RWNorman's Beer, Food and Politics

Walking a Tightrope without a Net

Pt. 5a Walking on a Thin Line

Sometimes even Rock Stars have it right.  "Walking on a Thin Line" by Huey Lewis and the News, was about our soldiers returning from Viet Nam, but the fact is that the song is about all of our existences.  We all are walking on a thin line.

The further we go, the less substantial our wire, and at some point we will both individually and collectively be walking on a thin line.  Again, with no net, but at some point the concept of having a net is inconsequential.  I mean, where does one go when the fabric of space itself seems to be falling out beneath you?

We have only two major problems here, and the fact is that no one is looking at the facts.

The first problem is that in the United States our political parties have become opposing factions, one wielding power whilst the other regroups.

The second problem is based upon the first.  We will have no parties from here on which ascribe to the people's wishes, but rather to their own ideologies.

This is not a Democracy and it has never been so.  It is a Representative Republic, where the people elect people to make decisions.  The People only get one vote once in a while, but the people's representatives get to vote on all the decisions.  When the people vote they select their choices for the promises of legislative agenda but that has nothing to do with what the people they voted for vote for.

How tight of a rope do the American people want to walk?  How far above the landscape does the rope need to be?  Who would walk onto a tightrope without a visible net?

Are these really problems that Americans want to ignore?  If you look down, do you see safe haven or an abyss?

The answer you might give is probably more telling than you would want to admit.

Most everyone should be looking into an abyss right now.  The wealthy are ok, but even they are not fine.  The amount of lost equity in today's America is about 25%, but the availability of the money giants to fund new purchases, maintain new avenues of profitability, grows by the day. 

Nine trillion dollars are available for investment today (10/05/09).  We're talking something just shy of 1/4 of the total of real American wealth.  The total American wealth based on GDP and held properties is somewhere around $45 to $53 Trillion.

Looks to me like America has a problem with our accounting system.

I find no reason to believe that anyone in congress or industry is concerned about our well being.  If we have accounting systems which provide transparency and accountability, then why are corporations counting debt as an asset?  And selling it as if debt can go away by sucking the life of the American family?

Who the hell cares?  Who steps up to the plate and takes a Casey Stingel swing when the vast wealth of the country is stolen by the few?

If everyone, so up in the face of Democratic politicians who are working on Health Care right now, can become scary crowds of dissent, then why aren't there any people jumping up and down now, mad as a hatter, to decry these corporations for their abuses of governmental control?

Where, when, how, WTF?  Major banks are paying back TARP without penalties for pre-payment, and yet still have the backing of the Government for losses?

Americans get charged for pre-payment for the ownership of their homes, and corporations get preferred treatment when 1 out of 8 Americans are losing their homes.

Locking students into debt, charging 35% rates on outstanding debt because one didn't pay their telephone bill, eating away at the core of America which fuels their expansion and control. Our environment is not what I grew up with.

In the 1960s people had to prove themselves to receive credit.  Now credit is given to those who have no jobs and only a hope of achieving a career.

These people have no concern about the life of a person.  They only have the life of the corporation to be concerned about.

Walking a Tightrope without a Net

Pt. 4a, Climate Change, Nationalization vs. Globalization, Etc.
Part 3b is forthcoming but the subject matter is pretty large so I will publish it out of order.

The concept the Republicans of the Bush administration have pushed, which was hands off to the Kyoto Conventions, illustrated just how much they didn't understand the problems, much less what level of resolve was necessary to find a solution to the problem of global climate change.

Yeah, sure, China and India are creating a lot of carbon.  So did the US, but the US only had a small percentage of the population of either country, much less when you add the populations of both countries together.  One billion six hundred million people cannot be held liable for their output of carbon when the western world from the industrial revolution forward have produced 90% of excess carbon in our atmosphere today.

And there are proponents of even more global warming so that the Northwest Passage may open up for full time shipping, but again the results of such a passage are of such a consequence that one would have to assume those hoping for such avenues are simply beyond the help of the best psychological treatment.

The time for action is almost past, so I'm suggesting that any action by any country is a positive that may well see results.

And the time for sitting on one's hands is almost past in terms of making the move towards the full scale and funded development of green technologies, regardless of whether immediate payback is possible.

There has been a time in the past when America led the world by example, not by power.  And the actions we took were based on American ideas in American towns and cities.

That time has long been in the past and even our own infrastructure is falling down around us as we argue about how great America is.

Why has this happened, one might ask.  The point is that we are a decaying nation, caught up in our own past accomplishments without thinking hard enough about how we can maintain our advancements in a world ever more globally involved and with education faltering enough to produce degreed morons whose ability to think are exactly what the right wing of this country have wanted and worked hard to design.

The problem is that we have lost the ability to think of future consequences of today's actions, or lack thereof.  We don't have the brain power available to answer the hard questions, and when answers are presented they are usually so top-heavy with political consequences that the real consequences to the American people take a back seat, and it is to our peril that we don't recognize our brain trust is failing just as our infrastructure is, and pretty much along the same time frames.

To illustrate what consequences may become prevalent is the movement of jobs to China, with which we are all familiar.  What isn't being seen is that China also offers a very favorable environment for our smartest and brightest in the near term, which can easily translate into the long term.  One of the best pieces of advice I can offer someone pursuing a career in any field likely to become a major field in China is to learn Mandarin while you can.

From my point of view there is virtually no window available today for America to become the foremost in anything, and it really pains me to have to say that.  Were my children even ten years younger I'd seriously recommend for them to look to China for their ability to gain reasonable employment and an avenue to advancement.

Either the United States stands forward right now to advance avenues of green technology and restores its workforce to a place of respect and allows them to garner a better life for their children, or the loss will be so great that even America can no longer hope to be the country our greatest generation fought to make it.

I mean, why send jobs overseas?  Cost?  Is the loss of jobs due to an increase in the quality of the work?  Mostly the answer is no, but only for a period of time.  I recall Warren Buffett talking about a coffee table being offered in one of his Berkline stores.  He made the declaration that such quality wouldn't be available to Americans at such a price without having move the production to China.

Well, as we are beginning to see all too clearly, even the lesser expensive coffee table doesn't make any sense if the average person cannot afford the price.

And when I say "can't afford the price" I mean both out of pocket expense, and I mean in terms of the jobs lost so that the production costs come down.  There's also the unexpected costs incurred when fuel prices hit the roof and the coffee table no longer has any major benefits in costs because the average American can no longer afford the product.

There's a concept called the "evolutionary consequence of capitalism" which actually creates globalism in business whilst killing sovereignty at home.  Well, we're not talking about a truism here.  We are talking about a governmentally acceptable consequence of big business trying to increase the bottom line for today without being concerned whether they will have a bottom line in the future.

During the late 1800s thousands of Chinese were brought into this country to work menial jobs in virtual slavery.  Today we will be seeing a migration of Americans to China, perhaps to work in menial jobs in virtual slavery. 

Perhaps not, but who is to say not?  Are there any people out there in American society today who can actually answer the question?  Anyone who has planned well enough to establish new jobs needing to be created and keeping those jobs from moving overseas?

We have a lot of examples of the failure of America to hold the front on innovation when Japanese companies moved their manufacturing facilities into the US building cars.  Today two of the four top car manufacturers are foreign.  And today all of the major American electronic manufacturing jobs have moved to China, South Korea and even Malaysia.  Intel just celebrated the millionth computer manufactured in Taiwan.

Let us take a look at something this country has really been good at in the past, which is the ability to come up with major improvements, version by version, of space surveillance via the National Reconnaissance Office's high resolution satellites.  Today we can no longer build these satellites because we've lost some of the basic knowledge built upon during our initial successes.  After $8 Billion of expenditure our failure is so stupid as to make one wonder whether we have any brainpower left in the country at all.

For instance, starting in 2000 a new higher resolution satellite was offered for contract bids when tin rivets AND circuitry were used in the prototypes although all of our history in near and outer space construction had already written off the concept of using tin in space due to the brittle changes in physical structure because of higher deterioration rate from cosmic rays as opposed to newer designed materials.  And yet the place our contractors started from were 50-year-old guesses on what would work.  The supposed contract savings boosted the final cost from $5 billion to $8 billion and still the system was a failure.

So I guess what I'm saying is that this country has to be ready to be a part of a global community before we should espouse the concepts of globalization, much less allow corporations to dictate such a move.  Or we have the opportunity to reign in big corporations' move towards globalization until the ramifications of moving jobs abroad become clear whilst we waste away with a work force unable to cope because of our lack of understanding the effects globalization present to the working people of America.

And if you think you see a backlash of Americans against importing outside work forces, then think about over one billion people in China having to cope with Americans moving there to get jobs.

While we try to figure all of this out you might want to spend some time learning Mandarin because the solution to global climate change is probably going to start in China.

Walking a Tightrope without a Net

Pt. 3a, Who the bastards are and How They Work

William Kristol recently wrote in the Washington Post that there was no crisis in Health Care, therefore there needed to be no reform.

I've asked this before, and apparently Mr. Kristol was more than willing to point up the idiocy of having knowledge of a problem and not having the courage to support fixing the problem before it became a crisis.

And herein lies many of the problems Americans face today due to those in the vast network of power purposely working towards knee-jerk reactions from or direct manipulation of Congress to fix a perceived problem only when it becomes a crisis.  The lack of forethought is considered a virtue in Mr. Kristol's world.

As one may recall (or not) William Kristol was the Chairman of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).  A portion of the Statement of Principles is as follows:

Our aim is to remind Americans of these lessons and to draw their consequences for today. Here are four consequences:

    • we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;

    • we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;

    • we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;

    • we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

The problem with this Statement of Principles isn't that it doesn't sound good, but it is a statement made to produce a direction in American foreign policy that is not consistent with American ideals.

President George Washington warned Americans of "foreign entanglements" and President Dwight David Eisenhower warned of the "military-industrial complex".  One wonders how it is possible to include the American people in the designs of the nation when our world is foreign entanglements based upon the military-industrial complex, as many companies are now multinational with their own agendas.

Don't get me wrong.  Like I said, it looks good on paper, but when you go around the globe trying to implement the ideas, the means become more important than the ends.  Particularly when the same level of crises Mr. Kristol wants to see in health care reform is the level of crisis Donald Rumsfeld expressed as needed to implement the ideas espoused by PNAC.

In 1998 Mr. Rumsfeld said "For these ideals to implemented it would take another crisis on the scale of a new Pearl Harbor."  As we all know, Donald Rumsfeld was the Defense Department Secretary on 9/11.  One simply has to question the timing of both.

In other words, and as Milton Friedman had said numerous times, crisis is not a negative but a time of opportunity.  Mr. Friedman went so far as to say that one needs to seize a time of crisis in order to further one's own agenda, and lacking a crisis of sufficient severity, it would become necessary to create such a crisis.

Now I was watching Rep. Ron Paul  (Independant, TX) on Morning Joe yesterday (maybe, could have been another program) and Mr. Paul blamed all of our financial problems on Keynesian economics since FDR's presidency, but I would suggest that Mr. Paul is more than wrong and perhaps purposely misleading.

The problem is that we are not talking about economists who were contemporaries, and Keynesian economics pretty much went out of political favor during the Nixon administration.  Ayn Rand was a well known proponent of Friedman type economics (and Alan Greenspan an admirer of Ms. Rand), and for all practical purposes her novel "Atlas Shrugged" is the Republican bible, especially today.  When the Republicans talk about their value system, one need only spend $29.95 for a paperback of this tome to understand their divide and conquer strategy.  I did.

On the other hand there were specifics to Keynesian economics which do indeed hold true today.  The equation for calculating Gross Domestic Product is as follows:

GDP = C+I+G+(X-M) where C is consumption, I is gross investment, G is Government spending, and X-M is Exports minus Imports.

This is a simple equation, which stipulates by its very existence that when one of the factors is a negative, another of the factors needs to be positive in order to maintain the norm.

What this means is that in a recession, with fleets of import/export ships lying lifeless in harbors across the world, that there is an imbalance between exports and imports.  This lack of product moving across the world in today's environment means that the imbalance needs to be balanced by either increased investment (which we haven't seen because investors are holding onto their money) or increased consumption, which won't happen when people are losing their jobs and trying to pay down their massive debt.  The only other factor which could change the picture is Government spending, without which a vastly deeper depression than that of 1929 would have been a foregone conclusion.

So when Americans are lacking jobs and trying to pay down debt, health care expenses are outrunning pay increases and inflation adjustments, and Wall Street is still giving billions of dollars out in bonuses, Mr. Kristol still wants more of a crisis before he's willing to say that health care needs reformation.  And reformation might be the better term, usually used to describe a change in religious attitudes rather than economic structures.

Perhaps Mr. Kristol wants us all to see the light and become strict adherents to his ideas of creating crisis to move his agenda forward.

Now I have to admit I was somewhat crestfallen when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel said that our current financial crisis should be viewed as an opportunity, thus echoing Milton Friedman's statements.  But there certainly should be avenues available to answer the plight of the average American whose pay hasn't kept pace with inflation and who needed to borrow money on the equity of their homes just to try to keep even during the past 30 years.

The question isn't whether there is a crisis, as Mr. Kristol would have you believe, but rather whether the crisis is big enough to make people stand up to the concept of being pushed around by those who may well have manipulated circumstance into crisis.  And then one has to wonder, if in fact this is true, whether those wishing to manipulate a crisis have the plight of the average American person in mind, or like Milton Friedman, would prefer to see thousands of people dead to further those ambitions, as evidenced in his missives to General Pinochet in Chile during the '70s and that government was feeding 30,000 people to the fish.

I don't prefer to be at the end of my life before I start asking the right questions, and I know that at every turn there will be someone out there willing to forego asking the right questions in order to further ambitions or agendas which don't include the well being of the people, but I hold no congress with ambitions when people's lives and hopes and prayers are ignored to the monetary benefit of the few.  And I certainly find no congress with people whom would lie to the American people in order to gain advantage for themselves, especially if it means pain or disruption of lives or death to their idea of an acceptable minimal number of Americans.

If life is precious then each American life is precious and I can't believe that the religious right can hold truck with killing criminals and law abiding Americans at the same time, based on the idea of waiting until every problem becomes a crisis before a solution is sought.

Problems need clear cut solutions, with a well thought out analysis of the problem and a number of solutions with differing levels of results which then may be pondered over to come up with a sufficient fix to the problem.

By allowing all of our problems to become a crisis, then only those who have a stake in the outcome of the decisions can make judgements regardless of whether based upon true study or simple manipulation of public perception.  Once a problem has become a crisis the answer leans mightily towards simple manipulation of the public's perceptions.

President Obama has chosen to set the problem before the American public and give the opportunity to Congress to answer the problem of health care with a solution before it becomes a crisis so large that no answer will suffice.

Bill Kristol wants the problem to become a crisis so that his cohorts' solutions are the only answers, of which none will suffice.

The problem is that Bill Kristol doesn't care whether there is an answer that suffices to fix the problem for the American people.  He only cares that his side gets credit for the knee-jerk reaction to a crisis that could have easily been fixed when it was only a problem to be solved.

Walking a Tightrope without a Net

Pt. 2, Bees, Bats and Bastards

President Obama came to Wall Street on Monday (9/14/09) to tout how the nation’s economic outlook has improved from a year ago, but he called on Congress to pass stronger financial regulations this year, as he offered a sharp admonition that “there are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment.”

“Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we are still recovering, they are choosing to ignore them,” Mr. Obama said in a speech at Federal Hall. “They do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation’s.”

It would be kind of nice if I didn't have to interrupt my own observations of what has gone on before by having to pay attention to what is going on now, but life is life.

We, as Americans, no longer have the choice to wait until crisis forces action, but we also have the requirement to demand actions be taken based upon the facts which prevail.  There is no longer the option available to us of waiting for events to show us the failures of our systems.  We have to work with the assumption that we are those who would notice the failures more quickly, if we were just paying attention.  How many years are we expected to repair systems that are no longer functional?  Shouldn't the functionality of a system be upgraded as demands increase?  How many people have to die, lands polluted beyond reasonable recompense, and how many lives will become as so much fodder for the Corporations who now try to manipulate the Supreme Court into giving these same Corporations the rights of the First Amendment?

President Obama is one such person who recognizes the peril of the nation if our people simply huddle together to fight against change when change is happening all around us, with or without our consent.  The consequences are more than severe; they are devastating.  In fact, the consequences would continue to be devastating on an exponentially increasing rate.  Jobs lost, lands seized, health care costs running rampant with life giving medical attention lost purely to profit motive and pollution making life a hell on earth, and not just for humans.

Whatever you may believe, take a look at what is going on around you.  Corporations have the rights of people based on the 14th Amendment, decided by US Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite in 1887, but the idea that Corporations may well have the people's First Amendment right in an upcoming Supreme Court decision is just plain scary. 

Such a decision would not be to the benefit of the people.  The consequences of allowing Corporations to input as much money as they want into political elections virtually gives Corporations the rights to ASSIGN specific people into political offices which they choose to support.

Your vote will no longer count, and the President's agenda, regardless of political motivation, will become moot.  The Corporations will decide all in which they choose to take part.  Ecological disasters will become prevalent because there will be no regulations to stop them from increasingly dumping toxic waste products into our life sustaining supportive systems, and when a person is harmed, including children, there will be no recompense. 

Corporations don't care about you or your children.  They won't spend the day treating open sores or spending money to have children's teeth capped due to the erosion of the enamel of their teeth after they've polluted your ground water with heavy metal cast-off.  They don't feed aged parents whose minds have become mush due to pollutants they put into the ground and the water systems.  Corporations don't do anything but put dollars into other people's pockets.  People who don't even know who you are and they don't care who you are.  These people aren't even aware that the Corporations they invest in are causing numerous problems with health and the viability of the ecosystem because the Corporations don't tell them that in the Annual Report.

Corporations won't care whether you can get to work or not due to illness because they have ignored government regulations on a clean and safe working place.  Corporations won't care if you have to BUY clean water when only 50 years ago clean water was delivered to your house by the water system or you had clean water in your wells. 

In fact, Corporations depend upon you BUYING their bottled water, to which these pollutants are finding their way.  And the worst thing is, Corporations have been getting away with it for most of 30 years.  And yet, even if you supposedly get "clean" water to your house, the possible contaminants aren't even fully understood, much less recognized.  Unused anti-biotic medicines and components of common shampoo are making their way into our rivers causing sex changes in fish (which then die) and then working themselves into our major city water supplies (where they aren't being filtered because our systems don't recognize the pollutants).

The fact is that George W. Bush's administration was told not to worry about environmental consequences of corporate malfeasance set up during 8 years of defacto deregulation regardless of what the legislative branch had already signed into law by any previous President.  In eight short years nature has chosen to start fighting back.

Again, you and I are walking a tight rope without a net.  This is a system designed to make you less powerful in the actions taken by your government, supported by corporations whose interests do not coincide with yours, much less take your human rights to a life safe from outside harm into consideration.

I don't actually say that the government is at fault through all of the succeeding administrations.  One thing which IS a constant throughout all of those administrations is the desire of Corporations to end any and all restrictions or regulations and they will pay more money each year to lawyers and lobbyists (not to mention political fundraising efforts) than they would be willing to pay to people their actions have been proven in court to have harmed.

The Bush43 administration has a proven record of hiring political shills from these corporations, such as NSA/Secretary of State Condi Rice.  In the door of government from big oil and right back out the door to continue her agenda.  Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, John Ashcroft, the list is long and goes into all agencies as deep as the presidential appointment list reaches and further.

The majority of the CPA in Iraq were kids just out of college, there to run a country and oversee the rebuilding of war damaged infrastructure, who found it more interesting to play football with bricks of $100 bills, and obviously totally incompetent to accomplish the task at hand.  These people and their bosses simply LOST $12 Billion dollars of cash, saying to congress in testimony that they didn't have any receipts but they knew the money went to the right places.  I'd like to know what their definition of "right places" is, because at least then we could go to these places as ask for the money back.

The Justice Department was virtually denuded of all of its professional lawyers (236 out of 320 either quit or were forced out) and replaced by, in some cases, recently graduated students still waiting to take the Bar exam.  And the person doing the hiring, both in political appointees along with new career department lawyers admitted to a congressional committee that she had posed a litmus test of party affiliation.  In the case of political appointees such an act is not a matter of breaking the law, but in terms of career justice department employees we are most certainly talking about a matter of breaking the law.

The CIA also lost numerous of their most senior analysts as newly appointed CIA Director Peter Goss brought in new management and started weeding out those who believed in the mission, not the political mechanization of a Bush appointee.  In the end those who left can hold their heads high for not falling into the quagmire of numerous renditions and becoming the nation's torturers.

The EPA was told to ignore the enforcement of regulations, and for the entire time the Bush43 administration was in power, 502,000 incidents of (in many cases admittedly) toxic waste dumping, from human waste being dumped into rivers by mobile home parks (trailer parks), to millions of gallons of heavy metal laden waste water being pumped into mines which were no longer profitable.  Unfortunately for ex New Jersey Governor, Christy Todd Whitman, her stint in the EPA never reached its full potential, being shown by the statements about the streets of New York City being safe after the building collapses of 9/11.  Just days ago yet one more victim was taken by virtue of his work on the cleanup of the World Trade Center.  Eight years later 9/11 is still claiming victims due to a lack of integrity towards the people.  He died, btw, because he could pose no claims to any insurance due to his working environment.

These actions have caused far more than just the medical problems experienced by the human occupants of the world.  Even today, 2 years after the 2 hundred billion-bee die-off, no one can point to any one particular cause, but might I suggest that bees, being a very small living unit, are major indicators of massive problems within our environment.

As if the loss of honeybees wasn't enough, and the multi-headed/multi-limbed frogs and turtles weren't recognized as a predictive indicator, we now also have the mass death of bat populations for the past 4 years.

Honeybees are a tremendously important part of our ecological system.  There is no inherent replacement for the work that bees do within that system if they completely collapse, which would be around 2035 if today's rate of dead hives continues. 

I was watching The Last Beekeeper on Planet Green the other day, and one interviewee's statements made the sharpest point to me.  Essentially this lifelong beekeeper said that bees were very industrious by their nature, giving back far more to the ecology than the humans who now transport them thousands of miles from the almond trees of California to the orange trees of Florida.  This isn't how bees were designed, or they would have jet engines under their wings.  We are stressing our environment to the breaking point and causing the problems we see by forcing more from nature than nature can provide.  And nature strikes back, every time.

Nature strikes back to such problems as global warming.  Bigger storms in larger numbers are one observed result.  Changes in climate resulting in birds having chicks on a specific cycle and the food they normally feed these chicks is already gone due to a change in habits of the grubs caused by ever-earlier springs.  These birds are not likely to change their ingrained patterns within a time frame that will save them.  Their decline is noticeable, their disappearance almost certainly indicated.

Bats are inherently disliked by a lot of people, usually because they are afraid of a bat flying into their hair.  The truth is that bats don't fly into anything except maybe bio-ecologists' well-placed and baited nets for study.  But that study isn't producing an answer as to why their are millions of the little critters dying off by the day, and our insect population has no other predator to take up the slack.  A lot of these insects rely on our food crops and with an increasing number due to the lack of a natural predator our food crops will suffer an increase in failure or devastation.  Disease may well increase in both our animal and human population due to the increase in insect numbers.

The problem is that most people aren't looking at the big picture from the top down, where the problems become obvious.  Take a mathematical equation as an example.  You don't figure out an equation from the top down, you build it up, piece by piece, and then the solution becomes apparent.  But you can see there is a problem from the top if the solution changes.  In book-keeping it would be called double entry which provides a proof as you go along.

Our entire universe is just like this equation.  Every bit of information within the equation is so tied up with the rest of the bits of information that when one bit goes missing or changes, the solution is different.  The entire universe is made up of and from stardust, just as our galaxy, star system, planet and inhabitants are.  There can be no way changes in one part of the environment will not have an effect on the rest of the environment, and if the observations of our universe are correct, 90% of the time these changes result in calamitous events.

Evidences of the possibilities are astounding in number.  We have virulent diseases sprouting from all directions.  From HIV/AIDS and Ebola starting in the jungles of Africa to H1N1 swine and H5N1 bird flues jumping species and presenting the potential to kill tens or hundreds of millions of humans, the equation's data bits are changing and the solution is no longer the same. 

As we over-exploit our world nature fights back with more deadly determination than anyone has before thought possible.  Many don't even have the concept in their minds that nature is capable of protecting itself, regardless of having done so for billions of years.  Such thinking requires a major paradigm shift to understand that the planet itself is a living organism and has methods and means to protect itself, even to the point of determining that a species such as Homo Sapiens might need to be eradicated.

No guns or bombs in our armories can defeat such determination and once the planet starts to fight back, there will be no ability to negotiate or even offer unconditional surrender.

Our Sun is just introducing itself to other stars because they can only speak at the speed of light and the universe is big. The bones of the earth have now watched the rise and fall of mountains over billions of years.  Humanity is but a passing thought in the time of such behemoths.

Follow the equation as the solution changes and you'll see that even as we fight to dominate nature on Earth, the solar system itself plays a part. Perhaps some larger force has determined the outcome of the human experiment many millions of years ago by the gravitational nudge of a rogue asteroid or comet and placing most of life once again in the crosshairs of the celestial gun.

It appears to me that we have many of the smaller questions to answer, the analysis of the bits of data which describe our existence to be defined so that our actions place us inside the protection of the planet which bore us to this point in time.  To think that mankind has any kind of mastery over the nature of this planet is false thinking and such thinking needs to be changed.

Mankind is not the steward of the planet.  Mankind is the steward of all living things with which we co-exist.  Not only our thinking has to change to peacefully co-exist with the rest of nature, our efforts to tame nature have to work within those confines.  We cannot change nature and nature won't care when we're gone if we try.

Walking a Tightrope without a Net

During the years immediately following the end of WWII through to the beginnings of the '70s, America became prosperous on the backs of the American middle wage earners, not those whom prospered by virtue of having been born into wealth.

So the question becomes when did this country suddenly need to depend upon the good will and mechanization of the wealthy?

Unfortunately the answer lies directly with the Republican party of the '70s, whose influence against the counter-culture of the late '60s taught the Karl Roves of the world to win at any cost.

They did so by teaching these young Republicans that any nasty political trick was perfectly acceptable as long one won the race.  The ends justified the means, and the ends were good, so how could the means be bad?

This was polluted thinking derived from the concept that you cannot do any good if you are not one of the players, therefore in order to do good you must accept that you probably will have to do some bad.

But where did this thinking in American culture come from?  To answer that I'll have to go back a little bit and remind people that our greatest generation fought a war against just such an ideology.  And, in fact, upon winning that war, instituted the Marshall plan and rebuilt the destroyed infrastructure of Europe to prove that the ends didn't justify the means, but just the opposite.

However, in the effort to stay ahead of the game against possible new enemies such as the Russians, some of our leaders were deluded enough to engage with the remnants of the enemy purposely to gain intelligence advantage, bringing Nazi scientists and intelligence professionals in from Germany and incorporating them into our most important programs towards national security.

There can be no doubt about how the development of NASA put humanity on the moon, but neither can there be a doubt that a country which could accomplish this feat had superior capabilities and could be used for national security advantages.  The possibility of weapons in space and colonies on the moon presented major problems for the Russians, having become the USSR at this point, but that was an outward and exposed method of utilizing Nazi strengths to our advantage, whilst the insidious use of Nazi spies to keep track of Russian advancements turned into something quite different and largely hidden from view for decades.

During Eisenhower's administration some of the Nazi ideas about "molding" the individual's psyche were funded by the CIA, which ultimately has brought about our SERE program where soldiers are taught what they might expect in terms of interrogation if they are caught on the field of battle by being subjected to torture themselves.  The CIA continued these types of programs by testing new psychedelics on both American citizens without their knowledge and upon the same fighting men our country had depended upon to defeat the Nazi threat.

Suddenly war had become a testing ground much more imperative than an ideological contest of wills.  President Eisenhower said as much himself in his farewell address, suggesting that the real power in America was the military-industrial complex.

By this time the die had been cast and the stone etched for perpetuity.  The concepts of control by those whom had neither been voted for nor elected for office was now a fait accompli, backed by a new way of political thinking, pointing the finger at government as the bad guy so that none would think to point the finger at those pointing their fingers.

Thus was born the concept of winning without compunction of any actions which brought about winning.  Winning for winning's sake became the way of the future for the Republican party and the negative effects, though initially unnoticed for a decade or so, became so ensconced that noticed or not, established a new order in the way of politics.

By the time Ronald Reagan was elected President the country was mentally amenable towards the idea that government wasn't the answer but the problem, as Reagan himself used numerous times in his stump speeches.  Here's where the concept of creating an enemy within our midst started and the weapons used to bring this creation to life have only been tempered and honed to a fine edge in the years since.

The first test of that fine edge came about when an upstart from Arkansas was elected as president and the immediate wielding of those weapons began in earnest.

President Clinton was barely inaugurated before these forces were unleashed to keep him in constant defense of his election promises and goals.  The mid-term elections of 1994 placed a Republican majority in power whose every waking moment was aimed at destroying a Democratic presidency whilst laying claim to power to determine the course of the country, Constitution be damned.

And it didn't really matter whether the Republicans won outright or whether they simply created enough of a stir that they distracted the executive and the American people enough to confound the people.  It mattered only that the President was not able to pull off getting his election promises enacted.

I believe the appropriate quote here is "If you can't dazzle them (the people) with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit."

And this Republican Party is still doing the same thing, but that fact isn't really what I was planning on writing about.

The consequence of the above was a lack of governmental control over business that instituted the largest assault on the middle wage earners in 50 years.  Whilst the country, post WWII, had been built upon the backs of these Americans, the real "elite" of the country were going to make things go their way, which meant move money from the pockets of the "uppity" middle class to the wealthiest 1%.  Deregulation of the S&Ls brought about a $450 Billion dollar windfall to business whilst the average American was beginning to float their way into major debt.

Credit cards, which originally were for those with proven payment records, were suddenly and even aggressively offered to those without the means to guarantee payment, thus placing more Americans at the point of failing on a day by day basis.

Hence the title of this little diatribe.  For the past 30 years the average American has been walking a tightrope without a net, not because they desired to do so, but because it was the only way across the chasm separating the average person from the American Dream.

In fact, the American Dream has been offered up as the ideal when it is the same attractive trap offered to any type of prey.  These manipulators want a compliant people, offering them only one narrow path to success without a net.  Falter and you were apparently not "of the stuff" of which the American Dream is made.  Certainly this cannot be the fault of the dream, but of those who chose to pursue the dream. 

The indicators of such as proof are such ideals as President Barack Obama has chosen to put asunder.  Health Care for all at a reasonable price (initially dependent upon one's ability to pay) and without limitations.  Education, which allows each and every one of us to strive to be the best we can be.

Just these two items raise the middle wage earner back onto a wide and stable platform, able to compete with the best of the rest, and the returns in terms of the average person's contribution to the wealth of the nation exceeds no bounds.

Ah, but the Republicans wish to place bounds upon the American people, using 50 year old psychological ploys to distract the American people away from the real questions of the day, hoping to continue to direct the bulk of the people onto the tight rope where they have no net.

And it is easy to see why.  It is better to pluck pennies and dollars from the pockets of millions of the poor than to try to pickpocket 20,000 extremely wealthy people. If one questions this, then think back to when multimillion dollars lotteries began, once again a ploy to move dollars up the chain to supplant taxes which should be imposed upon the rich.

Yet the problems are even far greater than what I've just discussed because the tight rope is far longer and more invasive and holds far more people than one might have even imagined just two years ago. 

However I'll talk about that tomorrow.  I think I've left everyone enough to chew upon for a day.

What is Wrong with Politicians?

Here's a hint.

Mr. Cureton replaced Johnny Flowers, who had been a commissioner for 18 years, and is proud of his efforts to bring development, including the landfill and a privately run prison (a third major employer is a catfish feed plant), to Perry County. Mr. Flowers, who like Mr. Cureton is black, said he did not mind his defeat at the polls because he had done what he thought was right. “The community,” he said, “don’t know what’s good for them.”

This passage is from an article in the New York Times, 8/30/09, Clash in Alabama over Tennessee Coal Ash, by Shaila Dewan.

Apparently Mr. Flowers, an ex-commissioner for Perry County, Alabama is of the opinion that his constituents aren't able to think about what is best for themselves and their community, after the county commissioners decided they would accept some 8,500 tons of coal ash reclaimed from the massive spill in Tennessee during December of 2008.

Now just to go back a little, it apparently wasn't bad enough that the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston Fossil Plant failed to properly store this coal ash in the first place, poring tons of coal ash over vast areas of Tennessee farmer's lands and polluting streams, ponds, lakes and rivers.  No, now the Authority wants to move the ash into someone's back yard and the local commissioners jumped at the chance to increase the county coffers by $3 million even if it jeopardized the people's lands and drinking water.

So when the citizens of this largely black county started questioning the feasibility of storing coal ash the plant which created it couldn't contain, another county commissioner suggested whether the criticism was fostered by outside interests or competitors for the contract, having this to say.

“That’s the means to their end, that they can keep it out of black communities on the charge of environmental racism,” said Albert Turner Jr., a black county commissioner, inviting a visitor to sniff a sample of the heavy, mud-like ash in a souvenir glass jar. “They would benefit on the backs of the stupidity of African-Americans who let this trail of money get away.”

Now what I'm incensed about isn't that a local community fight of these possible ramifications is taking place, but rather the seemingly consistent idea that people, citizens of the United States, really are rather dumb and don't know what is good for them.

A good example of this is currently on the television in front of me on Chris Wallace's Fox News Sunday.  Ex-Vice President Cheney is making up things right there on the television, supposing that Americans are not intelligent enough to realize that what he is saying are still a pack of lies, primarily meant to diffuse any attention which might be paid to him in terms of enhanced interrogation run amok.

As asked by Chris about the neutrality of the "top cop" AG Eric Holder, Cheney redesigned the whole government again by saying "The President is the Chief Law Enforcer of the country and the AG is..." essentially just a figurehead doing the President's bidding by virtue of being a cabinet member.

Well, we know better than that.  Throughout the life of the Justice Department it has evolved into a tool of law for the protection of the people, its independence typically overshadowing the whims of a sitting President, and certainly should overshadow the influence and whims of a sitting Vice President, who has no constitutional authority except as a tie-breaker in Senate votes, even as we know that Dick Cheney wielded virtual extra-Presidential and likely unconstitutional authority and influence during his term in office.

We know that the attorneys of the Office of Legal Counsel, a Justice Department office responsible to the Attorney General bypassed the AG's authority and reported directly to the White House.  Under the Bush administration OLC attorney John Yoo apparently answered directly to the White House legal counsel, Alberto Gonzales, bypassing his direct boss, Jay Bybee and his ultimate boss, John Ashcroft.  The coercion was directed by the office of the Vice President via his own legal council, David Addington.

Whether it seems that these two types of items are related or not, I believe I can pin the two tails on this donkey with ease.

Politicians do two things throughout their political careers.  If you add Cheney, then make that three.  Instead let us just talk about the two primary functions of a political career.

First, to be of any influence in the game at all, they need to be elected, and to that end they will do or say most anything necessary to garner the votes necessary to be elected.

Second, they need to STAY IN POWER.  To this end and with the expansion of their influence with the attendant efforts to co-opt this influence for corporate or personal benefit, politicians place themselves on a fine line thinking that they are making the decisions whilst the rest of us know that money corrupts and power corrupts.  Add them together and all avenues lead towards the same endgame.

Otherwise, explain to me why Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania originally was elected as a Democrat, jumped to the Republican Party, and recently jumped back to the Democrats?  The obvious answer is that he placed his need to stay in power over the loyalty he should have been showing his constituents.  His own answer to the question was that he foresaw a concerted effort to take his seat by the current Republican party and so he felt he had the best chance to retain his seat in the Senate came from moving to the Democratic party where he viewed his re-election having better chances.

Overall, Arlen Specter isn't any different of a Senator as a Democrat than he was as a Republican.  Are the people that stupid?  Apparently Arlen Specter believes they are.  And if the people of Pennsylvania elect him again under these circumstances then I suggest it is apparent why politicians think the people are stupid.

The only problem with all of these politicians is that they tend to find greater and greater stupidity on the American citizen's part with the greater power they garner unto themselves.

Well, there is another problem.  I believe the politicians don't realize that the more important they become and the more power they wield we are talking about an outward representation of the power behind the politicians.

Is there any wonder then that people across the country are virtually up in arms about the political postering first evidenced in the election of 2008?  We have seen Republican after Republican utilizing their power of political persuasion to focus on problems with Health Care Reform which aren't even real problems.

A lot of people keep jumping up and down about President Obama doing this and that, trying to turn the country into a socialism (i.e read Communist), trying to erradicate big business, etc., and it is all reasonable  to ask questions when your leaders are making statements which don't seem to match the facts.  Are American citizens able to actually reason through the diatribes to get to the facts?  Well, here are a couple of questions one might want to ask if they feel like their rights are being stepped on.

Just a couple of weeks ago there were protesters standing just outside of a venue where the President of the United States was speaking, and they were ARMED, some with assault weapons which may well have been modified for full automatic fire.  How do we know this isn't the case?  It requires the dismantling of a CAR15 to see if it has been retrofitted to support full auto (or simply firing the weapon, but by then it is too late).  In either case, if it were purchased as a full auto weapon or has subsequently been modified to fire in automatic mode, it is an illegal weapon.

How much of a problem could one imagine for the Secret Service if those openly carrying assault style weapons, which may have been modified or purchased to fire in full automatic mode?  Would any President trying to adversely change a country from a Democratic Republic to a socialist government allow people to stand in protest with weapons?

Does anyone remember seeing a protester at a George W. Bush event during his presidency?  Does anyone even believe it would have been possible to publicly display a weapon at an event attended by George Bush?

The answer is no because that president had protesting AT an event against the law, subject to arrest even for being in the area of a planned event to being present at the event area AFTER the President had already left.

President Obama takes American's rights in stride and does not react in some peculiar way that treats all protesters as possible terrorists (although some times I wish he would), and so allows those protesters to peaceably protest, guns strapped to their thighs and hung on their backs, without comment.

Now you tell me.  Is President Obama a man who is trying to take your rights away?  Is he someone who is trying to negate all free market ideology?  Has his whopping 7 months in office really been that bad considering what has happened during the Bush administration?

Consider this.  At this point in 2001 President Bush could barely get his primary tax cut program through Congress, and as a matter of fact I offered to send my tax cut check back to the government directly after 9/11.  But Bush hadn't even been tested yet, and his test answer was to stomp on the rights of the people by leaps and bounds.

I remember a Bush "town hall", which was by invitation only and bereft of any armed protesters, and certainly no protesters allowed within miles of the event, where he was talking to this middle aged woman and learned that she needed to work three jobs to make ends meet.  His take was that it was a positive "uniquely American" statement, but boy he did not come close to understanding just how uniquely American such a terrible quality of life really is.  Of course, as a Bush, George easily has dog sitters and the choice of any vet his dog might need, but this woman was so busy that she may have been too tired to see if her children were actually healthy and learning anything at school.  But to Georgie Boy this requirement to work three jobs was uniquely American as if it were a badge of courage.

And indeed it was a badge of courage for the woman he was talking to.  But it wasn't a badge of courage for the politicians whose jobs are to represent the people of American and come up with plans and actions which give everyone the real chance at realizing the American Dream.

Now with the recession starting to turn around after actions taken by President Obama, people are only protesting for one reason that I can see.  They don't have jobs to give them the decency they had fought hard to live.

Hence, they have plenty of time to get incensed by the rhetoric of the politicians and come pretty close to proving that these same politicians are pretty much right if they simply can keep us stupid enough, or tell us we're stupid enough times so that we ultimately come to believe it.

The quality of a country is described by the actions of its people, not the politicians.  Instead of standing up for your rights to own guns and believe lies, try taking the time you have whilst you are not working and learn some things about your country in which you can believe. 

Belief is important, but remember, it is the quality of your belief that makes things happen for everyone, including the poor, the downtrodden, the people who work three jobs to make ends meet and still end up walking for miles to get to free medical clinics because the words "health insurance" are just words to them.

So when you hear a politician talk about health care, ask them boldly about what the hell health care means to those without the availability of health assurance because that is what health care is really all about.

If we can ferret out the liars now, perhaps, just perhaps, we have a chance to save this country for the people, not the politicians.

Nine Republicans Complain to AG Eric Holder about Investigations

"The 9/11 Commission emphasized that keeping our country safe from foreign attack requires that the Justice Department work cooperatively with the intelligence community, but the appointment of a special prosecutor would irresponsibly and unnecessarily drive a wedge between the two ...

"We will not know the lost opportunities to prevent attacks, the policies to protect the nation left on the table, due to fear of future policy disagreement being expressed through an indictment. It is hard to imagine how the Justice Department could take that risk after September 11, given that the foremost duty of the Department is to protect Americans."

The letter was sent to AG Holder by Senate Republican Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona, Sen. Kit Bond (R-Missouri), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and was also signed by Sens. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia), Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), John Cornyn (R-Texas), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). 

(included from a Jason Leopold article "GOP Senators: US Faces Terrorist Attack if Hold Probes Bush's Torture Program" in Truthout, 24 Aug 09)

Let's see. The above Republicans are telling AG Holder not to investigate possible high crimes and misdemeanors, not to mention crimes against international law, because Americans might not be protected from future attacks.

It would have been nice if Americans had been protected from past terrorist attacks, but hey, the Republicans, many of those listed above, were just happy to be hounding President Clinton to distraction whilst the terrorists blew up two American Embassies in Africa and a nice large hole in the USS Cole. Perhaps almost as happy as the Republicans are now while hounding President Obama about his "supposed" citizenship.

They didn't seem to be too worried about terrorist attacks in the 90s, other than to create the Project for a New American Century to harangue President Clinton into focusing on regime change in Iraq, which, whilst these attacks were taking place, was NO WHERE CLOSE TO where the actual terrorists were making their plans.

Ah, but the Republicans are all worried about the terrorists finding out about our often described "enhanced interrigation techniques" which are, in fact, torture. Funny, but it seems to me that the bad guys already know about this. What is questionable is where were the Republicans BEFORE 9/11?

Well, after the bombings of World Trade Center in 1993, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, and the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Republicans didn't raise a peep. However, after an Executive order for a cruise missle strike against the Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, the Republicans were more worried about President Clinton trying to change the subject from Monica Lewinsky. Seems to me if the Republicans were as concerned about American lives as they say, they would have been a little more diligent in their efforts to protect Americans than their efforts to impeach Bill Clinton.

And after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole, did the Republicans suddenly sit up and take notice that America was indeed under increased attacks (five BIG attacks in 7 years)? No, they were fighting a war of mixed messages and redefining the language for the strict purpose of winning an election, not paying attention to the ever increasing war terrorists had already declared upon the United States (George Tenet, in a 1998 statement to the press).

Where were the Republicans? By 2000 Frank Luntz (author: Words that Work), was changing the language of politics, which, in 2001 changed the language of American policy. Republicans took great glee in the ability to use the largest loss of life on American soil from outside attack as a rallying cry to win back the majority in the Senate. They were perfectly willing to rush a bill through both houses which stripped the American people of many of their rights and put protesters in cages miles away from events they were protesting, and allowed the detention, arrest or infiltration of any one or group of people who might disagree with President Bush.

They spoke highly of protecting American citizens whilst putting many of those same citizens in detention centers (not to mention torture quite yet although it happened) because they were either muslims or had arab names (70,000+ mostly innocent people).

But I'm not going to go back through all of the last eight years of history to make my point.

These Republicans want to deny the American people another right. That is the right to know what the Bush administration did in the name of the American people, and they use the same tactic that worked for 8 years, which is intimidation through fear. Fear of being attacked. More people will die.

Yada yada yada.

The concept that the government officials, elected or appointed, are responsible to protect the people of America is preposterous.

The oath of office for the President of the United States is as follows:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

The oath of office for the Congress and members of the Cabinet is as follows:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

I see nothing here that suggests these elected or appointed officials are swearing to protect the American citizens. They are swearing to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

In this the Republicans have failed miserably. And here is why.

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

Ah, here we find the real protectors of the American people, and by God, it is the American people.

Somehow the Republicans missed this little part of history. Now they might well say, ah, but citizens born in the United States don't have to swear this allegience. The fact is that by virtue of being born an American citizen places these same requirements upon them as those who are naturalized being required to swear the oath.

So why are the Republicans actually trying to suggest that they have the protection of American lives in their hands, and as such they sincerely request that AG Eric Holder not allow investigations against those who may have broken the laws of the United States and International Treaty?

Because a true and unrestricted investigation of the allegations of torture might lead towards establishing the truth about the politization of the Justice Department along with most of the Executive branch. And because the true lack of accepting responsiblity for the last 8 years of rampant spending, restrictive laws, impinging upon American rights and freedoms, and illegal election practices might just come out in the wash.

The real point is that the American people are the true heroes for protecting Americans as the response of our Fire Fighters and Police have shown, and for any political party to blatantly use the devotion to duty and lives of these Americans for political purposes is a crime against all the people of America. To make a last ditch effort to "protect American citizens" by striving to bury yet another federal investigation is a crime, and by the rule of law, a crime cannot be whitewashed or hidden away in defense of the American people.

And we're not just talking about A crime, but THE CRIME. THE CRIME OF TREASON.

A Marshall Plan for America

It has finally come to pass that actions taken by American corporations have crippled the average American family. For 30 years, meaning the Reagan administration, the earning ability for the middle wage earning family has become stagnant, falling behind inflation year by year, and ending up with these average Americans borrowing money on their properties just to make ends meet. This is having people in chattel.

There has been a littany of Republican prognositicians about how the economy will go along with a lot of finger pointing at people taking mortgages which wouldn't have passed scrutiny under a more regulated regime, but there are factors which need to be addressed now and the sins of the past have to be changed now in order to start a new cycle of growth.

President Obama ran on three aspects of the American life that needed to be changed. He was resoundingly elected over John McCain, both in popular vote and in the electoral vote, to do just what he promised.

Due to public dismay at the continued war in Iraq, President Bush essentially established rules that bound President Obama to, setting up ultimate timelines for the removal of troops from Iraq, even though Bush had spent years denying the possibility of a timetable to remove the troops. So President Obama was somewhat hamstrung as to what he could accomplish without invalidating the agreement between Iraq and the US on terms for re-deployment out of the country.

OK, so we still have two things that need to happen, and both of them fall into the realm of the title of this blog.

We need a Marshall Plan for America.

Now before anyone wants to start griping and complaining about such a vast requirement, let us remember this. The Marshall Plan took two years to get through Congress and only after certain additional actions of agression. The total bill allocated by Congress was $12.4 Billion (of a requested $26 Billion). At the end of WWII the national debt was 125% of GDP, and yet Congress voted for the Marshall Plan, not because it added more debt, which it did, but because it was necessary to stave off the ravages of war in the European theater which could easily end up with threats from outside if the economy did not strengthen.

Now we all know that the apparent strength of the economy shouldn't be judged by the amount of wealth represented by the DOW, but by the ability of the people to deliver quality product for an ascending decent wage and benefits.

The wages are today's pay, but the benefits are tomorrow's promise, and there are billions of dollars residing in the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corportion run by the federal government. Initially designed to cover corporations who were going out of business, numerous corporations have since purposely gone bankrupt in order to relieve themselves of the burden of supplying their workers with the agreed upon retirement and benefits. They renigged and the federal government is running the game now. How much does it cost? Way more than you might imagine, and corporations get to start over without these encumbernments, so you tell me. Bailouts seem to be available for everyone but the American people who need it the most.

Some recent additions to the government guaranteed club are retirees and ex-employees of Lehmann Brothers, Enron, WorldCom, Adelphi and numerous other failed corporations during the Bush43 years. Unfortunately George W. Bush was the recipient of bad economic policy established by the Reagan Administration and even support by the Clinton Administration.

The point isn't about the failures of government but the purposeful use of bankruptcy as a means to deny the American worker their due via means of labor negotiations. From the time labor became a prominent fact in economic life of corporations, Republicans have been berating the effort of the people to get a leg up towards an even playing field.

So the erosion started by denying the average American a decent wage adjusted to inflation whilst offering work, and President Reagan took it upon himself to bust the Air Traffic Controller's Union, showing his Republican buddies the way to go. Once a labor is busted the ability to negotiate for your members is eroded, just as the average wage was eroded by corporations failing to meet inflation advances for employees.

Ah, but the cost of health insurance did continue to grow with inflation, often, in fact, outpacing inflation on a national average until the cost of health insurance and health care in fact became a factor of national inflation.

And with a flat lining income American workers were losing ground by leaps and bounds. This started being noticed in the Reagan Administration and hence the deregulating of the Savings and Loan Associations, primarily to free up money for the S&L investors, but ultimately becoming a feeding ground for connected wealthy willing to denude the industry and defraud the S&L investors in pursuit of the holy grail, free money.

That bailout cost the American taxpayer more than $450 Billion all told when the dollar was only worth 87 cents of a 1969 dollar (which was already only 57 cents of a 1950 dollar). Today that figure is more like 47 cents. Hence, today's dollars are the equivalent of a couple of beers in 1969. Yeah, right. Try to buy a couple of beers for 47 cents.

A gallon of milk now costs $3.50, a carton of eggs $1.29, and a six pack of Bud is $5. In 1970 during my stint in the Air Force, a carton of Marlboros cost $4.15 as did a case of Budweiser beer. Today a pack of cigs cost me almost $7. People spend $20 bills like they spent $5 bills 10 years ago. A $5 lunch during work was what I considered exhorbitant. Today it might be a salad if you aren't choosy about where you eat.

I recall my mom sending me out for bread and milk with a dollar and telling me I could keep the change. Now my bread is a smaller loaf and cost $2.79.

One of the funny things I've noticed by spending a lot of time watching CNBC is the bets going around about how the market will perform, and the standard line is that they bet a hamburger. What they don't tell you is that the hamburger is from Peter Lugar's and it is Kobi beef hamburger costing $45. This is the disconnect with business and the American people.

The buying power of the American citizen has become the playing field of the corporations who do not have the American citizen's well being at heart, but rather the bottom line dollar for their investors. The inequalities only continue to grow, and yet somehow these bankers come to Congress for bailouts, the automobile manufacturers come to Congress for a handout, and big Agro-business gets all of the subsidies designed to keep the small farmer in business using reasonable methods of farming such as allowing a certain percentage of their land to lay fallow until the enzymes build back up in the soil.

Certainly big agro doesn't allow a single hectare to go fallow but utilizes metric tons of oil based fertilizer (amonium nitrate, which is also an explosive used to destroy the Murrah Building in the Timothy McVeigh bombing) to continue growth of product whilst still receiving the subsidies designed for the small farmer.

In case you don't know, the depletion of the soil of its natural enzymes is the most likely culprit for the dust bowl in the midwestern states that caused John Steinbeck to write The Grapes of Wrath. Believe me, this information is pertinent.

All of the above is the reason that America needs its own Marshall Plan. A rebuilding of the American machine, including holding back rampant corporatism and revitializing the middle wage earner's ability to lift themselves up.

The Marshall Plan for America is as follows.

Health Care is not health insurance and should not be a for profit situation. Health Care is health assurance, setting up a system whereby all Americans end up with at least the most basic level of health care. If they are losing their sight, give them glasses, if their teeth hurt, provide dental care, if they have medical problems that impede their ability to be productive members of society, get them well so they can participate in the growth of a country that should have already given every person in this fine country a chance to rise to their own level.

Education is not memorizing facts. Education should not be a for profit situation because there are no quantizing factors which allow one to predict the importance of a particular individual. If that were the case than a little lowly patent clerk would never have arisen to become the Albert Einstein we have all come to revere.

If one only memorizes facts than one would remember that the Louisiana Purchase was made by Thomas Jefferson in 1803, but no one would know the reason why President Jefferson felt it necessary to spend 15 Billion in 1800 dollars to procure a vast area sparsely populated by the French during Napoleon's reign. But once you realize that it was Napoleon's reign with Maximilian installed in Mexico the picture becomes different.

And this is why REAL education is necessary. Facts and figures are fine for statisticians, but not much use for historians. And every American should be a historian or they won't know the reasons some things make sense and others don't.

From the Reagan Administration on the American people have been lied to by that party, and they have had all the institutions revoked which would include the majority of Americans. But no, the Fairness Doctrine in TV broadcasting (along with larger market shares being sold to the highest bidder) was abolished and the effort to dumb down the people came into effect. And it started with education.

President Reagan fought for a $450 Billion tax cut which went to $750 Billion and ultimately ended up becoming a $1.2 Trillion tax cut, and out of those cuts most state and local governments were given the shaft. Hence my children had no availability of after school activities which might have taught them team work and spirit. But my trash was picked up on Mondays and Thursdays. Ultimately my trash is now only picked up on Thursdays and the children in our schools still don't get to learn about the things that make life worth living.

The Army is in cohoots with the game developers, designing ready made troops to fight wars by remote control, and the effort to learn by those who chose to actually learn something is hampered by the fact that they never learned HOW to learn in the first place.

So yes, we need a Marshall Plan for America.

The original cost of $13 Billion for the Marshall Plan in Europe resulted in most of Europe coming out of the war sitting fine within several to 5 years. If you adjust 1948 dollars to today's rate, the Marshall Plan would cost about $2 Trillion.

Hmmm. Makes you wonder whether President Obama is really, really good, or whether the people have become really, really stupid.

I'd opt for the latter.

Climate Change a National Security Problem? Only Now?

I find the idea that our intelligence people, looking at climate change ramifications such as melting ice sheets, the disappearance of high mountain glaciers with the attendant loss of inland fresh water supplies, and mass probable migration, would only now recognize these massively documented occurances as a national security concern as being highly problematic.

What level of intelligence threat is necessary for anyone within those organizations to be bringing these types of problems to the people in power?

Does every crisis have to become a full blown problem resulting in less than well thought out responses? Don't bad plans generally have bad results, and by God, don't we have enough recent events that prove our threat recognition and post disaster planning are of insufficient solving power?

Let's take a look at a couple of serious planning deficiences during the Bush years that cause me to look at our nation's inability to react with well thought out responses, although I'm talking about the "lifer" bureaucrats who present these scenarios and come up with solutions, not the terminally transient political appointees and elected officials. And I do mean the bureaucrats, but also our military intelligence groups.

First, I know that the blame for disbanding the Ba'athist in Iraq was pretty much pinned on L. Paul Bremmer, Pro Consul of Iraq, but the fact is that this was the one huge mistake that brought the war to a long and costly affair which hasn't yet ended. But it wasn't Bremmer's fault. It was because some people somewhere down the totem pole decided to push for the disbandment never realizing that most of Iraq's professionals were Ba'athist, not because they believed in the party but because they couldn't get jobs without becoming members.

The thinking became that Ba'athists were bad because no one, even those people sent to Iraq to run the bureaucracy there, ever realized that the Ba'athists were the working government. Saddam was the tyrant, but the Ba'athists knew the government workings, where the files were, how to run schools and hospitals, repair oil pipelines and electrical power plants.

So it follows suit that if all of these people were employed to do their jobs again that two things would have happened.

First, the Iraqi people would have been gainfully employed and less likely to have become a part of resistance.

Second, they wouldn't have made the mistakes brought forward by KBR and Halliburton importing thousands of poor developing country citizens to work on projects which required a higher level of skill set than presented. Not to mention the slave methodologies applied by these contractors, both in wages and actual treatment.

The net result brings out a number of problems which were not even seen nor recognized when they were plainly obvious. One example is a bridge crossing the Tigress which carried an oil pipeline suspended underneath. The wisdom of the design of the Iraqi was due to their knowledge that the earth underneath the river was impassible via tunneling. But no, the contractors not only did not try to find out the geographical information of the region, but they didn't even ask any Iraqi engineers why the pipeline was suspended. No, the contractors spent the entire sum of $75 million breaking equipment and failing to fix either the bridge or the oil pipeline.

Of course this is only one little example in terms of wasted taxpayer money, but multiply this particular problem by the number of other small contracts which failed due to ignoring the Iraqi people and engineers who built the country for the previous 7 thousand years and you can see how massive of a failure our endeavors in Iraq have actually turned out to be.

As it turns out, the people of any country are that country's greatest asset and shouldn't be ignored when planning for post war rebuilding or rebuilding after a natural disaster.

Which brings us to one of the biggest blunders Americans have ever had to face, due to a lack, both of accepting something so well researched as climate change, and possessing the mental accuity towards maintaining systems designed to protect our fellow citizens such as the levee system and storm walls of New Orleans. A lack of poltical will or budget constraints can no longer result in another virtually criminal response to the needs and protection of the American citizens.

But there's still a bigger problem which has yet to be properly handled, and that is the loss of 100,000+ citizens who lived in New Orleans before Hurrican Katrina, but now live dispersed over the country, not only unable to help rebuild their own beloved city, but actually NOT ALLOWED to be a part of the reconstruction of their city or their homes.

In less than two weeks we will commorate the landing of Hurricane Katrina just east of New Orleans, forcing Lake Pontchartrain against the steel levees and overflowing the floodwalls, over burdening the city's pumps and flooding vast areas with millions of gallons of polutant laden water. But worse, it marks the anniversary of more American citizens dying day by day whilst Bush ate BBQ at John McCain's birthday party and received an accoustic guitar from a country music star.

America needs a real wakeup call, and Katrina should have been it. But even after that we had a major metropolitan bridge collapse killing at least 11 more Americans due to the failure to plan and maintain our infrastructure. Before Katrina the entire Northeast corridor lost power supposedly due to some tree falling on high voltage power lines, which brought a promise of revamping our power grid amidst a lot of political postering.

But still, years later virtually nothing has been done to rectify any of these foreseeable problems because no one is really looking for problems to solve.

The least of the foreseeable problems is the lack of far-seeing people's ability to predict much less plan for serious problems are those who should have been paying heed to global climate change for the past 30 years.

In other words, somewhere along the line 30 years ago or so, bureaucrats either lost the ability to confront the constancy of threat assessment, or had those abilities impinged upon by political manipulation.

Threat is inherent in the act of living. As a person we face threats on a moment by moment basis, and as we learned on 9/11, this living country is faced with threats just as often. At 8:45 AM on September 11, 2001 it was just another beautiful fall day.

And this is what is driving me to write about this topic. Where have all the planners who have the necessity, nay, the requirement and responsibility to assess threats and provide plausible "best response" scenarios gone?

For all practical purposes our military intelligence should have been assessing and planning for global climate change and its permutations even if the data were not so convincing.

With the inhumane results of African conflicts over diamonds and materials needed to build cells phones someone really needs to be on top of life sustaining resources which will cause even more devastating conflicts over fresh water and oil reserves. Conflicts over diminishing resources such as these will result in the over-use of such resources in order to control them, which is a negative sum action.

For instance, just how much oil has been used fighting over top of the oil fields of Iraq? Does anyone suppose that we have garnered control of said reserves instead of wasting other reserves in order to try to gain control?

But oil isn't the problem. Oil is only representative of the reasons for major conflicts throughout the world if we don't find ways to combat the flagrant use of these resources. Fresh water IS a world problem way before oil and natural gas actually will run out. And global climate change will put the vast reserves of our fresh water out of reach by melting it into the oceans.

Now some of our political and corporate leaders suggest that global warming will open up new areas for oil drilling, along with new northern pathways which would cut down on fuel usage for intercontinental trade, but the fact is that all of that fresh water, currently frozen as the artic ice cap, will put trillions of gallons of fresh water into our salt water oceans, creating havoc with the ocean conveyor currents, causing severe depletion of fish for food and untold dangerous climatic responses. England would not only lose London but would most likely become ice bound without the warmth from the Gulf Stream current.

Threat assessment and disaster planning should be looking at the wellness of our planet in order to come to grips with just how bad bad could be. Without this ultimate assessment of both ends of the spectrum no true threat assessment is actually being done.

We know what the status quo means, both in terms of reasonable predictions about planet termperature and timeframes. Thus we have a framework within which to work if we wish to be proactive about global warming at all.

And just to put the fine edge on the sword that cuts both ways, what does it matter if humans are not the direct cause of global warming as some suggest? We are thinking people with the responsibility to shepard this planet until something better than homo sapiens comes along. So it matters not whether it is mankind causing the global warming, but it is only mankind who can make the decisions to be forward looking, recognize the signs, and apply our minds towards finding solutions.

Threat assessments of national security interests are for those whom wish to point the finger of blame rather than having assessed the threats when they were a matter of an intelligent human community responding to human needs.

How the Bill of Rights Really Works

Over this past weekend, starting with Bill Mahr's Real Time on HBO Friday night, numerous Republicans were touting up the lofty quality of the American people for speaking up as the First Amendment gives the people just such a right.

Actually, freedom of speech isn't the case at all, and it appears to me that some of the high minded Republicans, who, on the stage of the House and the Senate floors, end up calling people like President Obama's choice for Supreme Court Justice Sonja Sotomayor a racist. Now in this case, yes, the ability to stand up on the floor and make these accusations is an exercise in Freedom of Speech. Not much in the way of displaying intelligence, but still covered under free speech.

But in this case there are rules that create that freedom of speech in that each Representative or Senator has a right to the podium for speeches about any subject (usually the morning free for all business), and no one is allowed to impinge upon that person's time without acquiescense by the speaker.

And this is the difference. A simple rule of etiquette. The senate and house have rules of conduct that allow anyone their time without the fear of being shouted down.

Most Americans don't realize that the ability to exercise their rights means that they have to impose the same rule upon themselves, for it is not the Constitution that gives the people those rights in the first ten amendments, but the citizens of America that ensure that those rights are not trampled upon.

To paraphrase a famous quote I can't seem to attribute at this moment (Voltaire?), "I may not agree with him, but I will fight to the death to defend his right to speak."

And therein lies the crux in the misrepresentations of Republicans about these mob ruled town halls which have been targeted by Republican operatives both local and national and the special interests they represent.

For you see, there is no freedom of speech if the freedom to speak is forcefully taken away by those whom would deny you your right to speak.

A group of anxious citizens concerned about the workings of their government and some of its policies is perfectly acceptable, and in fact a requirement of the First Amendment for the citizen to redress grievances against their government. And the citizen has two methods of redressing grievances. One is the court system and the ability to have their day in court. The other is at the polling place whereby one either votes for a representative who has done their job well or replacing them with someone the citizen hopes will do a better job.

But there is absolutely no level of the first amendment right to free speech involved with any crowd organized to disrupt public meetings by being one ill conceived word away from becoming a mob. In older days, but only in decades, this country experienced groups of like minded people becoming mobs and banding together for the express purpose of adding the word "lynch" to their status for they had stepped beyond any reasonable definition of legal. This is called mob rule, which takes the law into its own hands, thusly removing themselves from the protection of the law which covers all whom abide by those laws.

If a single word can take a group of people and make them a mob, then a single idea can make that mob extremely dangerous and automatically loses them the right to protection under the law, all in the name of freedom of speech.

This is one of the most interesting ideas of the Bill of Rights. The Constitution itself designs the parts and operation of the federal government, and directly allows that all ideas and laws not directly given to the federal government belong to the states. If a federal law imposes itself upon the freedom of the states, the states have the right to use law to remove that imposition.

The Freedom of Speech clause is not a right given to the people by the Constitution, but rather one of the "inalienable" rights of the people upon which the federal government cannot impinge. This includes all of the Bill of Rights.

And if the federal government does impinge upon these rights, there is some form of redress as listed above (although one may well argue that the possibility of redress for the past eight years has become tremendously difficult).

So where are the protections of the people's Bill of Rights if some of those same people decide that only THEY deserve those rights whilst those they choose to shout down have no rights to freedom of speech at all? Herein lies the problem, for if there are no protections of the people from the people then mob psychology applies and the laws break down.

Thus it becomes the pervue of the modern citizen to realize that no truer statement can be made than I may not agree but I'll defend the speaker's right to speak.

For nothing actually gives the right of free speech to the people but the people themselves. This is the essence of true democracy. Without free discourse there can be no consensus and without consensus there can be no advancement. Without the desire to advance those who wish to advance become a threat and the mob psychology comes into being. Fear of the unknown is generated by the inability of one group to comprehend the rights of all.  And by shouting down opposition a group imposes itself upon the ideals of democracy.

America is not a democracy, but a representative Republic. But the ideals of democracy are in the manner with which people treat other people. For those so misinformed to think that America is a democracy, just think about the fact that your vote for President has to go through an electoral vote, of which the participants are not elected by the people but appointed by the people they elect to state government.

So there is no connect between the concept of democracy and our form of government EXCEPT the acceptance of the Bill of Rights and all of our citizens abiding by that fact.

As can be seen, when the concept of an organized mob impacts upon the free speech of others, a downward spiral occurs that distracts from the true issues of the day in an illegal manner. For these people who would disrupt any group wishing to participate in public discourse have moved themselves outside of the law and should have no protections from those laws.

This is the reason we have always had local laws such as disturbing the peace, and if these mob strategies of totally disrupting public discourse about federal policies isn't disturbing the peace, then what is? Certainly not a person whom might have imbibed a little too much and then sings loudly on their way home. The law itself is much more important than this example because the law recognizes that the "peace" means the essence of democracy in peaceful discourse.

Anger can come into play in discourse and often does. That is part of human nature. But the concept of instigating a "grass roots movement" of angry people determined to deny others their right to free speech is a violation of law, not an exercise of the first amendment. In fact, at the federal level, it is a violation of civil rights and should be investigated by the Justice Department to determine whether any additional rights have been violated by these instigators.

So how does the Bill of Rights work? By individuals allowing all individuals their ability to exercise their rights. It is encumbent upon all of us to be an integral part of the Bill of Rights, not section off the people one side doesn't want to allow the opportunity of participation in those same rights.