver of fear down the spine of most conservatives. They imagine regulations as the “know nothing” government setting out to “fix” the business of the country. It is quite obvious that a government bureaucracy can not do good things on the microscopic level where there are more exceptions than rules. But, government regulations do not have to dictate every action that business wants to take. Government regulations need to protect the honest business person from the dishonesty that greed temps in every person. Why should a businessman remain honest when he sees his fellow businessman rake in the cash because he disregarded the spirit of the law?

Regulations and the enforcement of those regulations are meant to keep the playing field even for all those who participate in the markets. Under that premise regulations and a free market can share the stage. The greed that drives these markets will still exist, but it will be tempered by regulations that will force legal creativity slightly less profit instead of the illegal creativity that allowed people to pillage the ignorant with loans that could not be afforded by those that were just as greedily seeking short term gains and ignoring the long term repercussions.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Trust Me

2008-09-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if there really was a time when our government actually worked for us and not for the special interests. But, I do know that there were times when national security took precedence over those lobbyists that were putting all that money in our leader’s pockets. There always seemed to be an unwritten rule that congressmen would do what they wanted in an effort to allow the American people to get something out of the wheels of government. But, when it came to national security then the entire congress would make the effort to be cooperative and get something done in a positive way for the American people.

Of course, this effort to work in unity requires a bit of trust. A congressmen needs to make the assumption that the rest of the congressmen had the same desire to get the “right” thing done for the American people.

After 9/11/2001 the country had a rare moment of unity. We all believed that only the most unpatriotic person would desire to take advantage of a situation of national emergency. At the time we were under the impression that our president would learn what he could about the situation and do the “right” thing.

Only years later did we learn that the president and his administration had his own personal agenda. We have since learned that the George W Bush administration made an effort to distort the facts and present the best case for war in Iraq. Instead of a healthy public debate on this serious endeavor we were told to trust the president and hurry forward with this urgent solution. Similarly the so-called Patriot Act was named in an order to cloud the true nature of this bill. The Patriot Act is known to take away the liberty of many patriotic Americans -- but it was urged by the president for congress to pass the bill without actually debating it. Ironically the Patriot Act was undemocratically railroaded through congress resulting in the loss of some American liberty. And, this effort was only possible because the congress trusted the president to have the security of the American people at heart.

As the old Chinese Proverb says, “Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me.” And congress has learned its lesson; it will be a very long time before the congress will trust the word of a president and act on his word alone without debate or supporting evidence.

Is it any wonder that when the Secretary of the Treasury asks the congress for $700 Billion dollars that he can do whatever he deems necessary to fix whatever problems he happens to find with the financial banking crisis that we should view his motives with suspicion? Of course we should worry that a treasury secretary with only a few months left before he gets back to his area of interest -- the financial banking industry -- he just might be planning a bailout for himself and his friends. There currently isn’t any reason that we should trust the Bush administration or anyone associated with them to do the “right” thing. In fact it is more prudent to expect that they have some other motive than national security. Of course it is up to us and the media to find out what that motive is.

This crisis illuminates a few things.

First, in order for any government to work there needs to be a level of trust between those in the government in order for any swift action to take place. When that trust is broken the government can no longer function. If the citizens understand this, then they can vote in new representatives that share some level of trust. But, when the trust disappears then we have an adversarial system destined to do nothing at all. As long as the rule of law continues without trust then we are stuck.

Second, if we have a lack of trust in our government, then imagine the level of mistrust in Iraq where many members of the government have lost family members and the enemy is sitting across the aisle. How can trust be restored in a government like that?

Third, Republicans have always recited than mantra of Democrats equal special interests. But, Republicans have their own set of special interests -- the financial banking industry.

Fourth, our economic system needs a set of rules that are enforced to protect the average person from being swindled. These laws shouldn’t allow the temptation of cheap money now for an expensive repayment schedule in the future be allowed. This, after all, is the kernel of the issue that brought the financial industry to begging in the streets. And, begging in the streets is so unbecoming.

Fifth, if the capitalist system is to work then there needs to be a significant loss for those that took the risk of creating these adjustable rate mortgages and conned people into buying them. The people that made these decisions should be thrown out on the streets and replaced by a whole new group of people that are willing to revamp the system. Allowing these people to walk away without losing their shirts will encourage them to try something just as ridicules again in the future. If these people don’t feel financial punishment for taking a stupid risk, then they will risk our economy again.

How can our capitalist economy survive without trust?

When we go to the store to buy a CD we trust that the CD will have the music we want on it. When we buy food at the store we trust that we won’t be poisoned when we eat the food. When we buy a new car we trust that it will work for a significant amount of time before we need to buy a new one. Trust is how our economy works and how our country runs.

But, there is an undercurrent in our country that puts weight on deception. In some circles people believe that one is clever for selling something that isn’t worth the price paid. Keeping the truth a secret is the key to making as much money as one can from this deception. Once the truth is out, then the product can no longer be sold for a significant profit. However, the clever person is sure to be up to the next great deception that will earn another tidy profit until its discovered as well. The justification for this action is that no one will pay more than the market will bear. If people are willing to pay more then there must be some value that they are paying for. The untold truth is that the premium is due to lack of information flow. And a market without access to the truth is not a fair market.

Imagine bundles of adjustable rate mortgages sold for the potential premium increase once the teaser rate expires. The purchasers are expecting a large future payoff, while the people making the payment are not prepared to pay the new rate when mortgage payment doubles or triples. It is a train-wreck waiting to happen. And, these bankers have the Republicans in congress in their pockets because the have been financing their campaigns for years. The sad thing is that the people who created this junk no longer bear responsibility because they sold these bundles to unaware investors who believed the ratings of these loans. Once again fundamental trust was lost.

We will one day recover from this mess. Hopefully it will be sooner than later. However, it will take a long time for us to recover the naïve trust that we once had in our financial system, our government and our country.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Myth and Magical Thinking

2008-09-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

Since the nomination of Sarah Palin as the new standard barer of the Republican Party I have been struggling with a way to collect my thoughts and express them in a coherent way. I have been struck with many emotions and thoughts as the activities have played out over the last two weeks. Each time I considered writing something, but I couldn’t quite express the problem that my intuition told me was there.

Well, I don’t know if this will be any better than the collection of all those thoughts, but at least I believe that I have a context in which I can discuss them.

In order to explain this let me bring you back to 2003 and the first few weeks of the Iraq invasion. During that time the administration and the defense department were searching for heroes. If they didn’t find them, then they seemed to create them and put those stories out there with very little truth in advertising. Recall the story of Jessica Lynch. The first story put out by the US military and hyped by the administration was that Jessica Lynch was a determined fighter firing her weapon until it was empty defending the rest of her convoy until what she assumed would be certain death. What a great hero story for the military and the administration to use to defend their invasion of a sovereign nation (similar to the Russian invasion of Georgia a few weeks ago). Would we be more willing to support the Russian invasion if we were told of heroic Russian soldiers doing what this mythical Jessica Lynch did in Iraq? What if we heard about another heroic Jessica Lynch fighting along side the Russians in Georgia? What if we were told that the Georgians were terrorists and not the fledgling Democracy being attacked by the great bear Russia? I am not suggesting any of these things are true, but rather that we have a tendency to believe what our leaders tell us whether they are true or not.

Eighty percent of the American public now recognizes that the Bush administration lied to us about something during the last eight years. I am being generous here to make a point. I don’t want to argue these statistics, but rather the fact that the majority (over 50%) recognize that their leaders have lied to them about something during the last eight years. I could guess that the other 20% might agree that Bill Clinton lied about something during his administration. Therefore I would put forward the postulate that everyone in America agrees that their leaders have lied to them at some point in the last 16 years. I would like to conclude that we should expect them to lie to us in the future -- whether they are from your favorite political party or the other one.

So, if we know that our leaders lie to us, then why do we succumb to these lies so easily when they seem to be so outrageous on the surface? Obviously American culture, like many cultures, is romantic toward the hero and is open to stories of the true hero. We desire a hero at every level as some type of supernatural identification. We were all drawn to the story of Michael Phelps winning those eight record breaking gold medals. Wasn’t he just as heroic in Athens when he won six gold and two bronze? Imagine if his teammate Jason Lezak, whom gets very little recognition compared to Michael, wasn’t able to beat the French swimmer Alain Bernard. Imagine if Michael hadn’t been able to out touch Milorad Cavic by that hundredth of a second? Would he still be on the talk show circuit? These tiny intricate details are the evidence that makes an American Hero authentic.

America loves their heroes! But those heroes certainly need to be authentic. Imagine a mythical America where the news of the Olympics was filtered through the Republican Party. Imagine Michael Phelps losing those two races in the real world - would the Republican Party be tempted to create the Michael Phelps hero by altering the Olympic information? If politics depended on those results, then perhaps they would go that far.

We can look at the current presidential race and see those actions in play. The Republicans found the unfamiliar Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and they have opted to mold her into the hero that the American people are so easily drawn to. Since so little is known about her they can paint a picture of her with little chance of Americans learning the truth. Some of the things they tell us are bound to be true. Every true thing they tell us lends credibility to the lies that they tell.

This is like the story of Jessica Lynch. There was a thread of truth in the story. She was in a gun battle and she was taking from the scene of the battle. The lies of her story hang on these loose threads. It was more exciting to tell us about her gunfight. There were no witnesses to tell us that she didn’t fire her weapon. Even when she regained her senses, she didn’t remember any gun fight. When the Iraqis finely told their story we learn that she was taking to a hospital -- not kidnapped. No one guarded her except the doctors, and she wasn’t held against her will. Those lies, however, were necessary to paint the picture of the hero.

Well, Sarah Palin is not really the hero that the McCain campaign is telling us that she is. She was a mayor of a small town. She was elected governor after defeating a corrupt Republican in the primary. That corruption might have played into the election win. And, Alaska isn’t exactly a bastion of liberals, so her win in the general election wasn’t all that surprising. But, the McCain campaign is creating a hero out of the clay of this little known politician. And they are doing this by putting forward outright lies and deceptions. They tell us that she was against that notorious “Bridge to Nowhere,” when she actually supported it until the national media picked up on this huge pork barrel project. And, what is even more dishonest is that fact that she tells us that she said thanks, but no thanks to that federal money implying that she wouldn’t accept the federal money. However, she took the money anyway, and put it into the general fund. If the issue is wasting money, then this means that she is just wasting it on some other pork project instead. And now we don’t even know where our money went.

This dishonesty about the McCain-Palin ticket builds on so many other threads of truth. The image that they wish to build is a duo of heroes fighting for America -- but the truth isn’t that simple. John McCain may have been heroic in Vietnam, but that doesn’t mean that he has always been heroic. Republicans might like to believe that John McCain has always stood up for America, but the falsehood and deception that his campaign is currently hurling at the Obama campaign tarnishes that image. Doesn’t an American hero triumph by virtue of his truth over the enemy’s deception? I believe that the maverick that I have admired in the past has currently succumb to the seduction of political power. The illusion of heroic honesty and straight talk is no longer valid. I believe that the lesson he learned from the 2000 Republican primary was that honesty is no longer the best policy.

The truth is that the Republican political machinery is inherently dishonest and deceptive. John McCain may have won the Republican primary in an honest battle for the nomination. But, now that he is the nominee he has inherited the smear machine. And, as evidence of his non-maverick stature he hasn’t done anything to temper this evil in the Republican Party.

Barrack Obama offers us another version of the American Hero. Barack was a hero that sacrificed for his community in another way. Instead of being a military hero that fought in a foreign war, he went to battle against the status quo. When society found itself comfortable keeping the poor in their place he went out to organize that community. In these poor neighborhoods many people do manual labor for minimal wages. Opportunity in these places like the south side of Chicago are extremely rare. Gathering consensus and fostering leadership grants political power to these people. When the people do not know that they have rights, then they are less likely to seek them. Barrack Obama sacrificed his personal wealth for this community. He obviously didn’t sacrifice to the same extent that Mother Theresa had in her lifetime, but he also hasn’t claimed that he has sacrificed to this level.

In the end the choice is a collective decision of the American people. In the past we have made both good and bad choices. We have a tendency to look for the hero to fight the good fight for us. Barack Obama has demonstrated that he is willing to sacrifice his personal wealth for his community and in an extension of that sacrifice for his country because our country is a collection of communities. John McCain has sacrificed earlier in his life when he fought in the military for his country. In reality both McCain and Obama are offering us an opportunity to choose that hero. The job of the American people is to determine which vision offered is the Authentic American Hero.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Straight Talk or Fast Talk?

2008-09-03T16:12:00.001-07:00

Most Americans hate hypocrisy. “Catcher in the Rye,” struck a chord with Holden Caufield’s teenage discovery of the abundance of hypocrisy in everyday life. I have often wondered if the generic conservative’s objection to the novel lies more with this discovery than with the occasional use of profanity in the novel. Holden discovers that the world is not the way that conservative’s would like to present it.

In the 2004 election the conservative attack dogs lead the charge to discredit John Kerry with all means possible. The implied hypocrisy of one statement was used continuously against him. It was ironic that the political party rooted in hypocrisy and illusion were able to mislead the American public into believing that George W Bush was the honest candidate and John Kerry was the flip-flopper.

Out of the entire Republican Party one member had the best record in regard to the issue of hypocrisy. This of course was John McCain and his “Straight Talk Express.” And, to his credit John McCain began the campaign with this strategy. But, after John realized that he was the Republican pick he also realized that his strategy wasn’t working. The Republican base did not agree with John on a number of issues. For one, they didn’t like his vote on stem cell research. Second they didn’t like his stand on immigration. John was just a little bit too honest and the Karl Rove clan wasn’t that excited about John, so they weren’t that excited about going out and throwing mud for John.

John saw the writing on the wall and he knew that he had to do something, because “Straight Talk” wasn’t doing the trick. So, he hired some Rovian advisors that helped him modify his thoughts. In other words, he was either brain washed or he was convinced to flip-flop on some issues in order to win back the Republican base. Since we all know the power of his resolve based on his POW experience we know that he wasn’t brain washed. He has obviously changed his position for political expediency. This is the very definition of hypocrisy. It disgusts me, and I am certain that most Americans would find this most vile.

John McCain’s campaign is currently claiming that they believe that America should come first, before personal gain or political gain. If an average American knew the depths to which the Republican party has sunk in order to make political gain we would have had uproarious laughter at the first mention of this theme yesterday. Unfortunately, Karl Rove and his tactics continue to be known mainly to the more initiated political wonks.

It seems to me that we will need to hope and pray that enough Americans will become interested in politics enough to be able to smell hypocrisy based on the 30-second ads and news coverage of the campaign.

Will the American people realize that John McCain was against the Bush tax cuts before he was for them? Should the American people believe the new John McCain when he could just as easily change his mind again once he is elected?

My hope is that the selection of Sarah Palin for his Vice President will be one of those things that will show the hypocrisy. In John McCain’s own words he had determined that the vice president selection was perhaps the most important decision to be made during the campaign. When he made this statement he pointed out his age and suggested that the VP candidate should be ready to step into John’s shoes. Based on these words it seems to me that John was not putting country first when he chose Sarah Palin. No one in their right mind would believe that she was up to speed on all of the important issues. To be fair, it might be possible for her to come up the speed before January 20th. However, surely the Republican Party has people that are more qualified than Sarah Palin for this very important position. And, if John McCain really was to “Put America First” he would have chosen this more highly qualified person for this position. Instead, it seems more likely that the selection of Sarah Palin is an act of political expediency of a desperate candidate trying to shake up the race with a candidate that will excite the religious fundamentalists in the Republican Party base. It sounds like John McCain is putting winning the election first by sacrificing his honesty for hypocrisy.

It is quite strange that Sarah Palin is being praised for fighting corruption. It is true that she had taken on some corruption. But, as it turns out she was for “earmarks” before she was against “earmarks.” Sarah is a hypocrite just like many other politicians. As the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska she was the first mayor to hire a lobbyist to bring back the green to Wasilla. Millions of dollars flowed into the town. And, about that bridge to nowhere that Sarah said she was against. She cancelled the project, but she kept the money. She is sending $1200.00 to each Alaskan, but she is also taking money from the federal government to build infrastructure. So, basically the rest of the United States is paying Alaskans $1200.00 a piece. Now, that doesn’t sound right - Does it? Where is the Sarah Palin that fights corruption?

I hope that Americans see the real McCain and Palin before November 4, 2008 - not after the election like with Bush and Cheney.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Why Sarah Palin?

2008-09-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

Dan Quayle, Gerald Ford, Spiro Agnew and now Sarah Palin - Why do Republicans choose such horrid Vice Presidents?

Even though Richard Nixon said “Just don’t ever put me on the couch,” in reference to his fear of what he might find out if he were psychoanalyzed I will attempt to ask and answer some of these various questions from the psychology of fear.

In general I think that it is safe to assert that politics is driven by fear. In support of this assertion I would draw your attention to the great success of negative advertising when compared to positive advertising. In general people are afraid that their leaders will take advantage of the power that we entrust them with.

Since we all know that there are many things to be afraid of I would suggest that people align themselves with people of similar fears. Here are a few fears, and I would suggest that after reading each fear it will become apparent which political party embraces that fear in order to create that critical mass needed to secure that 51% needed to govern.

1) Fear that a foreign power will invade the USA.
2) Fear that employers will take advantage of their employees.
3) Fear that minorities are being mistreated.
4) Fear that the government will take away private property rights.
5) Fear that American culture will be destroyed by the invasion of foreign culture.
6) Fear that we are slowly destroying our planet with pollution and other destruction.
7) Fear that minorities will take over and force the WASPs into subjugation.
8) Fear that religious zealots will write religious doctrine into public law.
9) Fear that criminals will destroy social order.
10) Fear that the Government will take away our basic rights.

Obviously there are more fears professed by each political group. Some people might suggest that they are fearful of all of these things while other will suggest that they are fearful of very few of these things. However, each and everyone of us can take these fears and order them from top worry to least worry. And, in doing so looking at your top 5 of these will point your political arrow in the direction of your preferred political party.

By grouping our fears together the American political parties have created two methods to deal with these collections of fears. The Republicans have a collective fear that we are not safe from threats on our current “way of life.” These threats define our “way of life” as American culture of prosperity in which the wealthy deserve to have what they have and their property must be protected at all costs. Religion, social status, and current lifestyle are all threatened. The Republican solution to this threat is to fund the military to excess, keep the government small and weak, and protect the every symbol of current American culture, such as religion, corporations and to the extent that they don’t threat corporation - small businesses.

The Democrats have a collective fear that authority in general can and will threaten our current “way of life” and they also fear that the status quo has been taking advantage of many of us by virtue of current social status. The Democrat’s solution to these fears is attempt to make laws limiting these abuses of power, and forcing those who break those laws to pay for breaking the laws. Regulations and the enforcement of those regulations are thought to keep those abusers on the straight and narrow.

We can see that in general both groups fear being taken advantage of, but the potential abusers are different for each group. Republicans fear those that don’t know or don’t understand - foreigners and the poor who they perceive as criminals. As an extension since these poor are employed by the government they fear that these poor will force property owners to sacrifice some of their property. Democrats fear the abuse of authority that can be used to take away human rights, wages, and simple sustenance. By virtue of these fears Republicans tend to be the party of wealth, corporate power, and religious authority. And, Democrats tend to see the majority of those being abused being from the working class, minorities these diverse groups are welcomed into the party and their different cultures are celebrated. Since Democrats see the abuse of corporations toward workers and the environment as ground zero in this battle a common cause is enough and social status is less important than the protection of it that is sought by the Republicans.

What this means is that certain personality types are attracted to each political party. People who fear that they will be taken out by an aggressive social climber are more likely to be members of the Republican party. And, this leads me back to my original question. Why do Republicans makes such horrible choices for Vice President. I would put forth the conjecture that Republican Presidential nominees fear those who might show them up. In order to insure against this these nominees select their Vice Presidents from the bottom of the list, rather than the top.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Expectations and Economics

2008-07-10T12:13:00.000-07:00

It’s not what you have, but what you believe you can have that drives the American economy.

We should all understand that Republican fiscal ideology is focused on benefits for the wealthy. It costs the wealthy too much to help out those down on their luck, so we shouldn’t do it is the Republican mantra. However, in marketing this to the common man the Republicans normally drop “the wealthy” modifier and change “down on their luck” to “welfare cheating scum buckets” or some other derogatory adjective.

As Senator Phil Gram, the former Texas A&M economics professor, tells us that the economy is not as bad as we are imagining. Senator Gram said, “We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy.” Now, Senator Gram is pulling a Republican fast one on us here. What is more important to the average man, being able to feed his family or Apple being able to make a huge profit selling more iPods? If the man is an executive at Apple then the question is one and the same, but if he isn’t there will be layers of a complex economy clouding the issue.

If your paycheck has been constant over the last few years, and the price of gasoline and food have gone up, then you will be feeling the pinch. If your pay check has gone up by more than the cost of gasoline and food over the last few years, then I would venture to guess that you aren’t hurting so bad. So, I’ll ask - is Senator Gram right when he says, “the constant drubbing of the media on the economy's problems is one reason people have lost confidence.” Maybe it is one reason, but I’m guessing that to those on the lower end of the economic scale will be feeling more than what they are told by the media.

In America, though, we have some expectations when it comes to economic status. Expectations may be good, and they may be bad. Either way we need to remember that they are expectations and not reality. In fact success in America is measured by certain expectations. If a person meets or exceeds those expectations we have celebrations and fan fare. And, when those expectations are not met, then a person’s fiscal failings are kept in the shadows, something that we would rather not talk about. Fiscal failings are considered a source of embarrassment for the man down on his luck. But, if this information is kept hidden and not spoken about, then no one really knows if the expectations are even reasonable.

In America people have accepted that they should be better off in every proceeding year from the last. A small cost of living raise serves as an illusion to this expectation, while it shows a rising wage, it doesn’t always even match inflation. When a company is doing well they will often compensate the employees, but these compensations aren’t always justified in their distributions. Truth be told, fiscal failings behind common expectations are the rule rather than the exception. Americans have discovered how to continue the illusion in the face of this failure to meet expectations. Americans have taken to borrowing money in order to appear that they have exceeded expectations.

American expectations plaque the American economy in many ways.

The entire mortgage crisis that has recently burst the housing market bubble was caused by people meaning to appear to meet the expectations of the American dream. People bought into the idea that things were going to be better further down the road. They deluded themselves into believing that five years down the road they would be able to pay the mortgage when the payment jumped in their sub-prime loan.

Let me take the example of our neighbors, who confided recently that they will be moving out of their house. Five years ago when they bought the house they were able to do so by borrowing the money at a low interest rate. Even with that low interest rate they still had to make a $3000 per month mortgage payment. I don’t really know what they were thinking when they were told that in five years the payment would jump to $6000 per month. They were able to make the $3000 per month payments by having several families live in the same house and pool their resources. In addition one of the women in the house opened a day care in the house to take care of the children a raise a bit of extra cash. I could imagine that they might have been thinking that they could increase the number of children that they took in to significantly defray the cost when the payment jumped. They could have been thinking that they would all be making double their wages in five years and hence have the additional money needed when the payment jumped. Maybe they were thinking that they could double the number of occupants in the house over the next five years so that they could make the payment when it doubled. I don’t know what they were thinking, but whatever it was they were not able to make it happen; so they will be moving out of their house shortly.

The whole story above was forced into play by unreasonable expectations. The people moved into that house because they had expectations that they should be living in this house that was beyond their means. But, in America we have expectations that anyone should be able to “make it” if they work hard. They people living in this house accepted those expectations and proceeded the best way they knew. They set up an illegal day care and tried to make some extra cash. They work extra long hours putting in as many as they could, leaving in the morning before sunrise and getting home long after sunset. The main obstacle was not motivation or ingenuity. Their main obstacle was the expectation.

Expecting success often delivers success. A person is often motivated to work hard just believing that success will find a way. Many people, myself included, have operated under this premise. The ugly truth, however, is that many people also fail to meet these expectations following these same principles. Success or failure is not conditioned on how much work is put into an endeavor. Success or failure happens for many unforeseen reasons. And, because the reasons are unforeseen each individual that succeeds succeeds mainly because of luck. And, the entire concept of success is nestled in the expectations for the endeavor itself.

So, American entrepreneurial spirit is based on expectations. Entrepreneurs expect to invest time, energy and resources into a risky venture and succeed in producing something new and novel. This type of expectation is good for America and infects the American society with the can-do rags-to-riches mentality. But, if everyone in the country comes to expect that they to can become wealthy by selling shlock that no one wants or needs to the next guy, then that entrepreneurial spirit has changed from a net positive to a net negative for American society as a whole. And, the only real thing that has changed in this equation is the expectation. People once believed that innovation was a key to make a new product worthwhile has been changed into the belief that slick marketing can sell any old crap to anyone and make the seller wealthy. People won’t by crap was once the counter to this argument. But the real life counter example to that argument is how many people bought Windows computers and operating systems instead of much better alternatives such as Unix. The legacy lives on unfortunately. Marketing outmaneuvers substance.

Marketing after all is all about expectations. Marketing starts out by telling you what you should expect, then it claims to fill that expectation with the perfect product. Since America is the capital of the capitalist world we shouldn’t expect anything different than the marketing of many unfulfilled expectations and products that can’t fill them.

Since the Great Depression and FDR calling for Americans to expect a chicken in every pot our expectations have continued to grow with American marketing machine. Chickens in our pots, Cars in our garages, houses on our golf courses and yachts on our rivers and lakes we finally expect that we should control the world itself. Obviously we can always create expectations that are higher than we can realistically achieve and we most likely will continue to do so. And, when we do so how will we be able to know which expectations are reasonable and which ones are not?

Well, perhaps Senator Gram has an answer for that as well. When he lashes out and calls us a nation of whiners, then perhaps we will know that our expectations are a bit too high. Or, perhaps his expectations are too low?

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Religion and Politics - Who Wins?

2008-06-25T11:35:00.000-07:00

Religion is serious stuff.

Politics is also serious stuff.

Faith is the belief in something without having proof. Once you believe in what you can not see or hear or even imagine everything else becomes so much easier to ignore, deny or denounce.

Politics is using what you have to do what you can to make things the way you want them to be. It seems to me that religion could really mess that up or it could help you get that done.

As a very skeptical Roman Catholic deist I am offended by the remarks of James Dobson, the famous preacher and leader of Focus on the Family. In referring to a speech the Barack Obama made two years ago he claims that the Senator was making stuff up when it came to his thoughts on religion. Actually when it comes to religion everyone is making stuff up and trying to imply that God gave them the very answer that they are seeking. But, by looking at the many different religions and all of their various answers it is clear that none of these religions has the total truth to themselves. Barack Obama was making this very valid point with respect to the relationship between religion and politics. And, James Dobson, fearful of the truth in Barack’s point began doing what conservatives of little substance seem to do lately. They begin name calling.

The question seems to be - If you represent a group of people with various religious beliefs, do you impose your own beliefs on them or do you respect the broad variety of beliefs in your constituency when you make your decisions?

Be careful in your thinking here, because this is a fundamental point of contention between the political parties and politics in America at the present time.

Many issues might hinge on how you should make your decisions here if you were elected to public office. Lets look at the Death Penalty. If you are a Roman Catholic from a largely protestant district you would likely find yourself in conflict with you constituency on this issue. Roman Catholics are taught to respect life, all life and they are taught that man should not take that life away. They are opposed to the Death Penalty, without any exceptions. But, a district composed mainly of American Protestants are more likely to believe that death is the right punishment for some crimes. So, how does a man vote on this issue with this conflict in mind?

This is not an unusual situation in our day and age. For example, most governors will be asked to intervene in the carrying out of a death penalty sentence. The governor is generally the final appeal. If that governor happens to be a religious Catholic he would be caught between his religion and the duty of his office. And, most governors do not prevent the execution of any prisoner in their state even the Roman Catholic ones.

So, when James Dobson criticizes Barack Obama for standing up for the many different opinions on the subject of abortion he is going against the same ethics that supports a politician’s decision to work for the common good of the people. Barack Obama isn’t saying anything different than what the various Catholic governors of the various states have said and done regarding the death penalty. Barack Obama is telling us that most Christians do not follow every facet of the Bible in the same way. Some may shun eating shellfish and pork, grow their locks long and shave their bride’s head, but most of us don’t. Some Christian sects emphasize Baptism and others emphasize Pentecost. As a society we do not need to debate which of these is the most important. Although, within our particular religious environments we may feel obligated to do just that. And, Barack Obama was clearly pointing this out in his speech of two years ago.

On the other hand, James Dobson doesn’t really care what the majority of people feel about these issues. Instead he would like to impose his will (even though he likes to call it God’s Will) on the majority of Americans. In James Dobson’s world a ruling elite would determine which religious values should dictate to the rest of the world. That’s funny, but this sounds a lot like the Islamic Fascism that the conservatives have been warning us about. But, instead of Islamic Fascism this would be Christian Fascism. And, I believe that as long as the rules of Christian Fascism agree with James Dobson then he would be OK with it.

This setup gives religion a direct line of control to the governing of the people. The religion tells the leaders what to do. Since they are religious they must follow their religion and not the will of the larger group of people. Therefore the religion dictates what laws are made based on the religion of the majority in government. So, the goal is to elect these non-thinking religious zealots into power and the religion in power makes the laws.

So, it comes down to this. Do we want leaders who rule by looking and the facts and making the best decisions based on these facts? Or, do we want leaders who are religious automatons that merely do what their religion teaches them to do regardless of the facts? Obviously this is your call - vote!

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Know Your Enemy

2008-06-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

After the attacks on 9/11/2001 many Americans pulled their heads out of the sand and began to ask why anyone would want to do anything so horrible to us. Bill Maher famously asked the same questions in what seemed to a too sympathetic way, by going against the common wisdom of the time. The common wisdom proclaimed that the terrorists were cowards. Bill Maher pointed out: "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." Bill was attempting to try to understand why the terrorists would attack us. He was pointing out in a very insightful way that the common wisdom of the time was not even close to being honest. And this brilliant insight got him fired.

The Chinese warrior and writer Sun Tzu wrote “know your enemy” before going into battle. If “you know your enemy and know yourself,” he wrote, “you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” But, Sun Tzu warned, “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”

As Americans we need to examine the current conflict that we have with many of the residents of the Middle East. We need to know why some of these people want to do us harm. And, if we fail to ask the right questions and answer them honestly then, as Sun Tzu taught, we will suffer defeat.

I know that this doesn’t sound positive. But, being positive alone isn’t going to beat the enemy. Looking honestly at the problems that we face is the only way to fix those problems before we suffer once again. It is interesting that the neo-conservatives, the Bush administration and everyone else that has been so gung-ho about fighting “Islamic Fascism” haven’t spent the time to consider the reality involved in this fight. What is the goal, and what does victory look like? If we are fighting Islamic Fascism, we should know why the enemy is attracted to this ideology. Or, for that matter, if this is even the correct way to describe the enemy.

As I said above, before we can win we need to know our enemy. So, who is it that we are fighting and why are they fighting us, the USA?

Since we have linked the 9/11/2001 bombings to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden we should begin with what he tells us. He communicates with his group, his allies and with us and he tells us everything that we should know about him. But, because of the fear of our enemy the media is quite lax in publicizing what he says. Without getting involved in the bin Laden view of the world we can cut to the chase and discover what al Qaeda intends to do in order to win this war.

Osama bin Laden tells us that there are three ways he intends to attack us and win this conflict:

1) He wants us to spend ourselves into bankruptcy and waste our resources.
2) He wants us to spread our military strength thin by fighting the enemy around the world.
3) And, He wants us to become disorganized through political infighting.

By understanding what our enemy wants us to do, we can evaluate if we are fighting our enemy properly.

How are we fighting the “War on Terror?” First of all, we have determined to spend billions of dollars fighting a war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We began the war by destroying these countries with our massive weapons. We don't have the actual cash on hand to fight these wars, so we are borrowing money to fight these wars. In fact, the majority of the money that we are borrowing is being loaned to us by China. What happens if we continue to borrow until we have borrowed so much that we are no longer able to repay our debt? They call that bankruptcy.

Now, where are we fighting the “War on Terror?” First of all we collected our allies together and invaded Afghanistan. This seemed to make sense because the Taliban had given refuge to al Qaeda. Al Qaeda collected themselves and found cover in the border region between the two countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The territory is steep and difficult, but a surge of 200,000 troops concentrated in this area with the cooperation of Afghanistan (the government we put into power) and Pakistan (our long time ally) could have weeded out the enemy and we could have put an end to this a long time ago. However, we have less than 50,000 troops in Afghanistan mainly walking around looking for Taliban remains. The success of shooing the Taliban out of the cities and into the Mountains was so encouraging that George W Bush and his cohorts determined that invading Iraq would be the best thing to do. After 5 years of occupation many military leaders continue to remind us that we have spread ourselves quite thin. As to the political infighting, the polarization of our country started long before al Qaeda attacked us the first time. However, the stupidity of the Iraq War and how it has been run has only increased the political infighting. The possibility of real political unity appears to be some remote hallucination based in fiction.

My conclusion is that we must be losing the “War on Terror” because we are accomplishing every goal of al Qaeda based merely on the threat of another terrorist attack. They attacked us, and we are doing their bidding. Why would they attack us again if we are already doing what they want us to do?

Terrorism works by intimidation. They motivate us with fear and we do what they want us to do. It looks like the terrorists are getting what they want. The terrorists know that despite what John McCain might want we aren’t likely to stay in Iraq for 100 years. The terrorists operate on a Middle East time clock, a clock that works on a scale of 1000 years instead of the instant gratification clock that most Americans operate on. It doesn’t really matter whether George W Bush is stubborn about making a timetable. Our enemy knows that one year or five years it doesn’t really matter because they can wait. Echoing The Rolling Stones, “Time is on their side.”

So, how can we win?

Well, I believe that in Iraq we have already won, as far as any stated goals announced. We went to Iraq to secure our country from the potential act of aggression with “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” We discovered that there weren’t any in Iraq, so we should be loading up and getting ready to go. The Iraqi government and the Iraqi people now need to stand up to the plate.

In Afghanistan we have given up our search for Osama bin Laden, the leader of the group that attacked us. We need to re-concentrate our efforts and bring him in before he dies of old age.

And, we need to strengthen our borders and increase security at home. But, unless we want to live in a police state we need to do the best we can to use our soft power and show the world how we can all live together in cultural diversity and political harmony.

Of course, this is only if we truly want to win this war.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Voraciously Vitriolic Vipers

2008-06-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

After the 2006 congressional races I breathed a sigh of relief. Up until that point the Republican Party had driven the nation to the edge of an abyss. They were destroying the country bit by bit, and our only hope was to win at least one house of congress to stop the destruction. And, even with the Republicans claiming that the congress is doing nothing I am pleased that they have been able to stop the Republicans from their continued march to the apocalypse.

Well, that was 2006 and the success of the Democrats allowed us to take a breather, but the next wave of elections will be here in November. And, the Republicans are going to do their best to slur and slander any candidate that stands in their way of winning back political power.

It is quite obvious that this is already happening toward the Democrat nominated to run against John McCain for President of the United States. I am disgusted when I read or hear these people go out of their way to accuse Barack Obama of being a terrorist. He is accused of being Islamic when he was attending a Christian Church. These people are so full of hatred that they just make things up and put them out on the web as if it were fact (or imply that it might be supported by some thread of truth). I am continually amazed that Americans are so gullible that they believe these things. But, with the education system in our country as bad as it is how are they to comprehend the difference between the truth and the nonsense?

In the last few days since Barack has won the primary I have seen so much hatred directed toward him that I might believe that the Devil himself had secured the nomination. There were people saying that knocking fists with his wife was a terrorist symbol. There were people claiming that he was going to raise taxes, which tends to strike fear in the hearts of some people even more than the terrorist threat. So many of these things are lies, that writing them here seems to give them credit in some way.

Then Dennis Prager, the radio talk show host writes a conservative manifesto on how wonderful America was when he was a child.

The idea here, of course, is that America was wonderful before liberals changed America. Then this vitriolic radio host tells us how America was freer when we could speak our minds. What does he mean by this? He means that he liked to be able to make fun of people for being gay, having big boobs, being fat or being Jewish. He tells us that civil rights was a great step forward, so it wouldn’t be right to make fun of people for being black. But, he’s upset that in the current fascist state of America one can get in trouble for sexual harassment. You can hear him thinking as he writes, that he just wants to tell a good ethnic joke, but America has changed and he could get in trouble for that.

Oh, poor Dennis, now he’s not allowed to offend people like his father’s generation could.

Of course this brings me back to what I have always said about conservatives. If conservatism isn’t about keeping things the way they are now, then it is about bringing back the “Good Old Days” when things were perfectly wonderful. Of course, that time never really existed accept in the selective memories of conservatives that want to go there. Dennis tells us in his piece about a wonderful time when men could tell dirty jokes or ethnic jokes without the worry of offending anyone.

Well, maybe this was a wonderful time for the people making the jokes, but it wasn’t a wonderful time for the people subject to the ridicule. I remember people like this. We had a name for them. We called them bullies. Bullies thought the world of themselves and ridiculed those that they deemed inferior to themselves. And, bullies pretty much had an attitude that everyone was inferior to themselves.

Imagine if you will, a whole group of people with this attitude. These are people that daydream of a special time long ago when they could make fun of people and not be ridiculed for their mockery. And, if they still hang out today when no one else is around they can still mock the rest of mankind in their own special way. Well, this group of people still exists today, and they call themselves Republicans. They gather together and they make fun of those who are different than themselves. The top of their list, of course are the liberals that stand opposed to this bullying. And, what a better target than the leader of the liberals - the Democrat’s nominee for the office of the President of the United States of America. Well, the best of these bullies were actually paid in 2004 to spread ugly rumors about John Kerry, and many unsuspecting people actually believed this vitriol and voted against John Kerry because they were afraid.

Well, another election cycle is upon us and the bullies have come out of the closet and they are spreading those ugly rumors again. Many people will continue to believe everything they hear, regardless of the sources. But, I believe that there are many people who are out there that have learned their lesson. After they voted for George W Bush, our illiterate leader of this country proceeded to lead us into an abyss of hopelessness. Most Americans have come to the realization that the illusion of fear spread by these bullies and liars lead them astray. I have hope that Americans are bright and they realize that these bullies are spreading mockery and fear that has no basis in reality.

For example, they tell us that Barrack Obama is a Muslim. They tell us that all Muslims are terrorists and they imply that Barrack Obama is a terrorist. None of this is based in fact, but in the mentality of a person that wishes that he could feel free to mock those he dislikes this all makes sense. By adding even more deception by implying that a “fist bump” between Barrack and his wife Michelle is some type of terrorist “high-five” these bullies had another layer of lies.

But, why do these bullies feel the need to lie. If the majority of Americans really did want to go back to the days of mockery and profanity treasured by these bullies, then the majority of Americans could change the culture.

I heard a strange diatribe on the radio today. The special guest host for Rush Limbaugh told us that he was upset by the government’s power in creating a law in which restaurants and bars in California are not allowed to have smoking sections in them. He argued that the free market should have allowed the evolution of smoke free restaurants and bars. From my point of view he proved how the free market does not work in every case.

He told us that if people didn’t want to be bothered by smoke they should go to places that did not allow smoking. People that wanted smoking would go to places that offered smoking. Economics would let the best option win. But, there are many pieces of this puzzle that are missing. Can a person who gets lung cancer twenty years after working in these smoke filled places get their lives back? Can people make a choice and get a redo after they learn the results? Rush’s sub tells us that he asked the people working in a bar if they liked the new law. And, he was upset that they actually like the law.

Now, I am confused. The people working in the places are happy with the new law. The majority of customers don’t smoke, so they are happy with the new law. The new law put all of the businesses on an even playing field, so that no one business needed to take the risk of going non-smoking, so the business owners didn't loose any money or business. Perhaps some people who had once stayed home because of the irritation caused by smoke actually may have gone back to spend more time out on the town. The only people at a disadvantage are a minority of people who continue to be addicted to nicotine. Perhaps they could wear a patch and go out if that’s really what they want.

In the conservative tradition, this substitute Limbaugh, continued to mock the employees for liking the new law. “If they don’t like smoke,” he said, “they should have just gone out to find some other type of work.” Is this guy living in reality? Working in the restaurant business as a waiter or dishwasher is just about the lowest paid form of employment in the country. Don’t you think that if they could find a better job they would have taken it? This is obviously just more bullying from the voraciously vitriolic vipers on the right.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Who Stole the Wheels from the Straight Talk Express?

2008-05-22T16:31:00.000-07:00

I used to admire John McCain. At one time I thought that we had political leader that would stand up for the American people. I know that he was a bit bitter when Karl Rove spread all those rumors about his mixed race child in South Carolina way back in 2000. I could see the anger in his eyes for years.

I thought to myself that a politician that was treated like that has two ways to react. He could have become more resolved to fight with even dirtier tricks. Or, he have become even more resolved to stand by his principles and become that rare politician that wins by fighting evil with good. In the long run fighting fair and using facts and logic triumphs over fear, lies and deception.

Well, that was then and this is now.

My mind began to change when John McCain began to cozy up with the Religious Right. We went to beg for support from some of the worst people in the GOP. These are the people who believe that “winning” matters more than the American people. These people somehow believe that acting immoral to win the bigger “moral” battle is the answer to America’s problems. And, from what I have seen in recent years, John McCain has bought into this hype. Spreading lies in order to create fear will win more votes than telling the truth about your “Christian” position.

This is because the American people know what they like and it isn’t the conservative Christian America that the Religious Right wants the government to create for them. Americans do like their religion. They like the fact that there is an authority that helps them decide what is right and what is wrong. But, for the most part they also like their freedom. They don’t normally like anyone, the church or the government telling them how they should live their lives. Well, I should rephrase that. The American people are a bit schizophrenic. They like to know what the church believes, but they don’t want to be put in prison when they decide that they don’t want to follow the rules. The American people like to be told that divorce should not be easy, but they still want divorce to be legal. They want to be told that sexual relations out of wedlock is not the best choice, but they don’t to be put into jail for doing it. They know that the Catholic Church doesn’t approve of birth control, but they don’t want the government passing laws that would make birth control illegal. This is because America is made up of many individuals and not just one isotropic Christian group of people.

Well, John McCain is a conservative Republican and he has a problem. He is conservative not because of his religious beliefs, but because of his patriotism. This is not to say that Democrats can not be patriotic but Democrats generally don’t see patriotism in the same way. Of course this is stereotyping, and we have come to a time in American history where stereotyping a group might disqualify someone from public service, but we need to remember that people join groups because they find people who agree with their personal views. The American political parties are like this. Some people saw two different types of patriotism in the 1960s and 1970s and they were drawn to the two political parties because of these feelings. These feelings have a lot to do with what each political party believes what their purpose is.

My stereotype of a Democrat is a person who believes that government can and should be used to fix the problems in our society. A Republican is a person who believes that government should be used to maintain order. So, a Republican patriot is a person who follows the laws and doesn’t question them. A Democrat patriot is a person that looks at the system of government and finds the problems in the laws and fixes them. The methods and process for these two groups result in a large group of people yelling at the top of their lungs saying that the government is doing bad things in the name of our country, at another group of people that is yelling back saying that our government is doing great things that need to be done to protect us.

Who could have imagined that I could sum up these stereotypes and defend my use of stereotypes in so few words? Obviously doing so opens me up to controversy, but I am trying make the point that John McCain chose to be a Republican conservative because of his belief in what it meant to him to be a patriot and not because of his religious views. But, in order to be elected president he needs the support of the religious groups that infest the Republican Party. So, John McCain has begun doing what he vowed not to do - namely bow down to the special interest groups. He his changing the opinions that he once voiced in order to win the support of the Religious groups. And, if I was a conservative I would toss my cookies if I had to watch him do it. After all, the Republicans invented the idea that a politician should not change their opinions. They forced John Kerry into a corner by echoing the “flip-flop” pejorative. Republicans gave credit to the idea that one should believe so strongly in their ideals that they should never change course - even when it is good for our national interest. And, I think that anyone who is considering voting for John McCain should keep this in mind. How can a Republican vote for someone who thought that gay marriage was good before he thought that it was an abomination? How long will it be before he changes his mind once again?

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Life is Not Always Easy

2008-05-20T11:09:00.000-07:00

It wasn’t too long ago that I heard people, mainly conservatives, complaining that the textbooks used in the schools were too biased. Many of these people were opposed to the idea that evolution should be considered as even a remote explanation for the why we have life on this planet in the current form. But, science wasn’t the only subject considered biased by these people. Sometimes references in American history textbooks to the plight of the poor Native Americans, former slaves or unfavorable immigrant groups would get slammed for being biased - or sometimes even “un-American.”

The truth is that history is written by the winners and winners do not normally identify with the plight of those they oppose. But, even more often history is re-written by the new winners every time we make social, political and economic progress. The plantation owners in the rural south wouldn’t even consider commenting on the contributions of their slaves to economy of the south. But, that cheap labor kept the cost of agriculture low for all of the American markets. But, as the former slaves and their families gradually acquired civil rights and the political power that comes with those rights their history began to reflect that new power.

In the United States we often proclaim freedom and liberty as virtues sought by us for all of us. But, when we think of “us” we don’t always see the entire community of the United States as equally deserving of those rights. No institution better demonstrates equality than the military. When you and four of your buddies are out there in harms way everyone understands that bullets do not discriminate. So, it wasn’t surprising that when the vets came home from World War II and traveled the country meeting up with their friends from the military that they were shocked by the discrimination observed around the country. Jack Kerouac describes this poignantly in “On the Road.” These new battles erupted at home and began to bring more social change to America through out the 1960s.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that history would be rewritten again to reflect the brilliance of the civil rights movement and the grand social change resulting from the 1960s. Of course there is only so much room in any textbook and when some points are highlighted then other points are neglected. Sometimes bias comes from these facts alone. Sometimes authors take the initiative to trumpet additional points as well. The result often results in more bias.

History is the telling of not just one story, but a collection of interconnected stories. When two general face each other in battle, they both have their own personal observation, skills and bias brought into the conflict. They each see the other as a dangerous nemesis. History will normally only tell the story of the victor, sprinkled in with the weaknesses of the loser. When the battle began they both had strengths and weaknesses, but history doesn’t record it all. But, when the kin of the loosing general are vindicated on that day of sweet revenge, history records a new story, retelling the misfortune of the old battle story with a new twist.

It shouldn’t be surprising to me that my kids have brought home “new” textbooks that have once again rewritten history.

My daughter is currently taking a High School American History class. Her textbook has been written by several members of the Hoover Institution. When we read her book we now learn the evils of Socialism that have been lurking around every corner of American society. We now know the evils of unions and laborers in general. It has been clarified for me the FDR practically destroyed the country with the New Deal. If only he had left Hoover’s economics to lead us the Great Depression would have only been a small recession. It is truly amazing what they are teaching our kids now days. The irony to this story is seen in an included graph of unemployment from 1925 to 1945 that disproves many of these arguments when you line up the New Deal programs and the results.

Philosophically it makes sense that the Reagan years would have some fall out like this. In the long run we will end up with students being educated with these exaggerated biases to counteract the exaggerated biases from earlier books. It also makes me sad to see this back and forth bickering that polarizes the country. Many students take what they hear in school as fact and don’t think about it. Chances are that there will be many people who believe that unions are bad and the New Deal practically destroyed the country as a simple result of using this textbook. They won’t be taught that there were arguments on both sides of these issues. They will be left with the current winners point of view. Ten years from now we will once again have new textbooks. The current students will be long graduated and left with the biased views that they were taught. The question becomes, what will those new textbooks teach our children? Will they continue to teach of the evils of unions and the New Deal? Or, will they teach us how FDR, our physically handicapped president was a hero that triumphed over adversity in so many different ways?

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

When Markets Don’t Work

2008-05-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

Today Paul Krugman once again points out that the Republican party has only two solutions to problems - Tax cuts and deregulation or ignoring the problem hoping that it will go away.

Of course ignoring a problem and hoping that it will go away is not a solution. But if you can convince enough voters to ignore the problem along with you then at least you can win elections, control the government and eventually control the information going out to the public.

The Bush administration does this every day with the news from Iraq. How many pictures of coffins do we see coming out of the bellies of the planes coming back from Iraq? None! The reason for this is the simple party line - “its bad news, so ignore it until we have good news.”

The whole surge issue started with an increase in the numbers of deaths and injuries, both to Americans and Iraqi civilians. But, the administration did the best to ignore it, and at best admitted it saying that things would get better when the surge started to “work.”

Well, it’s a year later and the surge is supposed to be finished. The troops are supposed to be drawn down and the Iraqi government is supposed to step up and take over. Well, the reality is that “the enemy” went into hiatus and simply waited until the Americans finished their silly surge. And, now that it is ending those who are against America’s puppet government are slowly waking up and beginning where they left off before the surge began. If the US spent a little more time working with all the political forces in the country, instead of using force to make Iraq do what America believes is best maybe things would be different. But, the current administration doesn’t want you to see that. They continue to be in denial about what the solution must be. They don’t want to even admit to ant wrong doing when the whole situation could have been prevented in the first place.

But the administration is in denial about so many other things as well. Mainly it seems to be a fact that the Bush government is a faith based government. You are supposed to put faith in your government or else you are not being patriotic. Too many people bought into this in 2004 and re-elected George W Bush. Unfortunately we are stuck with this idiot for a few more months. But, if we work together to point out what the Republicans continue to deny then we may have enough people to vote to end this ridiculous ostrich policy.

Paul points out that the health care system is falling apart as we sit here and type. They believe that a market system will fix everything. But, there is a slight problem with markets. Markets react to what the average person is willing to pay for a service. So, I ask you one simple question, how much is your health worth to you? Are you willing to pay your entire family estate to make yourself live a few years longer - given there is a cure. So, given the fact that most people are willing to give up all of their money to live longer, then the price of health care will rise until all of our wealth is spent and health care providers possess all of the wealth. What other possible limiting factor is there? Why would people pay less than they have and decide to die sooner? The average cost of health care will always rise to mean wealth of the country. Health care providers will end up being the only people able to afford health care. If you disagree, then please tell me what will limit the cost of health care in a free market.

The only solution is to limit the market in some way. We can provide less health care, then people would not be able to purchase health care when they need it, thereby conserving wealth. We could allow everyone to become a health care provider and competition would tend to limit the price. Basically we would learn to take care of ourselves. Or, we could mandate maximum prices that health care providers would be able to charge for services. This would limit expenditure and reserve cash for other purposes.

The bottom line is that a free market health care system rations health care to those who can afford it, until they spend all of their money and whatever that they are allowed to borrow until they are forced out of the health care system surrendering that spot to the next guy in line. We could ration health care to the wealthy, or we could ration health care to the sickest, or we could ration health care to the most deserving. In the end health care is limited by the supply. If we maximize the supply and ration to the deserving we end up with the fairest system. Anything else is inherently unfair.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Death and Taxes

2008-04-30T12:28:00.000-07:00

“Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin.

But, since taxes are so certain it would make sense that we should understand the point of taxes. The conservatives have been crying for years now that our taxes are too high and they should be cut. The limit of cutting taxes can only be based on what we as the general population view as getting our money’s worth from the taxes that we pay. If we don’t really understand what our tax money is being used for, then we will never stop cutting taxes until we get to zero. Obviously there is a major disconnect here between what we need and what we want to pay for with our tax dollars.

Taxes have been a part of life since people formed tribes and began to live in cooperation. Taxes began as a type of payment to the leader in appreciation for his leadership, or as a part of the spoils of his leadership. In ancient tribalism a leader could force the point of leadership by taking command and demanding respect -- like other primate societies today, or even gang societies of today. The leader assumes authority and provides protection and in return receives retribution. Leaders obviously recognized that they could use their authority to demand more retribution. The retribution in turn could be used to maintain a large gang, or army to both offer more protection, and also demand more retribution. For the leader the cycle could grow as large as the number of people he could subject to his rule.

This model of a leader offering protection for retribution was challenged with the model of different forms of democracy or moderated government. With democracy, the point is that the leader is subjected to the will of the people. Democracy is an effort to constrain the greed of the leader who has no reason to limit the amount of taxation he places on his subjects. But democracy can only succeed if the people are educated enough to understand how their leader is attempting to maximize his authority and make personal gains. Education is not cheap and therefore many people are not educated. And, even in our own country the wealthy were able to educate their children while not all of the rest were so lucky. By only allowing landowners the right to vote, the education of the voters was maintained.

In these early systems of “democracy” the wealthy were still able to tax those without the right to vote and thereby maintain the uncontrolled ability to take money away from those who could not defend themselves. We saw this in ancient Greece and it was the main reason for the American Revolution -- taxation without representation.

Modern political progress tends to be in the direction of giving more political power to the less fortunate. So, in order to give power to the less fortunate it was assumed that they needed to be educated in order to vote in an informed way. Since the less fortunate are less likely to be able to afford a private teacher it was determined that it was in the best interest in society as a whole to have the government sponsor education by creating public schools. Public schools could serve two purposes, to provide a way to learn basic skills, and to spread a common story of the nation to the entire population. Basic skills elevate the individual and raise him to another level of value. A common story brings people together in order to pursue the goals of the common story. Well, obviously in addition to military protection public education is a worthy recipient of our tax money. Especially if one can not control the people who vote, then at least one can control how those people view the world and use the common story to influence control of the government. It seems like money well spent.

Education is not the only universal need of a society. People need food, housing, medical attention, waste management, transportation and more. Since ancient times the system was established that people pretty much fended for themselves. People needed to find a way to make themselves useful to society, and they were rewarded for their usefulness. On an individual level a person would find a need and work to fill that need. With this in mind many people solved many problems in many different ways. However, as society grew a new concept gradually grew as well. This was the idea if efficiency. This could be seen with the concept of interchangeable parts. Instead of having each gun handmade and individual a manufacturer could make hundreds of similar parts and build hundreds of similar guns that shot similar ammunition. Suddenly the efficiency of this model was realized and guns became cheaper.

In a similar way society was being handmade on the local level. Someone would make a road that he could use and others would follow it and try to connect to other roads through a maze of streets every which way, until a path from start to finish was completed. However, it was in the interest of society as a whole to have an organized system of roadways -- and it seemed very wise to spend tax dollars on that type of infrastructure.

Some things are more efficient with organization. It makes sense to build thousands of similar weapons so that an entire army can be supplied more cheaply, or hunters can buy guns at a lower cost. But, it doesn’t make sense for a government to tell each hunter which animal to target on his hunt. At some level organization makes efficient sense, but taking the concept too far results in ridiculous bureaucracy and control. At this level of understanding it seems logical that government organization can create efficiency by implementing a system of interchangeability. Local people however know the details much better than the government and therefore should retain local control over those details.

The point remains that there are some things that organization and efficiency can solve. These are the laws, programs and infrastructure that the government should spend its resources on, and we should be grateful to pay taxes for these services. We also need to be smart enough to know when the government is wasting money and efficiency by creating bureaucracy where it isn’t needed. As educated voters we really own it to ourselves to know that these specific issues are at the crux of most tax related issues.

The real problem is that politicians don’t want us to see the whole picture. Politicians are in the business of getting people to like them. Therefore a politician is not very likely to tell you the problems with an idea. Instead a politicians is more likely to tell you the benefits. Any government program has a cost and a benefit. If you are only weighing laws and programs by the perceived benefit that a politician is giving you, then you are likely missing the big picture. Even in government it costs money to build something - anything.

Take for example the gasoline tax holiday that Senator John McCain has recently proposed. The money collected from this gas tax is already being used in our government system of programs. The money is connected to the number of gallons sold, not a percent of sales. The consumption of gasoline is fairly regular because most people drive similar routines of commuting, shopping etc. However, during the summer many people take automobile vacations and consume more gasoline than the rest of the year. Sometimes decisions to take a vacation depend on the price of gasoline, if it is cheaper they will not be deterred and maybe drive more. If it is more expensive maybe they’ll travel a bit less. Cutting the gas tax for the summer is more likely to push demand higher. Econ 101 tells us that more demand will mean higher prices. It is likely that cutting the gas tax for the summer would have the effect of increasing demand and therefore raising the price of the gasoline -- likely by the same amount that the gas tax was cut by. The result is that consumers will pay the same price for gas during the summer months. Who gets this money? Well, the Oil Companies, of course! So, cutting the gas tax for the summer will result in shifting the gas tax money from going to the government to the Oil companies instead. Or in other words we will be paying a gas tax to the Oil companies -- it is simple Econ 101.

That might be frustrating to say the least, but what happens in September when the gas tax goes back into effect? Will the Oil companies lower their prices? No! Will people drive less? No, they can’t because we are now back to the inelastic market where everyone needs to drive basically the same amount, because they are driving to work and shopping alone. They can’t cut out driving to work. They may stop shopping if their earnings don’t go up.

The point of this entire post, however, is that we certainly will always need to pay taxes for the government benefits that we need to make our society more efficient and organized. Cutting taxes was proposed by the conservatives as a way to increase government revenue. Cutting taxes was supposed to stimulate growth and therefore increase the profits that companies pay taxes on. But, now several years after the tax cuts to the wealthy we are entering into a recession. The government is paying us with welfare checks in an effort to turn the economy around. Of course they don’t want to call them “welfare” checks because only lowlife poor people collect welfare. No, instead these are tax rebates that only tax payers are eligible to receive. What are the real benefits here? Everyone always feels happy when they have found a few extra bucks, so as the recession looms the government is trying to make us feel happy. Much of the problem we as a country suffer from is our over extended debt. If we were wise educated people we would use the money to lower our personal debt. However, lowering debt doesn’t really help pull us out of recession. Instead the government is hoping that we spend it like a bonus. If we do that, then we will extend the inevitability of recession a couple of months down the road. It will happen in due time, because people are still just spending beyond their means. At some point they will collectively need to stop spending and start paying off the debt. When that happens we won’t be making so much and people will loose jobs and default on those loans. So, are those tax rebate checks really a smart way to spend our tax dollars? I don’t think so.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

The Health of a Nation

2008-04-22T12:31:00.000-07:00

I am going to concede right here at the beginning that what I am about to say is based on nothing more than the view of a couple of pictures, conjecture and imagination. However, just like there may be no truth in it at all there also exists the possibility that there is some truth. I will make my argument in the form of supporting evidence for a hypothesis and leave the rest up to some brave soul who may be willing to do this project for her thesis.

Today an interesting paper on the reverse in longevity of Americans was released. The authors claim that the results certainly are surprising, because with the progress in the development of new technology it certainly seems strange that America, the country leading the charge in medical technology, would have such a slide in the opposite direction. The conclusion is that Americans on average are dying sooner now than in 1983.

The study is available online and goes into more detail than I need for my conjecture. Figure 3 in the study shows how longevity increased in the US between 1961 and 1983 on an county by county map. This map shows quite a bit of increased longevity across the country no matter where you lived no matter if you are male or female. However, figure 3 also includes two maps for the US between 1983 and 1999. These maps show a decline in longevity for the country on a whole, and particularly in the center of the country.

If you are aware of similar maps of this type used to portray the results of presidential elections you might recognize a striking similarity between the election maps of the 2000 and 2004 presidential election and the maps displaying the change in longevity. I don’t have the numbers at hand, but by just looking at these maps one can conclude that if you live in a county that supported George W Bush in the 2004 election your longevity also decreased between 1983 and 1999. Coincidence? You be the judge.

Not only that, but the counties with the highest level of support for John Kerry in the 2004 election actually saw increases in their longevity.

There could be several reasons for this. If we look at stereotypes we might be able to figure this out. A person who supported John Kerry is likely to be a Democrat or a liberal leaning independent. And everyone knows that type. Many of these liberals are health conscious, eat healthy (maybe even vegetarian), they exercise, go hiking, walk rather than drive, and are knowledgeable about the poisons in the environment that might harm them. Everyone knows that people like this live in two major areas - the San Francisco Bay area and The New York metropolitan area. And, guess what, these are the places with the highest longevity. These places also care the most about getting the government involved in protecting its citizens with health and safety regulations. So, its no wonder that these are the places why the increase in longevity in the US is most pronounced.

But, that really does not explain why the center of the country would have a decline in longevity between 1983 and 1999. This is the area with the strongest support for George W Bush and the Republicans. The decline for women in the area is even more pronounced than the decline for men. Why? Republicans believe that the government should not intervene, basically because people should have the freedom to decide for themselves. Obviously people want to live longer and simple desire will get people to make the right decisions. Based on the Republican beliefs people living under the Republican model should be healthier because the free market allows the people to make their own decision without government interference. People want to live longer and the free market will allow for things like healthy food, cheap workout facilities, safe vehicles, safe work places, cheap and effective health care and all of desires of people who naturally want to live longer. What better experiment could we have designed to test the two strategies for creating a better healthier society?

The years of this study are quite intriguing. From the Kennedy administration until the third year of Reagan social policy was mainly old school status quo. After three years of Reagan many of these policies were crippled by that administration. Slowly as Republicans became powerful their ideology and life style choices began to spread, mainly in the center of the country. Attitudes toward the “ridiculousness” of caring about what we put in our bodies began to catch on. And, based on the maps in figure 3 people began to care less about living a healthy life, especially in the Republican strongholds. Actually, based on this evidence it might actually be possible to put someone on a scale, weigh them, and determine if they are a Republican or a Democrat. Well, maybe not, because weight is only one of the many unhealthy things that Republicans seem to continually support. They don’t want our food labeled so that we can know what kinds of poisons were used in the processing. They don’t want us to be reminded of Global Warming. They don’t like protection and safety in the work place. They don’t want us to limit cigarette smoking in public places. They didn’t want seat belts to become mandatory safety devices in cars. They didn’t want the seat belts to have shoulder belts. They didn’t want the government to pay for vaccines for the poor. They don’t like to spend money on public health services. They didn’t want to spend money protecting our troops by giving them body armor. They didn’t want to spend the money to reinforce the Humvees they were driving in the Iraq War. The list is endless. But, I need to stop before I get too angry.

The point is, do we want to continue to follow the Republican ideas about public safety and continue to say our longevity as a country decline, or do we want to look to New York and San Francisco and increase our longevity as a country?

There are about 200 countries in the world. Many of these countries are extremely poor and many people are forced to live on less than a dollar a day. Health and safety issues in these places take second or third priority behind things like getting enough to eat. Based on GDP the US is number one in the world. However, what possible excuse could we have for falling lower than the top thirty countries in the world as far as longevity is concerned? This should be considered a national disgrace. But, by the careful deflection of this issue many are still convinced that the US health care system is the best in the world. It may be the case that health care in the US is great for those who can afford it, but many people can not afford it. And, in the future, if we continue down this trail, many fewer people will be able to afford health care in the future. This election cycle both Democrat candidates are pushing health care, but as the Republicans before him John McCain thinks that health care isn’t worth the money. The money should be spent on other things like the War in Iraq. But what he isn’t thinking about is the fact that more Americans are dying because of their poor health care than from terrorist attacks over the last 20 years or more. If we really are a nation of life as George W Bush likes to tell us then the Republicans should be a bit concerned about the health of our nation.

Then again, maybe Republicans just don’t care about their longevity because of some strange religious belief. If that’s true, then maybe this all makes a bit more sense.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Something About Barack

2008-04-18T14:52:00.000-07:00

Just after Christmas Barack Obama won Iowa in the Democrat’s primary. Iowa was the culmination of months (almost years) of campaigning. Anyone living in Iowa with a bit of gumption could basically go up to any candidate and shake their hand and ask them difficult questions. This personal campaign style could not be reproduced on the national scale. But, it could be copied in New Hampshire.

Hillary Clinton started the election cycle with the blessing of the grand masters as the golden child of the Democrats. Being the golden child means that money flows in to your campaign from established donors relatively easily. Everyone else in the race needed to work hard to change the minds of many that they at least deserved a chance to be seen and heard. After all, this is the way that American elections take place.

After Barack won Iowa he was coming on strong in New Hampshire. He had “momentum.” Momentum is an elusive idea if you think about it. Do you personally think to yourself and say, “Hey, that guy just won last weeks election, I think that I’ll vote for him?” We like to think that we wouldn’t be persuaded in such an uninformed way. We like to think that we sit and listen to a candidate and think about what they say and consider whether what they say could effect us in a positive way. Of course, every politician says the things that we think will effect us in a positive way. They never, or almost never say things that will effect us in a negative way. As voters it is our responsibility to discover the ways in which one person’s positive message is our negative message. So, how do we explain momentum?

Well, Hillary managed to shed a tear just in time to slow Barack’s momentum in New Hampshire. For a moment the nation and particularly New Hampshire thought that Hillary was possibly human. The control of this collective movement of political opinion is the elixir that all politicians seek. It seemed for a short time that Hillary knew how to turn people toward her with the bat of an eye.

Fortunately for America the primary season is spread out over several months. And, what people find important one week might mean very little a few weeks later. The idea is to allow the selection process weed out the potential problems we might not like when a candidate is elected. This would be a fairly honest system if it weren’t for the politics.

Politics is much more complex than what we normally see in the election process. Politics is about relationships. And, the key to winning elections normally lies in powerful relationships. The first most obvious relationship is between the candidate and the public; normally it is a relationship that builds over time as people get to know him and he gets to know the people. However, candidates that have already established relationships with existing politicians might be able to speed up this process. A powerful politician might use his relationship the people that support him to endorse a candidate that is less well know. And, for many people that trust transfers easily. The people don’t need to learn about the candidate if a person they trust tells them to accept the candidate. This saves time all around, but it also cheats the candidates that don’t have these powerful relationships from being heard. The candidate that has a less established network of relationships is always going to be at a disadvantage no matter how good their ideas are.

Of course, these are the realities of politics in America. The problem, however, is that good ideas make a country stronger, not necessarily good networks. Candidates are elected on their ability to build good networks, and only very rarely on their good ideas. Sometimes a person with good ideas is able to break into a network by bringing those idea to key people in the network that actually care about good ideas. However, if the network is devoid of people like this it become virtually impossible to make political progress.

With Barack Obama, however, he seems to be able to bring his good ideas forward and present them in such a way that people in the network of the powerful Democrats can not ignore him. We are only in this tight primary race because Barack Obama is able to communicate in such a superior way. If he were an average politician like Hillary Clinton but outside the network he would have simply been out of the race by now.

If you have any doubt about the uphill battle that Barack has fought so far, look at the polls from before a campaign enters a state until election day for almost every state voting so far. Initial polls favored Hillary Clinton in almost every race until Barack Obama began to spread his message. The longer that the public was exposed to his message the more he climbed in the polls. Hillary was spreading her message at the same time, however voter continued to slip from her and join Barack. If everyone had voted without campaigning, then every race would have ended up like Florida, where no one campaigned; Hillary winning by a huge margin. We this same phenomena playing out once again in Pennsylvania. Barack was down by 20 points before the campaigning even started. Hillary had the race in hand, until she actually had to make her pitch - why should you vote for her? With even footing at the beginning Barack would have built a lead based on his vision alone. There would be no competition by this time. However, Barack had to fight an uphill battle changing the minds of people who had been biased in the beginning. And, surprisingly he is doing it again and again.

When I look at this evidence it is clear to me that there must be something about Barack that keeps working. People don’t change their minds easily. If he can change the minds of these people he will certainly be able to work his magic as he moves on to the general election. And, as a President of the United States he will continue to need that power of persuasion in order to build his own power network with the people in Washington. Then he can put those ideas in place and really bring about change. After all the power is in the networks even if the ideas are not.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

The Devil Inside

2008-04-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

One fundamental difference between social conservatives and social liberals pertains to what makes a person “bad.” Are people born bad or good? Can good people become bad people? Can bad people become good people? What does it take for people to be good or to be bad?

Jesus actually spoke to this repeatedly. He understood that the main obstacle for a sinner was forgiveness. The ritual rite of Baptism was a cleansing and renewal that John the Baptist brought to us. The fasting in the desert was a way for people in Jesus’ time to shed the habits of sinfulness and to renew themselves. But, when a former sinner wanted to reunite with the community the only obstacle tended to be the community itself. The community expected sin from its sinners, just like it expected goodness from its leaders.

All of this is counterintuitive if we actually think about this for a second. Are we always good? Are we always bad? Of course we are never always one or the other. We are all truly human, and humans falter and err. So, we should expect the same of other people throughout society in general.

In “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil” Philip Zimbardo explains to us how he discovered that random people will become evil by the circumstances that they find themselves in. External influence clouds the perception of what we believe to be good or bad. And soon we find ourselves doing bad things without realizing that what we are doing is bad. This was a scientific experiment that resulted in a conclusion that the researchers weren’t prepared for. This same breakdown in social norms resulted in those photos from Abu Grab in Iraq.

What Philip Zimbardo points out is that the external environment can make the probability that people will turn bad more or less likely. In fact, he is not saying that people can not resist these effects. What he is saying is that there are environments that make the likelihood that bad deeds will happen more probable. And, one element in that environment is the existence of people who disregard the rules. If an environment exists that will have a high probability of one person breaking the rules, then it becomes more likely that the next person will break the rules, and soon many people are breaking the rules until finally all of the people are breaking the rules. If we know this in advance, then environments may be created that reduce the probability of “bad” behavior.

Now, one interesting dilemma however is that when some people are given the power to judge the “goodness” of another person’s behavior then that person has an increased risk of having “bad” behavior. Within the bastions of authority we find corruption. This is not surprising, but it creates a need to “police” our authorities. Secrecy also increases the risk that someone has a higher likelihood of breaking a rule. Secrecy offers a safe zone in which no one knows what is being done. Once again this isn’t surprising. The point that is surprising is that all of us have the potential for evil within ourselves.

To sin is human. To be selfless is also human. Humans have a wide range of behavior and every one of us is capable of all of these actions.

The conservative model of crime and punishment is based on the idea that we take the bad people and separate them from the rest of us. This separation of good from evil will purify the society and we will have a better society. This model would make sense if there truly were good people and bad people. There might be a few bad people that we would not discover, because they would be able to conceal their “badness” because that is what bad people do.

However, the Christian and Liberal model of crime is not based on this idea. Instead, any Christian can tell you that we are all sinners. We all break rules and we all sin. The problem is that once a person sins then they have a personal loathing for themselves about the sin they have committed or the rule that they have broken. (Of course this is if they feel that the rule or sin was actually worthwhile.) Some sinners or rule breakers feel justified in breaking the rule or sin because they feel that the rule or sin was unjust in itself. People who speed generally feel that they are justified in breaking the rule because they can personally speed without hurting anyone or causing any problem. Other people might see a speeder and feel justified because they should also be allowed to get to their destination earlier. When the speeding actually results in an accident, then the speeder will feel remorse and self loathing. A Christian or Liberal will explain that those first speeders should not break the law for the good of the community. If the community witnesses a rule breaker then the probability of rule breaking will increase. The final result will be another accident.

A liberal will tell you that laws should exist for the good of the community. Conservatives will tell you the same thing. But the idea behind the mechanism for these laws is completely different. Conservatives want to discourage the “bad” people and encourage the “good” people. Liberals and Christians want to prevent the community from evolving into a “bad” community.

I wrote this explanation in order to point out that the Catholic Church is bound to repeat the sins of the past, because the authority in the Catholic Church does not understand the problem. Today, the Pope announced that the pedophile problem in the Church will be fixed because the Church will no longer select pedophiles to become priests. On the face of this it sounds like a good idea. Screen the potential priests and determine whether they are pedophiles. When pedophiles are found, then don’t allow them to become priests. The problem is not with the selection between good and bad people to become priests. The problem is with the environment that allows pedophiles to develop after they have already become priests. Pre-selecting non-pedophile priests and demanding that they remain celibate will increase the probability that those priests will seek sexual gratification. Obviously not all priests will chose children for that gratification, but arresting their sexual maturation to the time that they become celibate will increase the probability that they will seek people of similar sexual maturity when they do seek sexual gratification. Of course not all priest will become pedophiles, but the probability will be increased. Secrecy, mystery and authority enable priests to act on impulses that the environment nurtures.

The only real solution to this problem is to recognize the true nature of being human. Being open about being a sexual human being will allow priests to mature in their understanding of what it truly means to be human. When other priests know what everyone is thinking about on this level it allows the entire community to mature. Taking away the secrecy and forgiving each other even if one falls builds strength in the community. Ensuring that children can not be allowed to become victims puts everyone on the same page. However, realizing that sexual and emotional gratification found only in meaningful human relationships is the only real way to quell the ominous potential for this evil and will most likely never happen. And without that particular reform we will continue to have a few priests continue to sin in this way for a long time to come.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

The Center of the Country

2008-04-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

Last week I ventured on a business trip to the middle of the country. St. Louis is a major American city based on the fact that it offers major league sports teams. However, when you compare the city of St. Louis to many other American cities it seems to be a little more “laid back.” When I suggested this idea to a friend he asked, “By laid back do you mean - nothing is going on?” I actually believe that something is going on, it is just going on a bit slower than in other areas of the country.

Missouri is the “Show Me” state. Basically this self-assigned reputation suggests that people in Missouri are born skeptics. However, I don’t believe that Missourians are skeptics in all areas at all. Instead, as a casual observer it seems more likely that people from this state tend to be set in their ways until they are show to do things another way. Now, stereotypes are generally frowned upon by those who are politically correct, but when you walk into a new place and everyone is behaving in such a strange and universal way it is hard to not believe in stereotypes to some extent. In fact, the idea that people from certain places behaving in certain ways would be strongly supported by the cultural influence in an area effects the population. People who move from these areas take their culture with them as well as their genetic pool.

Missouri is also one of those states that will most likely play a significant role in the 2008 election. Missouri is also a state with a history of racial issues. For example, the Dred Scott case was argued in St. Louis. Therefore it tends to be important to understand how the people in this “compromise state” might feel toward the possibility of Barrack Obama being elected to the highest office in the land.

The first Missourian I asked about Barrack Obama laughed at me. Of course this fresh graduate from Mizzou was extremely drink and would laugh at just about anything she did have a serious disbelief in the possibility of a person of color being elected president. As I proceeded to ask her if she had heard any of his speeches, or knew what he stood for she drew a blank. She was aware that there was no possible way that any of her friends would vote for him. At that point I was happy to learn that she was not registered to vote.

Well, I didn’t feel very encouraged after listening to this (what do you call a person from Mizzou?) person tell me “the facts of life” in Missouri.

The next person that I questioned about the 2008 election wasn’t exactly from Missouri. And, since this was an informal survey that actually means nothing I will tell you what he said anyway. I began by suggesting that of course he must have voted for Barrack in the primary election, and he laughed in my face again. (I guess this is bound to happen when one spends time in the bar.) When he collected himself he asked me “In the month after 9/11 back in 2001 could you have ever imagined that we would have a black Muslim running for President of the United States?”

Well, what other answer could I have for this obviously misinformed question than, “Of course, I expected that would be the next step in our political culture.”

When this man was caught off guard by my response he said, “Hey, you aren’t being honest with me!”

Then I was able to say, “Well, that’s because you weren’t being honest with me. Barrack Obama is not a Muslim. In fact, the problem that he is currently having pertains to his membership in a Baptist church. And, last I knew the Baptist religion is a Christian denomination.”

Of course arguing with a drunk is never likely to be productive. But it does tend to bring to the surface one of the problems that our country still needs to solve. Clear lies and misinformation will continue to plague this election. Whispered innuendo will be a major force that will continue to work against what would be best for our country.

Of course the person I was arguing with was a working class person that would benefit economically from the election of Barrack Obama more than the election of either of the other two candidates. However, the economic interest of the upper class is being served by the prejudice of the lower class. This tends to be a convenient circumstance for the upper class, because they would never dare to bring it up and expose their advantage. And, when people have been raised in a culture of racism then that racism is an undercurrent that seems to be acceptable within that culture.

My daughter recently returned from a trip to Texas. Being raised in California and having friends from many different racial groups she found her experience shocking. She was in the process of visiting different schools in an effort to choose a university to attend after graduation. Most likely just because her parents graduated from Texas A&M she felt an obligation to tour this campus. The non-diversity of that school was shocking, and she announced that it was highly unlikely that she would be able to attend that school. Her host, somewhat surprised, said, “Why? You’re white and you’re not a lesbian, so you would fit in just fine.” My daughter couldn’t even grasp the comment. She must have told us this story twenty times just trying to understand where these people were coming from.

But, the rest of the country might be a bit more like the center of the country rather than the coasts. And, because of this we are in need of a major national discussion on racism. And, I offer these points as just another effort to push this conversation forward.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

A Tale of Two Wars

2008-04-04T16:06:00.001-07:00

What should America’s foreign policy be?

I just finished “reading” “Charlie Wilson’s War.” I actually listened to the audio version of it on my way back and forth to work over the last week. I highly recommend it to anyone who wonders how our government works. The book details quite a few examples of why politicians do what they do as opposed to what they say in public.

The story of our involvement in Afghanistan and the historical context around it brings up a very interesting question. If America really hated communism or socialism, why were the Republicans so dead set on the Nicaragua War and the Democrats so dead set against it? And why was the converse true of the Afghanistan War?

People who haven’t seen the movie or read the book might be surprised to discover that Charlie Wilson was a Democrat from Texas. He was actually known as the “Liberal from Lufkin.” So, why did Charlie find the Afghan cause so important and the Contra effort such a lost cause?

The answer lies in the true nature of these two different wars and in the basic ideology of the Democrats and Republicans.

The Nicaragua War began when Somaza the dictator of Nicaragua, from a merger of wealthy coffee plantation family and other wealthy families was overthrown by a group of people who organized because of the abuse they suffered under this government. The overthrow could have been viewed as a liberation of the people from the oppression of the upper class. But, because the wealthy in America fear the common people they were eager to restore this wealthy family back to power. In order to do this they hired soldiers of fortune - the Contra to fight against the new Sandinista government.

The Afghan War began when the Soviet Union marched into Afghanistan and took over the government. The country was poor and not ruled by anyone possessing huge wealth. The Soviet Union mainly wanted territory and eventually access to a port on the Indian Ocean. But, in Afghanistan the Afghan people rose up en masse to fight the occupation of this land. These people didn’t need to be paid to fight, because they would gladly give their lives to fight the Soviet Union to the death.

These wars began roughly the same time in 1979, but the Republicans quickly backed the Nicaragua Contras while Charlie Wilson, the Democrat in Congress, sought to back the Afghanis. By looking at how those two wars started it is quite clear why one party backed one war while the other party backed the other. What does justice mean? Is justice protecting your ill-gotten gains or is it protecting your freedom? Obviously each political party here in the United States has its own interpretation. One war was to restore a wealthy family to power while the other war was to win freedom for a country that was overthrown by our direct cold war enemy - the Soviets. Which war was the more noble war? Which war was a war for freedom? Which war was for the people?

It is funny (or maybe sad) to think about how the Republicans have somehow inherited the caricature of the party that is willing to fight for freedom and liberty to defend our country, when they actually don’t act that way at all. A war for freedom and liberty isn’t really worth the fight in the minds of the Republican party. But, when real assets are involved, then the Republicans jump on the band wagon waving their pitchforks shouting “kill the beast.” In reality Democrats seem to act to protect our country in a more reasonable and rational way most of the time. When they are swayed to jump into the fight it seems to be when the plight of the people is in danger. Charlie Wilson went to bat for the Afghanis when no one else cared about them. He saw a noble people fighting to free themselves from oppression. This is the same fight that many working class Americans battle day to day because they have no choice; they need to feed their families. Hopefully, as these stories are retold and the truth bubbles to the surface we will see the true colors of the American political parties when it comes to defending our country.

When we put the Iraq War in the light of these two wars fought at roughly the same time we see how a Republican congress and a Republican President used their power to manipulate the facts to present their case for war. Their motives seem to be quite clear in this light. The Iraq War has nothing to do with winning freedom from the oppression of Saddam Hussein as many Republicans would have you believe. It is obviously for the control of Iraqi oil. Well, Ok I already knew that years ago, but it is always comforting to see additional evidence backing a theory. Although evidence mounts some people will never believe that whoever they support could ever do anything wrong.

Like a said above, this book is a must read. It goes into the nuance details of how this politician with a noble goal in mind could not realize when his war was beginning to go wrong. And, by wrong I mean that the CIA support against the Soviets turned into fuel for internal conflict in Afghanistan. The result put the Taliban in power and created terrorist camps. Charlie Wilson and the CIA remained blinded by the perception of the nobility of those they supported although the extremism that beat the Soviets was slowly being turned against the United States. They believed that if they were able to bring down one super power, they could surely bring down the other, because “God is the only superpower!”

When I start hearing words tied to actions like that I begin to worry. The mind of the person who says these things is convinced not only that God is all powerful. That part I am OK with. But they also imply a second part that says I am doing Gods will. The flaw is that the person acting believes that they know what God’s will is. This frightening thought process is not only a part of the Islamic religious ideology. It is a part of fundamentalist religious ideology. Not all Muslims are fundamentalists. Just like not all Christians are fundamentalists. But, all fundamentalists have this belief that they are doing God’s will and therefore nothing can stop them from doing it. And that’s why George W Bush’s claim that he is doing God’s will in the Middle East is so frightening. Eight more months!

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

The Expert

2008-03-11T11:32:00.000-07:00

I have a teenager who knows everything. You can ask her yourself, and she will tell you straight out that she knows everything. She gets A’s in all of her classes, and this reinforces her strong belief that she knows everything. She can tell you with great certainty everything that you need to know. Of course, there are those things that she has never heard of before, but they really aren’t that important - they are way too boring. So, for the most part she knows everything that she needs to know.

At first glance one might suggest that we have it made. We don’t need to worry about her doing poorly in school, because she knows everything. We don’t need to tell her what she should be doing, because she knows everything. When we tell her about the dangers of having unprotected sex she replies, “Duh!.” When we tell her about the dangers of drinking alcohol or taking drugs she will give us the same reply. What else can I say, she knows everything.

Imagine for a moment my brilliant daughter and her sister sitting in front of the computer one evening. As her sister begins a new game my brilliant daughter responds, “Don’t do that you idiot! Use this key and do this instead. You are so stupid, how are you going to even get out of level one like this?” Of course, my response to this is to tell my daughter that she is being nasty and she shouldn’t belittle her sister like that. And, she quickly retorts, “Well, she deserves it. She is being so stupid. Come here and watch what a moron she is being.”

Obviously the previous scene is a slight exaggeration of reality. However, I am exaggerating to make a point. My brilliant daughter knows quite a bit, and even in her mind she believes that she knows everything. The truth is that she is lacking in one important aspect of life, and that pertains to social skills. She can tell you how you ought to do a number of things, and she will if she sees you doing something wrong. After all, with thirteen years of experience she is currently and expert at life. But, when it comes to dealing with her sister she uses poor judgement. She was completely correct in the fact that she knew how to play the computer game that her sister was just learning. But she did little in the way of teaching her how she should play.

My point here is that being an expert isn’t everything. Many people have become experts by that fact that they perform the same job every day. They certainly have an expertise in that area. But, we all know people who are experts, but they don’t know how they should exercise their expertise. In fact, expertise is a very important attribute that we should strive for, but there are at least two additional attributes that are also important. Judgement and creativity are also quite important.

In recent years it has become fashionable to judge our politicians based on the issues. In most cases however it becomes impossible to choose a politicians that matches squarely with your own personal political agenda. As candidates get weeded out through a series of campaigns the resulting candidates are less likely to match our own personal political agenda. And, we are left with a choice to vote for a candidate that we don’t completely agree with, or not to vote at all.

If we choose to vote, then we must invent new criteria in order to judge the candidates that we don’t completely agree with. One popular method was to pick the candidate that we disliked the least. Each candidate commonly contributed to this by issuing advertising telling us how horrid the other guy was. This type of campaign results in negative attack advertising that wearies the public and pushing the majority into hating politicians in general. A second method to pick between two similar candidates is to base your choice on personality. Of course the personality put forward by the politicians is likely to be created and marketed by people who sell soda pop and potato chips by implying that they are good for you.

The final way to choose a candidate is to look at their personal history and determine whether they exercised good judgement had expertise and used creative ways to solve problems in the past. And this method is most likely the most reliable way to choose a candidate. Of course this is the most difficult and time-consuming way to select a candidate. And, even when you go through all this trouble it is likely that those who choose to use the first two methods will overwhelm your vote. However, in a close election your informed vote just might be the difference needed to put that one guy over the top.
Just think, if people in 2000 had used this method to choose between Al Gore and George W Bush we would have had a completely different history over the last seven years. Al Gore’s “cardboard” personality lost to George W Bush’s “guy you’d like to have a beer with” personality. And we ended up with a guy with no expertise in any function of government. We ended up with a guy who exercised poor judgement in picking his cabinet and advisors. He then continued to exercise poor judgement continually there after. Finally, we ended up with a guy who had absolutely no creative thought in his head. He opted to choose between the ideas submitted by his poorly chosen staff without a thought to modify them in any way. Al Gore may have lacked the personality, but he exercised terrific judgement in his activity to rally people around environmental issues even after he lost the presidential election. Could anyone even imagine George W Bush doing anything after he leaves the White House?

Now I need to go ask my daughter who she thinks is going to be President next year, because she knows everything.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection

Total Control

2008-02-28T18:54:00.001-08:00

Twenty-five years ago I was sitting in a political science class listening to the professor explain how the extreme right and the extreme left end up in the same place - Totalitarianism. At the time I was taken by surprise. How could the extremists goals of two completely opposite ideas result in the exact same result?

From time to time that same circular diagram that that professor drew on the black board pops into my head. The diagram continues to remind me that moderation may be the best action with the most reasonable results. But, the diagram also has its subtleties. For example, are government interventions always bad? How much government intervention is too much? Can one side of the political aisle claim to be the party of less government? Isn’t it true that extreme conservatives will eventually demand the government to take control - like the Fascists of World War II?

Unless one is a true libertarian, which is a very small portion of the American electorate, Americans actually want our government to take some control. The argument isn’t really about more government and less government as the Reagan Conservatives claim. The argument is about which things the government should have a hand in. Religious conservatives want the government to control the culture. Fiscal conservatives want the government to control the working class. Environmentalists want the government to control those who feel they have a right to rape the heartland. Whoever believes in the law wants laws enforced by the government.

So, if most people want the government to intervene in some way, the question should become “What do we want our government to do?”

When we finally stop arguing over the false dichotomy of whether we want more or less government we need to begin to construct an honest idea of what we want a functional government to do. Then we can begin to move in a direction toward a solution that the majority can agree to.

Liberals and Conservatives already have many positions on many issues, and these positions suggest what the total function of government might be. The majority of Americans will agree that government needs to create laws the majority can agree to except to live by. But, what should the purpose of these laws actually be? Should laws be created to restrict the general population, because the general population can not be trusted. Or, should laws be created to restrict those who have power, because those with power can not be trusted? Or, should laws be created to empower the weak because they are at a disadvantage? Should laws be created to protect the weak? Should laws be created to protect property so that the wealthy will not be able to lose their property, even if they are careless with it? Should the government encourage or discourage risk and investment? In the simplified view, should the government control, encourage, discourage or ignore what we do as citizens in order to protect us?

I think that it is interesting to study the two paths in which extremists on the left and on the right eventually come to the conclusion that totalitarianism is the solution. Totalitarianism is type of government that controls all aspects of our lives.

Extremists on the political right are Fascists. Even though many conservatives of today claim that they want less government, they certainly do not want to do away with laws and law enforcement. If these conservatives truly believed in the idea of more freedom and less government they would be happy to be placed in the middle of some failed state like Somalia. In Somalia people are at the will of he War Lords that maintain control by force without law. In reality laws do exist, because the War Lords create their own personal laws to suite themselves. The power of force - be it military, monetary or religious is placed over those forced to obey. Many conservatives view the world based on an extension of this view. Leaders are strong and powerful and they enforce their will by creating rules enforced by power. Since this is the nature of the world the only problem with it is the way in which the rules and laws are created and enforced. If the laws could be created and enforced more fairly everyone could live in peace. Conservatives can see that the main problem is that many different leaders created many different rules and laws. If there were a way in which one universal system of rules could be created then our problems could be solved. Religious conservatives already understand that the problem is solved, because God has given us the universal guide to law. Not all conservatives agree to this. In fact fiscal conservatives believe that business should be free of law and workers should be made to conform to society’s needs. Fascists take the conservative idea of laws to an extreme where every possible law is created in order to make society run a smooth as possible. Whenever a problem is encountered, then a new law is created to fix the problem. If people don’t comply with the rule or law, then the penalty is increased until society conforms and becomes efficient. The government ends up taking control of every aspect of life.

On the other hand the left begins with the idea that workers should be able to live a reasonable life with very little constraint. Workers should be able to have the jobs that they chose to do and be paid a reasonable amount for the work that they do. Immediately we realize that there is a problem here. How can workers demand to be paid for doing a job that society does not need or want? If every person decided to run his or her own company we end up with all chiefs and no Indians to use a politically incorrect metaphor. One way to fix the problem is to demand that people are allowed to do this work and be paid to do it by law. Extremists on the left quickly find that the utopia must be created and fueled by the government. And, the people quickly find that they are forced to do work that the government needs to be done and they are paid what the government decides to pay. The leaders will continually explain that this totalitarian government is only temporary until people realize that what the government is forcing them to do is what they wanted all the time anyway. However, the future never comes and the government wouldn’t know what to do if it did come anyway. The goal ends up becoming creating rules and laws until society conforms and becomes efficient. Which means that the government ends up taking control of every aspect of our life.

So, in America we praise freedom and liberty as a check on either type of extremist. Freedom of speech allows us to question the extremists before they build up enough momentum to make all of the rules and laws that end up controlling our lives. Under the Republican controlled congress and the Bush administration our liberties and freedom were beginning to be stripped away. This is the first step in the direction of either extremist movement. Fortunately the election of 2006 was able to wrest away the congress from the extremists. Similarly, if the left were to begin to make laws restricting our freedoms and liberties another election would give some check to the right. And, once again we would see that the checks and balances of American democracy really does work.

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Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

Reflection