Myth #127 Republicans Can Keep Their Old Beliefs and Just Sugar Coat Their Message

Myth #127  Republicans Can Keep Their Old Beliefs and Just Sugar Coat Their Message

Republicans did an autopsy of their party's failure in the 2012 elections.  They decided they needed to put more feet on the ground and try to appeal to minorities, women, etc.  Big Problem.

Sugar coating their message doesn't change their message.  For example, 53% of American approve of same-sex marriages by a CBS Poll.  A Washington Post-ABC Poll found 58% of Americans in favor of the same.  In true Romney style, the republicans explained why the polls are not true.  Of course, among the young adults same-sex marriage just seems normal.  The Republican platform is clearly against it.  

11 million immigrants want a path to citizenship.  They have a lot of Hispanic friends and many sympathetic white supporters.  Most Americans want there to be a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.  Republicans do not.  Republicans think they should be punished for breaking the law even if most of them have a good cause ... helping to support their families back home.  Republicans could come up with a plan to base immigration on a policy to bring talent into the U.S. like Australia, Canada and many other wise governments.  But, Republicans have nothing. 

Most Americans like Planned Parenthood which helps prevent abortions via birth control.  Republicans do not.  Really?

Most Americans favor at least background checks on people buying guns.  Republicans do not.  NRA owns the Republican party and unfortunately many of the Democrats.  In this case, what the majority want is not relevant.  So, this may not hurt the Republicans since the Democrats are cowards on this issue.

Most Americans have a problem with no health insurance being available for those who have a pre-existing condition.  So, if the Republicans knock Obamacare, they should come to the table with some plan on that issue.  They should come up with something better than the emergency room for treating the common cold for the uninsured.  They've got nothing. Again, the majority wants a plan on Health Care.  Given no alternatives, they favor Obamacare. 

So, Republicans are mostly in disagreement with the majority and lacking any real substantive alternatives. They are in denial like they were with the polls that showed Romney losing.  In a democracy if you are on the side of the minority on most issues, it is really tough to get the votes.  

Republicans, you need to change your position away from the far religious right.  Holding on to that group will lose you the hispanics, gays, blacks, women, and young voters.  But, you may hold on to the old white men -- the group that has a poor record in getting out to the polls.  More sugar is not going to fix it this time.

Plan B?

Myth #12 It is America's Duty to Be The Unpaid Policeman of the World

Perhaps you know that North Korea has nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles.  What we don't know is if they can make their nuclear weapons small enough to fit on their ballistic missiles.  The bad news is that the North Korea's are making threats against South Korea, Japan and the United States to use their nuclear weapons in a preemptive first strike.

The United States of course responded with plans to beef up anti-missile missiles on the West Coast and plans will surely follow to beef up defenses in Japan and South Korea.  All of course for big bucks to the American taxpayer. 

But why?  If you are Japan or South Korea what would you pay to get anti-missiles installed in your turf to keep North Korea from dropping a nuclear bomb on your head.  I am thinking we could even make a handsome profit.  Of course, we can stick with the current plan of borrowing money from China, passing the debt on to our children, and pretending like we are rich.

Myth #147 Obamacare will be repealed.

Myth#147 Obamacare will be repealed.

Ryan just came out with a new budget.  In his budget that says we will have a balanced budget by 2023 (just in time) he assumes Obamacare will be repealed.


REALLY?  

Lets face it.  Obamacare is the law of the land.  It has a lot of problems but it is not going away.  Assuming that it is going away invalidates everything Ryan is saying.  As McEnroe would say, "you've got to be kidding!"

If Ryan and the other Republicans want to be taken seriously they will start improving Obamacare with ammendments -- working with democrats that know much needs to be changed to make Obamacare efficient, even functional.  But, be real guys.

Myth#27: Capitalism Is Good For Workers

I grew up taking pride in calling myself a capitalist.  At the simplest level it is simply letting individuals and companies freely trade with each other -- but a set of rules has evolved that defines what is fair.   The question is, "are the rules fair?".  Is there a balance of power between the various groups in our capitalist system?

Is our capitalism dominated by special interest groups just like our government?  Is it possible to have free and fair trade when the government that governs our capitalism is dominated by special interest groups?
  

"Free" Capitalism puts a value on everything relative to the value of everything else.  There is no other system that works better than this... how many pounds of bread is one pound of steel worth.  The Soviet Union didn't know how to  do this during their prime.  They looked it up in Western newspapers.  Really.  Of course, if they were having a drought in Society Union and not in the west, the Soviets were using a low value for bread.

Capitalism optimizes a system based on the underlying rules and power groups that operate within it.  For instance, print more money and capitalism lowers the value of that currency, although there may be a lag.   Raise taxes, something painful, and the system adjusts to avoid taxes more.  Make business taxes cheaper overseas then business moves overseas to minimize taxes.  

There are four primary groups in American capitalism, shareholders, customers, government, and workers.  All of these groups have power/representation except for the American worker.  Unions used to represent the worker, but their power has been minimized; government used to represent the worker, but our pathetic Congress no longer represents anyone but themselves in getting re-elected.

There is another huge factor working against the worker, there are seven billion humans on this plant.  Capitalism automatically discounts anything that is in excess supply. 
We are also replacing humans with machines, computers, and technology in general, see Myth#3 There are No Solutions for Unemployment.  Also not good for human's value in the capitalistic machine.

BUT sadly ... it goes further than this.  If capitalism just valued things based on their scarcity,  all still might not be too bad for workers.  But, the value of all things are adjusted by what I will call the Good Old Boy Club.  If one factor of production has the power to adjust its value, for instance, labor unions fifty years ago, then the value of an item is raised or lowered by this power, this leverage.   More on this in later posts. 

But for now, let me just say our form of Capitalism has been fined tuned by the Good Old Boy Club to optimize things for those in power.  And who is in power ... in corporations it is The Board of Directors and Upper Management, and in Government it is the Top Layers of Government and the Military Industrial Complex, see Eisenhower. 

In companies, it is easy to see how upper management serves on the Board of other corporations who in turn serve on their board.  They take care of each other.  The Good Old Boy Club has also reached from corporations to the government for decades, but with PAC's from corporations buying elections the connection no longer has to be secretive ... the buying and selling of officials is out in the open.  Congress for example has only one mission ... get elected, get re-elected.  And a complacent population that does not know history is easy to control. 

Most companies, like most families, just get by, making a modest profit, paying their bills, putting a little in the bank for a rainy day.  But, from time to time companies by the brilliance of their workers or simply being at the right place at the right time make a killing.  This is not bad because it means they have met a need or a want extraordinarily well. Government gets their cut via taxes and then the Good Old Boys in Congress spend it for their special interest groups. But who decides where the rest of it goes? 

To pick on Apple ... it has $400 billion in cash that has been generated from the combined brains of its workers and management and meeting the need for a great cell phone, the Iphone.  Shareholders have also put up cash to get the whole show started.  Who is going to decide how this bounty is destributed: hint: a few key shareholders and upper management.  The workers gave up their rights to any of this extraordinary bounty the day they signed a pile of papers in the personal office on their first day of work. If they wanted a job, they had no choice.  For example, they signed a paper saying any patents they create will belong to the company -- which strangely does not include them in this context.   The Good Old Boy in Upper Management will throw them a few crumbs to keep them happy, but they have no legal right to the wealth they helped create.  (Apple will take care of their workers better than most companies, but in our present world, they certainly are not expected to.)

How created wealth is distributed/shared is not automatically determined by capitalism.  It is a construct that develops by a series of laws and legal decisions and past practice that establishes the rules of capitalism in our country.  Of course, recall who writes the laws ... industry usually .. upper management ... the good old boy club.  If workers are employed because of their special skills, they do not have final say about matters affecting how money is distributed, or much of anything else.

So, we have developed our flavor of capitalism that very effectively distributes money to the good old boy club ... upper management, the Board of Directors, preferred shareholders (read good old boy club),  Congress (good old boy club), etc.  BUT NOT THE WORKERS.  

As jobs become more scarce (End of Work by Jeremy Rifkn), will we as workers and citizens fight over the last scraps or will be informed enough to unite together to change the rules of distribution. Will we unite to set up Term Limits for Congress? Will we even care enough to know what rule changes we want for our form of capitalism, or will we meekly follow the good old boys?

Myth#63: We Are Our Brother's Keeper?

Myth#63: We Are Our Brother's Keeper?

Many of us have heard the tape where the 911 Operator pleads with a nurse to give CPR to a woman who has fallen.   The nurse refuses to help the woman in the assisted living home because it is against policy.  The woman dies, persumably because no help was given. 

The initial debate in the media centers on the policy in the assisted living center, but to me the existance of a policy, good or bad, is not the real issue.  Does it make sense in a life and death situation that someone has to refer to a policy, to a written manual to know what to do?  We have our entire life to learn and study and develop our own moral code.  Is this a decision that can be delegated to someone else? Can the nurse, as a person, get off the hook because someone else has decided that letting the woman die was the right thing to do?

If the nurse knew she might get sued for trying to help and instead doing CPR wrong, would that change what is right and wrong?

Are we our brother's keeper?

Let's apply this principle to yesterday's question.  Should we be willing to work a shorter work week, make less money, if more unemployed people would now have a jobs? And what would happen to the economy if more people had jobs?

Is helping others the path to helping ourselves, the path to helping the economy?

Myth#3: There Are No Solutions for Unemployment

I am reading a book that I read the first edition of about 1980.  The book is entitled "The End of Work".  It contends that computer technology, robotics, and technology in general are reducing the need for labor.  For example it states that steel production in the last twenty years rose from 75 million to 102 million tons while employment in the steel industry fell from 289,0000 to 74,000.  The book is filled with such examples from all over the world with some noted exceptions (Africa, parts of South America, etc.)  Even China is shedding jobs even as it creates new ones.

Of course, the real unemployment rate in the U.S. is much worse than the offical 8% or so.  We do not include people that have stopped looking for work, or people that have never been on the employment roles like high school dropouts that sell drugs or do whatever they can to get by.  Neither do they include the 2% of our population that is in prison or the large amount of people that are working but not producing much in government or miliary jobs.  And finally, it does not include perhaps 10% or so of our population that is under-employed doing much less than they are capable of doing.  Lose your job and if you find a new job it is probably a lower paying job requiring less skills than before.

It is estimated, per Jeremy Rifkin the author of this book that by 2050 only 5% of the adult work force will be need to run all of industry, farms, manufactuting, etc.  I visited a wall board plant last year that had 27 acres of a factory under roof producing wall board at a rate of many feet per second.  The plant was huge and no one was around.  Mountains of wall board were being produced and stacked by machines.  A lone fork lift operator loaded pallets onto a truck sitting at the dock.  A factory full of machines making wall board.  A total of 18 people worked in the plant including secretaries and this was for all three shifts combined - including the boss.  The few workers sat watching computer screens.  I saw one person get up to make an adjustment on a machine when the computer warned it was slightly out of alignment.  It really is happening, jobs are vanishing.

So how is it that we are doing as good as we are doing. Credit. The housing bubble and the credit pumped into our society kept a lot of people employed.   It is estimated that the average American lived on 120% of his salary over the last decade.  The government spends about 142% of the revenues / taxes that they bring in.  They are crying loudly because they have via the sequester dropped down to 136%.  

Things are not going to magically fix themselves.  We need some short and long time changes to the game book.  One simple idea for today, more in later posts.  

Job Sharing

France about a decade ago reduced the work week to 35 hours, most of Europe is down to 37 hours or so.  Of course, our industry would cry how impossible it would be to reduce the work week without destroying productivity.  Surprisingly, two countries that beat American productivity are France and Belgium who have 35 hour work weeks.  However, they have the same spending disease that we have so they turn out to be in worse shape than us.

Remember in the elections how we (Obama and Romney) were going to reduce corporate income taxes to improve American competitiveness -- so we at least hold on to more of our jobs.  So much for campaign talk.  

Large companies are sitting on trillions of dollars they are not investing because their plants are running under capacity because their markets are not growing -- because all the workers /consumers are sitting on the couch at home looking for jobs.  (Example, Apple has $400 billion in the bank.)

So, why couldn't we give cuts in the corporate tax rate to those companies that reduce their work week - a sliding scale.  One would assume at some point that to maintain productivity they will hire workers to replace the lost hours from shorter work weeks.

Although this is not an international fix, and lack of jobs is an international problem, we can create jobs in America at the expense of the rest of the world by simply lowering our corporate tax rate and attracting the jobs that are created to American instead of Europe, or even China.  America is still a good place to find skilled and dedicated workers.  Few companies however are willing to pay our corporate taxes, 35% and often state taxes, for example in Maryland, of 35% also.  Pay 70% corporate tax or go to Hong Kong or Ireland, etc. and pay 10%.  Duhhh, what should we do.

Myth#1 America is the Greatest

We as Americans believe we live in the Greatest Country in the World.  Is that true?  By what standard?  Literacy?  The number of babies that survive birth?  By how safe it is to live in this country?  By how well we take care of our sick, our aged, our youth?  By how we educate our children?  By how hard we work?  By how our families stick together?  By our success in marriage?  

Perhaps there is one area.  Our military.  But even that is suspect for effectiveness.  We spend ten times more than China, and more than the next twenty countries put together -- all of which are our allies except for China.  Are we any safer than the rest of the world?  If so, then what about 911.  Our military is the best at spending money the most inefficiently.  Do we seriously believe that if China was stupid enough to spend a trillion dollars a year on the military that they would not kick our butt like they do in every other category.

My friends in Peru used to say that Americans were good at making money but not good at living life.  We no longer have the highest standard of living in the world, we have not for a long time.  So, I am afraid my Peruvian friends were wrong, we don't know how to make money or live life.

But, we do have more tanks in storage than anyone else.  Tanks that the miliary do not want, but Congress likes pork despite the fact that it helping to destroy America. 

Is the American Dream becoming a myth?  Is Congress part of the problem, or part of the solution?

Myth #96 We can spend our way out of recession without paying the fidler.

Everything has consequences.  Printing trillions of dollars of new money (printing and debt) to SAVE our Economy will not be done without a huge cost.  More dollars representing the same, or even less goods and services, means the dollars are worth less.  The other variable is its relative rank versus other currencies.  If other countries do the same thing the relative drop in our currency will be less, canceling the effect to some extent.  But, no other country is going quite as nuts as us in trying to spend their way out of this situation.

Capitalism and free markets are pushing us toward an adjustment in our lifestyle.  We as a people and country have been living outside of our means for a long time.  The house of cards have fallen-in on themselves.  The message we are being sent by the markets is that resources have been and are being irrationally distributed.  Credit, far beyond what is rational was used to probe up this irrational distribution for much longer time than a more prudent policy would have allowed.  

For instance, it is irrational that Fuld from Leman Brothers got $480 million managing a bank that he helped drive into bankrupt.   Keeping interest rates abnormally low to keep our economy going while loaning money to people to buy things they could not afford at any rate was an irrational distribution of resources.  

Obama spending money to stimulate the economy without a real plan to improve things will just lead to inflation.  Investing in our economy, our people, our infrastructure, etc. would also stimulate the economy without necessarily causing inflation assuming value was created equal to or greater than the monies spent.   The downside of investments is that they take time, usually years, to see the benefits.  We as a people have grown weary of working hard and waiting for our investments to bear fruit.  So, I suspect we will concentrate on quick fixes and pay for it later with higher inflation.  

Myth #21 We Had a Noble Cause in Iraq.

War Statistics

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered Since The U.S. Invaded Iraq "1,366,350" www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America's War On Iraq: 4,691 icasualties.org/oif/   Number Of International Occupation Force Troops Slaughtered In Afghanistan : 1,597 http://icasualties.org/oef/ Cost of War in Iraq & Afghanistan $951,331,622,218 http://www.costofwar.com/ If we only had a noble cause, we might be able to rationalize killing so many people and impoverishing our children.  But, what is the Noble Cause, I can't seem to remember.  And, what exactly is the Change that Obama promised?

Myth#15 We were innocent in causing the big recession.

Unemployment Pain

10 % unemployment in America.  Horrible.  The real number is much higher if you count those that have given up and those that are underemployed.  The real number is about 17%.  For some minority groups the number is much higher.  With our population growth, we need 125,000 jobs per month created just to hold even on the percent unemployed.  Depressing as it gets.

Have you ever been unemployed.  You want to work, you want to take care of those you love and you have no job.  No one will give you and job and you don't have a clue of what to do.  It absolutely sucks.  It destroys your self worth and it hurts as you see your life savings disappear, your house be repossessed, and your children become homeless.  It is a very helpless feeling that happens to people that have done everything right their entire life, or at least what they were told to do, to see the lives unwind. Go to school, get an education, work hard and everything will be okay, and suddenly it is not okay. 

To a man where his identity in life is what is what he does for a living, it can be absolutely devastating. This can be as bad as not having health insurance, well actually the two go together in this country.  Not having health care is just another thing that happens to the unemployed in this country.

Did the recession cause this problem?  Of course, you say, its obvious.  Not really.  The jobs we had before the recession where not built on reality, they were built on loans from China, et al.  We borrowed money to buy stuff that kept most of us employed.  It was not real, it was not sustainable.  On average, Americans were living 20% above their means buying goods, which of course kept a lot of employed for awhile.

The challenge is simple, seven billion people on the planet want the life style that we have become accustomed to in the U.S. and they are willing to work harder and smarter than us to get there.  In athletics, we say they are hungry.  In contrast, we are not.  We expect the good life, we wait for it to come to us.  We use our military might, mostly in the Middle East, to protect our energy resources to try to maintain the life style we have become accustomed to. 

Side diversion, the 2016 Olympics.  Brazil won the right to host it as we all noticed it.  We were shocked that Chicago, the city of 37 child homicides this year, came in last.  Sadly, that is how the world now sees us, as Has-Beens.  And, there is too much truth to it, i.e., 17% unemployed if you count those who are no longer looking and/or no longer qualified for unemployment.

The government can help and is doing so now with infrastructure projects, and it can do more.  Government has to leverage its actions through small business.  It is simple, helping small business helps create jobs ... since most job creation in this country comes from small business.  What does small business need?  Credit, accelerated depreciation schedules, investment tax credits, medical insurance for its workers, and respect.  The government can also help with education, our only real long term path from being a Has-Been to being the Come-back-Kid.

But, in the end, recovery and full employment has to come from us the people.  We have to stop blaming everyone else for where our path has taken us and turn inward, and as JFK said, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

Myth #134 Justice is Black and White: Roman Polanski

The 13 year that was raped by Polanski is now over 40. This reminds me of the German officers that participated in the Holocaust. Some were not caught until they were in their eighties for crimes they committed in their 20's and 30's. Perhaps some of these men had grown into kind people doing great good for the world. Perhaps some had paid all they could pay for the horrific crimes they did and had suffered their punishment just being alive. I don't know, but it is possible.

Yea, Polanski was wrong a long time ago and should not have fled. I am assuming he has led a virtuous life since then, or at least stayed away from minors. The question is, is he the same person that committed the crime. Is revenge and punishment the reason that he needs to go to jail now?

Yes, I think he should be brought back over to face up to his past. But, it is not clear to me that what was decided about 30 years ago should still be the right thing to do now. The victim of the crime, the state, and Polanski need to sit down and do a lot of talking. It would be good to hear some remorse from Polanski, and some insights from the victim, and some flexibility by the law. In short, there should be a process, perhaps even a new trial. I don't know what the right answer should be, perhaps Polanski should go to jail. But, everyone needs to sit down and discuss this and figure out what the right thing to do is -- what makes the world a better and kinder place to live.

I guess I just do not believe in black and white.

Chicago ... Olympics or Children

Chicago ... Olympics or Children

Chicago has had about 37 children killed this year by gang violence.  Black kids mostly, so who cares.  Apparently no one.

Chicago wants the Olympics to come to Chicago in 2016.  Who cares.  All the rich people and people in power that are going to make millions from the big deals that will come down when billions are spent to construct the venue required for the Olympics.  What good does this do the kids that are getting killed.  Nothing, absolutely nothing.

What is important.  The kids or the Olympics. 

Where is our country putting the effort.  Well, it is not the kids.  Where is this country willing to put billions of dollars into to make everything come out all right.  It is not the kids.

Where are our values in America. Where are America's priorities?

Where is our country putting the effort. Well, it is not the kids. Where is this country willing to put billions of dollars into to make everything come out all right. It is not the kids.

Where are our values in America. Where are America's priorities?

What do our actions say

Teaching By Example

I have some great neighbors, they still have a few hill billy genes, but still they are good people. They try to raise their kids the best they can with mixed success. They do a lot of talking to their kids and they have  rules and take interest in their children's lives. It is obvious they love their kids. As a parent with three grown kids I have one strong opinion about raising kids. It is more important the example you lead in living your life than all the rules than can fill a book. For example, my friends smoke. What are the odds of the children smoking?


As a country, the same thing applies. We can talk about democracy, the land of the free, the home of the brave, etc. But, when we forgo the rights of anyone our government accuses of being a terrorist with or without any evidence, then what we say doesn't mean much. When we torture prisoners, then our grand words mean nothing. When we lie about our reason to invade IRAQ then our grand words mean nothing. When we ignore the violence in our big cities like Chicago and then pretend everything is okay because we want to host the 2016 Olympics there, our words ring hollow.


When we say bring us your tired and down trodden and then let 15% of our population have very little health care and provide no childcare for single moms, our words ring hollow. When our religious south talk about being our brothers keepers in their churches and then curse the poor Mexican immigrants, their religion and our country looks pretty lame. When we claim to care about humanity and then pass drug laws that turn Mexico and many other Latin American countries into drug supply centers, one is forced to laugh at our hypocrisy.


How we care for our weakest and our most downtrodden is ultimately how the world will see us. Our battle with the terrorists of the world and the fundamentalist religions of the world is not going to be won with guns and at the moment it is not going to be won with our noble ways. We need to find our values and live them, treating everyone with fairness and with fundamental beliefs that founded this country. We have parted from our basic values before, McCarthism was not that long ago. The way we treated the Japanese living on the west coast during WWII was not that long ago. Sadly, most Americans won't even know what I am talking about since we no longer even known about our heritage.


Do a random act of kindness tomorrow, start turning around America one small step at a time.

What Makes Something Right or Wrong

For many religious people the answer to this question is simple, what does the Bible say, what does the Koran say, then add it to some interpretation and some updating for a centuries and vola, we have a judgment. For instance, the Bible is pretty down on homosexuals and the Koran is pretty down on women being equal. Okay, so maybe I picked some bad examples, but many religious groups have magic books that they look stuff up in to determine what is right and what is wrong.

But, what is the path for us that don't see the light, that are agnostics, or atheists, or even worse scientists or engineers. Where do we look to find out what is right and wrong. First, it is my opinion that we are born with an innate sense of right and wrong that is then reinforced or torn down by those around us, usually our parents.

I also think we can get there my a rational analysis that shows that peaceful coexistence and the traits of the human that makes that possible maximizes the possibility for survival of our species. And if that is not the ultimate goal, then the opposite path, and our destruction, seems in its own construction to be meaningless. What traits make peaceful coexistence possible: cooperation, respect, kindness, love, etc. would all seem to be right and the right thing to do.

There is yet another way. To look at mother nature, to immerse ones self in it and in its details, to find the reason for life and by example what is right and wrong. Look at any mother in nature and how they raise their children. Or wolves that mate for life and live in small communities to help each other survive. Our ants or bees and their complex societies. Or dolphins how they care for the well being of other species, even humans. All we need to know about what is right and wrong is acted out in front of us in the small amount of nature that survives our hard hand, the hard hand of its most powerful member of nature, humans.

A lot of our problems in our culture comes from our disconnection with our roots, nature. We travel on asphalt, live in buildings with artificial environments, spend little time and very little quality time with our mates and family. Vacations are spent in cars, man made amusement parks with their fake water rides, etc, eat in restaurants with their sugar heavy deserts, and never converse with another human about anything important. Our whole existence is about commercialism, the maximum extraction of commodities, fuels, etc. out of the ground for constructing our artificial worlds. We form communities like face-book and thoughts to fill in for the communities we have lost in our race for prosperity, the filling of our lives with imitations of life, which makes me think of the oxymoron of reality TV. Our aliments reflect our loss of our connection with nature, obesity and diabetes are two examples. Cancer one day will surely be linked to the vast use of chemicals that we use carelessly in our lives starting at our birth.

Right and wrong is right out your door in the spirit of the robin that comes in spring, the geese that come in the winter, or the spiders that hunt under your porch. It is with great care that we must use our intelligence in altering our world away from where nature would lead us.

Dire Times and the New Currency, Energy

We are not living in the best of times.  That may be a huge understatement.  Do I think as a country we are going to fall off the cliff.  I guess if I had to pick yes or no, it would be yes.  The yes comes from our inability to see that times have changed, our position in the world has changed. 

We are no longer the richest country in the world by almost any standard.  And our live style is declining by all standards.  Why? Is it us?  Is it our rotten politicans who clearly work no longer for us but to be re-elected?  Well, perhaps in part. Our addiction to consuming and our politicians self interest makes a hard problem almost impossible to solve. 

Energy, cheap energy to be more specific is a thing of the past.  It is no body's fault.  It was given as a gift to us by mother nature and we have squantered most of it ... well, the part that is possible to pump quickly to the surface anyway.  Saudi Arabia is sit sitting on a gold mine, but it is already shrinking so fast that their next generation of the royal family are not getting the stipens they have grown accustomed to.  Bribes to fix stuff in the U.S. political system are not coming as fast as before.  Economic bailouts to buy American military equipment are down.  And, they are having trouble paying off the terrorists to keep them from turning on the hand that feeds them.   But, that is just one small point on the planet.

Nuclear power seems to be the only short term solution and the democrat party will never admit this.  France now gets 72 % of their energy or similar from nuclear power plants.  They now sell power to Europe.  The risks associated with nuclear waste, which are very manageable from my engineering perspective, are small compared to what is going to happen to our society has energy becomes unaffordable.  With affordable energy, all other economic problems are fixable.  Without it, no other economic problem, including health care, is managable.  Our currency is going to go down the tube to prove this point, since it is based on nothing, it has no Energy, the new currency, behind it.

It gives me on satisfaction to say this problem has been coming for a long time and we have been sticking our heads in the soil.  But, that is the way it is.  Carter, Nixon, Clinton, Bush 1 and Bush 2 all gave great speechs about energy and then did very little.  Obama has spoke waxed eloquent on the subject, but it is not his highest priortiy.  If he has to pick medical or energy problems to address with his popularity, the correct long term answer is energy.  It is the foundation on which are society is based.  Energy will give us the "energy" to address the medical problems.  Until then, some rule changes in the medical field would carry us for a few more years and allow us to address the one problem that will not go away, how to power the world we have created on low cost energy.

Well more later.  When I will try to do better stating the obvious.  A world built on cheap energy quits working when cheap energy runs out. 

Nuclear Weapons

Russia and U.S. Presidents are going to get together this month and agree to reduce our deployed, not including stock piled, nuclear weapons to less than 1700 in the near future.

Back in the day when they used to worry about such things, it was estimated that it would take about 100 nuclear bombs to bring on a global winter which would wipe out mankind.  Given the inter-connectivity of life and the delicacy of life in general, this is probably a high side number.  Like it matters.  In any case we will agree to only keep enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the planet 17 times each.  How noble of us.  We (humans) are idiots.

The nuclear club is about seven or eight if you don't count our two newest members Iran and Korea.  The new members are not as revered as old members like Pakistan and China.  Or as righteous as Israel or as just as Great Britain or as proud as France or sacred as Indian, but they are our newest members and deserve all the respect that countries with nuclear weapons deserve.  God bless such self righteous idiots.

Nuclear weapons are like using hangernades to get rid of flies or ants in your house.  And those with those weapons don't want anyone else to have them.  Obviously, one of the most war-like countries in the history of the world (that would be us if you haven't noticed) is to be completely trusted with these toys, but no one else.  Daah.  No one should be trusted with the ability to destroy our planet.  Can you really imagine that we trusted Jehovah Bush with this power. We are idiots.

With kids, and I have learned it applies even to countries, it is not what you preach that matters to most people, it is what you do that matters.  The U.S. speaks great volumes when it agrees to cut the number of nuclear weapons to 1700, if and only if, Russia cuts the number of nuclear weapons to 1700.  Why not be daring, cut out nuclear weapons to 1699, set a real example for the rest of the world.  We are idiots.  Why not cut it to 100, or the correct number to just wipe out the planet once.  If we miss a few people, Russia can take up the slack.  If Martians some day look at our game plan on nuclear weapons there is only one conclusion they can reach. Humans were idiots.

Lost Paradise for Our Children

I am an old fart, in body if not in mind.  I don't much care what happens to me, I have had a great run in my life.  I have lived through the most amazing time in American / World history that will ever be, I think.

I was born right after America with a little (lots) of help from the Russian won the great war against Hitler.  I witnessed the greatest creation of wealth and prosperity the world has ever witnessed.  I witnessed an effort to eliminate prejudice against blacks, gays, women, fat people, etc. An absolutely amazing period in American, and World, History.  Perhaps not since Jesus have people had more hope than we had in the sixties.

In art, we had John Lennon who imagined a world without heaven or hell when it was not popular to do so.  Simple men like Mohammid Ali stood against the government and the killing of people our rulers had decided were evil.  Martin Luther King spoke of the promise land, but like Moses, never got to see it.  Kennedy asked the people to not ask what the country could do for them, but what they could do for their country.  I am afraid the last remarkable thing we will do is to elect Obama.  It is our last gasp, perhaps.

Where did we lose our way.  It is actually quite simple.  We gave up the religion of the Bible and put consumerism in its place.  I do not support either religion, but the masses do.  Perhaps another religion that competed with consumerism is a complete faith in science to solve all our problems.  But, problems of humanity are not external, they are internal, inside the soul, and I use that word with caution. The world as we see it is a reflection of what goes on inside our minds, our souls.  Our thoughts and attitudes ooze from our body and color the world as we see it.

Our economic and social well  being derives from who we are as a people, and that derives from who we are as individuals.  Loving your neighbor is important to insuring our survival as a people and as a way of life.  And, unfortunately, consumerism does not teach such basic truths. The old religion, that I desserted 32 years ago, at least gets this right.  However, the followers of this religon mostly do not apply this principle, so either way, society is doomed.

Now my kids, what kind of world do they inherit.  First, a world that believes in nothing.  Second, they live in a country that is a military superpower but a declining economic superpower.  The superpower part came from a people that dared to dream and believe in a just world.  My children do not give such things much thought and my children are much above the average.  They are great kids.  All of them smart, all of them trying to do what is best and right, which is more than you can say for most. But, they are lost in the quagmire of American life.  The strength of a people come from their beliefs, and sadly our beliefs center around out doing the Jone's.   There are many wonder exceptions around me, but exceptions must become the norm to change the tide.

Our future at the moment depends more on the Chinese than on us.  Its an economic reality.  If you don't know what I am talking about, start reading, figure it out.  The Chinese culture is very old with a lot of wisdom embedded in it.  The current leaders, communists, do not yet reflect the whole of China.  The people of China understand many things they understand about life that we do not understand.  So, them holding the future, or the next hundred years is not necessarily a bad thing for humanity.  It is hard on the white, Anglo-saxon, protestant mentality, but not necessarily bad for the human race. They have a lot to teach us about families, community live, devotion, cooperation, and the good of the whole.

In all, the transition will be tough on my kids.  But, hopefully, they will adapt, accept the new world order and not be stuck with the attitude that we are the greatest.  Not even Mohammid Ali believes in being the greatest in the broader scope of humanity; his humility in later years testifies to this.  In the end, it depends on values, on morals and the courage that comes with living one's life based on principles.  For my kids, I am optimistic that I have helped to give them a set of values that will lead them into this new world.  I am not as optimistic about most of America and their children.  Perhaps this is egotistical, and maybe it is, but I have been fortunate to have children that embody the person(s) I would like to be, perhaps better than I do myself.  Today, Michael Jackson and Fara Facet died.  Michael J didn't seem to me to have a very good life based on what I think I know about him, but who knows.  Fara seemed to be a pretty cool lady.

Socialism for America

There is a lot of fear these days that we are turning socialist, or even worse.  With the government taking over the banks, owning part of the auto makers, and now jumping into modifying medicine, people fear this is the first step in the government taking over the private sector, i.e., socialism.

Well, I would say to those people you have not been paying attention for the last twenty years.  There are three big sources of power in the U.S.,  the two political parties and big business.  The lobbyists are the go-betweens, the grease that makes the machine work.  This was called, the balance of power.  No, the people, the electorate didn't really matter, still don't.  Only 20% of the electorate vote any way, they don't care and they gave up power a long time ago. 

The balance of power has gone amuck since the republicans under their fearless leader shot their wad on Iraq (I almost slipped and said Vietnam, being from that era of time).  All their political capital was used up with the illusion that we, the U.S., still controls the world.  We don't and we control less with every day that passes.  The world is being remade as we speak, primarily by the Chinese, but many others like the Indians or the Middle East are not far behind.  They have the money, we have the debt.  While we worry about petty things like illegal immigrants, with a country we should be in bed with to improve our competitive position with China et al, we haggle over immigrants and continue to fight a war on drugs that has not worked for fifty years.

So now, we are left with just the democrats and big business.  We probably have sixteen years of democrats to look forward to, eight with Obama, eight with Hillary.  Sixteen years is probably enough time to recover from Iraq since eventually the electorate will forget how it all got started, and/or they will remember the democrats were more midgets and funded the effort.

But, what we all forget is that MONEY controls the world.  MONEY and power are very close cousins.  So, who controls the money, China.  China controls the money that the democrats need to continue their illusion of being in control of life in America.  If you are familiar with fishing, I would say that China is about ready to set the hook.  When a big mouth bass picks up your plastic worm on the bottom of the lake, he sucks it in and starts to swim away with it.  If you jerk too soon, you pull the end of the worm out of his mouth.  If you wait too long, he feels the hardness of the hook embedded in the worm and spits it out.  But, if jerk hard at just the right point in time, then the hook pulls through the plastic worm and embeds itself into the jaw of the big mouth bass.

When should the Chinese jerk the line and set the hook.  I would say right after we have sucked in the big juicy worm of health care.  Let us put one more bag goodies on our shoulders that we cannot afford, and then ask the Chinese to fund it by buying our bonds, bonds that we can not possibly repay already.   In this case, setting the hook just requires them to purchase the debt of Europe for a few months instead of U.S. debt and/or move more of their cash into their own domestic economy, which is harder than it sounds while trying to remain in control of all major decisions.  Market chaos could be China's friend, but they are not likely to embrace it too hard or too soon.  In short, we might get lucky and they may not set the hook.

Turning to socialism, nah.  We already have a system.  I struggle for words to describe it, but  lobby-ism, nepotism, oligopoly, etc. are all close cousins.  We don't even have any serious journalism challenging the system, and even if we did, the electorate doesn't read anymore, even the ones that vote.  We get our thirty minutes of news, superficial, negative and self-focused with the illusion that only what happens in the U.S. matters.  The news is only one step ahead of our obsession with reality, or more properly phrased, nonreality shows.  The public is there ready to reprogrammed as required by skills first learned and developed by the marketing people that sold us commercialism, but now used to sell us Presidents and weapons of mass destruction, whatever it is required for us to believe. 

So where does it all lead.  Its simple, are children are going to be indebt to the Chinese.  The Chinese communist party to be more exact.  We have been in the feed yards for twenty years.  We are now fat and ripe, our children have been delivered like veal to the fat business man, and there is really no way out.  I suppose we could all bolt and charge the fence, but I suspect that we could go more like lambs to the slaughter than our forefathers that dumped tea into the ocean.  Hopefully we are at the bottom of the cycle and it is not all doom and gloom like I painted here, but at the moment where we are headed looks like a continuation of where we have been going for twenty years.  And yes, all things are self correcting and eventually the pendulum will swing the other way.  After all, even the dark ages only lasted a few hundred years.

Escaping Capitalism

Capitalism is not a religion, or science, or even a set of rules. But, it is a reality. Capitalism governs the flow of money between makers, consumers, governments, countries, etc. as elequountly as the laws of nature control rain, and water moving between rivers, streams, oceans, the sky and even underground streams. If you disrupt the flow of a steam, say with a damn, the water builds up and for awhile you can deny water access to the river and even the ocean. But, it is all temporary.

By the first level of the laws of capitalism, a lot of banks should have failed. They performed poorly and under free market principles they should have been allowed to fail. But, we decided that we could throw a damn in the river and prevent the natural course of things. Yes, and we have prevented the banks from failing, even though they did a crumpy job at managing risk. In fact, we have reinforced bad behavior. Our children have spat on the floor and have been reward with money from the government. They can do nothing to deserve failure, we will prope them up and guarantee they can fail. The cost, trillions of dollars, for this "no lesson learned" lesson.

How exactly will this play out. I don't know. I know we were afraid to let it play out. We did not trust the basic principals behind capitalism. We decided we could stop the natural order of things, stop those that have been stupid from failing. But, all we have done is dealing with the problem. We think we can write new regulations to keep the same problems from happening again. But, these are secondary laws, much less than the primary laws that says when you take excessive risk and fail you die. Our new regulations will try to make taking excessive risk illegal, but our actions say if you do, we will take care of you, we will hock the American people to take care of you.

An alternative would have been to kick the owners of the bank out, sell their assets to other banks, and insure the accounts of those that used the bank. In other words, take care of those that were harmed and punish those that were stupid and took excessive risks. I suspect those at the top of the banks were really good buddies with a lot of the government officals, in short, they were all part of the good old boy's club.

How will it all come out. I don't know. What I think will happen is the value of our dollar will fall, we will suffer inflation similar to 1974, and we will repeat the same mistakes somewhere in the future, because we avoided the lessons that capitalism was trying to teach us.

Violence in Mexico

 I don't know how many of you have witenessed the violence happening in Mexico.  The police and the drug lords are in a full fleded war.  And guess what, the police are losing.

Of course, we, the Americans, are driving all this with our thirst for drugs: pot and coke being the two highest.  I don't use either now but I have tried both, especially pot.  Of course, I use alcohol, a drug that in my mind is worse than either pot or coke.  And if you throw tobacco into the mix, then pot and coke are health drugs.  And we subsidize tobacco production by giving them subsidies along with other rich farmers.

How hypocritical can we be?  Our hypocricies are costing hundreds of people their lives and is destabilizing an emerging country.

The answer is simple.  Legalize pot and then tax it.  See how that works out and then consider coke.  Make it legal and put the bad guys out of business.  The other option is the drug on wars and we all know how well that is working despite the billions we continue to spend on it each year.