Dr. Forbush Thinks

Crazy Right Wing World

2012-01-10T12:52:00.000-08:00

Listening to the Rush Limbaugh Radio program is normally a call to duty for me, not a pleasure trip. But today the radio program made me smirk, then smile, then outright laugh out loud – LOL. The reason for this is my view of Republican politics from the outside looking in. Callers were complaining about how Mitt Romney “unfairly” beat-up on poor old Newt Gingrich in the Iowa caucuses and how Newt is retaliating with “unfair” ads in New Hampshire. The callers were complaining about the lies and untruths being thrown back and forth. But what made me actually laugh was when one caller actually said that these guys should hold back on all these lies until after the convention when they can throw them at the Democrats. They didn’t actually use these words, because that would mean that they actually would need to acknowledge conservatives’ modus operandi is to lie about those with whom they disagree.

The Republican candidates have been telling their constituents for almost a year now that this is the most important election of our lifetime. Since it is so important we should make sure that we get it right. But, when conservatives say “get it right” they mean, “get it RIGHT.” They don’t want to measure what the American people want and use that measure to create a policy that it acceptable to the majority of Americans. Instead they want to explain to he electorate why the minority on the far right should impose their will on the rest of us by describing utopian visions of a right wing world that they imagine existed in the minds of our founding fathers. If only the founding fathers had this one vision. Unfortunately the reality is each founding father had agreed to compromise their personal visions to create a unified vision that no one agreed with 100%. And, the irony of today’s conservative situation is that these people have not learned the lesson of this compromising principle used to form their sacred documents of “The Constitution,” “The Declaration of Independence,” “The Magna Carta,” and the “Federalist Papers.”

Now the rest of us are present as conservatives battle each other with lies, misunderstanding and misinterpretation. It is so nice to have them throw these things at each other instead of the rest of us. But it also makes me worry about the future. With all these lies going back and forth it is obvious to me that they will eventually settle on one version of “The Lie” they come to believe as true. It is frustrating for me to see the process laid out in plain sight watching people make bad choices. There is an opportunity to point out another world view while conservatives are searching for their own. There is an opportunity to point out how compromise is supposed to work. There is an opportunity to point out the futility of fighting each other for purity of vision and hopefully their fight will result in failure. But, of course failure is not guaranteed.

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Reflection

Abstractions

2010-09-22T17:01:00.001-07:00

I have always had a question in the back of my mind nagging me to answer it. But, it has always been hard for me to figure out how the question should be asked. The problem, as it turns out, is in the formulation of the infrastructure needed to understand what the question means. The problem is in trying to understand the abstractions that describe the question and in the end formulate the answer.

In simple terms, the question isn’t really that complex. It starts out as – “Who am I?”

The question could have a simple answer if I am sufficiently satisfied with knowing my name and address and perhaps a few facts about my personal history. But, I was me before I had a history. I was me before I lived in this place. I was me before I had my name. So, the question remains – Who am I?

I have had this question nagging at me since before I was able to talk, let alone be able to express it. I tried to ask it when I was young, and before I realized that it was a philosophical question. I had this question in my mind before I knew about Rene Decartes and before I knew that other people might be trying to answer the same question on their own terms. I may have asked my parents when I was young, but I had already known that the answer would be disappointing by the time I was a teenager. The problem always was that, the answers, know matter who came up with them were always disappointing.

The problem was that the question in itself assumed that the words “who” “am” and “I” were predefined and held a certain understanding in themselves. They “sort of” defined themselves in the way we define them. Therefore the abstraction of these words always defined what the answer to the question was before it was asked. In order to answer the “real” question one needs to redefine what these words mean in a more complex and specific fashion. We need to understand that “who” does not really mean “which person?” out of any available persons. Instead, “who” means the entity of being and existing as distinguished from the rest of the universe. The “who” is the distinction made between being and not being. The “who” is the distinction made between my being and your essence of being which is different from the matter that I occupy currently. In fact, I could take each atom of carbon in my body and exchange it for another completely different atom of carbon from a completely different location in space. I could continue to do this with every type of atom that makes up my body and I contend that I would still be me even if all my matter were replaced. That is because we believe that every single atom is exactly the same as every other atom of the same type. Nothing distinguishes one carbon 12 atom from another carbon 12 atom. They could all be exchanged. And such is the case for every other type of particle in our bodies. So, the “who” I refer to is an abstraction that means more than any single body that “I” may occupy.

And, while I am at it, we have problem with the ways in which the words “am” and “I” are abstracted in our thoughts. What do we mean by “am?” Am in English is a manifestation of the being verb. Being is a short cut for describing our existence. And, the heart of this question lies in the fundamental reality our existence. How do I exist? How is it that I exist? What does it mean to exist? All of these questions mean address slightly different aspects of the idea of existence even though none of us has any way of knowing anything other than existence. Why is it that I exist here and I don’t exist there? Why is it that I exist now and I don’t exist then? Will I exist again after I have exist now? This idea of existence becomes the abstraction for the concept of Heaven and Hell. When I exist after I have existed then I will exist in another place and time for eternity. Or, so we are lead to believe. The entire idea of the word “am” is caught up in the complex abstraction our understanding of being and not being.

And finally the reflexive understand of “I” is asked with the abstract understanding of the “I” that we refer to. I is understood to be the one asking the question. However, the I asking the question is no longer the same I after the question is asked. The whole abstraction of who the questioning I is is caught up in the belief that an entity exists longer than an instance. However, we all know that we change in time. We are no longer the same person that we were 1, 5, 10 years ago. The fact is that we really can never be the person we were a moment after we make a choice and we are those choices moment after moment. In fact the totalness of our story from birth until now are need to understand who the "I" refers to.

Even though the question “who am I?” seems like a simple easy six letter question in English it is perhaps the most complex question that we will ever ask. It is the personal accumulation of a life’s work. The question may never be answered because the effects that we have on those around us may effect generations. We can answer the question with a name and an address because that name and address are a place holder or an abstraction for who we are and the effect that we may have on the future. But the true answer is still left to be written.

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The Myth of American Meritocracy

2010-08-23T15:41:00.000-07:00

I will admit that I am a glutton for punishment. Whenever I have a radio nearby and I remember that Rush Limbaugh is on the air I have an uncontrollable urge to check in for 10 to 20 minutes and find out what he is ranting about. It almost always kicks up the ire in me and reminds me why I can’t get too complacent. It reminds me that there are people out there that believe this garbage and they will continue to believe it until they have an alternative point of view to put it against.

Today was another one of those days. I flipped on the radio and began to listen.

After all the commercials for the “fear” products. (Gold to hedge your bets on the economy, Privacy software, etc…) I heard Rush tell his audience how in America we live in a meritocracy. The definition of a meritocracy is given to be how one rises to the top based on ones merit. This idea fits into the capitalist myth that the best products survive, the best ideas survive and the weaker things fail. The problem with this assertion is that counterexamples abound. Just look at Unix, Microsoft Windows and Apple OS to name a one. Windows trudges on in this capitalist system regardless of the fact that it is by far the worst of these three operating systems. The real truth is that the product with the most aggressive marketing wins, regardless of whether the marketing is true or false. And, products that have a market presence are more likely to maintain it than an equal newly introduced product. The bottom line is that products do not excel merely on their merit and neither do people.

In the case of people, marketing and prior standing are more important than merit. Now, I am not saying that merit does not mean anything. Of course merit is part of the equation. But it is certainly not the only nor the most important parameter in the equation. We can envision society having positions to fill in the shape of a pyramid. As one rises there are fewer and positions with higher and higher value. If we imagine that those at the top award the vacancies as they appear then they award them to there family and friends before they fill them with those who truly merit the positions. Therefore some of the positions will be awarded by merit, but for the most part family and friends will be rewarded first.

Imagine a simple example. I don’t believe that I need to specify names and companies, but the general family business is founded, grown and eventually passed on to an heir. In general, do you believe that the heir has earned the company through merit? It may be the case that some heirs may have made daddy proud, but to the point of being better than the average MBA? If a classmate to an heir had applied for the same position do you think that daddy would have used merit to determine who would get the job?

The point is, America is not a meritocracy. America has some aspects of a meritocracy, to the point that for positions in the upper reaches of society there are some open spaces for some new people to rise into that society. But by all means America’s upper reaches of society is not occupied exclusively by people who have earned the right to be there. This is a myth, and we all know this. The heirs to the “old” money in this country more than likely do not deserve their positions in the upper class. They were born into their positions. And, we all know this, because we know that Paris Hilton did not merit her money or her fame. And, neither do many other lesser known rich folk.

Every single one of us knows that people get hired because they know someone. Every single one of us knows people who are employed that do not deserve the position that they are in. Every single one of us knows that money talks and if you already have the money then you are more likely to be able to persuade people to do what you want regardless of the merit of an idea. The old boys network is a prime example of this in action. The old men in society are connected because of their interactions with each other. These networks are powerful enough to influence city councils, mayors and other politicians regardless of the merit of a project or proposal. Merit is secondary to the will of the few people who pull the strings. Perhaps when a couple of the old boys can’t come to an agreement, then they may give it to the people to decide. Then each side pours in the money in order to persuade the people to their side of the argument.

The conservative right knows this too. Rush Limbaugh knows this. Because, if they really believed that people in America rose in society because of merit, and they supported this idea, then they would certainly be advocating the inheritance tax as a means to force those freeloaders to earn the rewards of upper class positions in society by the merits of their actions and accomplishments rather than the wealth of their daddy. You just can’t rationally support the idea of a meritocracy and be for any form of passing wealth on to the next generation through anything but merit. And, the next generation should be given equal rewards for equal merit. Students who excel should earn free education. Jobs should be awarded based on merit, not who you know. The old boys network should be seen as the Mafia network that it really is. Our society should not perpetuate the myth of a meritocracy until there is evidence that supports this as fact.

Anyway, thanks Rush for inspiring me to write another blog after being quiet for so many days.

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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

Just One Question – Why?

2010-03-24T14:35:00.000-07:00

Anger is in the air. Listen to right wing talk radio and it is as if we have been attacked. Read the conservative opinion pieces and we can learn that the world has changed for the worse. On Sunday night the vulgar language spewed out of the mouths of the minority in the sacred halls of congress. So, if conservatives have so much respect for tradition and the sanctity of the halls of history then why have they reacted as if the institution is crumbling before their very eyes? Why?

In order to answer this question one needs to understand how the levers of power are pulled. One needs to understand what is the real issue and what are the facades built to give the illusion of freedom, liberty and democracy in our country.

The real fight in the USA is between the property owners and those who are exploited to serve the property owners. This is a fight that has existed since the dawn of time. In ancient times when people first left their nomad ways and began to farm someone needed to control and oversee the operation of these farms. And, controlling the property had the advantage of controlling the flow of wealth not only to their family and friends, but also to future generations. The American Revolution was a struggle between the property owners in England placing claim on their property in the new world. When the Americans revolted the English property owners lost control and lost huge chunks of property.

Of course there will always be an owner to every bit of property, because property is needed to conduct business or provide a place to live. Property is a renewable resource that insures personal livelihood as well as future generations success. As our society has evolved from an agrarian society to a modern society our concept of property has expanded to include homes, factories, buildings, companies, intellectual property and other forms of capital. In a similar evolution the means to protect these things have evolved to into a complex set of laws and regulations that insure that property is passed on to future generations, and the rest of society is molded into a type of property that these property owners can use for the means of production.

If you have any doubts into what I am saying, them imagine the typical “company town” of the 19th or 20th centuries. A property owner has land in some remote location that he wishes to exploit. He advertises for people and brings them to his company town where every business is controlled by the land owner. Freedoms and liberty are sacrificed for the success of the company. However, the workers are paid a “fair wage” and never share in the profits in a boom year. The workers are treated as replaceable pieces in a machine and they are replaced when they are worn out. This is the ideal situation for a property owner, and to believe otherwise is to ignore history. If the property owner were allowed to capture people and force them into labor they surely would. Only anti-slavery laws stand in the way of this being a common practice. Slavery still exists in places where the property owners are able to hide the practice from the government's prying eyes. This is because this is the natural proclivity of the property owner – to find the cheapest and most efficient way to secure and expand his property for future generations.

Republicans are and have been the party of the property owners since the 1960s when the civil rights movement captured the Democrat party. The civil rights movement was mainly about saying that people who didn't own property had rights as well as those who did. Of course these ideas existed long before the 1960s, but these ideas had no real power because of the political illusions that existed to make people believe that they had a voice in government. Even today it is much more difficult for a laborer to gather support and be elected than it is for a property owner.

Laws have been made in very creative ways that limit the number of non-property owning law makers in government. This result in few law makers that are willing to change the status quo. And, as a result workers are treated as pieces in a machine where the cost of maintaining the pieces needs to be balanced against the cost of buying a new part. Some parts just wear out and that's just the price of doing business. Isn't it understandable then that property owners would become upset when they are told that the government wants them to maintain their machines?

Of course property owners are going to be upset with the situation. But they can not easily put voice these views in the public. This is because property owners are now a very small fraction of the population. Most people don't own their home and have few real assets. If these people realized that they were being exploited as they truly are, then they would rebel as the slaves of Haiti once did. The results wouldn't be great for anyone, but the property owners might suffer the worse fate – being stripped of their property.

Property owners have instead created a complex array of illusion and double talk to explain the situation. They have created the illusion that anyone can easily become a property owner with enough hard work, while they pay the average worker just enough to shelter and feed themselves. They have created the illusion that one brilliant idea will move a worker to riches beyond imagination while protecting the company's right to all intellectual property produced within the company. Property owners use the legal system to litigate any challenge such that the person with the deepest pockets prevails. It could even be argued that the quality of education in property owning communities is better than non-property owning areas. This discrepency in education allows the property owners to maintain control of the power structure.

As the curtain is pulled back from the levers of power it becomes more obvious as to why some people are angry about the passage of health care reform. The real problem however is how this anger is transmitted to the rest of society. People who are non-property owners should not be upset about this. Even small business owners should be happy that there will be a safety net when the banks call in their loans. Small businesses should realize that they are not the property owner for the most part, the bank is. If there is a possibility that you could find yourself begging for a handout, then you should realize that this health care reform law could help you in the long run.

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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

After the Fact

2010-02-19T17:30:00.000-08:00

After the Fact

Faith vs. Reason is the basic cultural divide in the US today. This divide isn’t as clear-cut as one might guess at first glance. “Faith in science” and “reasoned theology” have both surfaced over time. Faith and reason are tools that people have used to forward their personal self interest over the years as well. The details of what one believes to be faith becomes murky as time separates the epiphany event from the eager student new to the faith. Similarly new students in science need to believe that the previous scientists have used the proper methods and reasoning as they learn the lore of science. No modern scientist can reproduce every experiment that has built the edifice of knowledge that has given us the shoulders of giants that we now stand on. So, when we stand back and look at the regular people who are neither experts in religion or science we should be able to empathize with their confusion as to which they should pledge their allegiance.

The problem with this debate between faith and reason is that we all carry our personal bias into this debate. We have all learned how to look at the world from an early age and we carry that world view into the argument. We find it easy to persuade others with our same world view by using our common basic assumptions about the world as we argue for a world view that we already believe to be true. These two world views do not matter in our day-to-day living, and therefore they are not challenged on our day-to-day existence. However, these grand world views do have an impact on how we should govern ourselves, and how we view our purpose in the world.

The truth of the matter is that there really isn’t a dichotomy in world views. Instead, there is a plurality of world views. The reality is that there really isn’t a debate between faith and reason. Reality is not known by any of us, no matter which side of the debate that you fall on. Those on the reason side can only know for certain what we can measure for certain. But one knows that knowing everything is futile because we have limitations to those measurements. Those on the faith side of the argument are limited to communications with the supernatural no matter what faith one believes.

The bifurcation between faith and reason quickly breaks down into multiples of different communications with the supernatural and multiples of informed reason biased by the cultures from which the reasoner was born into. Even if one who reasons could understand the observable world one would certainly need to concede that there does exist an unobservable portion of the universe. And, finally ethics and morality can not be based solely on reason. Biology or mathematics can not tell us that stealing from our neighbor is wrong. We may observe that when someone steals from us we feel loss, but we can not prove that the loss is not a good thing. We know from example that pain can be good for us. We could even use logic to determine how to minimize human suffering, but we can not prove that this is a good thing in the long run.

For example, if we believe that evolution is the process in which humans have become reasoning beings. And, if we believe that reasoning beings can evolve into something even better. Then we must believe that beings that lack the new desired trait will eventually need to die before they can reproduce, because this is how evolution works. So, reasoning people are faced with a dilemma that can not be reasoned – Which is more important, the evolution of the species or the weak individual lacking the superior-trait? Our current culture biases us toward the individual, but it is only faith in this culture that prevents us from sliding into another way of looking at this. This faith has nothing to do with a superior being. Ancient societies believed that culling of the weak offspring would make the tribe stronger in the long run. With all of our understanding of the science of evolution we have chosen to allow our tribe to get weaker because of our cultural bias toward the weak.

It is our Christian culture that teaches us to feel pity for the weak in our society. If it wasn’t for Jesus telling us to feel pity for the poor, the sinners and the lepers then we might have continued to put these people out of our society for the good of our society. Today we take it on faith that Jesus was right, but God told Moses differently. This is a very complex argument with implications on our society for thousands of years into the future, but most of us haven’t thought about it. Even if we were to learn by some scientific method that there was a group of people that harm our society because of the genes that they carry, would we decide to make our future society better by removing them from breeding?

We can look at this problem from the other side as well. Those of faith believe in their hearts that a supreme being is molding our society with his hand. If the weak in our society can’t cut it, then this supreme being will put those people out of their misery. The more powerful are smiled on and they are able to have more children and pass their heritage down through the generations. Whether one believes in genes or evolution, this is how society has been working for eons. Believing in faith alone would be to continue this process. There are rules that are taken on faith and they can not be challenged, because to challenge the rules would be to challenge the whole system.

Our society exists in four dimensions, on earth in three dimensions, plus its projection into time. The question is – How long will our society exist into the future and why?

Man has evolved the ability to predict the future through reasoning. Or, man has been given the gift of predicting the future by reasoning from his creator. Either way, man has this ability and it should be used, either to honor his creator, or to further the success of the species. This fact should not be argued; both sides of the debate should agree on this. It is not a black or white question. Whether one believes in faith or science both camps should agree that man should further the existence of the species with reasoning. Man should exam the threats and reason for solutions to those threats.

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with this. Some believe that one should put complete faith in the supreme being. This attitude poisons the debate. And, in order to defend the position some on the side of faith will argue absolutes. This means that one should be absolutely sure of a problem before one should take preventative measures. This same argument would mean that no one should buy insurance even when the risk of danger is very high. Because, unless one is certain that their house will catch fire then one shouldn’t waste money on insurance. In addition, no one should repair a house unless one is certain that the house is going fall down. One shouldn’t learn to swim unless one is certain they will fall out of a boat, or into a pool. One should not learn to hunt unless one is certain that the stores will be shut down for weeks. One should just pray that nothing bad will happen, unless it is forewarned and certain.

The problem, of course, is that no one but God can be certain of anything. Even when a hurricane is baring down on the coast, it might just move to east and nothing happens to you. And by definition no one can be certain so no one should prepare for anything. This attitude ignores the gift of reason given to us by God or by evolution. It doesn’t really matter how we got the gift of reason, but it does matter that we use it.

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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

Crazy Health Care

2009-09-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

It drives me crazy every time I hear someone utter the factually incorrect statement that the US has the greatest healthcare in the world. I heard it again today on a radio talk show and the comment wasn’t even challenged. Of course this didn’t surprise me, because this assertion is never challenged.

Now, to be fair, there are certain ways that the USA could be ranked number one in health care. If by “best” we mean “most expensive,” then we might be in the running. However, if we would measure quality of health care as a function of healthy outcomes then the USA is not even close.

If we start by making the assumption that the goal of having a good health care system is to prolong life we might start by looking at the list of countries ranked by the number of deaths in a country per 1000 people living in the country. By looking at this list we see that the US is ranked about the center of the list ranked from highest to lowest -- 94th with a rate of about 8.1 deaths per 1000 out of over 200 countries. ( 2009 List by the CIA World Factbook) This does not tell us everything, but it does tell us that countries like Mexico have rates much lower than ours. Why?

There could be other problems just looking at this number, because some countries have younger populations than other countries. A younger country should have a lower death rate than an older country by the mere fact that everyone eventually dies. So, lets assume that the goal of health care is to allow people to live as long as possible. The measure of success then would be the life span of the average citizen in the country. If we rank countries from the longest life span to the shortest, we find the US ends up at 50th out of over 200 countries with an expected life span of 78.11 years, while Japan finishes near the top of the list with 82.12, Australia has 81.63 and Canada 81.23. With these numbers how can anyone still argue that the US has the best health care in the World?

What exactly is a person thinking when they claim that the US has the “best” health care in the World? How do they measure best? It is true that within the borders of the USA there exists some very good health care. And, it is true that if someone has unlimited resources they would be able to have access to some of this very good health care. The problem is that many people in the US do not have access to this care. And, hence these people pull the average life expectancy of the US down.

So, if someone asserts that the US has the best health care in the World they must be asserting that their own health care is part of the elite few that have access to this advanced health care. They are also asserting that they really don’t care what happens to the population that does not have access to this elite care. Of course this is sad and selfish, but in the USA we do not have laws against being selfish and most people are numb to the suffering of others.

But, even the assertion that a person has access to the elite health care that exists in the USA is suspect. This is because many people are covered by insurance that they have only rarely used. This is because many people in the US never go to a doctor for a yearly physical. Insurance companies don’t see any benefit in having people see a doctor on a yearly basis, because it costs them money and they are in the business of collecting revenue and figuring out ways to avoid paying any money out. Insurance companies are in the business of making a profit, and any layout goes against the bottom line. It isn’t in the interest of the insurance company to care about the health of its customers. In fact, it is in their interest to see that their customers die in the cheapest way possible.

A person normally doesn’t learn the effectiveness of their insurance until the insurance is needed. And, when the insurance is needed its too late to change coverage. And, when the insurance is needed the trauma of the situation clouds ones vision of the financial picture. Many people with what they believed to be “good” insurance find themselves bankrupted and embarrassed by finding out how poor their coverage was when they needed it. This embarrassment prevents them from sharing this with their family and friends.

The silent killer in the US health care system is the fact that health care costs have been rising over the last 20 years. People may have had favorable experiences with their insurance companies over the years, but their current situation may have changed over the years. Many procedures and drugs are no longer covered under some plans. Employers are buying cheaper coverage that covers less with higher deductibles and co-payment options. This means that more money comes out of your pocket before the insurance company pays anything.

Eighteen years ago the US was already a very expensive health care system. I know this from personal experience. My daughter was born in Germany in a private hospital. I was working for a US company and therefore my US insurance would cover the hospital and delivery costs in Germany. I just needed to get the bill and send it to the insurance company. As my wife went through prenatal care and through the birth of my daughter I submitted the bills to my health insurance company. The total at the end of the process was completely covered by my health insurance. And, the company could not believe that I had submitted all of the bills in total because the cost of my wife spending an additional three days in the hospital “should cost much more” as the insurance company wrote to tell me. The German bill noted each procedure and expense in meticulous detail -- even to the extent of pointing out that I was being charged an inflated cost because we were covered by private insurance.

The question we should be asking is -- Why was there such a disparity in cost between the US system costs and services and the German system? I would assert that it must be greed in the US system. I would also assert that greed itself is not illegal, but it preys on people when they are in very vulnerable situations. Greed in health care pushes suppliers to encourage patients to over spend. The emotional situation urges the loved ones of the ill to “do whatever is possible.” There is no natural limitation to this spending except the bottom of each person’s money supply.

I know that this greed is real from another personal experience. I was involved in a project to develop one of the first MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines. At that time we called it NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), because the technique actually causes the atomic nuclei to resonate. When we talked with doctors they told us many quite interesting things that gave me insight into the health care industry.

The first thing they told us was that the word nuclear needed to be dropped, because nuclear was a scary word and people would not want to subject themselves to a machine that used nuclear anything. Of course, MRI is one of the safest forms of imaging, applying a magnetic field and electric field and measuring the magnitude of the resonance signal of particular nuclei in order to map the density of water in the body for example. This is much less dangerous than using X-rays that can cause mutations when they hit the DNA in a cell.

The next thing they told us was that the MRI pictures were three dimensional and multi colored. The colors did not look like the colors in the body, so it would be much better if we could make them look more like X-ray pictures. Obviously the doctors could not recognize the advantage of the new technology and they would prefer that the new technology was only slightly better than the older technology so that the doctors would be more likely to adopt the new technology. Obviously this is something to keep in mind whenever one takes a trip to the doctor.

And the most frightening revelation of all was that the doctors told us that they were happy that the new technology was cheaper to operate than the previous technology. But, it was new technology, therefore they could charge more for it. The most important implication was that the profit margin would be larger with the new technology.

The summary of this is that the doctors were willing to make the technology less effective, they were willing to lie to the patients by changing the name of the machine and they wanted a higher profit margin. I have to tell you that I have had a very skeptical view of all doctors because of this experience. I think that we should all be more skeptical.

When I was in Germany I noticed that the doctors were much more friendly and willing to share what they didn’t understand as well as what they did understand. I felt more connected with the process. I felt like my questions were listened too and thought about. In the US this is much less frequently the case.

Anyway, I am still very confused at the assertion that the US has the best health care in the World. If anyone knows of any evidence that supports this I would love to read it. Please tell me what you know I am all ears.

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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

Multiculturalism

2009-08-12T17:53:00.001-07:00

In order to understand multiculturalism we need to understand culture. Culture is a word that gets thrown about by the common man and has a specific definition by anthropologists. But, culture is a confusing concept to understand from a member of a culture. And, of course, everyone of us is a member of our own personal culture.

Culture is a collection of beliefs, traditions, shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize a group of people. Sometimes that group of people is an ethnic group. Sometimes that group of people is an organization. Sometimes that group of people is a nation. Culture can be referred to as a positive attribute when it is addressing the finer things of a self proclaimed “advanced culture.” Culture can refer to an attribute of a particular culture. But, no matter how we look at it we are immersed in our own culture and we are bias when we compare our own culture to other cultures.

Since culture is a collection of shared beliefs -- shared by the members of our own culture it is difficult to find members of our culture that disagree with these “shared” beliefs. With this in mind it is quite well understood in abstract how difficult it is to change a culture.

When two cultures come in contact with each other it should be clear to understand how conflicts will arise. Lets look at two cultures -- jocks and nerds. I chose these two cultures because I know that most of my readers are not members of either of these cultures and therefore will not be biased by their personal membership in one class or the other. If you are a member of either of these cultures, then you may need to skip this example. In a typical jock culture we could easily understand that the way to solve a problem is with brawn, muscle or strength. And similarly we could imagine that the credo of the typical nerd is to solve every problem with brainpower. With this in mind we can easily imagine that working together to solve a problem might not work out so well. And in addition we can also imagine that creating a fair way to solve conflicts might also run into trouble. Any measure of strength of culture will be greeted with calls of cheating from the other side. Any member of one of these groups will find difficulty in understanding the values of the other group.

Most of us might actually realize the value of both muscular strength and brainpower. This might be a cultural value shared by many westerners -- the value of power and strength no matter what kind it might be. This might be extended to the power of money, the power of learning skills, the power of knowledge… And now we see the problem with understanding culture. No matter what the issue, when we look at different cultures we are always comparing them with our own culture. Even if we don’t identify ourselves with jocks or nerds we still have our own cultural values. We might have decided our own “best strategy” for dealing with problems. We might have a priority list of ways to deal with problems. We might believe that the best way to deal with a problem is how we feel like dealing with it when we meet it head on. We might have already concluded which culture is superior to the other based on own culture.

Ironically, one cultural attribute is the value that a culture places on cultural beliefs and traditions. Some cultures value these above common sense or scientific studies. Other cultures are willing to adjust these values. And, then there are cultures that see these beliefs and traditions as old and outdated. In the United States currently there is a “culture war” based on the value of cultural values themselves.

In light of the “culture wars” it might be interesting to think about the origin of cultural values themselves. If we think about it, people are always telling stories about their personal experiences. When these experiences offer life lessons, then the stories will be repeated again and again. Life lessons are important ways to learn about the dangers of the world. Repeat the good things and avoid the bad things. But, just because it appeared that a story turned out one way because of an action or inaction does not mean that there really was a connection. And, the stories that proved on repetition to be wrong will eventually be dropped from the list of useful stories. Over time a culture of stories emerges and propagates. But, because the story exists does not mean that the lessons are the right ones. The evolution is always in progress. Jumping up and down on the left foot before battle does not always insure victory. But, the story and tradition might continue “just in case.” However, storing food for winter tends to work more often than it doesn’t.
After the end of the Second World War the world was poised to accept a huge number of scientific breakthroughs and studies. Many traditions were proven false and brought all tradition under scrutiny. Science could be applied to many aspects of our lives. Scientific method was used to break down additional traditional ideas. The zeitgeist suddenly questioned tradition in general. Traditions suddenly needed to defend themselves. The World War II soldiers came home after being exposed to a world of different cultures. The time was ripe for change.

Traditions don’t change quickly. The older people were brought up with the older traditions and the like what they know. Even obvious problems, like segregation, don’t change easily. The act of embarrassing the southern tradition with live broadcasts of civil rights demonstrations might have brought attention to the inequality in this foreign society as seen from around the world. But when one is brought up in this culture biases are still hard to overcome. The spirit of the 1960s was a powerful force, but it was by no means universal. As the traditions of each cultural group came under attack these groups reacted as expected -- to defend the traditions of the group. Society became divided into the traditionalists and the progressives. Traditionalists sought to propagate tradition regardless of the reasons for those traditions. Progressives sought to change traditions. Each group has a different problem. The traditionalists needed to defend their traditions in the light of scientific inquiry. Progressives needed to invent new traditions to replace the old if they could. This is because when a tradition is removed, then something new usually is needed to fill the void.

As time has progressed the situation has become more clouded. In the beginning the traditions like segregation and discrimination were easy targets for progressives. The next obvious target was the tradition of polluting the environment. It turned out that this was much more difficult to fight. Some traditions seem to be stupid and easy to fix, but for every tradition there is a group that the tradition belongs to. And that group will always fight to retain the tradition no matter how stupid it looks to the rest of us. As laws were written to clean up pollution in the 1970s, they also included loopholes intended to preserve the traditions of dumping and destroying as much as the public would tolerate.

Traditions can limit our freedom. But, traditions can also provide a time to go wild and allow chaos in a controlled way as well. Progressives have often been branded as having loose morals, because they have often fought to introduce additional forms of families, including divorced couples, same sex couples and multi-generation families. But, progressives have also fought to reduce drunken driving accidents by questioning the traditional holiday party culture. Some of these activists may not have considered themselves to be progressives, but anyone who fights tradition is a progressive. Ronald Reagan was a progressive when he determined that the tradition of a balanced budget wasn’t as important as borrowing money to pay for military programs even though building the most powerful military possible might be his tradition to trump all others.

Some people do not understand the scope of traditions. Some traditions encompass very small groups of people down to the size of an individual family. Other traditions cover people living on the entire planet. Some traditions cover religious groups while other traditions cover entire nations. Each individual orders the traditions he is exposed to by personal importance. When a person that values traditions differently or has different traditions altogether, then conflicts may arise. When individuals value these differing traditions very highly, then these conflicts may become very serious, resulting in wars and death. When one values their own traditions above all others, then these conflicts may be unavoidable. So, it should be clear that traditions are quite important.

Now, the United States is not one culture. In fact, in reality no country is just one culture no matter how hard people try to create one. The problem is that each individual has a choice in honoring each tradition. The existence of a tradition does not determine its value as a tradition. The observance of a tradition is what gives a tradition value. Just because Martin Luther King Jr. Day is on the calendar doesn’t mean that Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed by the majority of people in the US. Where are the parties and the celebration?

Tradition is more than its very existence. Tradition can not be forced on anyone. But, when one tradition replaces another it surely scares people, because it signals that thing are changing and they may be left behind.

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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

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

Risk

2008-02-14T15:15:00.000-08:00

I have written before that in general conservatives operate on fear while liberals operate out of necessity.

Let me briefly review this idea. In general conservatives are the successful wealthy business people who fear losing what they have - money. Or, conservatives are the morally upright religious zealots who fear that society could go down the toilet at any moment. These two groups represent the majority of conservatives. Progressives however, feel that the world has already caved in all around them. Progress is anything that can help them dig out of this mess. Progressives are willing to try almost anything to fix the problems in society, while conservatives fear that anything new will lead to the downfall of everything they have come to love.

Since the people who are happy with the way things currently are is usually a smaller number than those who believe that they are up to their necks in shit conservatives needed to craft a way to convince those in need to vote to change things to the way they have been. The idea that change back to the “old ways” was a progressive change was championed by the Reagan revolution. Fear and progressive change have been the guiding principles of American politics for a long time.

Well, it actually turns out that the majority of people actually reside somewhere in the middle. These moderates fear change that is too rapid, but they want some change to help them out of the doldrums. For these people “fear” and “change” are words that can move them to support a candidate. Reagan used “change” to move these people to his side. George W Bush used “fear” to keep them there in 2004.

The truth of the matter is that we should worry a bit about change. But, we should also recognize that change can happen for the better.

It is easy for people to become fearful of terrorism. Obviously seeing 3000 people killed in one day in an orchestrated terrorist effort is scary. I don’t need to say this, but we all know that death is a bad thing. But, death does not only come from terrorist attacks. Death comes in many preventable ways. And, progress happens when we can reduce unnecessary death no matter where it comes from.

But, how can we know which efforts to defeat unnecessary death should be taken on, and which efforts should not? We have limited resources and we can only do so much. This is known as risk. We can calculate risk by what we observe. For example, we can count the number of people killed by terrorist attacks and divide by the number of years that we examine. We can quickly see that even before the security measures taken on by the government we have had relatively few people die in terrorist attacks per year. We can compare this to automobile accidents and we quickly realize that driving our cars is much riskier than going back to our old level of security before 9/11/2001.

But, fear rules and conservatives are controlled by their fear. Our conservative government has told us to be afraid and to do whatever we can no matter what the cost in order to protect ourselves from terrorism. We have spent billions of dollars in Iraq fighting a war out of the fear that terrorist will attack us again. We have spent billions of dollars trying to prevent terrorist attacks that rarely happen. We could calculate how many lives have been saved by counting the number of deaths due to terrorism occurring in the seven years leading up to 9/11 and compare that to the number of lives lost in the prevention of terrorism since 9/11. We can include the amount of money spent and we will quickly come to the realization that we have lost more lives and spent more money based on irrational fear than before 9/11. The risk of terrorism was small and it is still small. We have lost more lives. It is almost as if we are paying terrorists to kill our soldiers. If we used a balance sheet that would be the conclusion.

But, the sad and frustrating part of this wasted effort is that the money could have gone to save lives instead. One example is our health care system. It turns out that roughly 18,000 people die each year because of lack of health care. That is equivalent to six 9/11s per year. Many of these people could have been saved if they had the health care that a civilized country like the United States has available to every citizen. With preventative care and regular checkups many lives could be saved or enhanced. The billions of dollars that we are wasting in Iraq to bring that country up to the twenty-first century could have been used to bring our poor and needy up to this century instead.

The foes of open borders continue to complain that immigrants too easily have access to services provided by our country. However, we freely give this same aid to Iraqis in an effort to appease them so that they will not join the insurgents. This may be working, but if we weren’t their in the first place it wouldn’t have even been an issue. And, if we had assessed to risks in a proper way we would never have gone into Iraq anyway.

Fear can be tempered by considering the risk involved. Fear of driving to and from work is almost zero for most commuters. The risk of this drive is far greater than to probability of being attacked by a terrorist. Roads could be made safer, but fear has persuaded the hand of government to spend more money on the terrorist “threat” and less on our roads.

The biggest problem that we face is not terrorism, or roads, or even health care. The biggest problem that we face is the education of our children. It turns out that we could make very good decisions based on the calculation of risk. However, our education system has cheated so many people in our society from having a useful education that politicians, if they actually can think, are able to persuade the public to fear risks that are as tiny as the threat of another terrorist attack. If we don’t educate our society to think, we will surely become a society where the wealthy and well-to-do minority will be able to control the rest of us through our ignorance. The erosion of our education system will ensure that any progress that we have made over the last 50-some years will erode as well.

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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

Witch Trials

2008-02-11T15:10:00.000-08:00

Many years ago the Catholic Church began to worry about evil. At the time the Catholic Church reasoned that Satan was an angel created by God. Satan had originally been called Lucifer, and he was a favorite of God’s many angels. One interesting thing was that the Catholic Church never questioned the idea that God might actually play favorites and actually have a favorite angel. The story tells us that Lucifer turned his back on God because of his personal pride and fought a war against the angels that chose to stick with God. In the end Lucifer was banished from Heaven.

Well, Lucifer was not happy being banished from Heaven so he decided that he would tempt God’s latest creation - man. Tempting man in the form of Eve was literally “child’s play.” And, God was upset with Lucifer’s triumph in the mortal realm. So, God told Lucifer that he could no longer influence man directly. This was somehow meant to reassure us that we didn’t need to fear Lucifer around every corner tempting us.

The Catholic Church, however, had a problem. They observed the fact that there was certainly evil in the world. And, they knew that Satan had been banned from directly tempting man, from this story. So, how was Lucifer tempting evil in this world? They finally realized that man was being tempted by witches. Witches were human beings that could get around God’s ban on Lucifer’s dealing in the mortal realm. Witches certainly must be tempting man as a proxy for Satan. And, the obvious conclusion is to put the witches to death and secure a world free from evil.

Suddenly this story seems very familiar to me. If it doesn’t sound familiar to you then I’ll offer a little more.

The Catholic Church became so worried about how the witches were operating in the mortal realm that they set out to round up the witches. They looked for people that appeared suspicious. They might be people that didn’t act like a “normal” person. They arrested those who were suspicious and took them to a detention center.

Obviously a witch was evil by the very definition. And an evil one would certainly attempt to cover up their affairs by lying. And therefore anyone who would deny that they were a witch would certainly fall into the category of what a typical witch might do. However, with a massive amount of pain a witch might finally be forced to admit that they were a witch in a moment of weakness. And once an inquisitor would have a confession they could put the witch to death and purify the world. Such a noble goal - Don’t you think?

The premise here is pretty straightforward. Good will triumph over evil! Those hunting witch were certainly good. And, witch by definition are those who spread evil and therefore must be evil. How could any problem arise out of such a black and white situation? Good purifies the world by eliminating evil.

There are a couple of things that the Catholic Church never considered. The first and most terrifying thought is that we are all evil. We have all committed evil and we are all capable of committing more evil. In fact, the very nature of the idea that killing off evil people would purify the world is an evil idea. Murder is an evil act in itself, and any one who believes that they are worthy to carry out the act is suffering from the addition evil of pride. Pride of course was the same evil that brought down Lucifer himself.

The thought that purifying the world of evil is worth the lives of the innocents that might be caught up in this action is an additional evil that plagues the very proposal. But, pride overwhelms the people who have this idea repeatedly throughout history. Genocide is another fruit of this horrible mindset. People who are different are accused of being evil and torture is used to prove the validity of the claim. If a small amount of pain won’t bring the confession, then more pain will surely provide it. The cycle can only be stopped if the pride in knowing the truth can be broken. And, the truth is that this rarely happens. The Holocaust of six million Jews, The Spanish Inquisition, Rwanda and even the torture of suspected 9/11 terrorists are all examples of pride gone wrong. And today, February 11, 2008 our government announced that there will be still more witch trials. Pride has no limit - especially in this administration.

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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

Super Tuesday

2008-02-04T14:27:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I get to vote. I actually get to vote in an election that actually may effect the outcome of the American political process.

Twenty-some years ago I was in college when Harold Washington won the Democrat mayoral primary to become mayor of Chicago. Well, at least that’s what I was told as many exuberant Chicagoans ran through the dorms announcing that the first African-American had become mayor of Chicago.

I began to think about this recently as we are on the brink of such a similar historic event. I lived in a Cleveland, Ohio suburb when people like Dennis Kucinich and Carl Stokes were mayors of that town. At the time Harold Washington’s coronation as King of Chicago didn’t seem like such a big deal to me, an outsider to the windy city. When I finally read the news and discovered that his winning of the primary was only the first step - he had to win the general election I continued to be confused about this thing they called Chicago politics.

Politics is a funny thing. People think that they understand the way politics works until it doesn’t work like that any more. Hillary Clinton was able to pull off a surprising victory over Barack Obama in the New Hampshire primary by simply shedding a tear. On the other hand four years ago Howard Dean won the New Hampshire primary and lost that nomination on the same night with his historic scream of exuberance. Confidence is a good thing but overconfidence soon becomes arrogance. And excitement soon becomes perceived as lunacy.

Perception influences more votes than any other aspect of a candidate. Perception is a powerful tool that can be used to lead a nation. In a perfect world there is a correlation between perception and reality. However, we don’t live in a perfect world. George W Bush and Karl Rove taught us that, if we didn’t know it before.

Harold Washington was an inspiration to many people who admired the struggle against adversity to achieve political power. However, Harold Washington also died of a heart attack that was most likely induced by the cocaine that was found in his bloodstream at the time of his death. People can be both an inspiration and a poor role model. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington advocated freedom and liberty while they were both slave owners. Being perfect is a very high ideal.

When we look for our next leader, and as I said I must cast my vote tomorrow, we can only know what we perceive a candidate to be. We are always short of the total picture of any candidate. The Chicagoans that voted for Harold Washington never knew that he had a cocaine habit. Instead, the perception that elected Mayor Washington was the perception that he understood the voters and he would fix the problems that the voters needed to be fixed. Because he was an African-American it was assumed that he had lived a life that a typical African American had lived, whether that was true or not. And, some people who where not African American feared that anyone who had experienced these inequalities in society was bound to take advantage of the power of the office of mayor to take retribution. Obviously this is a sad state of affairs when one group believes that there was a group of people that had been mistreated and a representative of that group might use power to seek retribution. Both the knowledge of mistreatment and the assumption of retribution are sad commentaries on our society.

Slowly our society is learning that people don’t necessarily take retribution when they win power. And, we are also learning that people we once thought that we could trust not to abuse political power surprising do abuse their power, like the current administration. How can we protect ourselves from people that would abuse their power? After all, this is the aspect that most of us fear the most about our government. We look for hints when we see these politicians up close and in person. We suspect politicians when they manipulate the facts on the campaign trail, because this type of manipulation makes us wonder what else they might manipulate.

So, I have determined that I will cast my vote for Barack Obama tomorrow. When I see Hillary shedding a tear the day before a vote and miraculously winning the New Hampshire primary it seems a bit too manipulative. When I see her do the same thing this weekend right before the big Super Tuesday primary it seems just a bit too unlikely to not be planned. But, this is not the sole incidence of Hillary’s continued perception of manipulation. I saw her take the easy way out when she voted to attack Iraq back in 2003. I saw her craft her presentation in such a way that she carefully doesn’t commit to anything in an effort not to lose any potential voters. She mirrors the same manipulative behaviour that I have despised in the Bush administration from the beginning. She may be on the left side of the political aisle, but she seems to be on the same side of the obfuscation partition. I really don’t want to have another deceptive presidency. I don’t think that any of us do.

Of course it really is hard to know if Barack is just better at hiding his manipulation. After all, many people still believe that George W Bush is as honest as the day is long. Currently that number of people might be down to 17% of the population. But, 17% of 300 million is still a lot of people - 51 million. And 51 million people can still influence a lot of power in this country, especially if there are dollars attached to those people. So, regardless of whether Barack is able to manipulate me as a voter I am willing to cast my vote his way and hope. I hope that we will finally have a president that believes what he says and will bring America together to create a more perfect union and move us 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

The Yearly Trip to the Desert

2008-02-01T14:28:00.000-08:00

When I made the transition from the University world to the Industrial world I was introduced to the concept of the “trade show.” The idea with a trade show is to gather the key players in your industry or area and sell each other your products. In academia there is a similar concept called the conference. An academic conference does the same thing as a trade show in that it gathers all the key players into one location. However, the academic conference is based on the premise that everyone is sharing their ideas. The truth of the matter here is that at an academic conference everyone is “selling” their ideas.

Human nature works the same in both the academic and industrial worlds. People like what they are used to using. They would like to continue to do what they are used to doing with the exception that they might like to do it a little faster and a little more efficiently. Most people are not willing to jump on the band wagon of any new technology without proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the new way is worth the trouble of changing.

When I joined EDC we had a monopoly on the equipment that we made. The premise of sticking with what you know worked very well for our company. When the occasional player tried to break into the market we could easily introduce something into our product to compete with any potential advantage that might challenge us. Customers tended to stick with what they already knew - namely our product.

With the success of our company we made several attempts to expand our business. In order to expand we needed to create a new product using a new technology. In doing so we normally ran into the problem of coming up against established products and trying to overcome that inertia from the other side. In one case we came up with several improvements on the existing technology in the semiconductor industry. However, breaking into the semiconductor industry proved to be extremely difficult and we fell back on plan B, sell the technology to someone already established in the semiconductor industry.

The point of all this introduction is meant to establish the need for trade shows and conferences. When you get together with people in the field conversations begin and mature. Walking the trade show educates and informs. Trade shows bring customers to venders, but it also brings people and ideas together.

As we developed our biotech equipment we needed a way to get our product out into the public. To us it seemed liked people would just “need” our equipment once they saw what it could do. How could anyone prefer the “old” technology when we had this “new” technology that was so much better? The answer of course was that the old technology worked adequately for most applications being done at the time and the potential customers weren’t so sure about the new technology. Most people were unprepared to look a couple of years down the road to the new applications, mainly because they hadn’t been thought of yet.

Our job was to show potential customers how wonderful our product is. This had to be done with the standard tests that our customers use to verify that their current equipment works. In other words, in order to break into an existing market we needed to make our equipment do the same job that the current equipment was doing. People weren’t prepared to redesign everything and put our equipment into the new setup. And, the best place to learn what the current customers think about “new” equipment is a trade show.

In the biotech industry trade shows and conferences are merged into one thing. There are talks and presentations as well as booths for people in “the industry.” This means that you need to make your point academically as well as economically. A new technology needs to pass “peer review.” In other words, your product will only be accepted if the majority of the people in the community agree that the technology is worthy. And so, even though scientists don’t like to admit it - social relationships play a role in the industry.

Well, EDC BioSystems first presented our technology at this trade show about five years ago. And, over those five years we have presented our argument to the community every year since. And, slowly the community has warmed to acoustic dispensing and EDC BioSystems as a company. Hence, every year in this decade I have made that trip to the desert, either for learning about the industry or for presenting our equipment. And, always to build those important business relationships.

This year the conference/trade show was held on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. I flew in Sunday and left Tuesday afternoon. There are certain rituals that have been established over the years of attending trade shows. One of those rituals is the “business dinner.” Other rituals are “walking the show,” “working the booth,” “scoping the competition,” “meeting and greeting old friends,” “reading the posters,” and “finding the golden nugget.”

These rituals have gradually evolved by trial and error. The rituals need not be performed in any specific order, although they all do need to be done during the show. Some are performed throughout the duration of the show, while others are done once and abandoned. Each of these rituals have social interactions involved and the rituals foster social relationships.

With all of these rituals to follow there is hardly any time to do anything on your own. Well, there is one personal ritual that I have begun in recent years. I get up early and go for a run. I did this for the first time three years ago. Of course whenever one is in a strange city it isn’t that easy to know the best places to run. So, on my first trip I just took off running down the street at 5:30 in the morning. This first run wasn’t an ideal run, mainly because I ran out into the desert before the sun had risen. It was dark and I had no idea where I should go. I had looked at a map before hand, and it seemed that I had a good trail to follow, but there weren’t any sidewalks and it was bloody dark. Well, on subsequent runs I found better and better places to run. And, I gradually began my run a bit later so that I could run as the sun came up over the desert. This is how these rituals evolve.

This year I did the same thing. I woke up and began my run at 7:00 AM. I thought that I might try something a little different. On the last day of the show last year I found out that there were trails on the mountains that surround Palm Springs. These steep rock piles that surround Palm Springs shoot up about 3000 feet into the sky and influence the desert climate that has people returning year after year. These naked rock piles have very little vegetation because of the lack of rainfall and consistent 100+ degrees weather most of the year. In the winter the weather is much more hospitable. At 6:30 AM I took off toward the mountain to the west of the city. The base of the mountain was about a mile from my hotel, but I had no idea where the paths began. I thought that I might just run along the foot of the mountain and discover where the path might begin.

As I ran the mile toward the base of the mountain I saw a fellow runner heading in the same direction. Then I saw a couple of runners running in the opposite direction. I sensed that I might be going the right way. As followed the runner ahead of me I saw him scramble up to a road that ran along the base of the mountain but at about 10 or 15 feet up the side of the mountain. I followed him up to the road, and then up further to a sandy path that seamed to climb further up the side of the mountain. I followed him as he ran up the side of the mountain. Running up hill requires a bit more effort than running on flat ground, but if one slows down one, then one can still find a good pace based on effort. Of course the guy that I began to follow was faster than I was, so he was soon out of sight somewhere ahead of me on the path.

I continued to follow the path up the mountain. I traveled at a good pace, breathing heavy on the steepest sections of the path. As I climbed I saw a beautiful city stretched out before me. As I climbed I saw that the trail was actually marked with little spots of white paint on rocks. After about 25 minutes I emerged at the top of this small mountain. It was the first foothill, with taller ones directly behind it. I estimated that I had climbed about 1500 feet and to my surprise there were six very sturdy picnic tables placed at the top of this climb. Just as I emerged I saw the runner that I had followed up the mountain. For the first time I noticed that he was about ten years older than I am. He complimented me on being in “good” shape. He said that he was Swiss, so of course he was used to doing this. Then he took off running back down the mountain.

Been there, done that! I circled the picnic tables and then I also took off running back down the mountain, and back to my hotel. The total round trip was about 55 minutes - a good workout for the day.

The next day I decided to do the same run, but I thought that I might explore the top of the mountain a bit before a returned down again. I also decided to leave a few minutes earlier in order to catch the sunrise over the city as I climbed the mountain. And, I discovered a loop that ran around the mountaintop. And, on the way down I ran into the same guy I had followed up the mountain the day before. I had realized that he was also in town to go to the same trade show. Finally as I was running down the mountain I passed another runner who asked me if I knew how to find another path that lead to the south end of Palm Springs. That was the first that I had heard of it. But I guess next year I will look for it as this running ritual continues to evolve.

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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

Ideology vs. Experience

2008-01-14T12:37:00.000-08:00

I recently listened to an outstanding interview of Jean Vanier by Krista Tippett on the radio program “Speaking of Faith.” Jean Vanier has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and has been considered a “Living Saint” by many people in the Roman Catholic Church. Jean Vanier is mostly known for the founding of the L’Arche movement. But, what I found more interesting was how he came to the conclusion to change his life.

In our culture we don’t always think about the journey we make through life. Or, when we do, we think about all of the career moves that we make in our effort to obtain some tangible goal. We mostly think about our personal change as a matter of growth. There is nothing wrong with this perspective, but it leaves out some important changes that we as humans go through during our lifetime.

Human beings may change in linear ways, where we grow and progress. We also know, but we don’t think about it, that human beings change in linear ways as we degrade when we get older. These types of changes assume that knowledge and power are the key attributes that make human beings human. But, for the most part this assumption ignores the fact that relationships make human beings human. We ignore the fact that people who are weak mentally and physically can have strong relationships. And, as a culture we ignore the importance of relationships - unless they are business relationships.

It is also possible that a strong and knowledgeable person may fail at forming meaningful relationships. But, in our society we don’t believe that failure in forming relationships is an important aspect of our culture. This is because we are constantly exposed to what we value in our culture through the widespread marketing in our culture.

As an aside related to this I’d like to tell a story. My daughter is currently taking seventh grade history. The curriculum has changed since my son took this four years ago. My son learned about Middle East culture in one chapter. My daughter now has several chapters covering the years between 600 CE and 1500 CE that go into quite a bit of detail. Some of this detail pertains to Middle Eastern culture. She learned that the Persians brought the west the sport of Polo. They also brought the west many geometric patterns and designs. Her assignment was to explain why these things are important. Well, her first draft explained why geometric patterns and Polo were not important to the west. Somehow it has been communicated to her that things like mathematics and medicine are important, while art and entertainment are not. After I pointed out that without Polo we might not have had Arabian Horses, because they were bred for that sport. And, Arabian Horses were sought after throughout the world, until the automobile was invented. Similarly the widespread pattern of paisley is Persian in origin - based on the silhouette of a tall tree blowing in the wind. Maybe paisley doesn’t have a life altering influence on western society, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t had an effect on western society. Art in general is part of the cultural nourishment that builds social relationships. We relate to the artist and we relate to the other people who are relating to the artist’s piece of work. Movies and video games might be the last piece of art that we have in our culture that performs this function. We are cutting ourselves off from bits of our history.

The point of this story is that our current culture interprets what we believe to be important. Currently we believe that technology is important. We are persuaded into believing this because technology saves lives, and lives are important. We can save hundreds of lives by keeping them alive on life support with technology. We can store thousands of lives in homes and hospitals. But, what Jean Vanier is saying that we need relationships to make those lives valuable. And, he is saying that people’s relationships with each other make both people more valuable. They become more valuable to each other. And, the relationships help people grow more able to form relationships with more people. This is not a generally accepted cultural value today in our society.

So, when human beings change from valuing our current societal norms to valuing relationships a human being grows in a non-linear way. They used to call this a paradigm shift, where the way one looks at things changes completely. And when Jean Vanier changed his life he went from being a Naval commander where his life was based on getting things done in the most efficient way possible to a new life where making a couple of mentally ill people happy by helping them to live.

He made this change in part because he had recently finished his dissertation on Aristotle’s philosophy of experience. Based on his study, he began to realize that reality was more important than ideology. And, this message echoes today through our culture.

So, what is the difference between ideology and experience?

For the engineer this is the difference between the design and the actual creation. Some very detailed designs have been built, and in the process it is eventually realized that the finished product has deviated from the design. This happens when a product is over designed for its application. Another thing that happens is that all of the possible applications could not have been predicted ahead of time. And, in the long run reality always trumps whatever the designer may have begun with, because we all live in the real world.

Aristotle is saying the same thing. He is saying that we can hypothesis all we want about how a system should work. But, until we actually put the system into practice we will never know exactly what we need to make it work.

Government is a grand example of this. A politician sees a problem and he thinks about it. Then a group discusses the problem and a solution is proposed. Another politician envisions a solution and she proposes a new law that will fix the problem. Unfortunately the process can never account for every possible way the new law will be used. And, often the application of the new law might be worse than the original situation. There are two ways that people react to this. In an ideology based world the law is right and the new problems are ignored, or fixed with new laws. In a reality based world the intention of the law is understood and the enforcement of the law is where the problem is corrected. We currently live in a culture where law triumphs over intention of the law.

Both extremes lead to abuse. In a law based culture the details are exploited by those who learn to work the system. It isn’t unusual to find organized crime families with lawyers that are meant to exploit the flaws in the law. Of course the exploitation would fall to the police and prosecutors if the intent of the law were to somehow triumph in another parallel culture some day.

On the local level Jean Vanier has found a way to make experience triumph over rules. The needs of the people in his home triumph over the rules. Everyone becomes a bit happier when people become more attuned to the needs of each other. Real interactions of real people with real needs informs better than that one king sitting on his throne thinking about what the people should be doing to make each other happy. Just image that. No, don’t just imagine that, instead go out and experience that by doing something to make a difference. At least that’s what Jean Vanier is trying to say.

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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

Turbulent Times

2008-01-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

I recently read a Mallard Fillmore comic strip that bothered me. If you don’t know Mallard Fillmore, he is a conservative duck that makes Rush Limbaugh type outrageous remarks on the comic pages of many newspapers. I sometimes wonder if Bruce Tinsley the author listens to Rush Limbaugh and puts Rush’s words in Mallards mouth. Nice work if you can get it.

Many of the points that both Rush and Mallard make can be argued in a way to use facts to point to their predetermined conclusion. The same could be said for many extreme points of view.

But, Mallard (or Bruce) made the following statement about global warming in his January 5, 2008 strip.
“Mallard’s New-Year’s Prediction #12: All of those Scientists who predicted, wrongly, for the past two years… …that global warming would cause lots of catastrophic hurricanes will do it again!! (Eventually, they’ll be right.)”

There is a problem with this statement, and that is that Mallard is wrong. It is like the tree falling in the woods, and no one is there to hear it. Did it fall? Mallard is saying that there weren’t any major catastrophic hurricanes in the last two years, because they didn’t strike the USA. At least that’s what I am guessing, because in the last Hurricane season there were some quite dangerous storms that hit Mexico and South East Asia. In fact, two years ago there was a massive storm that hit China. Just because the storms don’t hit the USA doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen. Unless you are a conservative American with blinders on and don’t acknowledge that the rest of the world exists.

Global Warming causes the oceans temperature to rise. As the seasons change the heat generated in the latitudes nearest to the sun (Northern in the Summer and Southern in the Winter) will redistribute by convection. This means that heat rises in the tropics and it is redistributed toward the poles as the seasons change. If there is more heat, then the redistribution may become more vigorous. Hurricanes are nature’s way of pushing massive amounts of heat toward the poles. More heat creates more powerful redistribution. Whether the CO2 in the atmosphere is causing the global warming or not the heating is happening and undisputed. The conservatives that don’t want to cut our dependence on oil don’t even argue about heating any more. They claim instead that the heating is due to some natural cycle of overall heating and cooling. That position doesn’t matter for the point that the Hurricane intensities will rise if the Earth is truly heating up - regardless of why it is rising.

The problem with Mallard making this blatantly wrong statement to a national audience of people who are centered on America and not the globe in total is that these people are willing to say, “I didn’t see any Hurricanes hit the USA this year, so Mallard makes a lot of sense.” This is just irresponsible manipulation for political self-interest.

The point is that the Earth is heating up, CO2 levels are increasing and the heating of the Oceans will require redistribution of that heat by convection. That heat is pushed toward the poles more vigorously when the temperature differences are high. And, one thing that many people forget, those massive amounts of warm air pushed toward the poles actually impart momentum into that cold air that may actually be pushed further south than would normally occur. So, if you get snow in Florida it could be due to global warming. This is because a strong surge of warm air could push into Russia with such high intensity that the cold air sitting at the pole might be forced south over the United States and in effect freezing Florida. The over all effect is to mix the warm air and cold air as the overall temperature of the Earth increases.

The whole idea that weather changes in one part of the world are connected to other parts of the world doesn’t make sense to a person that only thinks about what they see when they look out their window. A person sitting in Boca Raton, Florida and sees the temperatures drops to record low temperatures isn’t likely to believe in global warming if they aren’t curious enough to ask the question - why? Rush and by extension Mallard see the record cold in Florida and say “Ha Ha Ha, those scientists were wrong.” But, the reality is that the record cold they are witnessing is due to the global turbulence induced by global warming. Ignorance is bliss when you only see things the way that you already knew that they were. Unfortunately ignorance also leads to inaction and disaster if we don’t try to do something before its too late.

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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

Justice

2008-01-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

As Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

I got a little freaked out this weekend. But, the story actually starts a couple of years ago.

I have mentioned in passing that I had a great uncle who was a Socialist. He has since passed away, but he has left a legacy. He wrote for a local paper that at least some of my family called a Socialist paper. Many of those papers have been saved, so we have them to look back on his life and examine the things that he wrote about. But, the problem is that those papers are not in a digital format, therefore they are not easy to access. It turns out that maybe he wasn’t quite as Socialist as I had been lead to believe.

I had mainly only heard from my relatives what my uncle had written. And, I was thinking that it might be interesting to read some of the things that he wrote now that I am writing a blog. I didn’t really know what to expect, in that my family had told me how bizarre and strange his ideas were. I became interested in finding out what he had written, but all of those papers were clear across the country gathering dust in some storage closet.

Well, I suggested that we should try to post some of his writings on the web so that we could share them. One friend of the family took on the task of scanning a large number of the columns into a gif format that I could read, but in order to post them on the web I would need to type the columns into the computer. This was a daunting task that always seemed to get a low priority when I considered tasks to do. I received over 100 of his columns which he wrote in the weekly column. I estimate that he must have written at least 2000 over about 40 years. I opened up one file and read about a dancing escapade that he went on to an ethnic recreation center. I was a bit let down by the column. I was expecting something much more political, but I read about dancing.

It must have been luck of the draw. And, unfortunately it was bad luck for the project. I didn’t really feel like transposing a column on ethnic dance into a digital format, so the project took a back seat to other things - like writing my blog.

However, this weekend I decided to send out a Christmas picture to the relatives. Then I decided to clean up my e-mail when I came across an e-mail pertaining to this project. I had forgotten about it, but I thought that I might as well give it another go. I opened up a couple more of these gif files that were simply named by what seemed to be arbitrary number. I read a column he had written in 1971 when he went to a talk given by Madalyn Murray O’Hair. I thought that it was quite interesting from its 1971 perspective. She had just won her school prayer case and she was starting a new religion that she proposed in order to get tax exempt status for businesses willing to be bought by her church. I quickly transposed this interesting article.

I opened a new gif file once again at random and read a 1970 article about Martin Luther King’s sex life. This column was a bit scary to me, because it sounded like something that I might write. My uncle delved into the all the Biblical sex stories. He went on to tell us about new religions like the Latter Day Saints that believed that polygamy was sanctioned by God. I never read that article before - I was nine when it was published. But, what was happening to me? Was I channeling my uncle in some strange way in my current blog? Was there some common DNA that his father and my great grandfather had both passed down to us? Or, was this just a random chance coincidence?

After I had transcribed this interesting column I opened another gif at random. This one was written in January 1958. That was 50 years ago this month. It was about his experience of being called up for jury duty. Suddenly I had a strange déjà vu experience. I had written a blog entry about my jury experience in 2005.

The jury duty column wasn’t the freaky part though. It was his style. He wrote like me. Or, actually he wrote like me before I was born. So, I guess that means that I wrote like him. But, I had never really read any of his stuff. He wrote over 2000 articles for a Socialist paper that my parents wouldn’t even have in our house.

His jury duty piece started by describing the basic process of jury duty. But, as he told his story he told us about his friend who was “being indicted by the government as a conspirator against the Non-Communist provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act.” He told of how he questioned people in the room and asked them what they thought about Communism. He told us how this was a typical jury. And, then he laid the bombshell on us by saying that if he were to be tried on similar charges he would not opt for a jury trial. The conclusion put everything into a nutshell. Americans may not be able to mete justice in every case. Wow! That’s how I might try to make a similar point - it was freaky.

Anyway, if you want to read these pieces they are posted at: “My Mixed Up World.”

If you like what you read you might like to bookmark the page, because I plan to add more articles. And, you might want to read my jury duty article just for grins.

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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

Four Years Later

2008-01-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

Four years ago it was clear to me that I needed change. I was fat and out of shape. I wasn’t doing what I always thought that I wanted to do. We had an idiot as a president. And, it seemed like America was going in the wrong direction in every possible way that it could.

Could Americans really be this stupid? Could I be this stupid?

As I saw it four years ago, I was part of the problem - and not part of the solution. If I wasn’t taking the time to take care of myself, then why should I expect the typical American to care about our country?

As 2004 began I knew that I had to start to make a difference by first changing myself. I needed to learn about the situation that I was in. I needed to learn about the situation that Americans were in. And, perhaps if I could learn something I could begin to be a part of the solution and no longer a part of the problem.

Those first few months of 2004 I made some changes. I began to exercise a little bit. I began to read everything I could on the Internet on all sides of the issue. I began to listen to talk radio. I began to watch news shows. I began to read the newspapers religiously. I knew that I couldn’t be a part of the solution until I educated myself. I knew that I could speak from a perspective of authority unless I understood what the experts were saying. I knew that I couldn’t tell people to live like me, unless I liked the way that I lived. This was a total remake of myself that I did by myself without being told what to do. I played the skeptical scientist, where I didn’t believe anything that I read unless I totally understood as much about the issue that I possibly could.

This was a process of trial and error. I made a lot of errors along the way. At first I thought that I could walk around the block once in a while and hope that I could lose some weight. I thought that I could spout crazy ideas and spark discussions online. I thought that everyone would give advice and be helpful when I asked questions. Well, actually I was quite experienced in the flame wars of Usenet in the early days of the 1980s. But, I thought that it wouldn’t really matter if I disliked a politician and I asked why I should like them. I figured that I would get some well thought out answers to my curious questions. Instead these questions seemed to produce flame wars quicker than answers on every side of the political aisle.

As I realized my failures I recalculated and continued to seek solutions. I joined a Health Club and committed myself to 1 hour of exercise everyday come rain or shine. I started a blog and committed to writing at least one piece everyday come rain or shine. I opened myself up for criticism on all fronts. I believed that I could listen or read anything and everything about what I did or said. I continued to believe that sparking a community discussion among those who cared was the key to turning our country around. I learned that many people were already having this discussion, but they all seemed to be on one side of the political aisle. How could America have fair political discussion if half of the citizens didn’t even come in the door?

When I started my journey I was registered as a Libertarian. When I registered I believed that the government was making too many laws on issues that it shouldn’t be concerned about. For me Libertarian was about Freedom and Liberty. When I registered I got some strange phone calls from other registered Libertarians in the area. Their main concern was taxes. They almost sounded like Anarchists from their hatred of the government. I didn’t worry about how I was registered to vote for a while, because I thought that it didn’t matter. But, at the beginning of 2004 the primaries were approaching and I began to be more interested in the process of government. I knew that George W Bush was predetermined to be the Republican nominee regardless of how dysfunctional his government was performing. Republicans are too conservative to change horses midstream no matter how bad a job their leaders are doing. The 2004 election season proved that point. So, I became convinced that I couldn’t effect change unless I changed party registration so that I could vote in the Democrat primary.

Well, I learned a lot when I went through the process of learning about my new political party. Democrats, like Republicans, don’t like you to question their established ideas. Democrats might be better before their ideas have been determined, but once they are determined disagreements can get ugly. And, currently we have two determined party views of the world that we live in. The party views have been predetermined, and unfortunately that means that the party solutions have been predetermined based on these party views. This means that new ideas are very rare to come by. It takes a superior person to be able to see through the predetermined party ideas and understand their weaknesses. It takes a superior person to not only propose new ideas, but to be able to reform the predetermined political vision and create a new one. And, this is the case on both sides of the political aisle.

Social experimentation is not an option. People’s lives can not be treated like the lives of lab rats. So, trying new ideas without evidence is a poor method for fixing problems. Instead, measuring the situations that present themselves in reality must be the way social experimentation is done. This means that every variable can be changed when we compare one situation to another. Any fifth grader can tell you that science experiments should be done by changing one variable at a time and measuring the results. However, since we can not have the data that we want we must make arguments based on the data that we have. So, this allows each political party to find data that supports their predetermined political vision.

Sometimes the data gets refined and improved. This might be the result of passing laws based on faulty data. It also might be improved methods for measuring the data. In any case, this data often results in altering the political vision of a party. But, the curious thing is that sometimes the predetermined political vision is so entrenched that reality will not alter the vision. When this happens some followers will leave the party with the obviously flawed vision in an attempt to find the correct political vision. The reality is that both political parties in the USA today have flawed political visions in different ways. People general determine which party has the fewest flaws in their personal opinions, and then they will join that group. The opposition will always point to the opposing party’s flaws while they try to cover their own flaws.

If one stands back and looks objectively at a political party the reality begins to shine through. Lots of people buy into the party political vision. Most party members at many levels never question the vision. Everyone focuses on the political task at hand, which is to gain power or remain in power. The political vision becomes a method instead of a reason to obtain or retain power. However, when that rare individual comes forward and is able to reshape that vision the party actually becomes more powerful. There is hope that the new vision has lost its flaws that everyone secretly worries about, but are to frightened to mention. In reality there will be new flaws, but the party still has hope that these new flaws are even smaller than the old flaws.

The interesting thing with the Bush administration is how rare it is that an individual can maintain adherence to a vision that is so flawed and still pretend that the flaws are not part of the vision. It is almost the complete opposite of a person that has a new vision and brings forth a new hope. Instead, the Bush administration continued to believe their own lie that it would be possible to have a flaw in their old vision. They pushed forward and proved that the government really did have a role to play in disaster relief. They pushed forward and proved that taxes to pay for infrastructure really does matter. They proved that it takes more than just test scores to make schools better. They pushed on and proved the most important fact. They proved that Democracy doesn’t just happen when you remove an evil dictator. They proved that people need to care about Democracy or it just won’t work. The Bush administration did this in a social experiment that killed many people, which is sad in itself.

Well, four years ago I started this process. I believe that I have become a better person in those four years. I have lost and kept off fifty pounds of ugly fat. I have been able to run 16 miles continuously. I have swum from Alcatraz to San Francisco - twice. I have clarified my thoughts on the American political process and continued to try to learn more. I have improved my writing by contributing to the American political process. And, whether its true or not, I believe that I have made the world a little bit better than it was four years ago with my contributions.

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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

Jesus and the Devil Are Brothers

2007-12-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

I read that Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister and one-time governor of Arkansas, asserted that Mitt Romney wasn’t a viable presidential candidate because he believed that Jesus and the Devil were brothers. Why else would he make such a statement if he wasn’t trying to allude to this “crazy” idea. But, the fact is that religions of every strip are filled with crazy ideas and the followers of these religions are told that the ideas are crazy, but if one has faith and believes the crazy ideas then they will be saved.

When I read about Mike Huckabee’s statement I laughed. I was thinking about all the “crazy” ideas that the Baptists believe. In fact I thought about the “crazy” idea that all Christians have that Jesus was born of a virgin, died and rose from the dead. How is this idea not “crazy?” In fact there is a Yiddish idiom for a crazy idea that refers to the craziness of someone rising from the dead. Anyone can make fun of the crazy ideas that anyone else’s religion professes. This is because if you need to have faith to believe it, then it is impossible to prove that it is true by its very nature.

But, then again I thought about the idea that Mike Huchabee spouted off as being so “crazy.” I asked myself, Didn’t God create all of the angels? If they exist, and Christians believe that they do, then God must have created them, right? And, wasn’t Satan one of the angels, the rebellious one? So, I would assume that since God created the angels and Satan was an angel I would suggest that God created Satan. And since God created Satan I would presume that we could say that God was Satan’s father. It was after all that Free Will was responsible for Satan to choose to turn away from God. This of course is the same Free Will that makes us responsible for turning away from God.

So, if Satan’s father was God. And, we already know that Christians believe that Jesus’ father is God then Jesus and Satan actually share the same father. And, in most cultures when to people share the same father they are siblings. I am still wondering what they “crazy” part of Mormon belief would be on this fact. Is it that Jesus and Satan don’t share the same male gender? This could be the issue, after all angels don’t have a gender in Christian theology, right? If they would have a gender, then they might have sex, and that would just be “crazy.” Right?!!!

So, I guess I now understand why the Baptists would think that the idea that Jesus and Satan were brothers would just be too crazy and we shouldn’t have a loony in the White House that would believe such craziness. But, then again we have a crazy person in the White House that believes that a nuclear war might be a good thing because it might bring Jesus back to Earth a wee bit sooner.

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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

Stonewalling

2007-12-20T12:49:00.000-08:00

My personal experience with the our local Schools fluctuates from extremely good to extremely bad. We have lived in our town since 1998 and my four children have attended the public schools since we moved here. Over those nine years we have had the opportunity to work with some outstanding teachers and principals that have fostered enormous successes in my children’s education. Unfortunately we have also experienced some horribly negligent teachers and principals that seem to be going through the motions in order to pick up a paycheck each payday.

I could go into the details of each and every experience that we have had throughout the last nine years, but that would be of little use and foster little progress. In fact, two of the problems that we have dealt with over these years will never be corrected because the people have already died from diseases related to their alcohol problems. Unfortunately when we did confront these problems and bring them to the attention of those delegated with the responsibility our cries fell on deaf ears.

This time we have a new set of teachers and administrators and a new problem. We have seen this all before and it saddens me greatly. I personally don’t understand the resistance of the administration to effect change and fix these problems. But, as we have seen this all before we know exactly how this will play out. It is as if there is a script and every person plays their role and each time nothing is done the person lies about how they will be sure to look into the problem. Since the politics of the personal relationships is kept behind closed doors under the guise of protecting a alleged suspect I will not name names in this letter. I would surely provide further information to anyone who would talk to me, but all of the administrators involved already know the facts and the problems, they have just chosen to do nothing about it.

In an attempt to bring discussion and light onto this subject I would rather like to talk in generalities as a matter of furthering public discourse without pointing fingers and making accusations. The people who are guilty of stonewalling already know who they are. The teachers who choose to go through the motions without doing their jobs already know who they are. The solution to the problem is not to hide the fact that there are poor teachers and administrators in our schools, but instead to inform them that we are watching and they should do their jobs. Unfortunately most of these cases only involve a few people each year. The few people that are effected know that the school year will eventually end and the new school year is likely to provide them with one of the many very good teachers that we have in these schools. What the public needs is a way to bring attention to these problems and have them solved in a reasonable and effective way.

Now that I have explained the situation in generalities I will be a bit more specific. There is a teacher in a our local school that one of my children has for a class. The teacher has basically refused to teach in almost any definition of the term. Instead the teacher has the students attempt to teach themselves by reading their textbook to themselves and take notes. The teacher occasionally administers a test of the subject matter that she copies off of the Internet. The tests from the Internet do not correspond to the textbook material, because the tests from online actually come from another textbook that covers the same material with different details. My child has complained to counselors and the different levels of administration. The one time that an evaluator came into the classroom to evaluate the teacher the teacher conducted the class more closely to a traditional discussion style class. Obviously the teacher knows what she is doing would be frowned upon. However, the behavior continues and even with the complaints to the administration by approximately half of the students in the class. The students have signed a petition and presented it to the administration, but the administration requires each case to be dealt with individually and not en masse. The students continue to bring the issue to the administration with no results. Finally during the last meeting with the administrator the students were told the matter was already brought to their attention. When the students asked what was going to be done the administrator explained that nothing was needed to be done.

So, the sad situation that we have in the our local schools is portrayed in this example. The administration complains that they want the students to excel in academics. They publicly claim that they have hired the best teachers. And, they have hired some very good teachers. Unfortunately they have also hired some very poor teachers that should be removed from their responsibilities. We should not be paying teachers to shop online while the students outline the chapters in their textbooks during class time. The administration doesn’t want to know about the failures. Perhaps they want to claim ignorance. Perhaps they are too lazy to fix the problems in the schools. Perhaps the law ties their hands and they really can’t do anything about this. There are solutions to every one of these problems. We can fire the administrators that are too lazy or incompetent. And, if the laws are in the way, then we have an obligation to change the laws. The students deserve it and our future society is built on the education of these students.

Sincerely,

a concerned parent of a concerned student

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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

Regulation

2007-12-14T16:43:00.000-08:00

The enemy of Corporate Capitalists is regulation. The freedom to do whatever needs to be done to make a buck is the most efficient way to make that buck. Regulations, by the very nature, put a roadblock into that process. On the other hand, the goal of regulation is to protect the weak that do not have the strength to fight someone who chooses an efficient way of making money that also damages the society. Regulation is by its very nature a method to prevent efficiency.

My mother used to always say that moderation is the key to life. Obviously moderation does not rank high on the agenda of modern American society. People rush to embrace the latest fad, and then they drop it and rush on to the next fad a month later. There is no moderation in this behavior.

With regulations it is a similar love - hate relationship. People want to fix a problem and fix it “real good.” This results in regulations that don’t just fix a problem, they slam the problem real hard. Sometimes these slams can really hurt the efficiency of the process, and force capitalists to create new ways to make the process work. On the other hand, capitalists can permanently see the easiest solution is to remove the existing regulations to make the process work more easily. For the benefit of society lawmakers need to play the role of moderator of the regulations.

Unfortunately lawmakers are paid by campaign contributions from groups on both sides of the regulations divide. The result of this is that we never have a group of moderate lawmakers that realize the necessity of regulation as well as the danger of over regulation. The extremists populate the government and proudly push their agenda.

To make matters worse, the enforcement of regulations is the key to making them work. Enforcement is the jurisdiction of the executive branch of government. For the most part the enforcement of regulations can easily be curtailed by funding cuts. If there are no people to inspect and enforce regulations, the result is a policy that is the same as if there were no regulations at all. If no one follows up on a report of violations, then the criminal gets away with the crime. If the people given the duty to enforce the laws are selected because of their incompetence, the result again will be little enforcement of the laws. The truth is that it is difficult to enforce these laws even when we have competent people trying to enforce the laws.

Regulations are meant to protect society.

Yesterday I was listening to a right wing radio station. A caller was complaining that China was poisoning our children. It is quite understandable that we should be concerned with lead or other toxins in our products. One way to fight this is to require regulations. But, even more importantly we need to enforce regulations that protect us. The right wing talk show host pointed out that the government should not be required to do this job. And, we shouldn’t have regulations placed on our corporations, because that would be too costly for our American companies who distribute goods that are manufactured in China. I began to wonder what this guy was going to suggest to protect our society.

I was not only surprised, but shocked when the right wing radio talk show host suggested that we should let market forces protect America. If people get injured or die from poorly made products manufactured in China, then Americans will vote with their wallets and stop buying the poison. I wish I knew who this guy was, but the radio began to fade out while I was listening. Of course, I thought to myself, the market will fix all of our problems, even if a few people need to die in the process.

I began to think about Europe. Europe has an enormously complex set of regulations. I know a few of these regulations because I have designed products to be sold in Europe. The reason that Europe came to the conclusion that it needed these regulations was because Europe wanted to expand its market. It wanted regulations in one country to match regulations in another country. Obviously if one country had lax regulations it could manufacture less safe products at a cheaper price, just like China is doing in today. But, the US does not have a uniform set of regulations in which a product is marked as compiling with. It isn’t until a harm is found before a product is forced to be taken off the market.

What is the difference between Europe and the USA that makes for the differences in this attitude toward regulation? Why is the US government so careless about the potential problems with new products, while the European governments care about potential harms? I would suggest that the main difference is that Europe actually has a broad health care system. So, if there are widespread health problems caused by a defective product, then the government will end up paying the cost. The government is thereby motivated to prevent harms to society. (This sounds a lot like letting the market solve the problem.) Therefore the governments are motivated to create regulations that protect the people. And, the government is also motivated to enforce those regulations. Isn’t it wonderful when problems are left to the market?

So, I would suggest that Universal Health Care would not only help get health care to those who can not afford it, but it actually motivates the government to protect the people from things like toxins in our toys, and food. It might cost a little more, but what is the cost of your health? Isn’t there an old saying that asks: “If you haven't got your health, then you haven't got anything.” Surely a corporate capitalist can understand that little saying.

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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

Terror in America

2007-12-12T16:23:00.001-08:00

The current administration position is that waterboarding is not torture. Waterboarding is merely a method for extracting information from a terrorist. Am I the only person confused here?

Waterboarding is a method of making a suspect believe that he is about to die by drowning. The panic induced will apparently make a suspect give up everything he knows because he is afraid to die. Let me get this straight, a terrorist is a person who is prepared to strap a bomb on and blow himself up in a crowded market place or mall. Or a terrorist is a person who is willing to take control of a plane and fly it into building to kill thousands of people. So, somehow the fear of drowning will somehow make him give up all his secrets. What the Hell are they smoking over at the CIA? Or, maybe they are delving into the truth drugs that they are administering to their suspects.

But, let us suppose that there are some terrorist wimps that are afraid of drowning. Is waterboarding torture? The Bush administration has claimed that since there wasn’t any organ failure or permanent damage waterboarding certainly could not qualify as torture. Obviously John McCain, a GOP presidential candidate who claims to have been tortured in Vietnam wasn’t really tortured at all. Obviously whatever the Vietcong had done to John, it wasn’t torture because his organs didn’t fail and he didn’t die.

Actually with this crazy idea that organ failure is the qualification for something to be torture, there have been very few actual cases of torture through out the history of mankind. Maybe drawing and quartering someone might qualify. But, its kind of tough to get information from them afterward. In fact, name a type of torture where we have organ failure that will result in getting information from a terrorist. Maybe we should be doing Chinese water torture, which isn’t really torture at all regardless of the misnomer. We should be sticking needles under the suspects fingernails, before we cut them off. If we stop the bleeding there surely won’t be any organ failure. The administration would surely allow this type of persuasive technique. Maybe the Americans could invent a new type of pain inducement that could acquire the new name of Amurrican Pain Torture, without actually being torture at all if we can keep those vital organs functioning.

The problem however is that if the terrorists actually live and the War on Terror is actually won by America as we all truly pray for every day, then what will happen next? Will the information about the American pain techniques escape into the world either by those causing the pain or by those freed because the pain proved their innocence. Even with all of the secrecy of these clandestine operations I am sure that the agencies would like the rumors of “Amurrican Pain Torture” would be allowed to escape in the hope that this would frighten the wimpy terrorists into leaving their terrorist ways. After all, this is why we still have the death penalty in this country. The authorities believe the myth that potential murders weigh the potential consequences of a murder before they commit the crime. Surely they would also believe that these rumors would also scare off the terrorists that would like to strap on a suicide bomb as well.

Does anyone follow these arguments? It seems like no one has actually followed any of these arguments to the obvious conclusions. Obviously torture is not going to persuade someone who is convinced that their mission is to die for a noble cause. In fact, American culture praises our soldiers that have done the same - died in battle, died defending a hill, a fort, or a square foot of sovereign territory. American culture also praises those who have withstood enemy torture by repeatedly giving only name rank and serial number. Surely the terrorists who strap on suicide vests have a similar if not stronger social and cultural pressure. And, surely the pride of American moral culture that we don’t torture people is a strong statement that America is different. We believe in freedom and liberty. Obviously the strength of this argument has fallen to the side under the fear of terrorism. After all, the terrorists can not destroy our society. They don’t have enough force to actually make us change our culture or ideas. The only power they have is terror, hence the name. They believe that fear will make people act in ways to their liking. And, what do the terrorists want? They want to create a society where the government has a great deal of control over its society. They want a society where the government can know everything that is happening and be assured that people are following all of the rules. They want a society where they can find the opposition and take care of them at a moments notice. They want a society in which torture is a valid method of information retrieval. And, with the actions of the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11/2001 attacks the terrorists have been able to use terror to make us take the first steps in that direction.
Who says that terrorism doesn’t work in America?

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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

Obsession

2007-12-11T14:17:00.000-08:00

I was listening to a lecture yesterday by an expert on teenagers. He concentrated on the dangers that teenagers face as the mature. He was telling the audience about the dangers of drugs and alcohol when he took a moment to explain why some people become addicted to drugs and alcohol more easily than others. Obviously some drugs manifest in physical addictions, while other drugs manifest in psychological additions. At one time I recall being told that some people are more susceptible to psychological additions, and these people were said to have addictive personalities. Yesterday, the speaker went into a little bit more detail about this addictive personality.

The speaker yesterday spoke about obsessive behavior. He told us how a person with and obsessive personality has a higher probability of becoming addicted to drugs or alcohol. For example, an obsessive person might become obsessed with a multitude of different things before they even try alcohol. They might become obsessed with things that are overall very positive, or overall very negative. At some point along the way a person might realize that an obsession has taken over his or her life. And, because the obsession is an obsession the person is unable to make a break with the obsession. Obsession is a selfish behavior, because the obsession has a higher priority than any other issue or relationship in the person’s life. In many cases the inability to control obsession results in embarrassment in minor cases and self-hatred in the worst cases. At some point these feelings of self-loathing lead to self-medicating with drugs or alcohol in an attempt to “feel better.”

Once the person with the obsessive personality has self-medicated it isn’t long before self-medication itself becomes an obsession.

The speaker told us about obsession and insecurity and fear drive obsessions. Immediately I began to think about the authoritative personality that I wrote about on Friday. It seems that fear and insecurity also feed the authoritative personality. In fact, as I considered the authoritative personality and the obsessive personality I realized the authoritative personality might just be a form of the obsessive personality.

Think of the goal of the authoritarian. They tend to seek order and control. Obsessive personalities have very little control over their obsessions and they eventually seek to control them. An obsessive person will be tempted when he his trying to fight an obsession. An authoritarian personality makes rules and punishments in order to dissuade himself from the temptation. Ambiguity in rules lead to temptations. Ambiguity makes it more difficult to fight an obsession. A rigid framework with all the answers laid out for the obsessive person tries to take away the ambiguity, the free time and wishfully the temptation. But, the reality is that only the obsessive person can make the obsession go away by realizing that no obsession can be the answer.

Many groups tend to offer replacement obsessions as a solution. And, authoritarian frameworks offer a replacement obsession. An obsessive person will easily fit into a framework with a firm unambiguous set of rules and regulations. An obsessive person will seek comfort and security in continuously following these rules and regulations. An obsessive person would also find compulsion in making sure that every other member of the group is also following the rules and regulations. A large network of these obsessed people continuously following the rules and regulations and furthermore enforcing them results in a self-regulating structure provide comfort and security for its obsessive members. However, anyone from outside the structure is a threat to this security.

The fear of abandonment is high on the list of potentially destructive threats to the network. If members abandon the group the group shrinks and potentially withers. Those who abandon the group might prove that survival without the group is possible and perhaps even better. This image might lead to the unthinkable concept that the group is not the salvation of the members.

So, it seems reasonable to suggest that joining a authoritarian cult might be a response of an obsessive personality. Then again many of the things we do are responses to our natural tendency for obsession. I might even suggest that writing this very blog is an obsession of sorts. Waking up at 5:00 AM to go work out every morning is an obsession. Eating breakfast every morning and dinner every evening are equally obsessions. But, the point is that some obsessions are healthy and some obsessions are unhealthy and sometimes even dangerous. All of this goes back to free choice and freedom to choose “good” obsessions and avoid the unhealthy ones.

How do we determine which obsessions are healthy and which obsessions are unhealthy? I would suggest that the subject of the obsession would be one consideration. And, the intensity of the obsession is the other. For example, eating breakfast every day is a healthier obsession than drinking your lunch every day. However, eating 3,000 calories for breakfast every day isn’t healthy either. Similarly following rules and regulations are normally considered a wise practice. Even the occasional reminder to a passerby might help remind someone of the rules they may not be thinking about. However, demanding laws that take away a person’s freedom and liberty might be pushing the limits, like gun control or abortion rights. The obsession that some people have for controlling others is certainly an obsession that needs to be constrained.

The message here is simple. Obsessions in general are not horrid in themselves. Some people tend to have obsessive personalities that are prone to obsessive behavior. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If the obsessions that one chooses is a healthy moderated obsession it could be a good thing. However, if a person chooses unhealthy obsessions, it could harm the person, and perhaps it could harm our society.

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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

John Dean

2007-12-07T11:56:00.000-08:00

I was listening to a talk by John Dean the other day. John Dean is a Goldwater Republican and a member of the Nixon administration. He was also the person who helped to bring down the Nixon administration by his truthful testimony about the abuse of power in the Nixon administration. John Dean should be celebrated as an American hero at some future time. He continues to be a conservative, and he continues to find the abuse of power in government disgusting.

John Dean has now written several books criticizing the Bush administration. “Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush” makes the argument that the Bush administration has abused power in a more extreme manner than the Nixon administration, which was the gold standard in corruption up until the Bush administration took power.

In “Conservatives Without Conscience” John Dean tells us about the authoritarian personality. The authoritarian personality marks the type of person that is attracted to organizations like the Nazi Party. It turns out that the Republican Party is littered with people who fit this very same authoritarian personality type. These are people who not only go along with the flow and follow their leaders without question, they believe that it is the most efficient way to accomplish what they want to get out of the party. This attraction of authoritarian personality types to the Republican Party explains why the two major political parties operate in such different ways. The Republicans expect that they will receive commands from their leadership and carry out those orders, while Democrats continue to debate policy even after decisions have been made.

In his latest book, “Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches” John Dean goes into the damage done by the Republicans so far. So much of the destruction has taken place off the radar screen in the back offices. If the media doesn’t report on this the public doesn’t know what is happening. And, if the public doesn’t know what is happening then the public will continue to re-elect these people. And, the worst thing that has happened is that every time any aspect of this destruction comes to light the response from the perpetrators and their supports mocks the evidence and the person who presents it as if they are crazy loonies wearing tin foil hats and claims the apocalypse is around the corner. This in itself is quite ironic when we consider who makes these claims and echoes them through the blogosphere.

John Dean lays out a frightening case for how two groups of extremists have hijacked the Republican Party and proceeded to hijack the US government. These people operate on authoritarian principles of control, that frighteningly enough many people actually desire. The leaders of the Republican Party desire the ease in which goals can be accomplished when everyone follows the orders of the leadership. This is why it was so easy for the President to get his legislation through congress without any debate. And, the president never felt impelled to use his veto much until the Democrats began to question his authority.

The pessimistic view of this is that the Republicans will not give up easily. If they manage to take control again they will continue to press for more and more authoritarian rule until they feel some push back. If the public remains oblivious and apathetic we will continue to lose our freedoms and liberty. And as we lose freedom and liberty it will become more difficult to win them back. If anyone doubts the resolve of these people just look at the case of Christine Comer, the former director of science in Texas. She was fired after she forwarded an e-mail message on a talk about evolution and creationism. Even the way is which her supervisors characterize the “firing” as a “resignation” is a re-writing of the facts. Ms. Comer had no intention of leaving her post, as I heard her interview on NPR.

When authoritarian personalities don’t get what they want they continue to push the envelope, game the system and eventually cheat the system. These people already know that there is only one correct solution and all the others are invalid. A mind set like this assures destruction of society as we know it. Either the authoritarians win and change society, or they lose and war breaks out with those who disagree with them.

We are currently in a hopeful moment where the Democrats have been able to put some breaks to the destruction the Republicans have begun. However, if these people win again the destruction will continue. John Dean offers some clues in his books as to how we should battle back against, not Republicans, but the personality of these authoritarians.

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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

Tribalism and the Evolution of Democracy

2007-12-04T16:36:00.000-08:00

As we take a moment from time to time to stop and look around at the situation we live in we often come to the conclusion that we understand the world. Well, actually most of us don’t take the time to actually pay attention to the details of the world around us. And, many of us don’t really understand what we do take the time to observe. So, what really happens for most of us is that we hear things in passing and we jump to conclusions based on some of those ideas. And, one of those things that we have come to accept as reality is the political division of the world into about 200 different countries. Unfortunately most of us don’t really have a clue as to how and why the world is in this current situation. And, even more importantly - we have no idea as to how the world is evolving.

If we begin way back at the beginning of history... Actually if we start before history… Moreover, we should begin before man himself evolved into man. Lets look at primate for an example.

If you recall Dian Fossey’s work, she learned that Gorilla’s live in misty places. And, she also learned that Gorilla’s have social structure. Gorilla’s do not form nations, but they do form bands of chums that benefit from sharing the same goals and objectives. It turn’s out that these bands of chums will certainly find other bands of chums as threat to their existence.

So, it should be easy to understand that tribal structure most likely has existed as the status quo as human beings evolved. Human beings tend to band together as a method to protect themselves from other tribes that have banded together to protect themselves. The first tribes most likely were based on groups of human beings living in the same area and were most likely related. Extended families were the first natural tribes. This served the biological function of protecting familial DNA as it was passed down to the next generation.

Some tribes naturally grew in size while other tribes stagnated in size or decreased in size for many reasons. Perhaps some tribes could acquire a surplus of resources. Perhaps some tribes could acquire a surplus of men or women. At some point one tribe will seek resources from another tribe. A tribe could decide to use force to take the resources that it needs for survival. Or, certainly some tribes could come to an agreement in which two or more tribes would merge and pool their resources. And, a larger tribe would certainly be viewed as a larger threat to other smaller tribes in the neighborhood.

Common languages and customs tended to tie these different tribes together, and the differences that certainly existed tended to push tribes apart. Clearly as time progressed tribes grew larger and occupied larger regions. Tribes acquire identity from their leaders. Tribal leaders under continuous pressure to prepare for war. Either your resources run low and then you need to attack other tribes to survive, or other tribes attack you for your resources and you need to defend yourself. Conflict is a continuous way of life, even when no one desires that conflict. Everyone wins when peace is made, unless that peace requires surrender of your tribal identity.

When mergers of tribes are handled carefully everyone is happy that the new bigger tribe shares in the identity of the new tribe as being a continuation of the old tribe. The trick of a tribal merger is to make the psychological argument that the old tribes continue on in the new tribe.

Tribes are people and each person bring new ideas to the tribe. Some of those ideas are a propagation of the ideas of language, stories, myths and history. Those cultural things define a tribe. A tribe is a living thing that continually renews itself. A tribe has a short term memory and a long term memory. The short term memory of a tribe exists in an individual member of the tribe. The long term memory of a tribe are the memories that are passed down from one individual to the next. When two tribes merge some of those long term memories die while others live on. Before the birth of writing many cultures just died and could never be reborn.

If we begin to think of tribes as living things that can live and die and have memory we need to ask the question - What makes a tribe successful as a living thing? Obviously a tribe is successful when it grows and spreads its culture. A tribe is not successful when its culture dies, or is over taken by another culture.
There is only a limited amount “cultural space” within any culture. This is because a culture may have a large history of recorded memory the only important memory is the current experience spreading through the culture. In tribal life the current culture was repeated over and over again. A member of the tribe would experience the language and the history as retold by the members of the culture. Recipes and traditions flooded through the tribal experience. Over each year the tribe normally covered all of these things, ready to repeat them again. In modern America our culture is more elusive. We repeat and restate “themes” in different ways - and these “themes” tell us what our culture contains. So, how did we get here and has our culture evolved or died?

Let’s go back to the tribe and look at what the successful tribe has created. The successful tribe passes its history, food and ideals to each successive generation. The unsuccessful tribe dies. And, as I have mentioned before, in a merger some culture dies and some culture is passed on. And, since the advent of recording technology we have been able to put some culture on the back burner. Culture from the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks and Romans have survived to the present in the from of written records, but not in practice. We don’t have vomitoriums, speak Egyptian or have juries of 501 people. These cultural ideas have died. But have these cultures died, or have they evolved into what we have today?

In modern times we find that many cultures continue to live on, even after these people have been assimilated into different societies. Hebrews may have been the first culture to do this as they were able to keep their culture alive even after they had been held in captivity time after time. As tribes became large and began to dominate other smaller tribes without the demand of assimilation some cultural aspects were allowed to survive. Even though Christians were outlawed by the Romans, the Christians were able to keep their religion alive in the hidden places of society. When tribes were small and memory was the only storage media for tradition and customs cultural ideas stayed monolithic. However, as tribes grew into empires some culture was allowed to survive. Why?

What was the advantage of having an empire, if culture was not uniform? The answer of course is security. If we go back to the tribal picture we remember that a tribe’s main purpose was to survive. Large tribes ensured survival by eliminating the potential for conflict. The purpose of survival was to perpetuate the culture. However, with such a large empire, such as the Roman Empire, what is the culture that is worth propagating? Obviously the foods within the Empire varied as the regions of the empire varied and they would not be held at such a high value as other cultural values. Actually, the Romans themselves believed that the cultural value that they propagated was “civilization.” The peoples that the Roman conquered could keep their foods and languages, but they should become civilized and become a member of the Roman Empire. Of course the Roman idea of being civilized was a cultural value with a cultural definition.

As the world evolves from a tribal state to some future state people continue to merge together to form a strong defense against the enemy. The “enemies” in the tribal sense were the people who wanted to take the resources of the tribe. The method of taking resources ranges from destroying a tribe and taking the resources, to a merger of tribes where the resources are shared. In our modern world we have drawn political boundaries around virtually all the resources on the planet Earth. A tribe living within these boundaries shares its resources with other tribes living within these boundaries. Tribes living within these boundaries select leaders that determine how the region should deal with the rest of the world.

Let’s be clear here. We have tribes living within our borders today. Tribes are groups of people with cultures that differ from the majority. In fact, the majority of Americans are members of tribes. And, so it follows that the group of people left over that claim not to be a member of a tribe are by definition a member of a tribe. We have tribes that differentiate themselves by their land of origin - Italians, Irish, Polish, Russian or Pacific Islander. We have tribes that differentiate themselves by religion - Christian, Muslim, Jew, Friends of Jesus, Shakers, Quakers or Catholic. We have tribes that differentiate themselves by hobby - Rock Collector, Baseball Fanatic, Dog Breeder or Fundamentalist Christian. In fact, many of us are members of multiple tribes with multiple interests. We all define our lives by the bits and pieces of culture we collect, support and share.

Some tribes are born, live and die in a few short years. Other tribes live for thousands of years. We have all banded together out of the need for protection from the “enemy.” In America our enemy are those who choose to destroy us. If a tribe dies, it should be for natural causes - like disco. It should not be from external forces - like the Spanish Inquisition. In America every tribe has a right to existence unless that tribe threatens another tribe. Tribes are like individuals, but because of democracy, tribes actually have more power than individuals. Large tribes can elect representatives, while individuals could never do that. After all, that is what representative democracy is all about.

In fact, what democracy has done for tribalism is to give tribes protection and prevented the need for violence. When a tribe chooses violence over discussion democracy steps in and protects the vulnerable tribe. This is because we have recognized that no one wants violence - only protection from it.

Around the world we still have tribes who believe that they don’t need to surrender autonomy to democracy. The leaders of these tribes would rather fight to maintain control rather than suffer from the will of the people. These leaders know that they have been unfair to the people and if the people could, they would punish these leaders. But, the leaders have built protections into their systems to prevent this. Some leaders steal power that they don’t deserve. Sometimes the tribes don’t care. Since it is a democracy only a majority of the tribes need to care before something can happen. And, most democracies are orderly and bureaucratic - leaving time for corrections. In the long run a democracy will eventually get things right even when unnecessary suffering may endure from time to time. For the most part tribes will be protected and the will survive, which is much better than the old system of tribalism where tribes were continuously fearful that they could be wiped out at any time.

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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

Your Tax Dollars at Work

2007-11-20T16:13:00.000-08:00

Greed is a very strong emotion. People want money, because they equate money with security. If you don’t feel safe, then you can use your money to buy protection. If you have enough money to buy a nice house in a nice neighborhood, then you will have a strong police force to protect you. How do I know? All of the people in this nice neighborhood pay high taxes to have the strong police force to protect their assets. Money is security.

Why can’t we spend our tax dollars to have a nice city, instead of a nice neighborhood? Obviously we don’t have enough money to protect the entire city, that is why we choose to protect the wealthy areas of town and let the rest of the city fend for itself. At least that’s the philosophy in most of the country.

For more than forty years the Republicans have told you that they wanted smaller government. They told you that they wanted you to keep your money and spend it as you please. They told you that free markets and free enterprise would solve all of our problems. This language translates into: If you are wealthy and live in a wealthy neighborhood, then you should spend your money on your neighborhood. You should build the best schools, have the best parks, control crime with the majority of police force, and encourage only the wealthiest of citizens to live in your neighborhood. High home prices yield high taxes and discourage the “dregs” of society from living in your town. Wealthy communities draw the wealthy and powerful to live there and result in a disproportionate amount of power in the higher ranks of state and federal government. Forcing you to spend money on surrounding poor neighborhoods only encourages those who don’t have capital to be lazy and stay in their cesspool neighborhoods. And, for forty years those who were well off believed this line of thinking.

To the benefit of the Republican Party this line of thinking trickled down to the middle class in America. The middle class heard the selected bits from this reasoning. They heard lower taxes. They didn’t realize that lower federal and state taxes should be offset by higher local taxes in order to provide services that most people enjoy, like nice schools, parks and police. No, they believed that lower taxes meant more money in their own pocket to buy a new video game or a deep fried cheese sandwich. The middle class don’t have a ton of money, so tax cuts sound like a great idea in the times of inflation when everything seems to be just out of reach. And, when Republicans cut taxes then the federal funding in poorer parts of the country began to dry up. The net effect was to direct more money into wealthy neighborhoods and away from poor and middle class neighborhoods.

In the current conservative Republican mind the only reason for federal taxes is to fund national security. There was a time in our country when conservatives were motivated to build infrastructure in our country. That infrastructure helped business accomplished the difficult task of getting products to customers. It was in the government’s interest to aid airlines, railroads and trucking companies to smooth out all the wrinkles. Today, many believe that the infrastructure is built and it will last forever. Or, if it doesn’t then people can figure out how to maintain these things without the coordination of the government. If the companies that use this infrastructure need it maintained, then they will find a way to pay for it. FedEx and UPS should be out there fixing the airports, filling the potholes and dredging the channels. After all, what are we paying these guys for?

Instead our tax dollars are meant to be spent on our national security. For example, we should be sending our government employees around the Middle East fixing their problems. After all, that is what we are doing in Iraq. After we so quickly destroyed Iraq in creative ways like shorting out all of their electrical generation plants, blowing up bridges and dropping bombs on restaurants we are now trying to fix all of those problems. Our government is using your tax dollars to repair the infrastructure in Iraq. They can’t spend your hard earned money fixing our schools, but the supporters of the war in Iraq complain that the media doesn’t spend enough time glorifying the schools that your tax dollars built in Iraq. Isn’t their something ironic about this picture?

Our government knows that the burning of fossil fuels is changing our environment. They know that the old dirty power plants that are providing us with power could be made cleaner and more efficient with a little government help. But, we are spending our tax dollars rebuilding the power plants in Iraq instead.
In fact, we are spending billions of dollars on our effort in Iraq, but the president vetoes bills of a few million dollars and claims that he does this because of expense. Are we not the richest nation in the world? Well, actually I think Monaco is, but we are probably ranked higher than Iraq. Shouldn’t we be spending our money in our own country before we go around the world “nation building?” Even George W Bush said this in the collection of lies that he spouted while he was campaigning to be our president in 2000. But, George W Bush never was a man of his word. He has always said as little as possible to get elected and then remain vague on the actions that he really meant to take.

As this election cycle approaches we need to keep these lessons in mind. Candidates from which ever party will tell you the minimum information necessary to win your vote. No one will vote for the candidate who will tell us the whole truth. It is just too painful to realize that so many of our previous candidates lied to us and stole our money to pay for the previous generation. Ronald Reagan borrowed money to pay for his tax cuts. We are paying interest on some of those loans today. George W Bush borrowed more money to pay for his expansion of government. Arnold Schwarzenagger borrowed money to pay for the money that Enron stole from California. What do all of these leaders have in common? They are all Republicans that told us that they were going to cut our taxes. They may have cut taxes for the current generation, but they mortgaged those tax cuts on our children. And, who is winning in this capitalist business transaction? Why, that would be the Chinese government that bought a large portion of those government bonds. The Chinese government is now collecting interest on those bonds. In the long run we are paying the Chinese a government handout, when we have people in our country that really need a helping hand.

Some of our children don’t get proper health care, because their parents can’t afford the regular check ups, or the health insurance. When a child gets sick, these parents don’t have the money to take their kids to the doctor. Only when the illness becomes so extreme that an emergency room visit is the only thing that will save their life does a parent take their child for help. And, since they can’t afford the ER expense the visit is paid for with our tax dollars. Doesn’t it make a bit more sense to pay the lower cost of preventative care instead of waiting for a child to get so ill that they need the ER in order to survive? But, this is how we currently spend your tax dollars.

If you look at how your money is being spent today, I believe that most of us would agree that we are wasting a lot of money. And, the situation got this way by politicians pandering to the public and not telling us the whole truth. But, since no politician who told the whole truth could ever be elected we are left with the only possible option. That is, we must learn the truth despite what the politicians tell us. And the only way to learn the truth this way is to be skeptical, cynical and assume the worst about every politician on both sides of the aisle. Then the politicians will be forced to tell you more and more until the truth finally wins out. Doubt demands clarity. Skeptics are not easily fooled, because they expect to be fooled. Cynics are the toughest vote to win, but that only means that truth will win out.

On the other hand, if we continue to be the society that believes everything they hear, read or see without questioning, then we will meet the same downfall of every other “great” democracy. Those hungry for power will tell the people what they want to hear and do what ever they please without a single major challenge. And, democracy will fall to tyranny 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

Good Days and Bad Days

2007-11-09T15:54:00.001-08:00

Over the last year I have been running at work. We have a shower so the athletic odor isn’t an issue. I have been running after work or at lunchtime. During the summer after work has been easier than lunch. With the shorter days and the time change it is getting dark by 5:15pm now so running after work isn’t working any more.

Running at lunch cuts into my day for more than just the running time. There is the change time and the shower time. And, there is also the recovery time afterward. So, for a short 10K run it takes almost two hours out of my day. I can work a little longer in the evening to make up for the difference, but knowing that it will take the extra time sometimes prevents me from going out and running at all.

Yesterday I brought my running stuff with the intention of running. I was a bit busy, so when lunchtime came around I put off taking my run. Thirty minutes went by and I began to think about taking that run. It looked cold outside. I was thinking of every possible excuse, until I finally decided that I might just take a short run. I got changed and finally got out the door. I really didn’t feel like running. I was dreading the first mile.

Normally the first mile is the hardest part of my run. But amazingly yesterday’s first mile didn’t feel that difficult. This must be a common phenomenon. I almost always feel as if I am taking out the first mile too fast. Sometimes I think that I am going to have to stop and walk. Sometimes my legs feel like they are going to collapse. But, by the time I get to the 1-mile mark I suddenly have my second wind. Yesterday I had these same feelings during the first mile. But, yesterday they only lasted for about three or four minutes. Suddenly I felt stronger and able to push a little harder.

I take splits on the course that I run. I don’t know exactly where the mile markers are, so I take splits at turning points on the course. Basically I repeat several legs of the course so I am able to compare the legs of the course even though the legs are unusual distances like 1.75 miles, 0.75 miles 0.44 miles and 0.2 miles. This being said the total distance is 10K give or take a few meters.

Some days I feel really good when I run and other days I feel terrible. Sometimes when I feel good my times on these sections are slow. Maybe I feel good because I just ran too slow. Sometimes when I feel terrible my splits are extremely fast, but I end up crashing before I can pull off a great 10K time. But, yesterday I felt great and when I came to my first split I found that I had run a fairly fast time. I quickly calculated that if I kept up that pace I could finish at my average 10K time. This is because I normally negative split my times. I wondered if I could negative split this pace, because it seemed to be quite a bit faster than I normally run. Maybe I was running fast because I had an adrenaline rush, or maybe I had started too fast and I was going to hit the wall early. I wondered if I could push myself just a little harder. I feared that if a pushed too hard I wouldn’t be able to keep the pace.

When I was in High School I ran cross-country. I wasn’t good. In fact, I really sucked at cross-country. I just ran to stay in shape. One thing that I remember to this day was that my High School best mile time was 6:30. I tried to beat that time many times, but I could never run any faster. Twenty-five years later I came close to that time. Last year on the first mile of a 10K race I looked at my watch at the 1-mile mark I panicked. I thought that I might not be able to finish the race at that pace. And, by mile three I was running 9 minute miles. There was no way that I could negative split a time like 6:30. Yesterday I ran the first 1.75 miles at 7:40 minute pace. At that pace I would run a 47:30 10K which is very good for me. I consider anything under 48 minutes to be a good run. I felt strong and wondered if I could negative split that pace.

I pushed a little harder on the second 1.75 miles and ran it at a 7:30 minute pace. Amazingly I still felt strong. This was not a normal run. I continued to push a little harder and I finished the last mile at a 7:00 minute pace. My total time was a personal record. And, the best thing of all was that I still felt strong, even after I finished the run. It was certainly a good day. The last time I came close to this time was about five months ago. And, then I began to wonder what made this day any different from any other day. Why was this run so much easier to make this time than any of my other runs over the last five months?

It certainly wasn’t how I felt before I was about to run. I was dreading the feeling of that first mile. I didn’t feel strong when I sat at my desk considering whether I should run or not. I wasn’t even sure that the run was going to be good when I run the first two miles. I thought that I might hit the wall or poop out at any time. In fact, I never really knew how good my time was going to be until I hit the last mile. That was because I knew that at a minimal pace I could still have a very good time. But, I didn’t know that I was going to have a personal best time, until I finished the run. That was the truly strange thing. In fact, It is extremely difficult to even know when I am going to have a good day or a bad day.

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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

Liberal Lawyers are “Sue Happy” and Conservative Writers are Happy to Sue

2007-11-07T14:29:00.000-08:00

Every conservative has been told that Liberal Lawyers will be the Death of America, unless we get some control over the irrational lawsuits clogging the court system. Liberals counter that the judicial branch is one place where the common man can get a fair deal. (This assumes that the “common man” can pay the legal fees to take his case to court.)

The real truth is somewhere in between. People need to be able to challenge the powerful that exploit their power for their personal greed, until they are called on the carpet. Many of the laws that are written to benefit the powerful need to be challenged. Many of the scams invented by the powerful need to be investigated. And, this is one major purpose of the legal system in this country.

In general the system has been constructed over time by the powerful to aid the powerful and to ensure that the powerful do not lose that power. This is why large agriculture is able to exploit illegal aliens with low wages and the threat of deportation if they don’t comply. This is why so many banks are able to charge ridiculous fees - even on the people that are about to lose their homes. This is why credit card companies are able to market their cards to people that are unlikely to ever pay back the loans and charge enormous percentage rates on top of that. This is why companies are able to get away with selling defective products that don’t do what they are advertised to do. This is why companies are still polluting the environment without cleaning up the mess they left behind. And, the powerful continue to fight to stop lawsuits to straighten these ills out.

That is why I find this piece so funny: NYT

Conservative authors that have fought to put the power structure in place that would continue to insure the exploitation of workers are crying foul when they are put in the same situation. These are the liars that told us that John Kerry was unfit for command. They were afraid that John Kerry or another Democrat would get into office and make it easier for lawyers to sue to protect the workers or the environment. Now, they are taking the liberal route out of their own personal special interest. And, I suppose that they want us to cry in their spilled milk.

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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

Being Treated Like Children

2007-11-06T15:25:00.000-08:00

Before anyone has learned anything about politics they have already learned that there are two political parties. But, it is often confusing for many Americans to decide which party to support. For many Americans they are often asked to throw their support behind a candidate that is a member of one of these parties because the candidate tells them what they want to hear. It isn’t often that Americans actually spend the time and the effort to learn what the Political Parties stand for. For the most part, the political parties don’t have political education as a major priority. This is because the political parties would rather treat to like children telling you what to think, so you don’t have too.

In order to understand politics we should take a step or two back and look at history. There have been democracies before, and they have failed before. For most of history people have been ruled by a few leaders and the rest of the people had very little say in the matter. There have been Kings, Czars, Dictators, and military leaders. The main point is that seizing and maintaining power was a system that worked for the leaders but not necessarily for the majority. There were good leaders and poor leaders, based on the prosperity of the public, but much of that had to do with benevolence or luck. So, when Democracy was invoked in the few cases through history in which it was it offered the majority a chance to have a say in these matters.

Giving political power to the masses has advantages and disadvantages. This is because the wellbeing of the public is in the hands of those with political power. Just as a bad leader may act in ways that cause harm to society in general, the majority is capable of doing the same. It was always assumed that the public needs to be educated in order to make the wise choices needed to prevent harm to the common good of the public. But, this only works when people actually use their brains and think instead of acting without thinking.

This dilemma offers us a glimpse into politics as it has evolved. The people with power have always wanted to retain that power. The rest of the population has always sought power in order to get some control over their lives.

Power comes in several flavors. There is political power that enables one to create the laws. Judicial power enables one to determine what those laws mean. Police and military power enforces those laws. And, financial power buys the resources needed for all of these to happen. Some power comes from reputation and authority. Some power is based in fear or threats. The fact that leaders have power is not really the issue. Normally we argue about what leaders do with their power. Why do they do what they do, and how does it effect us are the questions we ask.

When the democracy of the United States was being created the balance of power was a critical insurance policy that was meant to prevent abuse of the public by the leadership. The people foreseen to be abused were the property owners. Property owners could potentially have their property taken away by the government. This is why the democracy empowered the property owners with voting rights. And states with small populations had wealthy property owners with more to fear from the tyranny of the common folk who could potentially vote to divide up all the large farms among majority. However, there was very little protection of the common man from the tyranny of the wealthy class. Over the next two centuries those with less power have continually fought for protection from those with more.

Gradually, those without power have been able to wrest bits of power away from those with power. And, those with power have continually fought to keep what they had. Those with power feared that as the common folk gained power they would turn the tables and demand property and power from those who had it. They called it communism, socialism, re-distribution of wealth, or thievery. But, those with this power could just as easily abuse their power by exploiting the common people. The property owners could never survive without these folk, because they also need their labor to grow their crops, mine their mines or manufacture their goods. There is a symbiotic relationship between these two groups. Those with property needs labor and those without property need money to survive. This relationship is asymmetric, because those without property can not outwait a property owner until they come to a fair agreement. Starvation and death will happen to the non-property owner before the property owner might suffer at all. Knowing this means that a property owner can basically offer whatever he likes as wages. Competition might play some role if property owners don’t work together in collusion. However, in reality it is in all of the few property owners interest to work together to keep wages as low a possible. Only in the case of low labor pools is there any reason for competition between the property owners to raise wages. Labor shortages might happen when particular skills are needed, or particular attitudes are desired.

As the weak in society gradually acquired more power they were able to demand minimum wages, better working conditions, better working hours and fairer treatment. These things have been won slowly as the property owners have fought these things every step of the way.

In order to understand the two sides of this argument even better we should examine the two extremes of these points of view. Property owners ideally would like to have total and complete control of everything they own. If they chose to burn everything to the ground it would be their personal choice. If they chose to build noxious chemical plants or sewage treatment plants or nuclear reactors on their property they believe that it is their right to do that. They believe that they have the right to pay whatever people take to do whatever they demand. Government shouldn’t interfere or place limits on anything that they decide they should do. If they are religious property owners, then all they need is God’s Law to limit them, and nothing more.

On the other extreme we have the commoners who own little or no property. They believe that they have the right to get a fair wage for a fair day’s work. But, many of them have become disgruntled by the way they have been treated by the property owners. They believe that they deserve much more than they have been paid in the past, and they feel powerless to effect any change. In the extreme case they desire to have what the wealthy have, security over their lives. If they can not get security they begin to feel justified in taking matters into their own hands just to provide for their families. At some point laws lose their effect over these people, because living in jail might end up being a better deal than the suffering the abuse of the system.

Most people actually fall in the middle somewhere. Most people own something and they wish to protect it from those who would like to take it away from them. Most people realize that laws to protect property rights benefit everyone. Most people realize that theft is not a solution. Most people realize that the abuse of workers is not a solution. But even though the majority of people realize these things it doesn’t mean that everyone is on agreement on all of these issues. The point is that there are people that continue to fight to protect their property rights while others continue to fight against abuse and for fairness.

It turns out that Republicans align themselves with those fighting for property rights. They favor a republic governed by representatives and protected from the tyranny of the people. And, the Democrats favor moving closer to democracy in which the people have more control over their own lives. These two mighty political parties fight this fight continuously over every issue that comes before them. Our country is a democratic republic that continues to fight this fight on a representative level, protecting the common good from both the power of property owners and tyranny of mass insurrection.

The reason we continue to be treated like children in this fight, is because our leaders don’t trust us. Without understanding the consequences the common folk would refuse to pay any taxes and raid the treasury. Without responsible adults in control our country would decay into chaos. Infrastructure would never be repaired and many people would run wild breaking whatever laws they didn’t like. And in the end neither our property or our rights would be protected.

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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

That Old Time American Principle

2007-10-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

Not to long ago, we were a country that stood on principle. As a nation we were united to fight evil and prevail. We had a nation filled with men who would sacrifice every thing that they knew to win the battle against many forces of evil everywhere. But, it seems that we have lost that Great American Principle.

This was quite apparent last week when the Congress voted to call a genocide a genocide. Maybe we should have done this many years ago, but at least some of our leaders recognized that we could find some common ground and at least agree on something so obvious. Sometimes it takes some time to stand up for something that is so obvious. And, a majority, a large majority of Congress agreed on this matter. Some pain takes a bit longer to figure out and make the appropriate gesture. The Catholic Church only recently acknowledged the evil role that the Church played in both the Spanish Inquisition and the smear of Galileo. These things happened 500 years ago, 400 years more than the Armenian genocide and it was a good thing.

But, unfortunately America has lost its principle. A weak leader like George W Bush is more concerned about Turkey’s reaction to this recognition than he is of the moral principle behind the action. And, George W Bush has claimed to have moral principle. But, like usual, his actions speak louder than words. George W Bush is a man of principle for the new age. That is code for: He is a man of principle as long as it doesn’t interfere with his agenda. There was a time when a leader’s agenda coincided with his principle. But, we are now living in a new age where a personal agenda trumps principle. Oh, please give me back the old days when men lived by principle!

It wasn’t so long ago when we saw minorities being put down, kept from voting and placed away from the central society. But, everyday Americans saw this injustice and drove hundreds of miles to help these people rise up against their oppressors. This was a time when Americans had principles and they knew the difference between right and wrong. They weren’t simply concerned with their personal self interest, but they were concerned with the well-being of fellow Americans across the country. Moral principle was valued then and people took the time and money they had and used it to further the cause of American freedom. This was truly a time when we had American principle.

Injustice wasn’t limited to a single minority in a single region. When these Americans with true moral principle looked around they saw injustice in many places. People saw how large corporations used automation to systematically destroy our country and our planet. They dumped toxins into our lakes, rivers and seas. They pumped disgusting gases into our atmosphere all in the name of production. These corporations argued that they were benefiting the people by producing goods for the people at such a low cost that everyone could have anything that desired. But, the people argued back, “If you don’t have your health, then you don’t have anything.” This was a good old American value that I remember so vividly from the past. There are so few people today that care about health any more!

Today we have to fight a president tooth and nail in order to get health care to our children. Twenty-five percent of the adults in our country can’t afford to take care of simple health needs. And, when something tragic happens to them they go to the emergency rooms of our hospitals where they know that they can not be turned away. As a society we are paying many times what it would cost to take preventative actions before things would get this far out of control. Today we have a President and Vice President that are using all of their energy to save energy companies that want to continue to destroy our environment. The more we damage the environment, then the more it will cost to pay for the health care of the people effected by this. There was a time when Americans would see this tragedy unfold and they would mass in the streets and shout and stamp their feet until our leaders would listen. Or, our leaders would live by principle and feel compelled to pass laws to fix these problems. But, America no longer has these principles and they people no longer feel compelled to do anything but eat, drink, watch TV and play video games. Maybe they fall asleep from time to time, but that is always something that they feel compelled to do.

Somehow we have elected a president that is compelled by “principle” to honor a religious figure in the Dalai Lama in order to defend religious freedom and give the finger to China, but is afraid to acknowledge a hundred year old genocide because he is afraid of what Turkey might do. Since when are Americans compelled by principle to rattle the cage of the worlds most populous country, but they are afraid to stand for principle against a tiny backward third-world country in the Middle East? What happened to true American principle? Why has America become such a frightened little dweeb country? I remember, like it was yesterday, when Americans stood for principle and they weren’t afraid to back down from even nuclear powers like the Soviet Union.

George W Bush once claimed that we were compelled to go into Iraq because of principle. Iraq never provoked us, and that attack had little to do with defending our borders. But, George W Bush told us that Iraq might threaten us in the future and this preemptive strike was some type of time bending defense of that future threat. And, in order to save us from the smoking gun of a mushroom cloud we were justified to attack Iraq and hang their leader. This was considered a matter of moral principle.

Over the past few years Turkey has been attacked by Kurdish rebels living in Iraq. These are real attacks where real Turks have been killed. This isn’t some strange bending of the time line. And, under the American doctrine of defense the United States of America would certainly feel compelled to attack these rebels if they lived on our border. So, Turkey would certainly be justified by American principle to follow the rebels back into Iraq after one of their “night raids.” And, Turkey passed a law condoning just that. Shouldn’t our principled president support such a principled and justified use of force for a real, not imagined, threat? But, our “principled” president condemned Turkey for passing this law. Oh, where have our American principles gone.

Please bring back the days of American principle where Americans stood up to its government when they knew that the government was wrong. Bring back the days when the people felt the American moral principle and acted on it.

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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 Void

2007-10-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

What is it that motivates us to live our lives?

Obviously not everyone has the same motivation - or do they?

Some people are determined to become wealthy. Others are driven to learn the secrets of the Universe. Still other travel the world looking for whatever thrills that they can find. The majority of humans, however, are merely driven to survive the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

If we take another step back and ask ourselves once again, what motivates these people to continue their unending drive to do what they do every day we may be surprised by the answer.

By the very nature of being human we have urges, emotions and desires that push us and our species to survive. Hunger pushes us to find food and eat it. The memory of hunger reminds us to store food for the future. Desire of the opposite sex urges us to procreate. Desire of friends and companionship makes a society stronger in order to defend itself against outside forces. The desire for comfort and warmth urges us to build shelters and protect ourselves from diseases and the weather. All of these urges come to all of us and we respond to them in different ways.

For the most part we are mainly concerned with survival. Most of the time most of us through out human history have been so concerned with simple survival that we haven’t really taken the time to ask the question - Why do we need to survive?

In some societies through out human history life has become easier for at least one group of people. When life became easier in Greek society the wealthy citizens of Athens used the surplus “free time” to ask this and many other interesting questions. The citizens of Sparta on the other hand used their free time to train soldiers to protect their way of life. These two major cities of ancient times are symbols for the two different ways to look at life. Sparta didn’t question the motivation of human survival; instead survival was assumed to be an imperative and military protection was the best-known way to achieve this imperative.

The philosophers of Athens asked this question over and over again. They asked the question in different ways. Somehow there is a feeling deep inside all of us telling us that we should survive, but we almost never know a true valid reason why that should be. After all, the meaning of life can not be answered unless we know why we were created. We can’t answer the question of why we were created unless there is a creator and the creator is willing to tell us why we were created. The puzzle goes on and on and it is difficult to find an honest indisputable answer that everyone will agree on.

This, of course, is the place where religion and science part ways. Religion asks us to make some assumptions that there is a God and that God created us. Science instead asks us to be skeptical and continue to ask questions that most likely can never be answered. As human beings the majority of us don’t put all of our eggs in one basket. This means that the majority of us don’t believe in religion to the exclusion of science, and we don’t believe in science to the exclusion of religion. So, most of us are comfortable with the idea that science can not answer questions regarding the purpose or meaning of our lives as individuals or as a society. Some people disregard those types of questions all together, others are happy to accept religious explanations. Either way, we all still have a feeling that what we do with our lives should serve some purpose, even if we don’t really know what that purpose really is. This is because there still is some desire within ourselves pushing us to survive and even thrive. We just don’t really know why.

Now, imagine yourself in the ideal situation. You have been born into a wealthy family and you most certainly will have everything provided for you for your entire life. You were “blessed” with parents that don’t ask anything from you and you are free to do whatever you like without limits. You don’t really need to study or work. You don’t need to think or read or question. You have three meals a day, a warm bed and much much more. So, what is the purpose of your life?

It actually turns out that a person does not need to be infinitely wealthy to experience this awesome freedom. In our American society today there are many people living in these exact conditions. These are not necessarily the wealthy, but the children of regular middle class people. Many of these children grow up with everything that they can imagine, food, a warm bed and a place to call their own. They are not asked to do very much and complain if they ever are. They get almost everything that they want and they sit around bored without anything to do. They watch TV and play video games for hours. Do these kids feel, know or understand the purpose of their lives? But, like all of us they still feel that deep down drive that they have some desire to fill. They just don’t know what it is. This desire is sometime described as an emptiness, a hole or a void. And, as humans we all search to fill that void with the things that we desire in the hope of filling that void.

From human instinct alone we know that we desire things that we are missing. We desire food when we are hungry. We desire water when we are thirsty. And, sometimes we desire these same things to fill that void of missing purpose in our lives. But, sometimes we can be fooled into believing that other things can fill that void. For example, drugs and alcohol may help us forget that desire which reappears when the effects of the drugs wear off. Others sometimes seek love to fill that void. And, in loo of love they find sex and lust instead. The problem is not that these things are evil, but rather the problem is that people don’t know what their purpose is and how to fulfill it.

Here is where religion offers a solution. Any religion will tell you that your purpose is to serve God, Whomever they deem to be that God. And, then the religion will prescribe how their particular God is to be served. The problem is so widespread and universal that is part of every religion. And the need to fill this void is so great that people will do almost anything in an attempt to fill this void. Cult religions thrive on this fact. But, other major religions use this human desire to fulfill the agenda of the religion in question. The question of whether God is truly being served is normally assumed by the majority of those who seek to fill this emptiness. “Love of God” or “Fear of God” are the profound forces used to keep those from questioning in many cases. Whether the religious purpose is the true purpose is not the point, because when a person feels that they are fulfilling a purpose the void becomes occupied and the need to fill it becomes less. Some will argue that only fulfilling your true purpose will fill the void completely, but since no one can truly know what that true purpose is this can only be left as conjecture. Some will argue that only a particular religion can fill the void, but the truth is that there are many very religious people still seeking to fill this void. The only way to truly fill this void is to become confident that you are truly fulfilling your purpose in the best way that you can.

You can acquire this confidence with or without the aid of religion. This confidence takes many forms. To some, it is called faith. This is the faith that you are doing what you need to be doing. But, it is also known a drive and desire. Athletes and Entrepreneurs have drive and desire to do what they do best by following their instincts. Scientists can remain skeptical, but they fill this void by continuously pursuing the questions that they ask. And, those that work to feed to poor and hungry know in their hearts irregardless of religion that they are certainly making the world a better place for the few that they can help. And their work truly fills that void.

The void is a search for purpose. And, as long as we live in an imperfect world there will always be a need. Finding and fulfilling these needs is the universal purpose that we all seek in the long run. We need to prepare ourselves so that when we find our purpose we take that opportunity and make the most of it. And, don’t worry, if you miss an opportunity another one will soon be on its way.

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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

Disheartened but Not Enraged

2007-10-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

For more than a year now the people of the United States of America have disapproved of the way that the Bush administration has run the country. The majority of Americans actually finally agreed that they didn’t like what the Bush administration was doing shortly after he was re-elected in November of 2004. The trend in the polls should frighten those of us that believe that Democracy is the will of the people. It was quite clear that Americans rallied around the flag after we were attacked on 9/11/2001. Once again after we sent our military into Iraq to conquer that country the general support for the president rose. But, the background support for the president has declined aside from those two events.

What could this striking data mean about human nature, politics and democracy?

What we should take away from this experience is that people generally don’t understand what they are told by politicians. It really doesn’t matter whether the politician is from the left or from the right, because people don’t understand the big picture.

How could I possibly come to this conclusion?

Well, part of the answer may be found in Paul Krugman’s column this week. Part of the answer may be found in the polling data that I mentioned above. And, part of the answer is found in understanding simple human nature of politics.

So, first of all we have to understand what politics has evolved into in the United States in this century. Currently we have 25% of the American people represented by the Republican Party in that these people believe that the Republican party will make their political dreams come true. Similarly we have 25% of the American people represented by the Democrat Party in that these people believe that the Democrats will make their political dreams come true. The other 50% of the American people don’t really believe that either political party will do much to help them but sometimes they will cling on to an issue that one party or the other party supports or opposes just like they do.

The 50% of the American people in the middle have been turned off to politics in general. They don’t see any hope of any solutions, because they see both political parties as looking past them and not listening to their problems. And, because they have no stake in the outcome of any of these political discussions, they loose hope in the political process. Many of these people don’t vote, or even register to vote. The two political parties are happy that these people don’t vote, because it keeps the balance between the two political parties relatively equal.

Occasionally a politician may become more populist and begin to attract a group of people from the middle 50%. Sometimes this support from the middle is enough to turn an election or two, but for the most part these people see no results from the hopeful candidate, and they drop out of the political process once again. A presidential candidate like Ronald Reagan was able to give hope to some of these people. However, a president like George W Bush easily erases all of those gains as and sometimes more by proving that nothing has changed even with all those nice words being spoken during the election.

But, this middle 50% isn’t the whole story. The extremist 25% on both sides of the political spectrum also play a role. This is because that 25% percent of true believers is not a hard and fast rule. That group can grow when there is hope that a political party can solve problems. But, that number can also shrink when it is certain that the party that simply serves someone else’s interest.

For example, when the Republicans adopted the anti-abortion rhetoric that attracted a huge number of religious extremists that believed that the Republicans could pass a constitutional amendment that would make abortion illegal. But, as it has become clear that the main goal of the Republican party is to make more money for the wealthy many of the religious extremists have begun to give up hope and move back to the middle 50% that don’t believe that politics can solve their problems.

Similar things have happened on the political Left when groups of environmental extremists wanted the Democrats to clean up our planet, but it became clear that most Americans weren’t willing to sacrifice their personal comfort to protect the planet. These people moved back into the middle 50% as they lost hope.

During the Bush administration we have this classic example repeated once again. People believed that the Republican Party could solve their problem after we were attacked on 9/11/2001. Many people from the middle 50% quickly cheered on the administration because they feared that believing that the job could not be done would be too painful. America is the land of denial when fear is at hand. If we believe that it can’t happen, then it won’t happen. Fortunately Americans don’t all live in denial continuously. Gradually Americans look around themselves and the see reality. And, slowly they fall away from the mentality of the herd. And, by the time the 2004 presidential election was upon us the Bush administration had about 50% support compared to the 90% support just after 9/11/2001. There was a small bump in support that only campaigning can do, but for the most part George W Bush’s support was falling, and it continued to fall after the election as well, as Americans pick their heads up and look around them at the problems that the administration caused.

The hardcore supporters of George W Bush has fallen to 17% now, based on the latest Rasmussen Reports poll. This number is lower than the number of conservatives, or people who call themselves conservatives. Obviously a fair number of conservatives have taken to the idea that George W Bush has betrayed the true conservatives. Richard Viguerie is leading this charge with his website ConservativesBetrayed.com. But, on Monday New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out that everything that these conservatives are “shocked” about have there roots in previous conservative rhetoric. Conservatives want and inefficient government that is in debt and inept. After all, this only makes for proving their point that the private sector could do it better. There is no consideration to the fact that poor management can make these things happen at a very rapid pace. Cutting Taxes for the wealthy is what every conservative wants, as well as to use up the Clinton surplus to pay private contractors to fight a war.

The real point here is that Republicans have veiled their true purpose to keep the wealthy in control at all means behind their words of phony conservatism that people like Richard Viguerie believed. The truth is not that Richard Viguerie was betray with his notion of conservatism. It is better understood that George W Bush has done what conservatives before him have done. They speak a good game to get the majority to vote for them, then when they have power they disregard those supporters and they carry out the true agenda. And, they’ll keep doing that until they’re figured out.

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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

Fear Not

2007-10-05T12:51:00.000-07:00

In a continued look at values I thought that I might bring up the number one value that separates conservatives from liberals - fear.

Of course, fear is a value that everyone shares. Fear is nature’s effort to make us cautious and prompt us to preserve ourselves. Fear keeps us from jumping off high places and killing ourselves. Fear keeps us from eating poison mushrooms, being bitten by snakes or spiders, or being attacked by bears or lions. But, if we allow fear to take control of our lives we may become frightened to try new products, foods or ideas. And, the over riding tenant of conservative values is to prevent things from changing. The fear of the unknown urges the conservative to stick with what he knows.

On the other hand, progressives seek the new ideas that will make life better. There are risks with new ideas. The progressive is willing to take the risk because he or she has the courage to change. There is comfort in knowing what to expect. There is fear in taking a risk to try something new. But, progress can not be made by doing the same old song and dance.

The funny thing about conservatives is that their common tie is in their fear. But, many conservatives act fearless in order to hide their fear. The high percentage of conservatives in the military is reflected in this fear. Psychologically they choose to face a fear - the ultimate fear - the fear of death. They chose to face this fear in an effort to immunize themselves from all of the other fears they have.

Obviously in reality a person is generally afraid of some things, and not afraid of other things. Most people are not purely conservative or purely progressive. Some people like the way the old ball park was before they built the new one, not because they fear the gods of baseball will make the home team lose, but instead because they were familiar with the old ball park. The new ballpark is an unknown and they fear that they might not be able to find their seats or the concession stand. For the most part, most people end up liking the new ballpark and not worrying about these things.

Conservatives tend to be on the side of issues that they fear will change the status quo. Some people will fear that change for one issue and not fear the change for another issue. But fear itself is the key determining factor as to which side of the issue you fall. If you fear change - then you are on the conservative side of the argument. Of course there are legacy grudge matches that have been lost by conservatives. In these cases the conservatives want the world to revert back to a time before they lost the battle. And, some of these grudges have been held for hundreds of years. But the origin of the argument will be found in fear.

This is why fear always seems to work for the conservatives. Fear is a tool that can be used to rally the troops on the conservative side. Fixing a problem with new ideas takes courage. Fear encourages one to fix a problem with force and violence. It takes courage to talk to the enemy. It only takes fear to rally the people to fight the unknown enemy. Standing up to fear might take bravery, but what you do when you stand up to that fear takes courage.

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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

Values

2007-10-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

Back in May I wrote a bit about values. It’s hard to believe that I wrote it almost five months ago, but I remember it as if I wrote it yesterday. I was thinking about values again recently, I remembered what I had written, and I began to wonder just what values the conservatives treasure when they claim to be about values.

As I pointed out when I first wrote about values, everyone has values. The most selfish value that most everyone has is to value their own life. The truth is that the question isn’t whether someone has values or doesn’t have values. No, everyone has values. The question is the priority of those values. Some people place the value of their own life above anything else. Some people place religion above their own life. Some people place country between the two. No matter what the order of these personal priorities, all people have values. The question is, “what is the priority of those values?”

There is an ideal view of what priorities “a God Fearing American Patriot” should have. But there are quite a few distinctions and intricate details of these “priority of values” when a person begins to think about the details. Does a person need to be religious to be an American Patriot? Should our priority be to put the government above our own life, or is it our country as community that takes this priority? Can one fight for one’s country and still oppose the government that is directing the war?

These questions are asked by many Americans, regardless of political party. Many conservatives desire small government, because they fear a government so strong that it demands a place in the order of values. Some conservatives argue that they want to retain their “right to bear arms” in order to defend themselves against a government that may have acquired too much power. Similarly liberals demand to right to question the decisions made by a government that they disagree with. They want to put their bodies out there on the line to prove to the world that there are people in America that disagree with the idiotic decisions made by an unenlightened government. Both conservatives and liberals should be able to agree that the value of government should not be placed above the value of the country as a collection of its citizens. This is often a difficult concept to understand because the government is often envisioned as the embodiment of its citizens.

But, the value of community should be placed above the value of self. Often a fight to the death is the only protection that a community has for its survival. If the community surrenders to its enemy the citizens may survive, but the community and culture become assimilated into the community and culture of the enemy. Individuals survive, but the culture dies.

For some, community extends to their religious community. In the United States there has always been a gentlemen’s agreement that for the sake of the country as a whole we don’t question the details of a person’s religious life. If the person can function in our society as a whole, then it doesn’t matter what a person believes on a personal level. For our society to function, it is important that personal religious beliefs do not interfere with the total functioning of the society as a whole. For example, a religious belief of killing all non-Christians would not be tolerated by the society as a whole, because this belief would interfere with the functioning of the greater society. So, for the good of the total community it is understood that some religious ideas must not be tolerated by the society as a whole.

Many people will still profess that they value religion above everything - their highest priority value. This works, as long as all of their religious values do not interfere with any other citizens. This value suddenly becomes a problem when a religious person determines that it is his personal priority to impose his personal belief on other members of the community by virtue of religious directive. Now, this wouldn’t be an issue if every religion had the same priorities, or if every citizen were a member of the same religion. But, in reality in a diverse country like the United States of America this is impossible. Therefore, when a group professes that their personal religion is valued as a priority above the nation as a whole, as many religions do, there is bound to be a conflict with the society as a whole at some point. When two different and contrasting religions offer the same prerogative to the point that each religion believes that the survival of the religion is valued above life itself, then the atmosphere is ripe for violence and maybe even war.

The interesting and dangerous truth is that many religious conservatives proudly profess that they value God first, Country second and Family third in their list of values. God’s laws outrank the country’s laws by the nature of this declaration. Unfortunately when two different religions, for example Islamic Fundamentalists and Christian Fundamentalists share these same values, then violence is bound to develop. On the other hand, if community is a shared number one value arguments will still happen, which is natural, but community would be encouraged to circle the wagons and defend itself when a rouge religious element develops. Other religions would be protected if this were the shared value in the community. Unfortunately many people continue to teach their children these dangerous “family values.”

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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 Sad Saga

2007-10-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

Conflict is ever present throughout the world. Besides the Pax Romana, I don’t believe that there has ever been a period of time when the world was not in conflict. The only reason for this peace, was because the power of Rome was so strong that no one attempted to challenge their control. It wasn’t because everyone liked the rule of law or the fairness of treatment of people through out the world. Often the reasons for conflict are religious, but sometimes people fight over resources and what they believe is their way of life. Often one group has held its opposition under control for so long that they become frustrated and revolt in violence. Sometimes a group sees that the group across the river or mountains has plenty of resources that they feel should rightly be shared. Maintaining a regional euphoric nation of supremacy often tramples on someone else’s vision.

For more than twenty years the government of Sudan waged war and about 2 million people were killed as a result of selfish aggression. More than 4 million people were displaced and moved across the borders into the neighboring countries.

During this conflict one group of boys traveled across Sudan to Ethiopia in order to escape the death and persecution. Nearly all of these boys were orphaned, as their parents had been indiscriminantly killed. The boys needed to learn to fend for themselves and figure out how to survive. The journey continued after they had found their way to refugee camps. International aid groups distributed these boys through out the world; 3800 went to the United States. And their journey continued, because the life of an immigrant to the United States isn’t always milk and honey. In fact, finding jobs proved to be quite difficult.

One of the leaders of these lost boys, Beer Ayuel, did find a job where he could use a rare skill in this country - the ability to speak multiple languages. He took his ability to speak Arabic and applied for a position at L-3 Communications, a New York-based company that provides translators and other services in Iraq. And, 17 days after arriving in Iraq he was killed.

A more complete story can be found here.

After telling my wife this story she had the perfect reply - “Bush is an Idiot!”

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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

That Vision Thing

2007-09-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

Ronald Reagan had a vision. You might not agree with his vision. You might not even agree with the premises of his vision but you can not say that he did not have a vision. His vision was based on the propaganda that he voiced through out World War II. His propaganda ignored the reality that many Americans faced every day. Ronald Reagan’s vision could not see the homeless sitting on the grates trying to warm themselves. Ronald Reagan’s vision did not see a struggling poor person, he saw a lazy fat-ass welfare mom trying to cheat the taxpayers out of their money. Ronald Reagan certainly had a vision.

When George HW Bush won election in 1988, the part of the country that accepted Ronald Reagan’s vision thought that his Vice President had seen the same vision. They wanted to be told that they had a right to be wealthy and ignore the rest of the country. The poor were all the suckers and losers; if you had money you had a divine right to it. But George HW Bush hadn’t heard the train whistle. He didn’t have a vision to share with the American people. The working class who had suffered for 12 years under the Reagan vision and never saw any of it come true were ready to latch onto a new vision. Bill Clinton had a vision that was different from Ronald Reagan’s vision. But, the people wanted a leader with a vision as opposed to someone without one. So, George HW Bush lost the election because of that “vision thing.”

Every good leader needs to have a vision. It isn’t about what that vision is, it is about what the country could become. We do these things as a nation so that we can become a better nation. The vision is what we might become.

In the past many elections have been a competition between visions. The potential leaders tell us what their visions are, and we choose where we want to go. But, in recent years the reverse has become the trend. The leaders no longer tell us what their visions are for a future with them in the leadership role. Instead, they tell us to fear the vision of their opponent in that same leadership role. The electorate becomes entangled in trying to pick the least bad vision of the future. And, when a real visionary emerges he is shot down by his opponents who tell us how impossible and unrealistic his vision is. The message is that we can’t trust a leader with such outlandish and impossibly unrealistic ideas. He certainly must be hallucinating in order to have such wild visions.

Apparently the Bush family is the antithesis of vision, because George W Bush lacks vision just like his father. Occasionally he announces a new vision, but he lacks the skill to convince us that it really is his vision. It is more likely that he has an advisor that suggests to him that it is about time to tell the American people that he has a plan. These plans don’t fit into a bigger picture. Instead they are plans announced with the hopes that we can conjure up our own vision of what he is telling us. He announced a new space objective to land a man on Mars a few years back. Those who like and study science may still be imagining this amazing journey. Most of the rest of us have long forgotten this. Was this part of a larger vision for this country? Actually it doesn’t really fit into the rhetoric of a president who doesn’t trust science.

Even the George W Bush vision of spreading Democracy around the world has lost its luminosity. In the last seven years we have invaded two countries under this premise. But, a larger vision would include diplomatic and political efforts to free many more countries from the oppressive rule of tyrants and military governments. We are never reminded that General Musharraf Pervez is a military dictator who overthrew or sabotaged several democratically elected governments. General Musharraf Pervez has gone against democracy by arresting opposition leaders and even a Supreme Court Judge. A true vision of democracy can not coexist with embracing leaders like this.

It is actually more likely that George W Bush has a personal agenda, rather than a vision. He is in the White House to weld power for his friends, family and loyalists. His actions demonstrate this louder than any words that he has spoken. The appointment of incompetent loyalists to positions to which they were not qualified has lead to many disasters - where Katrina is at the top of the list. The appointment of the unethical Alberto Gonzales is another on this long list. The reasons or intentions of these appointments don’t fit into any vision for America. Instead these appointments fit into a personal agenda for George W Bush. America is only beginning to see this, because George W Bush never shares this vision with the American people.
Now, as we think back to 2000 we might ask ourselves if Al Gore would have had a vision for America. And, because you don’t need to be president in order to share your vision with the world we can say that Al Gore certainly has a vision for America. He has spent the last few years telling us about the “Inconvenient Truth.”

Al Gore’s vision is to make America better, by putting and end to global warming.

We could argue that terrorism might be a bigger problem. But, if you actually look at the risks and probability Global Warming is actually a bigger problem. Global Warming will effect our food production, our coast lines, and our infrastructure. Terrorists may occasionally destroy a building and show the results on TV in order to terrorize us. Global Warming will work 24 hours a day seven days a week gradually damaging our country piece by piece. But, because the destruction is a hurricane here, a flood there, a drought over there we don’t see this as clearly. And, therefore we are fooled into thinking that the terror problem is worth a larger effort than the Global Warming problem.

And, it turns out that Al Gore’s vision, without even being president, is making a bigger impression than George W Bush has on almost anything except his debacle in Iraq. It just goes to show that you don’t need to be president to make an impression and get your vision out there. Of course, if Al Gore were president he would certainly have more power to make an even bigger impression. Of course, its really important to have that vision thing.

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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

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