A friend recently shared her support of a piece of legislation folks here in Colorado would like to move through the process. The legislation would require that folks who are over 75 need to re-take a driving exam and an eye test every 5 years.
There’s a fair amount of resistance to the legislation – mostly from seniors as you’d expect.
My friend strongly supported the bill – for reasons both logical and personal. Read more »
In my last post I talked about the concept of moral dissonance, relating to our ability to accept the idea of the death penalty, specifically using our assassination of Bin Laden as the center of that discussion.
I wasn’t sure if “moral dissonance” was even a concept in use. I’ve googled it a bit, and found that (as you would expect) it is a phrase that’s used. Here’s an article on Wikipedia discussing cognitive dissonance, and tying it to the idea of moral dissonance.
We all find ourselves faced with decisions we need to make, or positions we need to support or condemn. Sometimes the decisions we make or the positions we support are at odds with our core moral compass. In those cases, we can either recognize, accept, and live with the moral dissonance, or we can justify our decision in some way – building a case that makes it an acceptable exception to our moral compass.
I think the latter is standard human behavior – it’s what we all want to do. There’s a great danger in that path though, because the better we get at building those walls of justification around our deep moral compass, the more likely we (and our society) will devolve into behavior that is increasingly destructive, immoral, and downright pathological.
Case in point: As a country, we’ve allowed our leaders over the past decade to ignore moral taboos against torture, and have joined nations like North Korea and Libya who are happy to use torture if they think it might help them in some way. I doubt that even 1% of the US population believes that inflicting torture and pain and torment on another human being is moral behavior. Yet, a large minority of Americans support our government’s evolution to a torture state, and I would argue that even a majority of Americans tacitly support the idea when we elect any leader not willing to denounce the practice.
Look at the headlines lately, and the vociferous justifiers of torture claiming that the lead to Bin Laden came from a GTMO detainee – presumably tortured. This is strong medicine to help us to take the torture we allow our government to perform in our name, and move that torture into a safe category of “justified” – carefully isolated from the moral compass that tells us it’s not OK. Never mind the rest of the facts – that using torture makes it more likely that our citizens and soldiers will be tortured, and that the vast majority of information derived from torture is less than worthless. We’re willing to ignore all facts except the ones that allow us to justify the immoral behavior.
Am I being clear here? We ALL behave in ways counter to our moral compass – we do it all the time. The issue I’m raising is the difference in how we deal with this internally when it happens.
The lack of tolerance for moral dissonance drives us to justify our actions when they are at odds with our moral compass. Doing this allows us to continue to behave immorally with (internal) impunity, as we’ve build walls of isolation around our moral compass as it relates to our own behavior.
The alternative? Accept the fact that we sometimes choose to behave in ways that are at odds with our stated moral beliefs. Each time this happens, it should force the recognition that the decision we’re making is immoral. I can then take a stand that accepts my behavior AND accepts the moral incongruity, or I can do the hard work of evaluating the moral positions that I’ve taken, to see if I still believe them to be correct.
This is essential work – both as an individual and as a society. I’ve pointed out a couple of places where we – as a society – need to do this hard work. Are there places in your personal life where you need to confront moral dissonance? I know there certainly are in my own.
On the death penalty, I choose to accept the dissonance, and live with it. I accept that I think it’s morally wrong, and I live with the fact that I support it in some cases. Carefully managed and humanely administered, it allows us to eliminate a few of the chronic threats to society.
On the issue of torture, I choose to oppose torture in all cases – I can’t accept it under any circumstance. If there was some evidence that it consistently “worked”, I would probably change my mind. But there isn’t any such evidence, and quite a bit of contrary evidence. The damage it causes far outweighs the gains it brings.
Where are your big moral dissonance issues? How do you deal with them when your moral compass threatens to expose them?
Next, I’ll bring up some questions on this topic as they relate to a real hot-button issue – abortion.
The execution of Osama Bin Laden a week ago caused me to reflect again on the death penalty thoughts I posted just prior to that.
At its most simple, the assassination mission was simply a death penalty carried out. As I said before, I happen to support the death penalty in theory – when it’s used by society to terminate a force that is a significant threat to society.
This was exactly that – Bin laden was the self-professed mastermind of attacks on this country that killed thousands. He had confessed, was delighted with his actions, and was hiding from us to avoid execution. He didn’t seem to believe in “due process” himself, based on the delight he seemed to take in killing innocent people.
There are calls from some that his assassination was wrong, in that it failed to live up to the ideals and beliefs of this society. In denying him “due process”, our actions were wrong. The Executive Director of Human Rights Watch made these comments a week ag0.
He’s right of course. A strong moral argument can be made that killing anyone is wrong, and I’d agree with his comments that execution without due process is morally wrong.
This is where we all need to find our level of comfort with the moral dissonance created when we support an action that is immoral. For the good of society in general, I absolutely support the execution of this man who had caused many deaths and who would like to cause many more. There was no doubt of his guilt – he had proudly proclaimed his guilt over past actions and his intent for future action.
At the extremes, there are two reactions a person might have:
Both of these actions are the result of a low tolerance for moral dissonance. People who fall into these extremes want to see the world as very black and white, with no space for gray. They want to believe they have the complete and accurate set of universal moral rules programmed into their moral compass, and their way is the one and only way to see the world. If they support an action, it MUST be moral, and if it’s not, they’ll find a way to make it sound moral in their mind. Or they refuse to support it, no matter how “right” the decision is.
Our assassination of Bin Laden simply isn’t moral. Justify all you want. We invaded a sovereign country with our weapons and assassinated him and the people around him, and that’s simply not “moral”.
But in my mind, it’s OK. I have no problem with it. It was the right thing to do, as it removed an extremely harmful element of threat from our society – one that would surely cause grief and destruction in the future.
Moral dissonance might not actually be a phrase that’s commonly used – I just made it up because it seems to fit this dilemma. Look inside yourself, and ask yourself how much tolerance you have for moral dissonance. Your reaction to this assassination might be a good clue for you…
Right up front – I’m OK with capital punishment. Society overall does better, and fewer people are hurt, when we weed out folks who cause heinous harm to members of society. That weeding out can include putting the person to death if we deem that’s the only option to prevent them from causing more damage.
In fact, I’m such a fan of it, that I can’t figure out why we don’t start applying it to corporations. This overtly activist and extreme supreme court of ours has decided that our sacred Bill of Rights applies to corporations, so it’s time they start standing up to the same punishments that real citizens stand up to. If a corporation causes the death of a person, they stand trial for that death. If they are convicted of a capital crime, they are disbanded and liquidated as a corporation, with the assets they leave behind benefiting society as a whole.
But that’s another discussion…
Today I want to talk about a particular death penalty sentence – one that appears to represent systemic excesses and corruption in our criminal justice systems.
In 1991, Troy Davis was convicted of murdering a white police officer in Georgia. While there was no physical evidence connecting Mr. Davis to the crime, there were 9 witnesses – enough to allow the jury to convict him. While it troubles me a little that we’d impose the death penalty without airtight physical evidence, I’m giving the jury the benefit of the doubt, and assuming the circumstantial evidence (9 witnesses) must have been compelling.
The problem is, 7 of those witnesses have since recanted in signed affidavits. Most of them have testified that they bore witness only under the duress of police pressure and coercion. Of the remaining 2 witnesses, there is strong evidence that one of them may be the culprit who actually did commit the crime Mr. Davis was convicted of – multiple witnesses have signed statements that he has claimed responsibility. Apparently this man was the alternative suspect at the time Mr Davis was convicted.
I don’t advocate that Georgia let Mr. Davis go. I advocate that their case doesn’t seem to meet the bar we should be setting to allow us to kill someone. Their case seems to have been weak to begin with, and it has since fallen apart completely. In a trial today with today’s information, it seems unlikely there would be a conviction, let alone an execution.
This is where the corruption of the system becomes deadly. Rather than admitting this case is thin, putting the execution on hold until this new evidence can be evaluated, Georgia appears to be pushing full steam ahead to kill Mr. Davis. This is a case involving the death of a police officer after all, and the state needs to make an example out of somebody.
It doesn’t seem to matter to them whether or not the man they make an example of is guilty or innocent.
Learn more about the case here.
I submitted again today. It’s really the only choice you have if you want to travel on the commercial airlines. Like sheep being led to the slaughter, we line up and submit to searches that would make a Stalinist or a Nazi proud.
From TSA Website - The actual pictures they see of you are much bigger and much higher resolution.
We do it without complaining, though my contempt shows clearly on my face as I submit. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before I’m pulled into some room for daring to be contemptuous of this sort of fascist behavior, daring to question the authority of my government to force its will on me in its never-ending crusade to rid our country of any danger.
Well, strike that last line. They don’t seem to mind certain kinds of danger at all. They seem perfectly willing to cast ever greater numbers of the poor and desolate into the streets, happy to cut the last vestige of health care safety net from those without money, delighted to use tax dollars to fund private schools while allowing schools to fail in the poorest and most bleak corners of our nation.
It’s not really safety they’re after. It’s control.
I understand how, following 9/11, we had an administration and a congress bent on stirring fear in us, so we’d allow them to impose ever-increasing authoritarian controls over us, and get us to allow them to trounce all over our sacred Bill of Rights. In that soup of fear and growing authoritarianism, we gleefully allowed them to create the TSA – a gang of thugs who search and probe every crevice of our privacy whenever we enter an airport.
I endured the probing and ever increasing authoritarianism. My slightest whimpers at the offenses brought lighthearted comments from my fellow travelers. “I’m just happy they’re protecting us from terrorists”, or “I don’t have anything to hide – I’m glad their searching us all”. I could only hope that we would evolve past these thugs we’d elected, and get back to a sane respect for our Bill of Rights. Surely, We The People would revolt against this destruction of our Freedoms and Rights, right?
We don’t seem to care.
Today, as I made my way through the lines of gestapo and the strip-search machines, I watched a wretched site. I shouldn’t have watched, but I did.
A young woman – maybe 30 or 35 – had apparently failed the strip-search machine. In my case, I’d been frisked because I left a dollar bill in my pocket. Really, their machine could see the dollar bill in my pocket, and after I took it out, I was manhandled and searched to make sure I didn’t have any other offending dollar bills in my pocket.
But back to this young woman. Attractive and innocent, she’d worn a nice dress. A bit clingy – you could very clearly see the contours beneath the dress. Having failed the strip-search machine, she was going to be humiliated in front of all to see. Helga, (the interrogator or searcher – that probably wasn’t her name but could have been…), was having the young woman strike different poses over the yellow foot marks on the pad, while she ran her hands all over looking for the offending dollar bill (or whatever her offense was).
This was the part I shouldn’t have watched. If you wanted to know what was beneath her dress, all you had to do was look at her – she wasn’t hiding anything. If there was a dollar bill tucked into her panties I could have told Helga right where it was – I could see the lines of her panties, and I’m sure I could have seen the outline of a dollar tucked in there.
The poor girl was humiliated. Helga was feeling her up in public, and she was supposed to feel grateful that we were somehow more secure from bad guys as a result.
I was ashamed. I couldn’t continue to watch, and made sounds of disapproval and disgust as I passed Helga. Fortunately for me, Helga had her hands full, and couldn’t call gestapo buddies to haul me to the interrogation room.
This isn’t an isolated incident. Go out on the web and search for accounts of folks who’ve had similar or worst experiences, such as the woman who was felt-up and forced to remove her breast prosthetic.
Fellow Americans, when will we all begin to express our disgust at this behavior, rather than continuing to condone it with our silence? We have a budget crisis. How about this – abolish the TSA to save a few hundred billion?
Look, I have no doubt our Nazi style searches at airports make it harder for hijackers to steal airplanes and kill people. But let’s face it, our government loves to cozy up to terrorists like the tobacco industry and big pharma, and big tobacco and big pharma are absolutely killing tens of thousands of Americans each year with the legislation they buy in Congress, yet we do nothing to protect Americans from them. Somehow though, we’re happy to let these idiots in congress spend hundreds of billions and piss our liberty down the toilet in the name of eliminating some risk to airline traffic.
In our sacred Bill of Rights is the 4th Amendment – protecting us from unreasonable search by our government. It was meant to check and stop the power of government to use “security” as a cover for total control. It was meant to force the government to prove that they have some reason to believe that you’re committing a crime or doing something illegal before they’re able to search you in any way.
Really – look it up – it’s one of the founding principles of our nation. When we created the TSA, the federal government slapped the Bill of Rights in the face, threw it in the gutter, then turned to We The People and dared us to say anything about it or do anything to stop them.
When will we say something?
Life is dangerous. Bad guys exist, and do bad things. Hitler did a great job of making his country safer from outside terrorists, but the price was high. I’m one American who’s not willing to pay for a little security with the liberty that so many good Americans have died to preserve.
Abolish the TSA.
As we go through the process of searching for ways to cut money from our national budget, we should be doing some soul-searching as well.
You can watch the political parties lining up with their masters and pets, trying to focus the effort on the places where they want the budget cut. To do this, they need to demonize and dehumanize the people who they want to cut funding from.
One side wants to cut funding and “pork” that goes primarily to the wealthy class in our country. They look to move the taxpayer dollars toward those on the lower end of the income scale, and away from those on the upper end. In addition, they target defense spending as the best place to reduce cost.
The defense industry argument is an easy one to make – I’ve written before about the amazing money we could save if we cut our defense spending to twice as much as the next biggest defense spender in the world – $600 – $700 billion a year. It’s staggering.
But there’s a human side to that. Defense contractors are the biggest “welfare recipients” in the nation, and when they get that taxpayer money, they pass some of it on to their employees in the form of jobs – often really good jobs. These people who have these jobs aren’t demons and crazies. They are (for the most part) good people – often hard-working people – trying to get by and do a good job.
As we cut the defense industry’s “welfare” ticket back, many of those good and hard-working folks will be out of a job.
The other side wants to cut funding for any programs that move money toward the middle or lower classes in the country, while retaining programs that continue to benefit the upper class. They typically demonize the waste in government programs like Medicare and Social Security – these are the places they want to make the big cuts.
But there’s a human side to these cuts as well – much easier to see. While there is surely waste and fraud in any bureaucracy – be it Medicare or Defense contracting – there is also a great need among the poorest “class” in our country. As we cut these programs back, those with the greatest need will feel the greatest pain.
These people aren’t demons and crazies. They are (for the most part) good people – often hard-working people – trying to get by and do a good job.
The budget has both a revenue and a spending side. Both sides need to be addressed. On the spending side alone, as we pound the table with our strong opinions about who we should be cutting government funding for, let’s do our best to understand clearly what those cuts mean, who will be hurt by the cuts, and what that pain will look like.
Even when we hold strong opinions about who should receive the biggest cuts, let’s try and see the real people who will feel the pain of the cuts. Let’s see the good within those people, rather than demonizing them.
The same logic holds true for cuts to overseas programs that the government funds, or cuts to outreach programs in churches, temples, and mosques. It’s even more stark in those cases, as the recipients of the help often look much different than we do, and live much differently than we do. It’s much easier to not see and understand those more distant people, and much easier to see only the bad things about those people.
We’ve all got good and bad within us, right? We’ve all got things we’re proud of, and things we’re ashamed of. When we look at someone else, we need to recognize the same holds true for them. We choose whether we’re seeing the good or the bad in that person.
Until we see the good in a person, we’ll not be able to provide real and meaningful help, or find real and meaningful solutions. We’ll not be able to open the Giving Circle.
For those who are highly partisan one way or the other politically, My comments are likely to upset you again. Notice how I said that – folks on both sides are equally pissed off.
I’ve said before in my blogs that although I’m registered as a Republican, most modern Republicans don’t like me saying that – I’m not “their brand” of Republican.
I think for myself rather than blindly following the orders given by the elite masters in charge of the party. Lest someone think I’m picking on Republicans, the Democrats have their own version of elite masters telling Democrats what to think and say as well. Everybody nice and pissed off already?
I want to talk about the budget today, in terms simple enough for me to understand. Those who are zombified by their party elite will spout whatever trash they’ve been fed, but the reality of federal budgets is a lot less partisan than the elite would like us to believe.
There are several good sites out there that a person can use to explore what really makes up the budget, and how we might re-prioritize how we spend our federal dollars. This is the part we need to focus on – the spending side. Here are a couple sites where you can try your hand at it:
Center for Economic and Policy Research
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget
What you’ll find is that depending on which site you use, there are some constraints on what your options are. I found that in some cases, I wanted to do parts of some options rather than the whole thing. That’s OK – you can still get the message.
And the message is this: We’re in deep dodo. All those partisan talking points about getting rid of one program or the other have almost no real impact on the budget as a whole. To have any real impact on the budget as a whole, our options really come down to these:
There are two sides to the budget – money coming in and money going out, right? Just like our household budget. Congress is in complete control of whether or not we need to go into debt each year, because they decide how much we spend, and how much we take in.
As you look historically at the debt in our nation, remember that the debt is really very simple – the President works to set an agenda, and may propose a budget, then the President and Congress negotiate to arrive at spending priorities. This defines how much gets spent. The income side is even more simple – tax legislation defines how much revenue the government takes in to fund these things we’ve decided we want to spend money on.
Congress and the President work together, and they decide whether or not they want to plunge the country deeper in debt. Every year.
Starting in around 1980, Congress and the President started to get the notion that higher debt was really more OK than it had been in the past. As a Republican this makes me very ashamed, because this precedent began under Republican leadership. Of course, Reagan had the help of Democrats who let him set this agenda – an agenda based on this newly coined “Trickle Down Economics” notion. (A notion that George Bush senior described as Voodoo Economics).
History has proven George Bush senior right on this. Our country was in stagnation caused by the efforts of the Fed to curb inflation. When I bought my first home back in 1979 or 1980, my interest rate was something like 10% or 12%. Rates like that would plunge our country today into receivership. Thank goodness that at the time, our economy was strong enough to withstand such pressure.
At the time, folks were living pretty well. Wages were high, and unemployment was fairly low (by today’s standards). But our leaders were terrified of inflation, and in the latter part of the Carter administration, The Fed attacked inflation with a vengeance, driving interest rates up to those crippling rates.
During the Reagan administration, when the Fed began to lower interest rates, the economy picked up again. Just like today – look around at what has kept our nose above water for the last decade – incredibly low interest rates.
That part’s real simple. But then, while we were digging out of the mess that the Fed created, the neoliberals decided to try selling us the great fiction of the 20th century. They pedaled this notion that by lowering tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, you’d stimulate the economy. They timed it perfectly, because as the economy picked up as a result of falling interest rates, folks started to buy into the Voodoo Economics that they’d been sold.
In reality, while you can always get someone in the scientific or economic community to agree with nearly any wacko theory, the preponderance of credible economists will agree that tax rates have far less effect on economic stimulation than we were led to believe.
Use common sense to think about it. During the 1950’s, the American economy was booming and growing. Most folks see it as the real heyday of our “American Dream”. Underneath that robust and expanding economy were federal income tax rates as high as 94%. That’s right – the highest tax rates in our history correspond with the best economic growth in our history.
Not to say one caused the other – quite the opposite – the two things simply have little or no impact on one another. You don’t need an overpaid economist to use common sense and look at real history.
But the neoliberals did a great job of selling this myth to a public all too willing to gobble it up. After all, their myth included lower taxes – who doesn’t want to pay lower taxes? Why on earth wouldn’t we want to believe that?
Why does this matter? Because lowering the tax rates caused the debt to explode. Cut your revenue stream, increase your spending, and the result is very predictable. Exploding debt. We were increasing defense spending like crazy, and cutting the revenue we have to pay for that increased spending.
Folks, fairy tale time is over. It’s time for us to finally grow up and take responsibility and accountability for how we’re running the country. It’s unfortunate that for the past 30 years, we’ve been electing folks who seem bound and determined to run us into bankruptcy, but let’s put that in the past. Let’s be big boys and girls, and refuse to listen to the partisan pranks and dribble that will continue from both parties.
Can anyone who really looks at the numbers think we don’t need to raise taxes? For the past 30 years, the tax breaks we keep giving ourselves have proven to be nothing but a way of running up credit card debt. We were fools. George Bush senior was right – it’s all been voodoo economics. We’re going to have to be careful how we do it, but if you think we can avoid it, you need to go on back and sit down in the fairy tale circle with the other little ones, and look forward to milk and cookies and a nap. And the tooth fairy will be here soon.
On the spending side, we need to attack the big dollar items in our budget. That means entitlements and defense. And let’s face it, our defense spending is beyond absurd. We spend almost as much on defense as the rest of the world combined. Think about that. Staggering and absurd. Why couldn’t we figure out a way to spend twice as much as the next country on the list – who happens to be China? If we did that, we could cut our military spending down to less than a third of what we spend today – almost down to a fourth!
Wow! Just make our military spending twice what the next biggest spender in the world spends, and we save 600 or 700 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR! Cutting that kind of spending out of the economy will have lots of consequence, as it will no matter where you cut if.
For example, most folks would like to see entitlements cut. But let’s open up the concept of entitlements to include all government giveaways – not just the giveaways to poor folks or old folks. Let’s not leave out cut to poor folks or old folks – but lets make sure we’re cutting all across the board – poor folks and rich folks and everything in-between. I say that, and it makes me wonder why on earth I as a taxpayer would be handing out giveaways to rich and middle-class folks anyway. I guess I get why we’d be helping poor folks and old folks – agree or not with the concept these are folks who need help. But why are middle-class and rich folks on the dole?
Fodder for another post, but just keep in mind, as with military spending cuts, cutting here is going to reduce jobs that people have, and will reduce money that’s currently part of the spending cycle of our economy.
Bottom line – I’m hoping more people will turn off the absurd partisan talking heads that run our media this coming election cycle, and think for themselves. We spent 30 years digging a deep hole of debt. Both Democrats and Republicans had shovels in their hands. But We The People bear the ultimate responsibility for the fact that we sat around in the fairytale circle and let the neoliberals play pranks with our economy, and shuffle vast sums of our nations wealth into the pockets of the wealthy elite on the world stage.
As a Republican, I’m ashamed that my party has been the biggest supported of this neoliberal crap, but we’ve needed the help of Democrats to get it done.
Will we fall for that same old line of crap again? My hope and prayer is that real voters in both parties expel the neoliberals and neoconservatives, and let’s get back to real conservative, progressive, and liberal foundations.
As a teenager, I remember a friend commenting to me that he’d never met anyone who liked to argue as much as my dad did. He was sure, in fact, that if you put a rock down in front of my dad, he’d find something to argue with it about.
I’d never thought about it. I never really thought of the discussions my dad liked to have as “arguments”. We were taught from an early age that understanding was important, and that one of the most important tools in understanding was discussion. Real discussion – none of this “polite company” stuff. A discussion meant getting deep into the meat of an issue, and tearing it apart, and coming up with real understanding.
It wasn’t arguing really. It was exploration. Those who weren’t around my dad a lot didn’t realize that when a discussion opened up, he’d argue either side of the issue. If someone seemed to be taking “side a” in a discussion, my dad would strongly represent “side b”. If you were only around him occasionally, it was easy to think he was opinionated, and that you understood his positions. But when you knew him well, you knew that he could defend many different sides of an issue equally well.
In fact, that was an early lesson to me. Dad was insistent that hard discussion was critical to good and deep understanding, and that you should only enter into hard discussion if you could argue both sides of an issue equally well. If you could only argue one side, it only meant that you didn’t understand the other side, and only a fool argues against something he doesn’t understand.
There was great love and camaraderie in those heated discussions that we’d have as I was growing up. What felt at the time like stubborn resistance to ideas that seemed perfectly logical to me was actually relentless nudging toward the center of an issue – the only place that real truth and understanding could happen.
There were folks who would get frustrated with Dad, as he rarely let snide political comments pass unchallenged. Regardless of whether he agreed with the sentiment or not, (and you rarely knew if he did), he couldn’t abide the dishonesty that pervaded when you only presented one side of something.
The art of discussion is something I fear we’ve lost today. Few people are willing to invest the energy necessary to really understand an issue – they’d rather be told what to think by some idiot on the television screen. In an argument, folks have a set position, and victory means making a fool out of the other position, or talking over them, or bullying them. In Dad’s eyes, victory only happened when both people came away better able to argue the other side of the issue.
A good and dear friend got mad at me not long ago. His ideas seem strongly aligned with the extreme right or the extreme left politically – for this article it doesn’t really matter which it is. He’d gotten into the habit of including me in the never-ending emails produced by propaganda masters in the places where the extremes live, and forwarded to the party faithful for endless subsequent forwarding. This isn’t one side or the other – both extremes do the same thing.
The emails are generally mostly blather, with maybe the tiniest dose of the shadow of a true fact in there someplace. They’re targeted directly at the “party faithful”, to try and whip up the anti-whatever-they’re-against sentiment. They cater to those who don’t want to think for themselves.
Most of the time when I get these, I just push ‘em off to the trash can without even reading them. Now and again, I might read enough to rest assured that it’s just more blather. On one occasion, I read the blather, and was shocked at the complete lack of any fact or truth in what was being said. I shouldn’t be shocked, I know, because this is business as usual for the extremists – make stuff up and say it enough, and it no longer matters that it’s a lie.
On this occasion, though, I felt compelled to write back to my good friend, and correct some portion of the complete fiction that was in the email. My hope was to engage him in an actual discussion – really digging down into a particular issue. The result, however, was that I raised his anger at me – why couldn’t I just enjoy a little “humor”? He’s just sending this along to me in fun for crying out loud!
After a couple emails, I think we agreed that if he sent the political tripe to me, he should expect that I’d respond as-if he were looking for dialogue. (Sending an email is, after all, a form of opening a dialogue in my estimation…) I haven’t gotten any more emails…
I guess I’m glad to have less tripe in my inbox, but I’m sad that there’s now more distance between me and a friend of many years. If people have true affection and respect for one another, one of the most powerful demonstrations of that affection and respect is their ability to disagree with one another, and to explore the disagreement, and to learn from the position the other person is defending.
Or at least that’s what Dad taught us. Maybe that’s an ethic for a bygone era. Maybe today our culture teaches us we only want to engage with people who see things exactly as we see them. Maybe today, our hearts aren’t big enough for those who aren’t clones of us.Have our minds really shriveled and closed up to the point where they can only accept opinions and points of view that are already in there?
In the olden days of my father, “character” meant having the strength of ego to be wrong, the intelligence and understanding to defend many sides of an issue, and the heart to care more for friends than their opinions.
I fear our egos have become fragile and weak, our minds have become slaves to idiots on TV screens, and our hearts have shriveled to the point where we sometimes can’t see the difference between our opinions and our friends.
And I miss my friend…
It’s been really interesting to me to watch as the Wisconsin labor issues have been unfolding this week. It’s become a battle between wage-earners and those with all the power and money, and who knows how it will lay when its all unfolded.
My formative years growing up were spent in a blue-collar neighborhood. My buddies when I was growing up had dads who were carpenters and truck-drivers. Most were part of a union – at least the lucky ones were. While in my house and around the dinner table, unions were something spoken of in negative tones, it was a very different picture I got from the kids I hung out with.
It wasn’t that my dad was harshly anti-union, it’s just that his perspective was that the unions had too much power, and could influence the running of a company to a degree he didn’t like. I think that as the years went by, he became more anti-union.
Intellectually, all the arguments I was armed with were anti-union. The focus was on the corruption and greed. That’s the side of organized labor that I saw. This came to a head in my mid-20’s, when I had a job as a truck driver in a union shop. It was a good job, but after a short initial period, it would require that I join the union. Once I joined the union, then union dues would start coming from my paycheck, and I felt like I might fall off the dark side of an issue.
Then, one morning, I was headed to a job with one of the senior drivers. While he wasn’t the shop steward, he was clearly a senior member of the crew. I could tell that it was his intent this morning to make sure I understood that I’d need to go down and join the union, and he was looking to find out where I stood on things.
Bill Shelley was his name, (spelled like the poet, I recall him telling me), and I can remember the conversation like it was yesterday. Bill was a big burly fella. On our drive, I spoke honestly to him about my problem with unions as a whole, and my discomfort with the fact that I now would need to join one. Bill’s response floored me. While I expected a harsh confrontation from this big burly guy, what I got was a sensitive and understanding response.
He understood clearly how I could feel this way. He understood that the press painted organized labor in a negative light, so it would be pretty hard for anyone to feel positive without first-hand experience. There was no option for me to continue to work there without joining the union, but there was great understanding on Bill’s part regarding how I might feel like I did.
Bill talked a lot that morning about how organized labor in general had benefited his family, and most of the folks that he lived and worked around. He had some truly inspiring first-hand stories that he shared with me. It was one of those moments when my world-view was shifting dramatically – I was being forced to see things from a different perspective than I’d seen them before.
Bill helped me see that the only reason decent blue-collar neighborhoods existed was because organized labor kept wages high enough to allow a middle class to exist. Take that away, destroy the blue-collar working class in this country who makes enough to live a decent life, and how long can the country last without beginning to look like the feudal economies our forefathers ran from when they built this country?
“Class” is a concept Bill was comfortable talking about. He had no problem with the idea that “class” was alive and well in the country. In fact, it was a person’s ability to identify strongly with a “class” that was a critical component to a healthy society in his opinion. He was proud to be part of a “working class”, and was willing to fight to make sure that his working class didn’t get pushed into the sewers by those with all the power and money.
Corruption? Sure there was corruption in organized labor. There’s corruption in any large organization. It’s part and parcel to the human condition. There’s nothing unique to the concept of organized labor that makes it any more or less corrupt than AIG, Enron, or Congress to use examples from today. Does the media attack the concept of government or the concept of “corporate america” as bad ideas just because corruption exists within their walls?
Fast-forward.
Everything Bill talked about has come to pass. The press has continued for decades to paint organized labor in a negative light. Those with the power and money have continued to bust unions and weaken organized labor for 30 years. The watershed event was when Reagan busted the Air Traffic Controller’s union, signaling a brand new era when it’s OK to bust labor, because the press will support you.
As Bill predicted, wages in America have plummeted as organized labor has diminished. In the late 70’s, I was an independent businessman who hired casual labor. Generally, I paid about $10/hr for casual labor. Sometimes I could get by for $8/hr. Today, I’m an independent businessman who hires casual labor. I still pay about $10/hr for casual labor. With inflation, that’s probably about equal to paying $3/hr or so back when Bill Shelley and I were having our conversations.
Sure I like that my labor cost is low. But keeping that labor cost low in this country has resulted in the loss of a viable and strong working middle class. The folks I hired back in the 70’s had families, and they supported those families with their hard work. The folks I hire today couldn’t possible support a family on wages. Moms and dads work multiple jobs just to try and pay the rent. Discretionary money for “nice things” is a myth they’ve heard about.
While all this has been happening, the wealthy classes in America have Congress bought and paid for. Firmly in their pocket, they’ve assured that we’ve lowered their taxes, regardless of the fact that doing so has driven the nation to the brink of bankruptcy. Unlike the average American family, Congress seems to believe that you can cut your revenue without reducing expense, and there will be no consequence to pay.
The result? We’re broke. We didn’t just dig this hole this year or last year – we’ve been digging it for 30 years. The hole we dug happened because we took money from our budget, and gave it to the taxpayers. Sure everyone benefited from those lower taxes, but those who benefited the most were those with the most money. I’m a taxpayer – I like paying lower taxes. But the cost of those lower taxes has been this deep financial hole we’ve dug for ourselves.
I’ve know folks who’ve learned how to manage money from Congress. They go out and spend lots of money on things they want, and just charge it to the credit card. I watch it happen, knowing full well where it leads. It takes a while, but eventually the chickens come home to roost, and they wake up in bankruptcy. They rarely understand how they really got there – they always want to blame some recent event – look for something that caused this to happen to them. They hardly ever take real accountability and make the lifestyle changes required to dig out of the hole – a hole that will probably take them a lifetime to dig back out of.
That’s where we are right now. We’ve spent 30 years digging this hole by spending more money than we take in. As a behavioral scientist would predict, we’re not taking accountability for our actions – accepting that all those tax cuts we bought year after year on the credit card is what’s put us in a place where we can barely service our debt. Instead, we’re looking for someone to blame for our problems.
And in Wisconsin, the governor has found someone he wants to blame. Working folks. He figures that the media has done such a great job of denigrating organized labor that there just won’t be many folks who’ll sympathize with them, and that in the end, this is his chance to bust the unions. Apparently he’s said as much on a phone call.
There aren’t many bastions of organized labor left in our nation. There’s no doubt that busting this union will save the state some money, and there’s no doubt that this is a great time to attack organized labor if that’s what you want to do. But, I suspect that there’s been no real and genuine attempt to take the money first from all the places that need it less than working men and women.
Trying to balance budgets on the backs of working men and women might reap some short-term gains for folks with power and money, but in the long run, it’s bad policy for the nation. Keep taking away from that big middle of America, and who’s left to buy all the crap we want to import from China and sell from the shelves of Walmart?
Bill Shelley was right-on. I feel fortunate to have gotten some insight from him 35 years ago. I only wish his wisdom could be heard over the din of the media elite.
I want to point out that there’s no mention of Democrat or Republican in this post. This isn’t an issue of Democrats or Republicans, Left or Right, Conservative or Liberal. This is an issue of supporting working men and women in our country, and looking for ways to strengthen our economy. Our economy gets strong again when we revitalize that vast working middle class in the country. Slashing wages and the ability of those workers to organize does the opposite – it continues down the path of destruction of our vital working class.
There are places you can end up in the world where you can’t seem to get your eyes to close for fear you’ll miss the next spectacular turn. Halong Bay in Vietnam is one of those places.
A couple days ago, a boat sunk there in the bay, killing a number of people. They call this type of boat a “cruise junk”, and they’re quite common in parts of the bay. We took a 3 day cruise on one of these “junks” last week, so I’d like to talk a little about the junks themselves and what the tours typically look like. Then in my next post I’d like to talk about my experience on the tour last week, and what the bay left behind in my heart and mind after the 3 day tour.
The Ha Long Bay Cruise
There are several “piers” in both Ha Long City and Hai Phong city where junk cruises depart from. The two cities seem to have the bay “divided up”, so that they stay out of each other’s territory. While I’m sure there are “day cruises” as well, it seemed to me that the overnight cruise was what nearly everyone purchased. The level of “luxury” seemed to be widely varied, though generally the price for a 2 day, 1 night cruise seemed to run from $200 – $500 per person.
Regarding safety precautions and western style public safety, you’ve to to realize that this is Vietnam, not the West. In the West our judicial systems seem less corrupt than those in countries like Vietnam, and we have judicial codes that hold parties responsible for damage to other parties. This doesn’t seem to be the case in Vietnam. Compounding this is the “value” that we seem to put on human life in the west, vs the value in countries like Vietnam. Keep in mind that if you’re a lucky average worker in Vietnam, you’ll earn $5/day. If they lose a worker on a job site – through poor practice or just plain accident – there’s another one ready to take the job, and I suspect there’s little (if any) inquiry into the loss of life, assuming the right bribes are placed.
On our 3 day tour, I saw nothing that made me want to return to shore in terms of safety. However, I also lived on the “passenger” side of the boat, so have no idea what the engine room or other areas “below” looked like. In fact, after spending several days on the streets of both Ha Long City and Ha Noi, the boat seemed relatively safe. That’s more a statement, by the way, of the streets and traffic than of the boat. That’s another post…
Regarding general “maritime safety”, I’m no expert, and my opinion is given for free – take it for what it’s worth. That said, it seemed to me that there was a reasonable degree of “maritime professionalism” on the bay and between boats – at least as it relates to interacting with one another, and maintaining safety between each other.
It seemed that the cruise lines had all agreed on a few “highlight spots”, where they would all stop for passengers to visit. These spots varied from fishing villages to beaches to caves. At each of these “stops” it can be madness, as hundreds of tourists from various boats all clamor ashore to enjoy the remote beauty amid the throngs of others enjoying the remote beauty.
In this respect, western style tourism has arrived in full force in Vietnam…
Having offered this critical little quip, I have to say that even amid the throngs, the beauty of the places the cruises took you to was breathtaking.
While English is accepted as the Lingua Franca in Vietnam as in most of the world today, the English spoken by most in the tourist industry there is very limited. For those accustomed to traveling, and accustomed to finding ways to communicate with limited overlapping language, the language is not an issue really – you can figure it out. However, most folks in the US have never had to deal with this, and really struggle when someone speaks only a little English.
In Vietnam, (as in most of SE Asia), Western tourism dollars have become absolutely critical to government coffers, local economies, and local workers. Most of the individual workers that we interfaced with – once you asked and learned a bit more about their life – considered tourists to be the delivers of manna in an economic blight. One of our “guides”, for example, grew up in a coal mining town close by. His father is 60, and sounds close to death with lung issues. He felt lucky that his father got him a job at the coal mine, but was able to leave that job to work as a tour boat guide, where he earns much more without the health risk.
So, while my Western eye might look at this guy, and feel bad at the long hours he works and the poor working conditions, this job is almost the lap of luxury to him, compared to the life he’d have without the tourism industry. This is important perspective for the Western observer, because it underpins an extreme dedication on the part of the people in the area to make sure their Western visitors are pleased.
There are no surly waiters in Vietnam…
In fact, it’s almost embarrassing sometimes how much folks fawn over tourists. I particularly enjoyed how they had adapted what they believed to be humor. They would tell jokes or word-plays that could probably have been carried off within the context of a Western conversation, but that was comically flat when they said it. Of course, once the tourists realized that this was an attempt at humor, most would laugh dutifully. I found this particularly enjoyable to observe, and you could see the keen eye of the worker watching the crowd to see how well he was learning the language.
Which brings me to my final observation – the dedication and hard work of the people of that area. During the civil war of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s – the one that America participated in – this area was bombed repeatedly. It’s likely that millions of people died as a result of the bombing. Cities and culture were destroyed. To survive, people hid in the many limestone caves that riddle the small islands of the area.
The region survived that brutality, and they continue to survive under the yoke of totalitarian style government. Yet, my interactions with individuals never left me with a feeling that there was resentment of the US for the bombs we dropped or the people we killed. I was always left with a feeling of welcome and genuine personal friendliness. People there often work much harder than we in the West can imagine, and make far less than we can fathom. If I were in their shoes, I would feel great resentment toward Westerners – especially in light of the propaganda I am sure the Communist regime feeds them.
Yet, I never saw that or felt it from anyone. Surely it must exist, but must remain hidden. Even with the incentive that Western tourism dollars represents for folks to hide their resentment, I would still have expected to see some of it exposed. Perhaps with enough time in the right places I would see it, but based on what I saw, these people seem among the hardest working, most dedicated, and friendliest in the world.
Next, my own personal experiences on a Junk Cruise last week…
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After spending a couple weeks in SE Asia, I’m working hard on putting together an adjusted view of the concept of corruption, and how it effects the way we’re able to live our lives.
The first observation is that nearly all the “westerners” we met had a firm and preconceived notion of what corruption was, and how awful it is in SE Asia. For the most part, they came here prepared to be appalled at the level of corruption in the governments here, and the level of poverty of the people, and they were generally able to find ways to be appalled by exactly what they wanted to be appalled by. In most cases, I think their expectations were exceeded.
Because corruption is certainly evident and destructive over here. They don’t try too hard to hide it.
My second observation was that folks who lived here had the same view of government that most people all over the world have of their own government. That is, they think the government is corrupt, and that folks with money and power find ways to bilk the common folk from whatever they have in order to continue to line the pocketbooks of those who already have money and power. They think that the government is usually nothing more than a tool for those with the money and power.
Hard to disagree with that point of view.
I want to use the term “lifestyle”, but I want to define my use of it first. Most westerners see this word and think it means what kind of car a person drives, how big their house is, how expensive the restaurants are that a person eats at, how elaborate a person’s vacations are, etc. Because for most westerners, that’s how lifestyles are delineated.
But for most of the folks over here, the delineation is far wider than this. There is a wide gap between the masses of folks who work 7 days a week for $5/day if they’re lucky, and the very few who have all the power and wealth.
That said, I think the corruption over here is more offensive to us for two reasons:
I need to noodle on this for a while, and want to write about it. For now, I only want to say that the nature of this whole corruption thing feels a little different than I expected it to feel. It’s nasty and evil without a doubt. Beyond that, though, I’m not sure it stacking itself up in the nice neat little package I’ve been taught to observe.
Back to that Tall Ships post again – this doesn’t fit a pattern I have yet, and I need to noodle through it a bit to see if I can fathom the shapes I think I see out there…
OK, who said this and when:
“We are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program.” Arguing that he was against socialized medicine, he said that, “one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children’s children what it once was like in American when men were free.”
…
And the answer is: Ronald Reagan.
Probably not much of a surprise so far, but he said it in the 60′s talking about Medicare.
Here’s a link to some really good reading about the Medicare debate in the 60′s.
We should look at this debate carefully. Many at the time were convinced of the evil of having the government get involved in medicine. Here we are decades later, and Medicare is a popular and successful program. It certainly could be improved – as anything can. But that’s not a condemnation of the idea, any more than Enron or AIG are condemnations of the idea of free enterprise.
We’re in much the same spot today. The right wing is using the same arguments today they used then – which have proven true, and which have proven false?
I’m just a conservative guy. All I know is that in this country, we spend twice as much on healthcare as any other modern country, and we get less for it. Why have so many other countries gotten it so much more right than us? What can we learn from them? Again, being a conservative guy, I don’t like spending more and getting less. I don’t like spinning my wheels when I can learn from the mistakes of the past and learn from what folks are doing well.
Case in point: During the healthcare debate, one of the proposals put forward by the left was to allow folks to “opt in” to Medicare for a fee. Essentially, it put Medicare out there as an insurance program that I could buy into if I wanted to or needed to. Seems pretty logical to me. After all, if the right wing is right, and Medicare is so inefficient and ineffective, then nobody will buy in anyway – private insurers will be far more cost effective and provide far better care. Right?
Then why did the right wing argue against this, and make sure it wasn’t part of the reform? All by itself, this puts the lie to the argument. If they believed what they were saying was true, they would welcome this option. If they knew what they were arguing was untrue, they would fear this option.
They feared the option, and assured that you and I did not have the ability to “buy in” to Medicare, forcing us instead to pay higher prices to private companies, and receive less from these private companies.
It’s clear to me why private companies spend so much to make sure that we don’t have a “public option”. They apparently believe that the public option will provide better care for less money, and that they’ll lose much of their base to this public option. They will no longer be skimming huge profits from the premiums you and I pay.
If I were a major shareholder in one of these companies, I’d spend a lot of money trying to defeat public healthcare – it would be in my selfish interest to do so.
But I’m not a major shareholder in one of these companies. I’m just an American Citizen – part of We The People. My selfish interest is getting the best care possible for the lowest cost. It seems to me that the interest of the big private insurance lobby is at odds with the interest of We The People in this case.
This is so darned simple. It amazes me that the media and politicians can continually make it sound so complex. We’ve dug ourselves into this debt hole over the past 30 years as a result of irresponsibility, demonstrated in 2 ways:
It’s no more complex than that. While I might blame the neoliberals for starting us down this path, at some point, we as voters must take accountability for our decision in election after election to vote for the guy who says “cut taxes”, rather than the guy who says “be accountable”. Since politicians learned back in the 80’s that we wouldn’t pay attention to the debt as it ballooned out of control, they just kept playing the game.
The most vicious, underhanded, and filthy of the tricks they played with our money was the theft of money from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, in order to make the deficit appear smaller than it really was.
When the taxpayers agree to give money to the government for a specific purpose, one responsibility lawmakers have is to make sure the money goes to the purpose the taxpayers agreed. The taxpayer is entrusting money to the lawmakers, with the understanding that the lawmakers won’t skim the money to some end they decide they’d rather fund.
That’s really simple, isn’t it? Somebody argue with me if I’m wrong about this. In this scenario, wouldn’t you consider it theft or embezzlement or at the very least fraud if a lawmaker took money you gave him for one purpose, and just decided to use it for something else?
Back in the 80’s when this started to get out of control, I remember complaining about it to my friends, most of whom claimed to be politically conservative. How, I asked, can a conservative approve of this sort of theft, not to mention that even with the theft, we’re not balancing the budget? “It’s not theft”, they’d reply, “because it’s really just borrowing. The government is simply borrowing money from Social Security in order to temporarily fund other programs and tax cuts – when Social Security needs the money back, the government will give it to them.”
Right. And pigs fly.
So here we are, approaching the place where Social Security will need that money back that Congress has been “borrowing” for the past 30 years. In fact, we recently put ourselves on the express train to that spot, by reducing the amount that we, as taxpayers, pay into Social Security with each paycheck.
Now the moment of truth is fast arriving. If I was right, and this was theft and fraud, then the response of our elected officials will be to tell us that Social Security is rapidly running out of money, and we’re going to need to reduce benefits. If I was wrong, and this is just borrowing, then the response of our elected officials will be to explain to us now how they intend to raise the money to pay back the trillions they’ve “borrowed” from Social Security over the last 30 years.
It’s really that simple. And the answer is……
Listen to President Obama last night in his State of the Union address. No talk of paying that debt back – just talk of how we reduce benefits.
Listen to the news yourself, and see what you hear other elected officials saying. Is anyone talking about the money we need to raise to pay back the loan we owe to Social Security and Medicare? That debt, by the way, is $4.6 Trillion dollars. How on earth will we raise an additional $4.6 trillion, when we can’t even come close to balancing our current budget?
The answer is clear. Our lawmakers have no intention of paying the debts that they’ve incurred. Instead, they’ll simply run away from their responsibility. That makes what’s been happening for the past 30 years theft and embezzlement – plain and simple. I wish I’d been wrong on this one, but current politics is proving me all too right…
The older I get, the more tired I become with these losers we keep sending to Washington – the ones who’re too cowardly to own up to their responsibility to balance the budget they’re put in charge of. They can’t stand up to the taxpayer and tell the taxpayer what he really owes, so like the cowards they are, they keep telling the taxpayer they’ll reduce taxes, knowing all the while that this is irresponsible and cowardly.
They’ll keep taking the money from our elderly, to fund their pet pork projects. When will we get tired enough of this to get rid of these losers?
Well, all the new Republicans that rode into Washington on the backs of tea-party types have wasted no time at all thumbing their noses at the folks they were so happy to court during their campaign.
Remember all that rhetoric about how bad lobbyists were? Turns out that as soon as these new Republicans were sworn in, they jumped right on the “lobby money” bandwagon, sucking up as much of that poison and corruption as they could as fast as they could. Some details here.
Remember that whole “Pledge to America” grandstanding? Turns out that the tea-party types are pretty upset with the new Republicans for selling them out as soon as they got elected. Here is a link to the anger from tea party loyalists. Seems that in particular, it was the (seemingly false) commitment to “act immediately to reducing spending” sticks in the craw of those who thought they were electing conservatives.
Remember the rhetoric about the whole “we the people” stuff? Remember how the tea-party types thought they were electing folks who would represent the interests of the people over the interests of corruption and greed in Washington? They got a rude awakening, as they realize the people they’ve elected may just be the very best lapdogs for those interests opposed to We The People.
Click here for an article describing how the new Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee said recently that in his opinion, “Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.” And those silly tea partyers thought these people they elected believed it was the other way around…
It might sound from my tone that I’m down on tea partyers. In many ways I’m actually extremely sympathetic to their cause. At the heart of what they say they stand for, I’m in strong agreement with them. I want fiscal responsibility in Washington. I want a government that represents We The People rather than the right wing corporatist movement fueled by the rise of neoliberalism in our country. I could almost be a tea-partyer.
Almost.
In general, this whole notion that the tea party had that it was somehow representing the interests of We The People over the interests of the forces of the corruption and corporatism in our nation was sadly misled by some of the worst offenders of the interests of We The People, and some of those former tea partyers are starting to see that. Forces of corruption and greed were extremely happy to see some more friendly allies arrive in Washington this month, and have promptly dumped wheelbarrows full of cash in their laps to help in the effort to undue those things they hate the most – such as efforts to more tightly regulate Wall Street to reduce the risk of the sort of catastrophe that led to the trillion dollars of bank bailouts that Congress and the President leaped to provide back in 2007. (Let’s see, who had most of the power when that abomination of tax-dollar appropriation was enacted?) Here’s an article that goes into detail about those wheelbarrows of cash being dumped in the laps of these “new Republicans”, and how it’s grating many in the tea party who supported them.
While I feel bad for friends who were so mercilessly duped in this last election. I do hope it will help redirect folks who truly believe in those core conservative principles. Maybe as we start to gear up for the next election, many of those folks who were duped by the right wing will look a little more deeply at the candidates and the issues next time around.
It comes to this: Conservatives in this country need to reject this new-republicanism. How many times must we be duped and dumped on before we realize that there’s nothing conservative about the right wing, and yet this extreme right wing has taken over the Republican party over the last 30 years.
We need to go through a cleansing, and reject the likes of Boehner, hypocrites who talk all day about how bad things like universal healthcare are, yet can’t wait to sign up for their own government healthcare program – the one that I pay for as a taxpayer. If the Republican Party continues to put forward extremists and hypocrites, it’s time to sit vote for someone else until they put forward the real conservatives again.
Next time around, I’ll be looking carefully at the tea party groups. Maybe they’ve learned a hard lesson here, and maybe the real conservatives will come from their ranks next time. Unfortunately, this last time around, they were the ones who supported some of the most extreme hypocrites now lapping up corruption, greed, and lobbyists.
Front page of my Denver Post this morning, a story about the newly elected Secretary of State (Scott Gessler – R) who’d decided that he can’t live on the salary the job pays. His old job was with a law firm that represented clients on elections and campaign law issues, and apparently paid him a lot more than this new public service job pays him.
I get that – he decided he wanted to go into public service. It’s a tough row to hoe these days, as we’ve gone through a few decades of demonizing public employees and reducing their pay dramatically in relation to the private sector.
Was somebody twisting Gessler’s arm to make him spend all that money to run for Secretary of State? He was (presumably) smart enough to check into the salary he’s make before he spent all that money convincing the voters that he was the best guy for the job, right?
But now, he says he can’t live on a paltry $68,500 / year, and he wants to moonlight with his old firm to make more money. Hey, I agree that’s not much money. So why’d he run?
Aside from the issues of conflict of interest when he’s working for this private law firm who represents clients who he’s likely to oppose, I have some more basic problems with what he’s doing. Like issues of accountability.
Hey Gessler, you ran for the office, and unless you’re willing to tell us you were too stupid to check out the salary ahead of time, I think you need to be accountable to your decision to ask us to entrust the office to you. Do your job. It’s a full-time job. As one Colorado voter, I expect you to do the job I elected you to do, and not to be working a second job.
Don’t like the pay? I get it. So either try and get the salary raised, or quit. Hand the job over to whoever took second place in the election. These are public service jobs you’re running for, and these days, that means you don’t make much money at it. If you don’t like that, then change it, but don’t slap the voters in the face by getting us to chose you, then telling us you were just kidding – you really can’t live on what we were offering to pay you.
Can we get a little accountability from our elected officials? The Secretary of State is the one I’d expect the most accountability from for crying out loud.
Of course, I’m speaking of the disastrous Citizens United ruling by 5 extreme and activist Supreme Court justices. In this ruling, 5 justices decided that money is the same thing as speech, and a corporation can spend unlimited money to assure they have greater voice than ordinary citizens. Corporations in our country control the vast majority of the wealth of the nation, and they are answerable to nobody except their private shareholders. With this wealth, they’re able to bribe and lobby their way into the bowels of lawmaking in the country, completely unfettered in their efforts to buy and control the government of our nation.
The Citizens United ruling opened the door to a form of fascism where the only people who are able to wield power and influence in our country are those with wealth. The last election cycle already shows the chilling effects of this dark decision, as money played an unprecedented role in electing those whose job it is to represent We The People.
Throughout history, it’s always been the wealthy who have the most influence. Just a fact of life. However, when this great nation that I love was set up, it was set up in a way to reduce that tendency toward corruption. In our new nation, the wealthy weren’t able to silence We The People. The common man had the same voice as the wealthy man. Nobody could stifle speech – it was illegal. Since everyone had equal access to voice their opinion, and everyone’s vote counted equally, we had a democratically elected republic that worked.
Until the Supreme Court fell into the hands of the extremists who promote corporatism. Now, we’ve established a modified version of our Constitution and Bill of RIghts. Now, the people who have the only loud voice in our nation are those with wealth, because they’re the ones who have the money it takes to buy the airwaves. It was bad enough that the airwaves were controlled by those with great wealth to start with, making it inherently difficult for a fair message to be expressed. With this ruling, we’ve made it abundantly clear that the only folks who have the right to be widely heard in this nation are those with wealth.
Full disclosure here. I’m registered as a Republican. I’m a small business owner. I started my first small business when I was in my 20’s, and that was many decades ago. During my career, I’ve run businesses large and small across corporate America. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Capitalist. I love free enterprise.
And I love a free nation and a free democracy. Once we allow our democracy to be enslaved to the corporatists, we’ve not only lost our representative form of government, we’re also on our way to losing our freedoms. After that, every small businessperson in America will lose their ability to compete in business with the giants, because it will be the giants who run the sham of a government that they own. As a small businessman, I can tell you I feel that we’re well on our way to that state now.
The overturn of this ruling should be the number one priority of every true conservative in this nation. It should be the number one priority of every small businessperson in America. It should be the number one priority of the tea party. It should be the number one priority of every true patriot who loves what this country once stood for, and what it’s rapidly retreating from.
Somebody once told me that they read someplace that somebody said that way back when Europeans were first invading the Americas, it’s likely that natives might not have even seen the ships out on the sea as they approached and anchored. If they had to mental construct for the idea of a big ship on the water, their minds might have simply failed to process the images coming in to them.
Sounds like a crazy notion to me. And since it was something somebody might have read about something somebody might have said, I’ve always considered it to be mostly a made-up thing.
But a fun idea.
I suspect there might be a grain of possibility in the idea as well. So I’ll talk about it here as-if it’s real fact. It makes a point I want to make after all. And really, if I do this well enough, it might be that some Faux News Network might make me a job offer…
So, the ships were there. That’s a fact. And folks on the shore had eyeballs that worked, and they were looking out across the horizon, and their functional eyeballs picked up the information, and sent the information along the optic nerve and into the brain for processing.
So far, it’s all fact, it’s all science, and it actually probably happened just like that.
But we’ve all worked hard to “manage” our brain so it doesn’t interfere with the way we want to see the world. We all process incoming information in similar ways, but with little twists and turns, filters, brushes, and enhancing tools.
We all know what we want the world to look like, and we have fine-tuned our senses to pick out the pieces of information that surrounds us that reinforces the picture of what we want the world to look like.
My Faux News comment is a perfect example. What is your source of news? While some people work hard to get a wide variety of opinions and input, most folks simply find the news or opinion source that tells them about a world that’s built the way they want to believe it’s built. In my opinion, that’s explains the growth in popularity of particular networks or sources that are biased to the point of absurdity – people aren’t looking for Truth, they’re looking for reinforcement of the views they want to hold.
Just like the husband or wife who’s blindsided by the unfaithful spouse, even though everyone around the couple could see the signs for years. From the inside, the husband or wife had a picture of what they wanted their spouse to be, and the only information they accepted into their brain was the information that reinforced that view.
I understand this tendency. It makes sense. I can only imagine how overwhelming the world is to an infant – information bombarding the brain with no context or ability to put the pieces together. As we mature and grow, one of the ways we unleash the power in our brain is to learn how to filter and “manage” the information that we’re swimming through.
We can become extremely efficient at filtering and managing information, so that our lives run smoothly, and we’re not troubled with dilemmas. We’re not forced to confront and adjust our filters, brushes, enhancers, and other “information management” devices that make us comfortable.
I recently ran across a post by a gal (Katinka Hessilink) who suggests that creativity is tied up in this whole equation. In her article, Katinka is talking about the existence of a soul, but I’m co-opting her argument here to help me suggest that creativity in a person might really be little more than a higher tolerance to leave the filters turned down.
It might be that what we call creativity is really just a tolerance to accept, hear, and see input that doesn’t necessarily fit with the shapes we’ve already constructed within our mind – the shapes that we think the world is supposed to fit into. The “creative mind” really might just see more.
There’s always been this assumed connection between creativity and, shall we say, a looser grip on sanity? I have no idea of this is actually true, but it’s a pervasive stereotype.
If there were a linear representation of “sanity”, it could be that the further one moves to the right on the scale, the more constricted is their view of the world, and the less they are actually able to experience the world they’re moving through. They have a very tightly managed shape into which they fit all of the incoming information, and whatever doesn’t fit, is ignored or changed in some way.
What’s on the other end of that scale? Off the edge of either end would seem like insanity to me.
Way back in the time of Columbus, a dreamer sat on the beach of some island in the Caribbean. On the horizon he saw something he’d never seen before – he saw ships with tall masts and large sails. He ran and told the others of the tribe, who looked and saw nothing that fit into the shape of the world they knew, so they saw nothing at all.
I can believe that. You?
Here’s a Wayne Dyer quote, that I probably have a little wrong:
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you’re looking at change”.
I’m a fiscal conservative – one who really believes in the principles. One of the things that I’ve found really troubling in recent decades is the theft of that word – conservative – from the very foundations of the real meaning of the word. While I try and stay mostly a-political in this blog, I do like to post links to articles I write for others that do dig into political issues.
You can find the article at Tikkun – follow this link.
Thanks, as always, for reading!
I usually try and stay out of politics in this blog, but just can’t resist today.
It is amazing to me that the Democrats in the House of Representatives re-elected Nancy Pelosi as their minority leader. She was completely ineffective as the majority leader, and I see no reason we should expect her to do a better job now that her party is in the minority. I would go so far as to say that in my opinion, her personality, style, and lack of effectiveness was one of the big reasons why the Dems fared so poorly in the majority.
As for the Republicans, John Boehner wins without a contest, which is even more appalling to me. The fact that this guy walked around handing out big tobacco checks to Senators who were kind to big tobacco made a mockery of our democracy, rubbing our faces in the fact that he and his ilk are owned by big money. Over the past 2 years, his entire career has been nothing but an effort to thwart any of The People’s business from happening on the Senate floor.
Shame shame shame.
Though I try and stay generally non-political in my blogging, Tikkun recently published an article by me that I’d like to link to here. I’ll offer a bit of a warning and spoiler: If you’re either truly conservative or truly progressive in your leanings, you’ll enjoy the article. However, if you’re either extreme right-wing or extreme left-wing in your leanings, you’ll not like the article.
Fair enough.
Progressives and Conservatives – A Case For Exquisite Harmony
My son Jesse is in Vietnam, managing construction projects over there, teaching folks how to plan and build. Vietnam is booming right now, and companies there are looking for ways to leverage American construction knowledge. I talk to him most mornings, (or in his case, evenings), and through these conversations I’m coming to understand more about craftsmanship, quality, and just how much I’ve taken these values for granted in my life.
Jesse’s particular “craft” is decorative concrete. He’s an artist really, who happens to use concrete materials to build beautiful work that becomes part of a home or place of business. From stamped patios to countertops, he cares deeply for how something looks, and how well it’s put together. He’s built a valuable reputation as someone who “does it right”.
When a Vietnamese company hired him to come over there and work with them, he thought it was for his skill with decorative concrete. Now that he’s over there, though, he’s realizing that their culture is a long ways away from even beginning to understand that sort of concrete.
It’s a pretty foundational concept and value in the American Psyche – the notion of quality workmanship. During my own generation, we let some of that value slip away, and it’s still slipping today. But it’s such a basic underpinning of who we are that many generations will pass before we’ve lost it altogether.
Not that we do everything right. Not that we don’t know how to do shoddy work. We make mistakes, and we do sometimes do shoddy work. But we know it’s shoddy when we do it, and we generally see the mistakes for what they are.
For years, Detroit built cars that were works of art. To this day, few things are as beautiful as a ’56 or ’57 T-Bird, or a ’58 or ’59 Corvette or ’63 Corvette Stingray. How about the ’67 GTO (in black of course). These cars were all built as a result of a solid connection between the American worker and a belief in good workmanship and a quality product. I could go on for pages and pages about things like American furniture, or the solid stone homes throughout the Midwest, or the fine bicycles that are built in small shops across American still today.
We get quality. We get fine workmanship.
I’m learning through Jesse that this isn’t a universal notion – the idea of understanding quality workmanship. As he tries to teach workers in Vietnam some of the most basic notions of how to build a quality product, he’s learning that their cultural vocabulary just doesn’t seem to include an appreciation of a well-planned and well-executed project, or of the difference between a truly fine concrete finish and one that’s barely passable. Their cultural vocabulary seems much more focused on getting done quickly, regardless of the future costs of poor planning. They have a focus on the appearance that something is completed, rather than on an understanding of something done well that will last.
I remember when I was young, and a tag that said “Made in China” was something I was taught to avoid. It implied not only that the product was probably cheaply made, but also that buying the product supported a “system” that we didn’t believe in.
Somewhere in the 56 years of my life, we’ve turned this notion on its head. Now corporations like Walmart seem to be dedicated to stuffing stores with junk made in China. And people shop at these stores, either unaware or uncaring about what this represents.
50 years ago, “Made in America” represented something of great value. Good, hard-working people went to work in well-paying jobs and made good quality products. We knew how to pay people well to do a good job, and how to create and innovate. We knew how to build a 1958 Corvette. OMC built motors that would last for generations, not months or years.
We could have exported this to the rest of the world. We could have taught the rest of the world how to appreciate quality in the same way we appreciated quality, and how to find the elegance, simplicity, and beauty in products that were made well.
Or we could have imported another way of thinking. We could have imported the idea that cheap is better than good. We could have imported the idea that workmanship is worthless, and we need to pay people the lowest wage we possibly can, rather than a wage that will allow them to live well and support other well-paying jobs.
The American Worker would have benefited far more from the first course of action. We The People would be much better off if we’d have invested in exporting American Workmanship overseas. However, large corporations could show a better short-term bottom line by following the second course of action.
Guess which one we chose? We’ve now effectively eliminated organized labor in this country, which was the single most important factor in maintaining a living wage for the American Worker. Companies like Walmart have been very effective in exporting American jobs overseas, while working tirelessly to assure that their workers never enjoy the benefits of organized labor. We’ve lowered our standards of quality in this country, and we’ve accepted that everything we buy is throw-away.
For anyone who thinks I’m being racist in some way in this article, I think you’re missing the point. It isn’t that people in Vietnam or China are “less” somehow than people in America, it’s just that their culture places value on different things. In many instances, I think there are values in these cultures that we should be learning from and importing – they’re better than ours.
But understanding quality and fine workmanship isn’t one of these. Quality Workmanship seems to be something that still flows through American blood, and this is one of those things that we should be exporting, rather than importing the alternative.
Jesse’s a smart guy. He’ll figure out how to teach his colleagues in Vietnam how to focus on quality workmanship, and how to run a project efficiently. By the same token, I’m sure there are some extremely valuable qualities that he’ll pick up from them. I’m just sorry that as a country, we didn’t do that same thing, and instead allowed the short-term profits of a few large corporations like Walmart to define the decline in the culture of American Craftsmanship.
1958 Corvette
What if one of the major news networks had a reputation for consistently pressuring reporters, editors, and producers to present information that was blatantly biased, distorted, or plain lie? What if they had a reputation for going so far as-to fire reporters and others who refused on ethical grounds to write or produce stories that were fabrications and lies?
I know we all talk about how untrustworthy certain “news” sources are, and we know that there’s one in particular who has the sort of reputation I’ve described. We also know that there are lots of folks who watch this particular news source, and who’s response to such accusations always seems to be something to the effect that everyone does it, and their source just gets picked on more than others.
But surely if one of these allegedly fired employees took this news outlet to court, (let’s call them faux news here just because we’re talking about making stuff up), said news outlet would work hard in court to vindicate themselves – to prove that they don’t really force their employees to lie and fabricate stories just to support their political agenda. Right? Surely they would, because if they didn’t, they’d be exposed as nothing but a lying propaganda hack, right?
Wait for it…
What if instead, this faux news network went to court and argued that sure, they lied and made stuff up, and that it was their right to do so under the first amendment. Furthermore, they had the right to fire people who refused to lie with them and for them, as this also somehow was covered by their first amendment rights. No refutation of the allegation that their news was fabricated to support a particular political agenda, no fight for credibility in the eye of the public, but brazen boasting that sure they make stuff up and lie to their audience, and they have the right to do so.
No really. This really happened. I’ll not name anybody here – if you think I’m making it up there are lots of ways to check it out and form your own opinion about what happened. They were sued and lost, and upon appeal to a federal court, the verdict and award were overturned. They then went on the air and boasted that they’d been vindicated. I’m sure their audience thought that meant that it had been decided that they didn’t lie after all, rather than the truth, with is that they argued that of course they make stuff up and lie to their audience. And they won. They now have court precedent allowing them to continue to blatantly lie and distort and make up whatever they want to, and present it to the public as-if it were truth.
I know this all sounds really surreal. But it’s really true. And the saddest part to me are the following 2 bullets:
I don’t care what side of any political spectrum you’re on. Personally, I’m very conservative, but not at all right-wing. We should all be responsible enough to demand a level of truth and credibility from our news sources, and when one of them does what this one did, anyone with an ounce of concern for honor, integrity, credibility and truth should never, ever, allow that outlet to run on any media source they watch.
Care to guess which one it was? 
Common Decency, Common Courtesy, and Common Sense – critical to the survival of a culture. While the definition of each of these might vary slightly culture to culture, I think there’s some foundational common ground.
As a culture, we seem to have lost our bearings with regard to this 3-legged stool that supports a culture. When it happened I’m not sure, but it feels like it’s been rapidly accelerating over the past 30 years. We’ve lost the ability to allow any disagreement into our dialogue, as we no longer have an understanding of how decency, courtesy, and sense can guide us to learn from one another when we disagree rather than hating and hurting one another.
Common Decency
The desire to treat our fellow human beings with respect and compassion. The willingness to forego some comfort or profit in order for another to be more comfortable or to feel some small gain. This notion of common decency is foundational to most religions. In the case of my own religion – Christianity – the entire religion is based on the teachings of a man who gave himself completely to not only teaching these principles, but to demonstrating them in the life he led.
But these principles seem hidden in our culture today, don’t they? There will always be mean-spirited people who lie and cheat and bully others, but a culture founded in common decency will shun and banish those people. How is it then, that people like Limbaugh and Hannity and Orielly and Beck and Olberman survive and thrive on the airwaves of our public square? How is it that Americans continue to shop at stores like Walmart who strive hard to assure that good jobs aren’t available in America, both by continuing illegal and immoral practices to assure that American workers can’t organize, and by producing every product they can overseas in countries that consistently support labor practices that most of us would consider slavery, child abuse, or worse?
We make decisions every day with our wallets – our continual vote in the marketplace. Every time we allow one of these abusive, lying, cheating bullies to appear on a TV that we watch, we cast a vote in favor of what they represent. Every time we make a purchase at a Walmart, we cast a vote in favor of what they represent. We have absolute power to simply set our jaw, and make them go away by refusing to support them and what they represent.
Yet we don’t. Why not? Our refusal to take a stand against these practices makes us complicit in their actions. Certainly supporting the concept of reasonable wages will make our prices rise, but the America I grew up in had the decency to allow my neighbor to make a living wage rather than force him to live in poverty so I can pay a little less for some trinket I might want to buy.
The lying, cheating, bullies are out in force right now as we run up to our election. Will we continue to swallow their pill of dishonesty and lack of common decency, or will we set our jaw and vote with a conscience rather than with our selfish greed?
Common Courtesy
I had dinner with a friend not long ago, and our conversation meandered around to courtesy. As common decency has crept further and further from our relationship palette, so courtesy has become less and less important. Courtesy is an expression of care, concern, and respect for another person. Extending a courtesy to another person is an open hand that lets them see the respect you have for them.
My daughter went through a period when she refused to let me open doors for her. She’s a strong-willed and intelligent young woman, who seemed to see having a man open a door as an expression of weakness on her part. As she’s grown up, I’ve noticed that she not only lets me open doors for her, but will actually pause slightly to give me the chance to open it. She’s come to realize how much it means to me when I’m able to express my respect for her by opening the door for her, and she’s learning to give this gift to me more often. She’s every bit as strong-willed as she ever was, and becoming more intelligent every day. And she’s learning the art of courtesy in a culture that’s working hard to keep her from doing so.
I should mention also that my daughter is teaching me a thing or two about courtesy as well. Although I really don’t care a bit about fashion, and have nearly zero fashion sense, I’m allowing myself to learn from her – how to identify “cute” shoes, what colors go together well, etc. I do this not because I really care about cute shoes, but because these are things that are important to her, and by learning from her, I give her a gift and a courtesy.
The courtesy that our children display is a perfect reflection of what we have taught them about how to express care, concern and respect for other people. How our generation behaves is far less important than how the next generation behaves, and the common courtesy we teach them has a very big impact on that behavior.
Common Sense
Common sense was, at one time, the true measure of a person. If a person has all the education in the world, but lacked basic common sense, s/he was considered to have little practical knowledge. If a person spewed rhetoric that couldn’t stand up to the rigors of logic, s/he lost all credibility.
It was important that a person be able to sew a button on a shirt if necessary, or to understand the most basic principles of how to put something together or to apply common repairs. This represented common sense, and the ability to understand things and solve problems. Today, such things have come to represent “common” labor, and fewer and fewer people can do these things. Worse, they’re often proud of their lack of common sense, making it clear that they don’t have the ability to perform these basic tasks, apparently unaware or uncaring of the lack of common sense this displays.
In the words of Teddy Roosevelt, “If a boy has not got pluck and honesty and common sense he is a pretty poor creature, and he is a worse creature if he is a man and lacks any one of those three traits.”
Lest anyone sense any taint of sexism in this statement, the reader should also know that in the year 1913 – well before there was any sense of gender equality in our culture, TR also said, “Much can be done by law towards putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal rights with man – including the right to vote, the right to hold and use property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same terms as the man.”…”Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.”
The decline of common decency is directly related to the decline in common sense. It’s the loss of the common sense required to discern truth from fiction that’s allowed the ascendence of the liars, cheats, and bullies that are paid so much money by the media to spew their distortions and half-truths. The lack of common sense keeps us voting for people who spoon-feed us honey while destroying the orchard, and keep us spending money with multi-national corporations who are destroying the fabric of our economy.
Like every culture, ours is held up wholly by the 3 pillars of civilized behavior – Common Decency, Common Courtesy, and Common Sense. I question how much longer we can stand as these pillars erode around us. The power to rebuild them and make them strong lies completely in our hands. Will we pick up the tools and start to repair the extreme damage that’s already occurred.
Chase County Courthouse in the early morning light
Without a doubt and without a close second, waking up at the Millstream Motel early Wednesday morning is more pleasant than any other morning of our ride. I’m sure that some of this has to do with the realization that this is a day off – a day of rest and relaxation after 5 days of riding. But there’s more to the “goodness” of the morning than just this knowledge.
For one thing, the room is the nicest we’ve stayed in so far. For another thing, it’s really quiet – the only real sound outside being the sound of the stream falling over the little dam that was built when there was a mill operating on the site. For another thing, I’m really looking forward to exploring the town a bit on our day off. But there’s more as well – something I’ll just call “good energy” for now.
The room we’re in feels warm. It’s almost a suite, with a small bed and chair in the front area where the TV is, and a bed in the back area where the bathroom is (and the back door). Dave has been more than gracious and lets me have the nicest part of the room – the back section with the real bed – while he’s taken the front room with the TV, A/C, and smaller bed. I sleep really cold, and rarely even need an A/C, so part of this decision is based on the fact that Dave wants to be closer to the A/C. Whatever the reason, there’s no doubt that I got the better end of the bargain, and I’m grateful as I wake up before first light on our day off. Though I’m an early riser, Dave is usually awake and up before I am. This morning, I try and sneak outside without waking Dave.
It’s a perfect morning as the pre-dawn light grows around me. Sitting on the back veranda, I’m surprised by the lack of bugs. Listening to the sound of the water in the creek, I lean back in my chair and watch a fisherman sitting on the bridge with a line in the water. I watch for quite a while as the light grows around him, and figure he might be sleeping in his lawn chair. I wonder if he’s spent the entire night there on the bridge.
Fishing for catfish
After the light grows a good bit, I take a walk down to the bridge, and chat with the fisherman. I’m not a big fan of catfishing – just because of the static nature of it – but am enough of a fishing nut that I’m always interested in how someone’s doing when they’ve got a line in the water. Turns out that he’s been there a good bit of the night, and hasn’t had any luck. I would have thought that with the water up like it is, there’d be a good chance at catching some catfish – but what do I know about it?
Fishing is a funny sport. I’m a fan of a more active style of fishing – one where I’m pursuing or hunting the fish – but there are some odd aspects to the sport that seem to be common across most styles. This fella sitting on the bridge has spent hours in this lawn chair, watching his line down in the water, and hasn’t had a single bite. I might spend hours in my boat, softly trolling along a shore and casting hundreds of times up against the bank, and never get a single strike. But we keep coming back, and keep trying again.
On the surface this seems like odd behavior, but if you fish, it’s perfectly reasonable. There’s something about the activity of fishing that pulls us back to it all the time, and it doesn’t seem to be (as logic might suggest) connected much to the actual catching of fish. There’s some combination of factors that stack up to a complete “gestalt” of fishing that’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t infected with an attachment to this particular pursuit.
First off, there’s the peace, tranquility, and thoughtful space that usually surrounds the act of fishing. This isn’t something that’s always part of the sport, but it’s a pretty common component. For some, (like myself), there’s the hunt, which is powerfully addictive if you’re wired in a certain way. Learning the patterns of the prey, learning how he behaves, “becoming” or assimilating with the prey in order to hunt him. And for some, it’s a sport with the challenge that sports often bring to the individual.
For myself, I don’t really think of fishing as a “sport” – at least that’s not the aspect of the activity that grabs me. I think it’s more the combination of the peace and tranquility of the space, and “the hunt”.
Of course, in college I had a neighbor who used to go down to the creek (or crick depending on your dialect…) and fish for catfish every evening after work. He’s spend most of the night down there, then come back to sleep a few hours and head off to work again. He eventually confided that the real attraction to fishing for him was that it allowed him to get out of the house and away from his wife. I guess it was his escape – his way of avoiding conflict. I’m thinking there must be more effective ways of solving that particular problem, but then again, I suppose marriage counseling can get expensive…
One of many stone homes in the town - this one is new but there are some really nice older ones too.
Following my conversation with the fisherman on the bridge, I wander around to explore the town in the early morning. It’s still cool at this early hour, and the early light gives limestone a warm glow. A good bit of this town is built of limestone, right down to the sidewalks. Of course, over the years, most of the limestone sidewalks have been replaced with concrete, but there are a number of places where you can still see the old limestone. I’d like to believe that the replacement of limestone with concrete happened only when the limestone got broken for whatever reasons, but it’s pretty easy to believe that there may have been a time when limestone seemed too old-fashioned, and a modernization effort replaced much of it. Either way, it’s pretty cool to see those spots where it wasn’t replaced. My son designs and installs decorative concrete in ways to make it look like stone or slate or other materials, and the results are usually quite beautiful. But to see these old sidewalks – 100+ years old – in such perfect shape and continuing to grow in beauty as they age is a great reminder of just how tough it is to replicate what mother nature takes millions of years to create.
Dave is exploring the town too, and I run into him down by the courthouse. We each spend the early morning hours on our own self-guided walking tours of the town, before meeting up again at the hotel room around 10:00 or so. By that time, the Emma Chase Cafe is open, and we’re more than ready for breakfast.
Looking at the name, you might think that the Emma Chase Cafe is named after Emma Chase, who must surely have had something to do with the naming of the town. In a little bit of reading that I did at the historical society there, I think someone saw a picture once of a woman from the 1800’s, and they just “named” her Emma Chase, hung the picture on the wall, and called the place the Emma Chase Cafe. Subsequent to that day, someone came along who could actually identify the woman in the photo, and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t named Emma Chase.
But the photo still hangs, and the name of the place remains. And I like it. Sort of like Roslyn’s Cafe in the fictitious town of Cicely on the old Northern Exposure show. In the show, the story went that the Cafe got it’s name from a woman who was part of a couple who founded the town. In the show – as in Cottonwood Falls – it’s irrelevant whether the story is actually true or not. It’s a good story. That’s all that matters.
In fact, the town of Cottonwood Falls reminds me in many ways of the Northern Exposure town of Cicely, and I see a lot of similarities in the people as well. It’s a neat little culture and community that seems to be evolving in Cottonwood Falls. On the one hand is the old ranching community – folks with local history that usually goes back a couple of generations or more. I know that culture well, having lived in the general area for many years myself. That community is pretty darned conservative in the true sense of the word. They’re generally independent, and don’t want to edge into other folks’ business. They generally figure we’ve all got our own eccentricities, and one man’s are no better or worse than another’s. On the other hand are the folks who come from a more “alternative” style of America. Interestingly, their leanings aren’t really that different from the old ranching community – they just have a different set of eccentricities. The two groups might speak in a slightly different dialect, and might dress differently from one another, but their basic conservative tendencies match up pretty nicely.
That word – “conservative” – is one that I need to talk about a bit in this context. I don’t use the word in the same way political talking heads on TV or in newspapers will use the term. Those folks seem to think the word conservative is synonymous with right-wing. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth. In the same way, the talking-head elites seem to want to use the word conservative to describe a particular brand of religion in the country, and again I say, nothing could be further from the truth.
When I use that word – conservative – to describe the folks that I see building this community, I use it in a very pure sense, in the sense of pure and foundational conservative values. I don’t use it at all to describe someone’s political (right-wing or left-wing) or religious (progressive vs fundamentalist) beliefs. In the most pure sense, a conservative mindset could be summed up with a few bullets I think:
Cottonwood River at sunrise
In the town of Cottonwood Falls – as in the fictional town of Cicely in the Northern Exposure show – the nice harmony of folks from many different backgrounds, and their basic conservatism, seems to make the town work well.
The proprietors of The Millstream Motel fit into this little harmony well in my opinion. Sharon and Richard Clute haven’t lived here their whole life, but moved into the area and bought the motel at some point in the not-too-distant past. They have the motel decorated in a way that makes you feel quite comfortable – I could easily see myself spending many days there sometime. While their appearance doesn’t fit the stereotypical image of small-town Kansas, they fit in perfectly here and seem to be both pillars and ambassadors for this unlikely little pocket of quirky harmony in the heart of the Flint Hills.
This morning, when I asked Sharon if there was a laundromat in town, she insisted that we just give our clothes to her, and she’d take care of them. While we’ve been washing our kit in the sink every night, we figured it’d be good to actually run everything through a washing machine at this point. As I dropped the clothes off with her, we sat and talked for quite a while about the town and the motel.
The Millstream Motel hasn’t been around all that long – at least I don’t think it has. I think Sharon and Rick purchased the property not that many years back from the fella who originally built it. The exterior walls of the motel are constructed with pieces of limestone that were once sidewalk in Cottonwood Falls. Sharon impresses me as someone with a nice blend of eccentricity and practicality. In talking with her, it sounds like she’s done more than her share of recruiting of folks to move to Cottonwood Falls and set up shop. Sharon’s a quiet and gentle soul I think, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to venture a guess that she may once have considered herself a hippie, I also wouldn’t expect that she’d be upset if I did say something like that…
While we’re talking, my stomach is growling for breakfast. Dave and I head down to the Emma Chase Cafe. Which is where I was in this story before I wandered over into this discussion of Northern Exposure… Dave an I sit down at a table at the Emma Chase, looking around for a menu. My breakfast menu has pretty consistently been chicken-fried steak, and I’m thinking that since we’re not riding today, maybe I should eat a little more lightly this morning. The waitress sees us both looking around, and lets us know they don’t really print a menu.
“What do you usually have for breakfast”, the waitress asks.
I shrug and look out the window before replying, “Eggs and toast I suppose – maybe some bacon.”
“Then that’s what I’ll fix for ya’”, she replies. Then looking at Dave, continues, “How ‘bout you?”
I don’t remember what Dave orders – I’m so enthralled with this nifty way to run a restaurant. Just fix folks what they like. I suppose it makes sense. If someone wants something you don’t feel like fixing, just put on your best Jedi Mind Trick Voice, and inform them that they really don’t want that, and maybe even suggest something that you feel like fixing. It’s such an elegant solution!
Sign at the Emma Chase Cafe - need I say more?
After breakfast, we have pie for dessert. It is late in the morning after all. And they’re darn proud of their pie at the Emma Chase – I figure it’d be an insult not to order pie. (Of course, for those of you who are really in the know, you know that no pie could really compare to Peggy’s Perfect Pie…)
We talk to a gal who I assume is the proprietor, and she tells us about their schedule of get-togethers during the month. It sounds like this is the happenin’ place to be on Friday nights, as they rotate the flavor of live music they host throughout the months, but always on Friday nights. This Friday, (being the third Friday of the month), is gospel night, and she’s sure we’d truly enjoy the jammin’ and singin’ and pickin’. I’m positive I would as well, and I’m sorry I’m gonna miss it.
I also learn that on the first Sunday of each month, they host a bicycler’s breakfast buffet. I’m sorry I’ll miss that as well. I think if I do this ride again, I’ll try and end up here on a first Sunday just to enjoy it!
Dave and I head back to the motel for a little rest between breakfast and lunch. I’m pretty sure a nap is going to catch up with me as the day moves along, and I also want to explore downtown now that the shops are open, but right now a little rest on the shady back porch is in order.
Back Veranda at the Millstream Motel
Dave and I settle in to chairs on the back veranda of the motel. The day’s getting quite hot already, and the breezy shade on the back of the motel is the perfect place for us to palaver. Dave and I like to talk politics. Even though there are things we disagree on, we both enjoy the benefit of a slightly new and different way to look at something that we already have an opinion on. And really, there’s not much I don’t already have an opinion on…
In America today, it’s unfortunate that the art of social discourse has become so crude and intolerant. I place the blame for this partially on the media for the hate mongering that they’ve become so good at over the last 30 years or so, but even more of the blame has to rest on us – the American people, who seem to harbor some addiction to watching this trash on TV and listening to it. We only want to talk to and listen to people like us – they must hold exactly the same opinion that we do, or they must be an idiot. The ability to respectfully disagree with someone is lost, as is the ability to have a conversation with someone and believe that they might be a little more right about the topic that I am.
I feel very grateful for my friendship with Dave. We often will pick a topic, and find that we have different opinions about the topic. We’ll dig in and toss things up and about for a while, and quite often end up realizing that there’s not a gnat’s hair’s worth of distance between what we believe about the topic after all. In the process we get to have some great conversations, I always learn a bit more about the topic that we’re discussing, and most importantly, I generally learn a little something about myself in the process.
Today we’re talking about corporations, and the role of the corporation in our culture and our economy. As always, the conversation moves back and forth and around to many different complexions of the issue. Dave and I have both worked in Corporate America for most of our career. We’ve both had high-responsibility jobs in large corporations. I’ve run my own business, as well as businesses owned by others. How how businesses (large and small) are run is something that we’re both familiar with.
It’s interesting to me how the media has portrayed a competition of sorts between government and the corporation in recent decades, as-if they’re two different forces designed to achieve the same thing, and we always need to choose one over the other. As we’ve privatized more and more public functions, it’s often been portrayed as an improvement, because private enterprise (ie: a privately owned company) is always more efficient than public enterprise (ie: government).
First off, I’ll say that my experience has been that a smaller enterprise is almost always more efficient than a larger enterprise – whether its public or private. I’ve always worked in the private sector in one way or another, and I’ve seen some very efficient operations, and I’ve seen some that are astoundingly inefficient. I don’t think there’s anything inherent in the word private or public that makes something more or less efficient.
However, in terms of focus, I will say that it’s much easier for a public enterprise to lose focus, and that can lead to inefficiency. In a private enterprise, the focus is extremely clear. Nearly always, the core mission of every private corporation is ROI for the shareholders. Plain and simple, make money for the people who own the company. There’s nothing evil or inherently bad about this – it’s the heart of a capitalist economy. However, it’s also important to realize that at the heart of the matter, this is the sole function of a corporation.
A corporation is not designed or chartered to do good things for the economy of the nation, or to help people, or to behave in a way that builds strong community, or anything like this. (Of course, there are exceptions to this – there are non-profit corporations who are chartered to do this sort of thing. However, in the context of this discussion, I’m referring to the for-profit sector of corporate America.)
Jailhouse inside of the Chase County Courthouse
In fact, if you’re acting on behalf of a corporation, (as an officer for example), and you behave in a way that might contribute to the community or the nation in some way but harms the shareholders of the corporation, you might just be taken to court – might even be held criminally liable for harming shareholders.
This is really critical to understand. The corporation exists for itself and itself only. Given the choice between greater good (something that might help the community or the nation), and individual good (something that helps the shareholders of the corporation), agents of the corporation MUST ALWAYS choose shareholders over everything else.
Once again, I don’t see this as bad. I just see it as misunderstood in our country. The for-profit corporation is a very selfish agent, out for its own good only. This is the nature of the beast, and the way it should be.
Public enterprise, on the other hand, should have the sole mission of serving the greater good of the public that has chartered the enterprise. A public enterprise should serve no profit motive, but should instead serve only a motive of achieving the greater good of the public that they serve.
Viewed this way, there’s no competition between public and private enterprise. They serve two very different masters. The master of the private (for-profit) enterprise is the shareholder of that corporation, while the master of the public enterprise is the public body that chartered the enterprise. They should both be strong, and they should both work to keep the other in check. If private enterprise becomes too strong, then we’ll see growing disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots”, as those with power, money, and influence in the nation gather more power, money, and influence into their “empires”. If public enterprise becomes too dominant, then we’ll see growing inefficiencies as opportunities to leverage profit from the economy in the form of private (for-profit) enterprise diminishes.
This is the backdrop of our discussion this morning, as we talk about concepts of “greater good” vs “individual greed”. It’s hard for guys like me and Dave – who grew up in the for-profit world – to equate The Corporation primarily with “individual greed”. We’ve both seen good people do good things in the for-profit world, and surely seen some pretty selfish and greedy actions as well. We’ve grown up believing in this alter of “privatization” and “profit motive”. But at its most basic truth, it’s very hard to argue with the premise that the for-profit corporation is chartered to fulfill the individual good of a small group of shareholders, and this can often be at odds with the greater good of the community or the nation.
The lens that Dave is looking through in our discussion shows Corporate America in the more positive light, focusing on the good things that do get done in the private (for-profit) world. I’m arguing that while I see good things happen as well, I believe that they’re generally blips – they fall outside the charter of the enterprise in-which they happen. It’s people behaving as people, not as agents of a corporation, and those same people will behave well regardless of what sort of enterprise they’re an agent of.
This gets us to the core – the people. We’re social creatures – wired by evolution (or whatever you might believe has honed the wiring) to strive for survival, and our survival depends on community. I’m sure social scientists have lots of competing theories about the hows and whys of all this, but if you just back up from the forest and look around at us as humans today and throughout history, it’s plain that we’re wired to live in community. It’s also plain that we’re wired to survive as an individual. While a honeybee will immediately sacrifice her life at the slightest hint of a threat to the hive that she’s part of, we’re much more likely to give it some thought – to do some internal math to find out whether it’s worth sacrificing ourself for the good of the community.
Inside each of us, it’s like there’s this ongoing calculator hooked up to a scale of some sort, and the thing’s never unplugged. All through life, it keeps calibrating and recalibrating itself, building the algorithms that get applied to every situation that we come up against, guiding us to make decisions that might come down on the side of serving our selfish interest while sacrificing the interests of community, or might come down on the side of serving community interest while sacrificing our selfish interest. I don’t think the algorithms are built-in to us when we’re born, I think they develop within us as we live our life.
Within the context of a small group of people – especially when the group is isolated – it seems to me that the little “algorithm builder” would see a real possibility that the life of the community could end. I would likely see myself as a much more important member of the community – I would see clearly how much those around me depended on me for our mutual survival. By the time I’d reached adulthood, it’d probably be rare that many of my decisions would lean toward my selfish interest over the interest of the tribe.
As we’ve become less and less tribal, and few of us can really even identify a small group that we’re an important part of, I think the little “algorithm builder” inside of us tends to see little reason to help us make decisions that go against our selfish interest. I think that’s why when people do act in a selfless manner, it’s so often highlighted and seems like a really neat thing to us.
An enterprise is just a collection of people, and those people are going to try and act in the way that they’ve been wired. While we’ll surely try and carry out the mission of the enterprise, we’re going to do so within the confines of that little algorithm builder that we’ve been feeding and building all our life. At their core, and enterprise can’t be good or evil – it’s just a set of rules that the members need to live by.
As with all really good conversations, this one raises more questions than it answers, leaving us both pondering deeply when we’re done. The next day we’ll agree that one of the central functions of any government is to assure that the playing fields are tilted in favor of the greater good over the individual’s ability to be selfish – whether that individual is a person or an enterprise. But now, we’re thinking it’s time to do more walking and eating.
Walnut staircase in the Chase County Courthouse
We explore the old courthouse in Cottonwood Falls together. This is a gorgeous structure made of beautiful limestone on the outside, and trimmed with native walnut on the inside. I think the literature said it cost $40,000 to build 100+ years ago – heck the walnut trim alone would probably cost that today! There’s no “guided” tours of the building – you just open the front door and walk around – but everyone there is more than happy to answer any question that you’ve got.
As we’ve walked around downtown, we’ve noticed a place that seems to be a coffee shop, but wasn’t open quite as early in the morning as we wanted coffee. It’s open now, and we walk in to investigate. Elexa Dawson is the proprietor, and the name she calls the place is “The Gallery at Cottonwood Falls”. It’s a fun and eclectic mix of furniture, art, books, coffee, and pastries. Both Elexa and her store seem to fit perfectly in the fun little harmonious mosaic that is Cottonwood Falls.
Dave and I both spend a good deal of time rummaging through the historical museum. I’m a nut for that sort of thing anyway, but this is a much better museum than I’d expect in a town many times the size of Cottonwood Falls. We enjoy a good lunch at the Emma Chase – followed by pie – and then head back to the room for a nap.
After a brief nap, I wander over to the little cabin that’s part of the Millstream Motel, and sit on the front porch for quite a while. The sound of the river is wonderful, the shady breeze is warm but pleasant, and I can think of nowhere I’d rather be right now. I drift off to a place close to sleep a few times as I’m kicked back in the chair, and enjoy the wonderful energy of this quiet little corner of the world.
Tomorrow I’ll have to face saddle sores again, but right now I feel like I’m tucked into a little niche made just for me and my day off.
“And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”
– Thomas Jefferson
Well, David at the FredCast on his 1/28/10 expanded on the topic of “safe operation” while attention deprived.
Specifically, we’re talking about cell phones, and the idea of legislation to outlaw use of cell phones while driving. David’s perspective is that we should NOT outlaw cell phone use – at least not hands-free cell phone use.
In general David, I agree with you. There are things that might not be wise, and might be slightly less safe than another way of doing things, but at what point do we stop short of legislating every detail of our life?
I do think that cell phone use – whether hands free or not – does reduce the attention that we are giving to driving. I think this happens to everyone – drivers both good and bad, skilled and less skilled. I think that getting into an argument about the degree to which this happens is frankly a pissing contest where nobody wins and everybody gets wet…
I think that it is very reasonable to expect that people give the appropriate amount of attention to the road, as required by the conditions at hand. Failure to do this should be an offense for which the driver is ticketed. There are many things that can take our attention from the road, as you so rightly point out, and the bottom line is that when someone is driving with less attention to the road than they should have, they should be ticketed.
Of course, this can be a sticky wicket, can’t it? Who gets to make that judgement call? We have entrusted the local and state police with that authority, and while I am not always in agreement with the calls that they make, the bottom line is that we need to accept somebody’s authority, right?
The reason for the lack of attention is not really important, is it? You are essentially driving while impaired, and most states have laws governing this. I can’t tell you how many times I shake my head at someone who is driving along in the left lane of a multi-lane highway, completely oblivious to the traffic jam that they are creating by not adhering to the rules of the road and staying right except to pass. I wish these people would receive tickets to help them remember to pay attention. Or the soccer mom distracted by the kids in the back seat, or the animated conversation occurring on both sides of a front seat.
While driving down the road, it’s easy to pick out the cars that are being operated by folks who are distracted by any number of things – I personally would like it a lot if these folks were pulled over and ticketed more often. If the source of their distraction was a cell phone – as it would often be – then perhaps the ticket will help them make better judgement calls next time.
And after all, it really is “driving while distracted” that we are concerned with, right?
I just get really tired of attempts to legislate every little piece of our lives. It’s about responsibility really, and our responsibility to our fellow drivers on the road. When we fail to take that responsibility seriously and allow ourselves to become distracted beyond the point of reasonableness for the situation, then we should have our hands slapped for behaving irresponsibly.
I go back to the discussion of driving in bad conditions. An hour or two of driving on icy roads in white-out conditions will flat-out exhaust me. There’s no way I would have ANY distractions in the truck under those conditions. However, to try and maintain that level of attention over an 8 hour drive would be absurd. We NEED distractions – we need to balance our mind out as we drive, right? And, part of being a responsible driver is knowing where that balance is for any set of circumstances.
Someone asked again about the whole notion of listening to the IPOD while riding your bike – should there be “laws” regulating it?
Like so many things, people get all whacked out about things and don’t keep them in perspective.
Without a doubt, listening to stuff takes your attention from the task at hand, making you less proficient at the task at hand.
Period.
So what? Do we outlaw radios in cars? Do we make it illegal to have a conversation with your passenger while you drive a car?
People do this stuff to take their mind off what they are doing. I listen to all sorts of stuff while driving in the truck, (including FredCast), to give my mind something to do besides be numbed into senselessness by the traffic around me. No doubt in my mind that doing so makes me a less safe driver. Exactly why – when the weather gets really nasty – I drive in silence. I also talk on the phone while I drive – I know I am a bad person for doing this according to some people. But put this all in perspective. Creating more safety on the road can be achieved by outlawing all distractions. I just don’t think we want to go that far – I think we are willing to accept some risk as a culture – what price are we willing to pay for total safety?
All this logic above is exactly why I DON’T listen to my iPod while I ride. I LOVE riding my bike. Just handling it getting ready for a ride makes me feel good and look forward to the ride. Why on earth would I numb myself to the great joy that I get from riding? Why would I distract myself? I have a couple of buddies who I ride with, who on long rides (as-in 6 or 8 hours) will listen to their iPod. When they do this, it really separates them from me on the ride – I might as well be riding alone. The minor little chatter that happens as you ride, the extended conversations, all of that falls by the wayside.
So, my opinion is to leave the iPod in the truck, and ride the bike. There are so many aspects of our life where we cut ourselves off from the people around us, and fall into this media world that we plug ourselves into. We need to find more ways to plug into the world around us, and the people around us, instead of shutting them out with earphones.
But for heavens sake, this is not something to be legislated. The last thing we need is more invasion into how we live our lives by legislative agencies. Sure we sacrifice a little safety, but look around at all the other places in your life where you do that gladly. Leave the iPod at home because you’ll enjoy the ride more, and you’ll enjoy your friends more.
Plus, all that sweat just can’t be good for those things.
As a conservative, I am curious about how the public will punish the right wing for their gross obstructionism and complete bankruptcy of ideas regarding health care. This is an area where the Republican Party, run by the extreme right wing, demonstrates again just how far they have strayed from core conservative principles.
The fiscal conservative wants as much as he can get for his dollar. He doesn’t like wasteful spending. So, when it comes to healthcare, there are a couple of really simple facts that should drive every conservative in America to support radical change in what we do.
First, healthcare costs us twice as much as it costs the rest of the developed world. Absorb that a minute, because the media would have you believe think that we have reasonably priced healthcare in this country. There are several sources of information on the cost of healthcare – the REAL COST is what I am looking at – what does it cost us as a country to deliver healthcare to our citizens – regardless of how that is done? In 2007, Congressional Research Service, (remember congress was still controlled by the right wing in 2007 when this report was published), reported that in 2004, the US spent just over $6000 per person on healthcare. This is twice the average of other developed countries, (1st world big economy countries), and about 20% higher than the next most expensive nation.
So that’s the first half of the equation – we pay WAY more than everyone else in the world for healthcare. Not just a little more – TWICE AS MUCH! The fiscal conservative in me doesn’t like this at all. But wait, maybe healthcare in the country is just so good – just so much better than everywhere else – that this is one of those places where I need to just cool my jets, and accept that our culture wants to spend way more in order to get really really really great healthcare.
So I look around, and start asking the question. Just how much better is healthcare in the country than in the rest of the western world? Not for the ultra rich who can afford anything they want, but for the entire country – for all of us – because at the end of the day, one way or the other, we are all paying that $6000+/year to get this really cadillac healthcare, right?
Well, come to find out that we don’t deliver healthcare that stands out head and shoulders above the rest of the developed world.
But wait, it’s worst. We don’t deliver healthcare that is better than all the rest of the countries at all.
But wait, it’s worst. We don’t deliver healthcare that is as good as the top western nations in the world.
In fact, the quality of the healthcare that we deliver in this country is worst than the entire western world. The key here is to measure some objective metric that applies across the population, and demonstrates overall health levels of the population as a whole. You can be unfair about this if you want, and look for only those measurements that either prove this as an understatement if you are one side of the argument, or those that prove this as an overstatement if you are on the other side of the argument. A good article in the Christian Science Monitor tries to put the best face possible on it I think – from the same year that the cost numbers above are quoted – 2004.
I don’t want to split hairs. I am paying twice as much as the rest of the developed world, and I am not getting healthcare that is better than the rest of the world. THAT is indisputable regardless of what you want to argue.
So, the fiscal conservative in me says what we have is clearly the WRONG way to deliver healthcare, and we should be looking at the rest of the developed world to see what we can learn from them on how to do this better than we have been doing it.
Don’t know the answers yet, all I know is that the Republican Party has been hell-bent throughout this debate on making sure that nothing changes. They haven’t been offering alternatives plans or other ways to think about it – they have just been playing good lackeys to the corporate medical world, and doing all they can to prevent change.
And me, as a conservative, is disgusted once again at how far the Republican Party has strayed from true conservative principles.
Again.
And will the public punish them in any way? So long as the media keeps up their outstanding work of keeping the wool pulled down low over our eyes, and moving those shells around, they might just get away with it.
How incredibly sad…
I’m still having trouble finding a bike at the gym that works well for me.
Did I hear it right yesterday – that Bush is suggesting that we spend $750 million of taxpayer money to help the hungry in the world? I don’t have any details – just heard the headline.
This sure sounds good – makes a good soundbite – but is it possible that we really want to do this?
Let me understand the lay of the land with regard to what we do as a nation to impact food supply around the world:
I could go on, but from a purely fiscally conservative perspective, it would appear that the government uses a lot of MY money that they take from me in the form of taxes, and they use this money to ASSURE that food prices remain high, and that food availability around the world remains low. Then they want to act as though this is a problem that they want to solve, and of course, their solution to the problem is to take yet more of my tax money and throw it at the problem.
This is absurdity. What takes it from absurdity to the realm of moral crime is that they will most likely assure that most of this tax money of yours and mine that they say that they want to use to solve this problem will most likely go right into the pockets of the big agricultural firms to assure that the problem continues, rather than into programs and policies that might actually encourage independence on the part of poor regions of the world.
Can someone find a more clear example of moral bankruptcy?