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I believe its society’s responsibility to provide for those who do not have the wherewithal to acquire adequate housing, food, healthcare, and education, but that means the government must step-in when and where society does not make adequate provisions.
Libertarians, conservatives, and others, claim these provisions, when legislated by government, amount to socialism. Those who believe this way should take a hard look at its definition.
In the Frontline documentary The Warning, Henry Kaufman, Dir. Lehman Bros., 1995 – 08, said, “Libertarianism means those who do well prosper, those who do poorly fail, and the market clears the transaction.” This is precisely the problem with libertarianism, republicanism, or conservatism: the pursuit of wealth.
Ayn Rand, in the same documentary, said there should be a separation between the state and economics. If there is a separation between the state and economics, as Ayn Rand suggests, without law and regulation, as Brooksley Born explains in The Warning, “There will be significant financial downturns and disasters attributed to this regulatory gap over and over until we learn from experience," as we found out with the 2008 burst of the Bubble. It is proof that market-based solutions don’t work, which Alan Greenspan belatedly admitted.
In his column for the Wall Street Journal, 'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years, Stephen Moore recommended that the novel by Ayn Rand should be read by “every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. [If they had] I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.” Well, if every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration read Ayn Rand’s novel and acted on its proclamations as Stephen Moore recommended, we may or may not have got out of the current financial mess a lot faster, but I am absolutely certain there would be a great more pain for Americans.
The book, Atlas Shrugged, claims that liberals relentlessly pursue wealth distribution; that all of our problems have market-based solutions; that there cannot be political freedom without economic freedom. However, the problem is equality and justice should not be interpreted as wealth distribution; as we have experienced market-based solutions do not work; and in the end, there is no such thing as authentic freedom within money-based systems.
The problem with capitalist laissez-faire free market systems is money in itself, and presiding within it an unquenchable quest for profit and wealth that is intrinsic in capitalism. Since a capitalist concern is only for profit and the creation of personal wealth, they fail with “do-goodism,” as Stephen Moore expresses it, unless, of course, it’s in their best interest to do so. Despite their denial with the claim that “when profits, wealth, and creativity are denigrated in society, they [profits, wealth, creativity] start to disappear …” the fact remains that the innate capitalist mindset is completely void of understanding, compassion, or even recognition, for those who are homeless, hungry, indigent, or encumbered with infirmities.
The Proof of the pudding of the latter lies in Henry Kaufman’s very succinct matter-of-fact description of libertarianism, wherein there are no other qualifications than if you prosper there is financial success, and if you fail that’s too bad, the free market simply does not concern itself with anything other than profit and wealth. So, it therefore seems to me that a moneyless resource based system is the solution to these and almost all of our world’s problems.
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Perspectives: A Call for Education Exceptionalism
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The purpose of human life is its evolution -- not only Darwinian, but mimetic, environmental, and in other ways as well. For that reason, it’s important to perpetuate enduring growth and development, especially by the examples set for our younger generation.
Learning is not always pedagogical. The best and most influential teachers are those who can also inculcate learning by doing, demonstration, from providing best examples and practices in the way they play, interact, apply their knowledge and skills, demonstrate work ethic, develop relationships, by being proactive, by simply how they live their lives, and in their demeanor. Leading by setting a positive professional and personal example is by far the most effective model for teaching and living a purposeful life. This should be the expectation embraced by the school community.
In life, we learn from supraliminal and subliminal messages. For example, sometimes the stimulus that causes fear can be a result of what is heard and seen, but often by what is simply intuitionally felt.
On February 15th , Pembroke High School in collaboration with Pembroke PD and regional law enforcement employed K9s to search student property and their surroundings for illegal drugs and paraphernalia.
The February 18th Right Opinion column, “Gone to the dogs,” stated “This is non intrusive to most students and their persons and sends a clear message that this community is serious about preventing the sale, distribution or use of drugs in and around our schools. It may seem as though we are telling the majority of kids who have done nothing wrong, have not violated the trust of their parents or principals, that we do not trust them. I would hope these dogs tell our sons and daughters that we love them and will keep them safe. It is precisely the actions of last Friday that demonstrate to students that adults are watching them and will hold them accountable. Schools are a place for kids to feel safe and secure.”
Certainly, the PHS students affected by this search intuitively felt that they are not trusted, and the notion that dogs should be used in this way to tell our sons and daughters that we love them is ludicrous. Bringing police and dogs into a place of learning for no reasonable or probable justification is not about keeping them safe and secure; in fact, it produces the opposite unintended consequence of insecurity, some hate, repugnance for the authority of police and their school, and instills unnecessary fear. The supraliminal affect was that coercion, force, and intimidation by threats of violence are the way to achieve power and control, and fix problems.
Furthermore, it was intrusive and not productive; teaching was stopped for the non-educational purpose of searching for drugs. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the atmosphere created by taking police dogs into schools is “incompatible with nurturing environments that are supposed to be conducive to adolescent education.”
Moreover, police and school officials acted in defiance of the presumption of innocence, and violated reasonable respect for student privacy. Additionally, their action demonstrated that the police, the school, and the community may have failed in their drug education efforts.
The school, by initiating this action, did not contribute to the enduring growth and development of their students, nor did they provide leadership by setting the best positive professional and personal example of exceptionalism.
Therefore, presumptively the columnist was right: education “has gone to the dogs.” However, being that as it may, from my point of view, this search by police, dogs or not, was unacceptable.
a
The purpose of human life is its evolution -- not only Darwinian, but mimetic, environmental, and in other ways as well. For that reason, it’s important to perpetuate enduring growth and development, especially by the examples set for our younger generation.
Learning is not always pedagogical. The best and most influential teachers are those who can also inculcate learning by doing, demonstration, from providing best examples and practices in the way they play, interact, apply their knowledge and skills, demonstrate work ethic, develop relationships, by being proactive, by simply how they live their lives, and in their demeanor. Leading by setting a positive professional and personal example is by far the most effective model for teaching and living a purposeful life. This should be the expectation embraced by the school community.
In life, we learn from supraliminal and subliminal messages. For example, sometimes the stimulus that causes fear can be a result of what is heard and seen, but often by what is simply intuitionally felt.
On February 15th , Pembroke High School in collaboration with Pembroke PD and regional law enforcement employed K9s to search student property and their surroundings for illegal drugs and paraphernalia.
The February 18th Right Opinion column, “Gone to the dogs,” stated “This is non intrusive to most students and their persons and sends a clear message that this community is serious about preventing the sale, distribution or use of drugs in and around our schools. It may seem as though we are telling the majority of kids who have done nothing wrong, have not violated the trust of their parents or principals, that we do not trust them. I would hope these dogs tell our sons and daughters that we love them and will keep them safe. It is precisely the actions of last Friday that demonstrate to students that adults are watching them and will hold them accountable. Schools are a place for kids to feel safe and secure.”
Certainly, the PHS students affected by this search intuitively felt that they are not trusted, and the notion that dogs should be used in this way to tell our sons and daughters that we love them is ludicrous. Bringing police and dogs into a place of learning for no reasonable or probable justification is not about keeping them safe and secure; in fact, it produces the opposite unintended consequence of insecurity, some hate, repugnance for the authority of police and their school, and instills unnecessary fear. The supraliminal affect was that coercion, force, and intimidation by threats of violence are the way to achieve power and control, and fix problems.
Furthermore, it was intrusive and not productive; teaching was stopped for the non-educational purpose of searching for drugs. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the atmosphere created by taking police dogs into schools is “incompatible with nurturing environments that are supposed to be conducive to adolescent education.”
Moreover, police and school officials acted in defiance of the presumption of innocence, and violated reasonable respect for student privacy. Additionally, their action demonstrated that the police, the school, and the community may have failed in their drug education efforts.
The school, by initiating this action, did not contribute to the enduring growth and development of their students, nor did they provide leadership by setting the best positive professional and personal example of exceptionalism.
Therefore, presumptively the columnist was right: education “has gone to the dogs.” However, being that as it may, from my point of view, this search by police, dogs or not, was unacceptable.
a
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Is secession a solution to the Washington debt?
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Roland Holland declares in his piece, “Secession: A Solution to the Washington Debt Threat,” that government plunder via taxation and debt creation threatens to destroy the financial life of future generations, and that secession is a way to solve these problems.
Well, secession is not a solution.
Holland is wrong in misleading the reader into thinking that government is always the villain and that corporations and Wall Street are the be all and end all to our financial ills. Plunder occurs in the private as well as the public sector, in business, finance, state or federal government as well. As long as we depend on a money-based system, we will always have coercion, avarice, and criminality, which are existential in the system and an intrinsic hazard for anyone seeking wealth creation.
It is a fallacy for anyone to believe that private or public money management and manipulation is a solution to humanity’s problems, no matter whether those problems are financial, or social. The undeniable truth is that unquenchable quest for wealth is the cause for humanity’s problems.
Interestingly, a number of states have introduced legislation declaring sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment: Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, and Georgia, while there are about twelve states considering sovereignty. So, secession is not some unimaginable, off-the-wall notion.
Nevertheless, I don’t believe that a sovereign state would voluntarily participate in good faith within a confederation of states; their individual needs will always take priority and may come into conflict with another state’s priorities. Additionally, states would still be tied to the federal government by common interest in some important ways. Secession would be no more successful than that of the southern confederate states in the 1860s, which resulted in the American Civil War. The here and now of yesteryear and the here and now of today are complexly, geopolitically, demographically, culturally, and in every other way very different. Our country has significantly progressed and more sophisticated than the country known to our founding fathers.
Furthermore, the “Washington income tax,” as Holland refers to it, may be less as federal authority and services devolve to the states, but it would mean the states would levy equivalent taxes in order to provide those increased services. Therefore, nothing would actually be gained, except the states would benefit from having greater insight into their individual needs than that of the federal government. Additionally, states could not provide for their individual or collective national defense without dependence on a national department of defense, and therefore there would be a federal income tax or tax of some sort levied for defense.
Rather than secession, we should simply promote the devolution of some federal authority to the states; while over time transfer all authority to the states, then to communities. This would be logistically necessary in order to evolve to a moneyless structure. Community-based authority and control, amongst other measures, is how we will achieve heterarchical systems of governance, develop and retain efficiencies in resource management, affording authentic freedom, equality, and world peace.
Of course, moneyless systems would need to be applicable worldwide. In that, there would be a need to manage, regulate, and utilize resources in an equitable way, and this over time would require an accumulation of greater knowledge, an evolution to technologies that are more advanced, greater communication, greater national and international cooperation, resolve and commitment to an incremental process model leading to fruition.
a
Roland Holland declares in his piece, “Secession: A Solution to the Washington Debt Threat,” that government plunder via taxation and debt creation threatens to destroy the financial life of future generations, and that secession is a way to solve these problems.
Well, secession is not a solution.
Holland is wrong in misleading the reader into thinking that government is always the villain and that corporations and Wall Street are the be all and end all to our financial ills. Plunder occurs in the private as well as the public sector, in business, finance, state or federal government as well. As long as we depend on a money-based system, we will always have coercion, avarice, and criminality, which are existential in the system and an intrinsic hazard for anyone seeking wealth creation.
It is a fallacy for anyone to believe that private or public money management and manipulation is a solution to humanity’s problems, no matter whether those problems are financial, or social. The undeniable truth is that unquenchable quest for wealth is the cause for humanity’s problems.
Interestingly, a number of states have introduced legislation declaring sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment: Washington, New Hampshire, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, California, and Georgia, while there are about twelve states considering sovereignty. So, secession is not some unimaginable, off-the-wall notion.
Nevertheless, I don’t believe that a sovereign state would voluntarily participate in good faith within a confederation of states; their individual needs will always take priority and may come into conflict with another state’s priorities. Additionally, states would still be tied to the federal government by common interest in some important ways. Secession would be no more successful than that of the southern confederate states in the 1860s, which resulted in the American Civil War. The here and now of yesteryear and the here and now of today are complexly, geopolitically, demographically, culturally, and in every other way very different. Our country has significantly progressed and more sophisticated than the country known to our founding fathers.
Furthermore, the “Washington income tax,” as Holland refers to it, may be less as federal authority and services devolve to the states, but it would mean the states would levy equivalent taxes in order to provide those increased services. Therefore, nothing would actually be gained, except the states would benefit from having greater insight into their individual needs than that of the federal government. Additionally, states could not provide for their individual or collective national defense without dependence on a national department of defense, and therefore there would be a federal income tax or tax of some sort levied for defense.
Rather than secession, we should simply promote the devolution of some federal authority to the states; while over time transfer all authority to the states, then to communities. This would be logistically necessary in order to evolve to a moneyless structure. Community-based authority and control, amongst other measures, is how we will achieve heterarchical systems of governance, develop and retain efficiencies in resource management, affording authentic freedom, equality, and world peace.
Of course, moneyless systems would need to be applicable worldwide. In that, there would be a need to manage, regulate, and utilize resources in an equitable way, and this over time would require an accumulation of greater knowledge, an evolution to technologies that are more advanced, greater communication, greater national and international cooperation, resolve and commitment to an incremental process model leading to fruition.
a
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The Lion of the Senate
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In the late 1950s, I was a bartender at the Harvard Club of Boston. I served Ted Kennedy. I was in my early 20s. He was in his late 20s. The first time he placed an order it was for a scotch and water with just enough scotch “to color the water.” He always greeted me courteously with that familiar Kennedy smile.
Because of that personal connection, over the next few years, I developed a fondness for him and throughout my life his life’s vicissitudes, tribulations, and personal failings often attracted my curiosity.
At these events, Ted Kennedy was unremarkable amongst his peers; one would never suspect he would be our next Senator from Massachusetts filling the seat once held by his brother John F. Kennedy. Through his long tenure and influence, he became known as the “Lion of the Senate,” a major figure and spokesman for American progressivism while writing more than 300 pieces of legislation. Up to his death on August 25, 2009, he had been re-elected nine times and had served forty-six years.
Although a unique, respected legislator with a mastery of the legislative process, Ted Kennedy’s personal life took a beating: he has been repeatedly vilified for Chappaquiddick, womanizing, alcoholism, and his wealth, which in view of his advocacy for the poor and downtrodden, left him vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy; he suffered the loss of his brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. in World War II and his sister Kathleen Agnes Kennedy in an airplane crash, as well as his brothers President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the hands of an assassin; and he nearly lost his life in a fatal plane crash in 1964 that left him with a life-altering back injury.
And yet through it all, Ted Kennedy persevered. Through much adversity, he continued to be an effective legislator. His virtues as a hardworking senator, a master at bipartisan negotiation, one who loved his family, a compassionate voice for social justice and champion of working people were often overlooked.
In a column he wrote for Newsweek, “The Cause of My Life,” an article reflecting his enduring goal of universal healthcare, he said that the cost of healthcare reform inaction will be greater over the next decade than the cost of reform itself, and millions more will become uninsured or underinsured; that in other advanced nations, everyone has insurance and health outcomes are equal or better than ours; that inaction would threaten the health of Americans as well as undermine our ability to compete and succeed in the global economy; that universal healthcare legislation would end our disgrace as the only major industrialized nation not guaranteeing healthcare for all of its people; that in his illness he has relied on his congressional insurance, saying “I have never had to worry whether I could afford my care and treatment.”
During his illness, he had thought as never before what universal healthcare would mean to others, and that there is a need to “create a system to ensure someday, when there is a cure for the disease I now have, no American who needs it will be denied.”
Conversely, with the election of Scott Brown, voters in Massachusetts denounced Ted Kennedy’s dream of universal healthcare. Ted Kennedy’s cause apparently has for now passed away with him. But just perhaps his dream and the dream of so many Americans who need universal healthcare will subliminally persist and surface again sometime in the future.
a
In the late 1950s, I was a bartender at the Harvard Club of Boston. I served Ted Kennedy. I was in my early 20s. He was in his late 20s. The first time he placed an order it was for a scotch and water with just enough scotch “to color the water.” He always greeted me courteously with that familiar Kennedy smile.
Because of that personal connection, over the next few years, I developed a fondness for him and throughout my life his life’s vicissitudes, tribulations, and personal failings often attracted my curiosity.
At these events, Ted Kennedy was unremarkable amongst his peers; one would never suspect he would be our next Senator from Massachusetts filling the seat once held by his brother John F. Kennedy. Through his long tenure and influence, he became known as the “Lion of the Senate,” a major figure and spokesman for American progressivism while writing more than 300 pieces of legislation. Up to his death on August 25, 2009, he had been re-elected nine times and had served forty-six years.
Although a unique, respected legislator with a mastery of the legislative process, Ted Kennedy’s personal life took a beating: he has been repeatedly vilified for Chappaquiddick, womanizing, alcoholism, and his wealth, which in view of his advocacy for the poor and downtrodden, left him vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy; he suffered the loss of his brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. in World War II and his sister Kathleen Agnes Kennedy in an airplane crash, as well as his brothers President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the hands of an assassin; and he nearly lost his life in a fatal plane crash in 1964 that left him with a life-altering back injury.
And yet through it all, Ted Kennedy persevered. Through much adversity, he continued to be an effective legislator. His virtues as a hardworking senator, a master at bipartisan negotiation, one who loved his family, a compassionate voice for social justice and champion of working people were often overlooked.
In a column he wrote for Newsweek, “The Cause of My Life,” an article reflecting his enduring goal of universal healthcare, he said that the cost of healthcare reform inaction will be greater over the next decade than the cost of reform itself, and millions more will become uninsured or underinsured; that in other advanced nations, everyone has insurance and health outcomes are equal or better than ours; that inaction would threaten the health of Americans as well as undermine our ability to compete and succeed in the global economy; that universal healthcare legislation would end our disgrace as the only major industrialized nation not guaranteeing healthcare for all of its people; that in his illness he has relied on his congressional insurance, saying “I have never had to worry whether I could afford my care and treatment.”
During his illness, he had thought as never before what universal healthcare would mean to others, and that there is a need to “create a system to ensure someday, when there is a cure for the disease I now have, no American who needs it will be denied.”
Conversely, with the election of Scott Brown, voters in Massachusetts denounced Ted Kennedy’s dream of universal healthcare. Ted Kennedy’s cause apparently has for now passed away with him. But just perhaps his dream and the dream of so many Americans who need universal healthcare will subliminally persist and surface again sometime in the future.
a
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The Fallacy of the Misean Vision
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Llewellyn Rockwell expresses his paleolibertarian vision in his essay Imagining Liberty: The Misean Vision. In it, he expresses a world vision that would be most beneficial to man. A vision where apparently liberty can only be achieved within a free market economy. He claims the healthcare problem is a result of intervention, as if government is responsible for humanity’s cupidity.
The kind of world I envision is significantly different from Lee Rockwell. My vision does not acknowledge a money-based economy. It’s a moneyless world where war, politics, profit, and any need for compensation would not exist. Unarguably, that is the kind of world that would be most beneficial for humankind. Arguably, the problem is how do we get there. Americans pride themselves on creativity and innovation, and over time that pride can change our perspectives, ideas and attitudes, hopefully evolving to that kind of world.
A moneyless world is an idea. But sometimes ideas become theories, and sometimes they light the way to reality.
Rockwell says in his essay, and of which I agree:
“… society contains within itself the capacity for self-management, and there is nothing that government can do to improve on the results of the voluntary association, exchange, creativity, and choices of every member of the human family.”
“… the greatest guarantor of liberty is an entire population that is a relentless and daily threat to the regime precisely because they embrace this dream of liberty.”
“Sometimes thinking the unthinkable, saying the unsayable, teaching the unteachable, is what makes the difference between bondage and sweet liberty.”
“Freedom is the greatest gift that you can give yourself, and give all of humanity.”
However, the only way to authentic freedom is to eliminate the burden and coercive power of money. This is the one criterion that Lew Rockwell, Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, other libertarians, and philosophers, have overlooked, and therein lays the fallacy of their advocation: money management is not a solution to humanity’s problems it is the cause.
A moneyless society, which would be a free and classless society, is what will achieve liberty. For money creates the greatest obstacle to obtaining the greatest human potential. Humanity does contain the capacity for self-management. And, neither government nor money can improve on the benefit of voluntary association and creativity.
Freeing the obstacles requires new ways of thinking -- as Lew Rockwell said, “Sometimes thinking the unthinkable.”
Philosophically, a moneyless society embodies liberalism as well as libertarianism. It would be a social arrangement that insists on civil liberties and promotes social progress. A society founded on probity and liberty. One that is tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others, and one that progressively searches for new ideas without compensation.
A moneyless society embodies libertarian thinkers like Henry David Thoreau, but rejects the objectivist libertarianism of the likes of Ayn Rand.
Moreover, in consideration of a moneyless society, liberalism and libertarianism may be arguable but nonetheless moot: they lack meaning in a moneyless society. Such a society would be an egalitarian society, yes, but not socialism; socialism, to be definable, incorporates in its meaning the exchange of money for goods and services.
Additionally, for the world’s survival, we need to achieve on the Kardashev scale a type III civilization by not being hindered by the cost of resources but only by their availability, and by employing full utilization of all those resources, which would be available to all people.
Authentic freedom, progress and prosperity, can only be achieved through self-determination and independence from the powerful influences of money. Influences that today are exemplified by political partisanship.
a
Llewellyn Rockwell expresses his paleolibertarian vision in his essay Imagining Liberty: The Misean Vision. In it, he expresses a world vision that would be most beneficial to man. A vision where apparently liberty can only be achieved within a free market economy. He claims the healthcare problem is a result of intervention, as if government is responsible for humanity’s cupidity.
The kind of world I envision is significantly different from Lee Rockwell. My vision does not acknowledge a money-based economy. It’s a moneyless world where war, politics, profit, and any need for compensation would not exist. Unarguably, that is the kind of world that would be most beneficial for humankind. Arguably, the problem is how do we get there. Americans pride themselves on creativity and innovation, and over time that pride can change our perspectives, ideas and attitudes, hopefully evolving to that kind of world.
A moneyless world is an idea. But sometimes ideas become theories, and sometimes they light the way to reality.
Rockwell says in his essay, and of which I agree:
“… society contains within itself the capacity for self-management, and there is nothing that government can do to improve on the results of the voluntary association, exchange, creativity, and choices of every member of the human family.”
“… the greatest guarantor of liberty is an entire population that is a relentless and daily threat to the regime precisely because they embrace this dream of liberty.”
“Sometimes thinking the unthinkable, saying the unsayable, teaching the unteachable, is what makes the difference between bondage and sweet liberty.”
“Freedom is the greatest gift that you can give yourself, and give all of humanity.”
However, the only way to authentic freedom is to eliminate the burden and coercive power of money. This is the one criterion that Lew Rockwell, Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, other libertarians, and philosophers, have overlooked, and therein lays the fallacy of their advocation: money management is not a solution to humanity’s problems it is the cause.
A moneyless society, which would be a free and classless society, is what will achieve liberty. For money creates the greatest obstacle to obtaining the greatest human potential. Humanity does contain the capacity for self-management. And, neither government nor money can improve on the benefit of voluntary association and creativity.
Freeing the obstacles requires new ways of thinking -- as Lew Rockwell said, “Sometimes thinking the unthinkable.”
Philosophically, a moneyless society embodies liberalism as well as libertarianism. It would be a social arrangement that insists on civil liberties and promotes social progress. A society founded on probity and liberty. One that is tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others, and one that progressively searches for new ideas without compensation.
A moneyless society embodies libertarian thinkers like Henry David Thoreau, but rejects the objectivist libertarianism of the likes of Ayn Rand.
Moreover, in consideration of a moneyless society, liberalism and libertarianism may be arguable but nonetheless moot: they lack meaning in a moneyless society. Such a society would be an egalitarian society, yes, but not socialism; socialism, to be definable, incorporates in its meaning the exchange of money for goods and services.
Additionally, for the world’s survival, we need to achieve on the Kardashev scale a type III civilization by not being hindered by the cost of resources but only by their availability, and by employing full utilization of all those resources, which would be available to all people.
Authentic freedom, progress and prosperity, can only be achieved through self-determination and independence from the powerful influences of money. Influences that today are exemplified by political partisanship.
a
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Shooting Gnats with a Machine Gun 666 to 1
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In Tomgam’s post of January 14, 2010, Shooting Gnats with a Machine Gun 666 to 1, Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse write about the changing American image of our enemies. Explaining how the image of the Japanese warrior changed from inferior fighters who had congenital nearsightedness, inner-ear defects, lacked individualism, and who were poor pilots flying inferior planes, to, once we were at war with them, invincible, natural-born jungle and night-fighters, ruthless, cruel, and blind to any human values. In time, fear took hold in America resulting in the debasement and internment of Japanese Americans.
Similarly, after September 11, 2001, America’s image of Al-Qaeda changed. Al-Qaeda became from what was previous a somewhat insignificant group of terrorist into a superpower that required the full strength of the world’s most powerful armed forces to combat. Fear of Muslims gripped America, and some Americans even initiated a call for internment camps.
Government has deliberately and shamefully engaged in fear mongering as a political tactic to frighten citizens and influence their political views on such things as gun legislation, terrorism, war, healthcare, the federal deficit, climate change, or combating disease. Ostensibly, in order to protect us from our fears, it puts into place security measures to remedy those fears and protect our nightmares from becoming a reality. Each time that was done, it shaved away more of our personal liberty.
Creating public fear is the oldest tool in the statecraft toolbox for revving-up home front support for war. The American government has created a culture of fear, it has become an art form, exploiting it whenever they feel public support is lacking. Fear creation is a key indicator that we should be skeptical, for when our government through the media propagandizes fear, Americans should pay really close attention. Americans have not, and have failed repeatedly to comprehend that fact.
Fear is what has empowered the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has kept the Afghan war going for nine years, making it difficult to close Guantanamo, and to bring our troops home from Iraq. Fear has enabled the very lucrative business of war. It has enabled preemptive and protracted wars. As a result, we gave George W Bush unprecedented war powers, and subsequently allowed war funding and troop deployments in excess of what is logically necessary for success.
According to Engelhardt and Turse, active duty U.S. troop strength has a 666 to 1 advantage over the estimated number of al-Qaeda fighters worldwide.
The 2009 estimate of Afghan’s Taliban fighters is estimated at 25,000, not including about 100 Al-Qaeda fighters. There are approximately 277,946 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and non-ISAF troops in Afghanistan with approximately 193,800 Afghan National Army and police.
Al-Qaeda and Taliban assets are minuscule in comparison to U.S. forces. Their tactical armaments are very limited and unsophisticated.
The United States has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars on the Global War on terror. American and allied troops are supreme with very sophisticated land, sea, and air assets, and yet we cannot succeed in Afghanistan.
Combat, non-combat, and civilian casualties have greatly exceeded those of September 11, 2001. In terms of cost-benefit, i.e. cost and casualties versus any success, we have been significantly trounced.
Americans laud America as being the most powerful country and military force in the world. We have outgunned the Taliban and Al-Qaeda 666 to 1, and still cannot accomplish the mission, so how can we, in all candor, pat ourselves on the back as being so special.
Of course, based on the facts, we clearly should not. But there is an alternative motive at work in our government and by our military: the very lucrative business of conducting a protracted war, of which the war on terrorism enables exceedingly well.
a
In Tomgam’s post of January 14, 2010, Shooting Gnats with a Machine Gun 666 to 1, Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse write about the changing American image of our enemies. Explaining how the image of the Japanese warrior changed from inferior fighters who had congenital nearsightedness, inner-ear defects, lacked individualism, and who were poor pilots flying inferior planes, to, once we were at war with them, invincible, natural-born jungle and night-fighters, ruthless, cruel, and blind to any human values. In time, fear took hold in America resulting in the debasement and internment of Japanese Americans.
Similarly, after September 11, 2001, America’s image of Al-Qaeda changed. Al-Qaeda became from what was previous a somewhat insignificant group of terrorist into a superpower that required the full strength of the world’s most powerful armed forces to combat. Fear of Muslims gripped America, and some Americans even initiated a call for internment camps.
Government has deliberately and shamefully engaged in fear mongering as a political tactic to frighten citizens and influence their political views on such things as gun legislation, terrorism, war, healthcare, the federal deficit, climate change, or combating disease. Ostensibly, in order to protect us from our fears, it puts into place security measures to remedy those fears and protect our nightmares from becoming a reality. Each time that was done, it shaved away more of our personal liberty.
Creating public fear is the oldest tool in the statecraft toolbox for revving-up home front support for war. The American government has created a culture of fear, it has become an art form, exploiting it whenever they feel public support is lacking. Fear creation is a key indicator that we should be skeptical, for when our government through the media propagandizes fear, Americans should pay really close attention. Americans have not, and have failed repeatedly to comprehend that fact.
Fear is what has empowered the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has kept the Afghan war going for nine years, making it difficult to close Guantanamo, and to bring our troops home from Iraq. Fear has enabled the very lucrative business of war. It has enabled preemptive and protracted wars. As a result, we gave George W Bush unprecedented war powers, and subsequently allowed war funding and troop deployments in excess of what is logically necessary for success.
According to Engelhardt and Turse, active duty U.S. troop strength has a 666 to 1 advantage over the estimated number of al-Qaeda fighters worldwide.
The 2009 estimate of Afghan’s Taliban fighters is estimated at 25,000, not including about 100 Al-Qaeda fighters. There are approximately 277,946 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and non-ISAF troops in Afghanistan with approximately 193,800 Afghan National Army and police.
Al-Qaeda and Taliban assets are minuscule in comparison to U.S. forces. Their tactical armaments are very limited and unsophisticated.
The United States has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars on the Global War on terror. American and allied troops are supreme with very sophisticated land, sea, and air assets, and yet we cannot succeed in Afghanistan.
Combat, non-combat, and civilian casualties have greatly exceeded those of September 11, 2001. In terms of cost-benefit, i.e. cost and casualties versus any success, we have been significantly trounced.
Americans laud America as being the most powerful country and military force in the world. We have outgunned the Taliban and Al-Qaeda 666 to 1, and still cannot accomplish the mission, so how can we, in all candor, pat ourselves on the back as being so special.
Of course, based on the facts, we clearly should not. But there is an alternative motive at work in our government and by our military: the very lucrative business of conducting a protracted war, of which the war on terrorism enables exceedingly well.
a
Saturday, January 30, 2010
A RETURN TO COMMON SENSE
a
January 10th was the publishing anniversary of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, a forty-seven page political pamphlet calling for American colonist to proclaim their independence from England’s governance, and promoting establishment of a constitutional republic. It has been alleged George Washington was so persuaded by Paine's words that he stopped supporting the King of England, and Common Sense inspired Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration of Independence.
Without this publication, chances are we would not be the United States of America we know today: it shaped America. And, via example, the noted quotation of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” certainly inspired by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, may never have been conceived without Paine’s groundwork.
The essence of Common Sense lies within Thomas Paine’s vision when he wrote, "we have it in our power to begin the world over again"; it lies within the vision of Robert F. Kennedy, who put forth, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”; and, it lies within President Ronald Reagan’s declaration, “For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies,” and he further stated, “All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government”; it’s essence lies within the vision of Barack Obama wherein he said, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
Its essence dictates that hope is reserved for people, not governments, and that change founded on hope requires new ways of thinking by the people.
One of the most often repeated quotes in American politics is by our own [Massachusetts] former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, who said, "All politics is local": meaning political success is achieved when a congressional representative represents the everyday concerns of the place of traditional values commonly known metonymically as Main Street. I am fairly certain that Tip’s perspective came from his long experience and not from some enduring value taken from Common Sense. However, it fundamentally, too, is very much within the essence of Common Sense.
Common Sense’s idealism, advocation of principles, and profundity is as significant today as it was in 1776. Now as then, Common Sense conveys the same powerful message: “the government depends for its legitimacy entirely on the consent of the governed."
Today, however, we have seemingly lost our sense of those ideals. That’s apparently because Americans have adopted a view that the Constitution is of the government and not of the people, and they tend to blame government, whether it is federal, state, city, or town, rather than themselves for America’s, or their individual community’s, failures. America has acquiesced to a fading spirit, and instead adopted an unwillingness to stand up for what they believe.
If Americans are concerned over the decadence of their freedoms, and if they authentically want a “government is best which governs least,” then, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
That change begins with each one of us, extends to the family, expands to the community, which in turn influences other communities, and empowers the State.
An additional resource that adds a great deal to the very significant contribution Thomas Paine has made to America, and to the message that I was conveying: “The Elementary Common Sense of Thomas Paine” by Mark Wilensky
Mark Wilensky commented on the original Pembroke Express post: “I'm a fifth-grade teacher in Jefferson County, and an crucial part of teaching civics is providing students with our primary sources: the founding documents. This is critical in understanding what “We the People” really means. Today, as they did over 230 years ago, those documents instill in students the belief that all our voices are important. Every one of our citizens are given the right to pursue liberty. Futures do not have to be inevitable and "Little voices" can make dramatic impacts on events. That is Thomas Paine's greatest contribution to our country. His pamphlet, Common Sense, spoke to all the voices in the 13 colonies during a time of great fear and indecision. He gave a vast number of citizens a vision of what each could do, 176 days before the Declaration of Independence. A belief that power should radiate from the citizens. That message is still paramount to all our students today. For that pamphlet alone, Paine needs to be recognized as a integral part of the American miracle.”
a
January 10th was the publishing anniversary of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, a forty-seven page political pamphlet calling for American colonist to proclaim their independence from England’s governance, and promoting establishment of a constitutional republic. It has been alleged George Washington was so persuaded by Paine's words that he stopped supporting the King of England, and Common Sense inspired Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration of Independence.
Without this publication, chances are we would not be the United States of America we know today: it shaped America. And, via example, the noted quotation of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” certainly inspired by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, may never have been conceived without Paine’s groundwork.
The essence of Common Sense lies within Thomas Paine’s vision when he wrote, "we have it in our power to begin the world over again"; it lies within the vision of Robert F. Kennedy, who put forth, “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”; and, it lies within President Ronald Reagan’s declaration, “For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies,” and he further stated, “All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government”; it’s essence lies within the vision of Barack Obama wherein he said, “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
Its essence dictates that hope is reserved for people, not governments, and that change founded on hope requires new ways of thinking by the people.
One of the most often repeated quotes in American politics is by our own [Massachusetts] former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, who said, "All politics is local": meaning political success is achieved when a congressional representative represents the everyday concerns of the place of traditional values commonly known metonymically as Main Street. I am fairly certain that Tip’s perspective came from his long experience and not from some enduring value taken from Common Sense. However, it fundamentally, too, is very much within the essence of Common Sense.
Common Sense’s idealism, advocation of principles, and profundity is as significant today as it was in 1776. Now as then, Common Sense conveys the same powerful message: “the government depends for its legitimacy entirely on the consent of the governed."
Today, however, we have seemingly lost our sense of those ideals. That’s apparently because Americans have adopted a view that the Constitution is of the government and not of the people, and they tend to blame government, whether it is federal, state, city, or town, rather than themselves for America’s, or their individual community’s, failures. America has acquiesced to a fading spirit, and instead adopted an unwillingness to stand up for what they believe.
If Americans are concerned over the decadence of their freedoms, and if they authentically want a “government is best which governs least,” then, in the words of Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
That change begins with each one of us, extends to the family, expands to the community, which in turn influences other communities, and empowers the State.
An additional resource that adds a great deal to the very significant contribution Thomas Paine has made to America, and to the message that I was conveying: “The Elementary Common Sense of Thomas Paine” by Mark Wilensky
Mark Wilensky commented on the original Pembroke Express post: “I'm a fifth-grade teacher in Jefferson County, and an crucial part of teaching civics is providing students with our primary sources: the founding documents. This is critical in understanding what “We the People” really means. Today, as they did over 230 years ago, those documents instill in students the belief that all our voices are important. Every one of our citizens are given the right to pursue liberty. Futures do not have to be inevitable and "Little voices" can make dramatic impacts on events. That is Thomas Paine's greatest contribution to our country. His pamphlet, Common Sense, spoke to all the voices in the 13 colonies during a time of great fear and indecision. He gave a vast number of citizens a vision of what each could do, 176 days before the Declaration of Independence. A belief that power should radiate from the citizens. That message is still paramount to all our students today. For that pamphlet alone, Paine needs to be recognized as a integral part of the American miracle.”
a
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Do Truckers Get Traction? Absolutely!
Congratulations Scott Brown. You were a good candidate, you ran a good campaign, and all I can honestly say is good job!
Moreover, Mr. Chilcott’s view that “Truckers get traction” is true; however, in a storm they also throw sludge in your windshield, and will always obscure your view. Truckers seem to think they own the road. They are that idiomatic “elephant in the room,” or should I say on the road.
I am proud of Massachusetts, in that its citizens turned out and voted their convictions, no matter how ill-informed I think they were, or how opposed I am to their philosophy.
However, with the election of Scott Brown, voters in Massachusetts did send an undeniable message to Washington: we don’t want healthcare reform. It is such a serious issue that it makes it the most disturbing outcome of this election.
It all boils down to this: republicans (epitomized by the elephant) are for the rich; democrats (epitomized by the donkey) are for the poor. In essence that is what the two parties represent, and because of that, with the election of Scott Brown, compassion, an indifference to infirmity, the sufferings of the indigent, and diversity took a back seat.
Independent voters are those folks who will not commit to a cause until they see what’s in it for themselves. They are more motivated by their gut reaction than moral conviction. They are aloof until they know who the candidates are. A great majority get their information on the issues from tabloid sources like Fox News, Limbaugh, Carr, and Severin. They vote the candidate rather than a conviction on philosophy. They seem to be more willing to commit themselves to being a sports fan of the Patriots than they are consistently to stand up for a philosophy that declares how human beings should be treated. At least that has been my observation with family, friends, and those I have known over the years; not all, but a significant majority. Those are the folks who, apparently, gave Scott Brown his victory. And, despite their perception of his independence, what they essentially have is Senator Brown, the GOP’s new man in town, not the new independent man in town.
Even though a Democrat, I am an independent voter. I declare myself a Democrat because I want people to know philosophically who I am as a person. I will, independent of party affiliation, support the entity that will be pro-peace over war and pro-compassion over the creation of wealth. I don’t look for a clever brain; I look for wisdom and a good heart, whether that is in the candidate or the party that progressively supports those things that will accomplish that end.
I am not saying that Senator Brown is not a decent, good, and moral man, but what we can expect from Scott Brown is an opposition to change (that’s the definition of conservatism, i.e. to be conservative); support the same free market that is responsible for our disastrous economic meltdown; support of tax cuts for the wealthy, and to hell with the bread and butter of America: the American worker; and to work against any meaningful healthcare reform, unless it is beneficial to private insurance providers -- that’s what he supported in Mitt Romney’s (who, by the way, Ted Kennedy defeated in the 1994 senatorial campaign) Massachusetts, and we should expect no different from him in Washington.
a
Moreover, Mr. Chilcott’s view that “Truckers get traction” is true; however, in a storm they also throw sludge in your windshield, and will always obscure your view. Truckers seem to think they own the road. They are that idiomatic “elephant in the room,” or should I say on the road.
I am proud of Massachusetts, in that its citizens turned out and voted their convictions, no matter how ill-informed I think they were, or how opposed I am to their philosophy.
However, with the election of Scott Brown, voters in Massachusetts did send an undeniable message to Washington: we don’t want healthcare reform. It is such a serious issue that it makes it the most disturbing outcome of this election.
It all boils down to this: republicans (epitomized by the elephant) are for the rich; democrats (epitomized by the donkey) are for the poor. In essence that is what the two parties represent, and because of that, with the election of Scott Brown, compassion, an indifference to infirmity, the sufferings of the indigent, and diversity took a back seat.
Independent voters are those folks who will not commit to a cause until they see what’s in it for themselves. They are more motivated by their gut reaction than moral conviction. They are aloof until they know who the candidates are. A great majority get their information on the issues from tabloid sources like Fox News, Limbaugh, Carr, and Severin. They vote the candidate rather than a conviction on philosophy. They seem to be more willing to commit themselves to being a sports fan of the Patriots than they are consistently to stand up for a philosophy that declares how human beings should be treated. At least that has been my observation with family, friends, and those I have known over the years; not all, but a significant majority. Those are the folks who, apparently, gave Scott Brown his victory. And, despite their perception of his independence, what they essentially have is Senator Brown, the GOP’s new man in town, not the new independent man in town.
Even though a Democrat, I am an independent voter. I declare myself a Democrat because I want people to know philosophically who I am as a person. I will, independent of party affiliation, support the entity that will be pro-peace over war and pro-compassion over the creation of wealth. I don’t look for a clever brain; I look for wisdom and a good heart, whether that is in the candidate or the party that progressively supports those things that will accomplish that end.
I am not saying that Senator Brown is not a decent, good, and moral man, but what we can expect from Scott Brown is an opposition to change (that’s the definition of conservatism, i.e. to be conservative); support the same free market that is responsible for our disastrous economic meltdown; support of tax cuts for the wealthy, and to hell with the bread and butter of America: the American worker; and to work against any meaningful healthcare reform, unless it is beneficial to private insurance providers -- that’s what he supported in Mitt Romney’s (who, by the way, Ted Kennedy defeated in the 1994 senatorial campaign) Massachusetts, and we should expect no different from him in Washington.
a
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
When Silence Is Not Golden
A
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Times have changed since the zeitgeist of the Vietnam era. Today, it’s a different war in a different place and fought under different circumstances. This courageous speech, nevertheless, has great depth and speaks to the contemporary issues and attitudes that are as "incandescently" clear today as they were then.
I strongly urge you to take the time to read this very profound declaration by Martin Luther King, Jr.: Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, written by his friend and speechwriter, Dr. Vincent Harding, and delivered on April 4, 1967. It is a speech given at great personal risk. It is a speech that will be pertinent for all time and for all people. It is the most significant speech of my lifetime on the issues of peace over war, and of the unacceptable neglect and exploitation of the world’s poor -- an exceedingly powerful speech that should awaken one’s conscience.
It’s a speech I will always remember as being more significant than his “I have a Dream” speech, in which he stressed the importance of nonviolent resistance, vividly painting his vision of a better future for people of all color, even though that speech is more celebrated. Not that one is better than the other, but because I feel his Vietnam speech is more universal.
At the time, Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that Dr. King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
In the late 50s, I recall my contemporaries referring to Dr King in slanderous, hateful, and bigoted ways. They associated Dr. King’s movement with that of Malcolm X, who was an advocate for black separatism. They called Dr. King a communist, a hypocrite, and an adulterer.
In the early 60’s, I was a road musician traveling throughout New England, the Southern Atlantic states, the Deep South and along the fringes of the Midwestern states. My experience and observation of the treatment of black and brown Americans in the Deep South changed all that I had been told while living and working in Boston. The views of Time magazine, the Washington Post, and Bostonians toward Dr. King’s movement were misguided. While traveling in the Deep South, especially in rural areas, I was cautioned that it would be dangerous to give anyone a reason to believe I was a Northerner, and so, therefore, others who I was traveling with would speak for me, or go in to a business for me to purchase whatever I would need. So, I quickly recognized the enormity of risks Dr. King and civil rights activist were undertaking. From that point on, I developed a great admiration and respect for Dr. King and his work. That experience resulted in a major sea change in my life. As I learned more about Dr. King, it also introduced me to the non-violence philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi.
Additionally, about that time, as I became more disheartened over Vietnam and with what I was personally experiencing, I gained an interest in what Dr. King was writing and saying in opposition to the Vietnam War. When I first read Dr. King’s Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence I was sad, humbled, and not a very proud American. His words of war and peace, and of the poor, soon became my platform with friends, colleagues, and associates.
He said, A time comes when silence is betrayal. And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
The time is long overdue when Americans should not be silent regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. We should not be silent when we hear the war drums beating in relation to our difficulties with Iran. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. certainly would not be silent. He would dust off his old speech on Vietnam, change a few keywords, and give precisely the same speech.
Through the prism of my experience, on MLK day I always reflect on, and I am amazed, just how far we have come, and yet, disappointingly, how far we have to go.
a
The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Times have changed since the zeitgeist of the Vietnam era. Today, it’s a different war in a different place and fought under different circumstances. This courageous speech, nevertheless, has great depth and speaks to the contemporary issues and attitudes that are as "incandescently" clear today as they were then.
I strongly urge you to take the time to read this very profound declaration by Martin Luther King, Jr.: Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence, written by his friend and speechwriter, Dr. Vincent Harding, and delivered on April 4, 1967. It is a speech given at great personal risk. It is a speech that will be pertinent for all time and for all people. It is the most significant speech of my lifetime on the issues of peace over war, and of the unacceptable neglect and exploitation of the world’s poor -- an exceedingly powerful speech that should awaken one’s conscience.
It’s a speech I will always remember as being more significant than his “I have a Dream” speech, in which he stressed the importance of nonviolent resistance, vividly painting his vision of a better future for people of all color, even though that speech is more celebrated. Not that one is better than the other, but because I feel his Vietnam speech is more universal.
At the time, Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that Dr. King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
In the late 50s, I recall my contemporaries referring to Dr King in slanderous, hateful, and bigoted ways. They associated Dr. King’s movement with that of Malcolm X, who was an advocate for black separatism. They called Dr. King a communist, a hypocrite, and an adulterer.
In the early 60’s, I was a road musician traveling throughout New England, the Southern Atlantic states, the Deep South and along the fringes of the Midwestern states. My experience and observation of the treatment of black and brown Americans in the Deep South changed all that I had been told while living and working in Boston. The views of Time magazine, the Washington Post, and Bostonians toward Dr. King’s movement were misguided. While traveling in the Deep South, especially in rural areas, I was cautioned that it would be dangerous to give anyone a reason to believe I was a Northerner, and so, therefore, others who I was traveling with would speak for me, or go in to a business for me to purchase whatever I would need. So, I quickly recognized the enormity of risks Dr. King and civil rights activist were undertaking. From that point on, I developed a great admiration and respect for Dr. King and his work. That experience resulted in a major sea change in my life. As I learned more about Dr. King, it also introduced me to the non-violence philosophy of Mohandas Gandhi.
Additionally, about that time, as I became more disheartened over Vietnam and with what I was personally experiencing, I gained an interest in what Dr. King was writing and saying in opposition to the Vietnam War. When I first read Dr. King’s Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence I was sad, humbled, and not a very proud American. His words of war and peace, and of the poor, soon became my platform with friends, colleagues, and associates.
He said, A time comes when silence is betrayal. And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.
The time is long overdue when Americans should not be silent regarding Iraq and Afghanistan. We should not be silent when we hear the war drums beating in relation to our difficulties with Iran. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. certainly would not be silent. He would dust off his old speech on Vietnam, change a few keywords, and give precisely the same speech.
Through the prism of my experience, on MLK day I always reflect on, and I am amazed, just how far we have come, and yet, disappointingly, how far we have to go.
a
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Executive Excess: Final CEO Pay Numbers Reveal Jaw-Dropping Retirement Packages
a
Conservatives will acquiesce to executive pay excesses because as conservatives they possess an inclination to maintain the traditional order of things, an opposition to innovation or change, or in other words, maintain the status quo. That by basic definition is conservatism.
In regard to executive excesses, conservatives will say that is how the free market works. Middle class and lower class workers do not create jobs or wealth. Their mindset has always been that unless one can provide jobs and has the ability to create wealth, a person really is of little significance to society.
However, without these lower classes of people, the CEO, the upper class, or any business entity, would not make a profit or acquire wealth. They acquired what they have from the spending and labor of middle class and lower class people. They represent the greatest number of consumers.
Conservatives, who have the same mindset as these CEOs, want to continue to let health insurance companies manage our healthcare. To maintain what has been traditionally done. In authentic conservatism fashion, they want the status quo maintained. These are the same folks, as the article points out, who wanted to privatize Social Security. Just think where we would be now if the management and investment of Social Security were left up to Wall Street. These, too, are the same folks who will cancel or increase your auto or home insurance policy because you may have had an accident. Maybe I am confused, but isn’t that exactly the reason insurance is purchased in the first place.
If I have $100, and I equally distribute that amount to 9 other people, each of us will have $10. However, if it is determined that I deserve more than the others do because I manage the money, and I impose a fee of $1 from each of the 9, then I will have $19 and all others will have $9. Now, to some that may seem reasonable, and I suppose it is in consideration of the free market paradigm. But, if I instead pay myself $91, then everyone else will have a mere $1 each. That is unreasonable. This hypothetical fundamentally will be no different based on whatever complexity of scale is envisioned, or complex praxeological differences there may be in the market place.
There essentially is not any difference in the example than the game of monopoly. There may be some nuances that make it different, but it is essentially the same concept when it comes to the distribution and the vicissitudes of money. In “What's Wrong with Monopoly (the game)?,” by Benjamin Powell, he points out “the game seriously misrepresents how an actual market economy operates.” Nevertheless, when the complexities, variances in human nature, and all other dimensions that may exist are removed, in the end it amounts to the same thing.
That’s the situation: if someone acquires some privilege to have more dollars than someone else does, and the Fed does not print more money, everyone else, in the larger scheme of things, will have less. Of course, people simply use credit to purchase what they don’t have cash to pay for, paying their debt incrementally. And, those same folks with the same aforementioned mentality continue to gouge us with interest rates -- just consider how credit card companies circumvent credit law, and are now increasing interest rates in anticipation of the new law protecting consumers from sudden increases in interest rates.
In every sense of the word, all of these folks, from CEOs of big oil, insurance companies, retailers, to any other free market capitalist, for the most part are scoundrels. Their sole motivation is profit, and they will sell their soul for the sake of profit. “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.”
So, technically, for example, if Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Lee Raymond, receives a pay increase, a bonus, or some other compensation, he gains a greater piece of the pie while others will receive less. Of course, that doesn’t happen, because consumers will simply borrow more, inflate the economy on borrowed money, create a situation of "irrational exuberance," the fed will fire up the printing press, and eventually we will all be in economic difficulty again, and again, and again. If we are going to depend on a money-based economy, it is absolutely necessary to return to the gold standard.
Literally, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” The solution to the problem, and just about to every problem: We need to evolve over time to a moneyless society. It’s absolutely necessary to take the profit out of many things, eventually out of everything, but especially, right now, healthcare. And, by the way, over time, it can be done; it is not a utopian concept.
a
Conservatives will acquiesce to executive pay excesses because as conservatives they possess an inclination to maintain the traditional order of things, an opposition to innovation or change, or in other words, maintain the status quo. That by basic definition is conservatism.
In regard to executive excesses, conservatives will say that is how the free market works. Middle class and lower class workers do not create jobs or wealth. Their mindset has always been that unless one can provide jobs and has the ability to create wealth, a person really is of little significance to society.
However, without these lower classes of people, the CEO, the upper class, or any business entity, would not make a profit or acquire wealth. They acquired what they have from the spending and labor of middle class and lower class people. They represent the greatest number of consumers.
Conservatives, who have the same mindset as these CEOs, want to continue to let health insurance companies manage our healthcare. To maintain what has been traditionally done. In authentic conservatism fashion, they want the status quo maintained. These are the same folks, as the article points out, who wanted to privatize Social Security. Just think where we would be now if the management and investment of Social Security were left up to Wall Street. These, too, are the same folks who will cancel or increase your auto or home insurance policy because you may have had an accident. Maybe I am confused, but isn’t that exactly the reason insurance is purchased in the first place.
If I have $100, and I equally distribute that amount to 9 other people, each of us will have $10. However, if it is determined that I deserve more than the others do because I manage the money, and I impose a fee of $1 from each of the 9, then I will have $19 and all others will have $9. Now, to some that may seem reasonable, and I suppose it is in consideration of the free market paradigm. But, if I instead pay myself $91, then everyone else will have a mere $1 each. That is unreasonable. This hypothetical fundamentally will be no different based on whatever complexity of scale is envisioned, or complex praxeological differences there may be in the market place.
There essentially is not any difference in the example than the game of monopoly. There may be some nuances that make it different, but it is essentially the same concept when it comes to the distribution and the vicissitudes of money. In “What's Wrong with Monopoly (the game)?,” by Benjamin Powell, he points out “the game seriously misrepresents how an actual market economy operates.” Nevertheless, when the complexities, variances in human nature, and all other dimensions that may exist are removed, in the end it amounts to the same thing.
That’s the situation: if someone acquires some privilege to have more dollars than someone else does, and the Fed does not print more money, everyone else, in the larger scheme of things, will have less. Of course, people simply use credit to purchase what they don’t have cash to pay for, paying their debt incrementally. And, those same folks with the same aforementioned mentality continue to gouge us with interest rates -- just consider how credit card companies circumvent credit law, and are now increasing interest rates in anticipation of the new law protecting consumers from sudden increases in interest rates.
In every sense of the word, all of these folks, from CEOs of big oil, insurance companies, retailers, to any other free market capitalist, for the most part are scoundrels. Their sole motivation is profit, and they will sell their soul for the sake of profit. “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender.”
So, technically, for example, if Exxon Mobil Corp. CEO Lee Raymond, receives a pay increase, a bonus, or some other compensation, he gains a greater piece of the pie while others will receive less. Of course, that doesn’t happen, because consumers will simply borrow more, inflate the economy on borrowed money, create a situation of "irrational exuberance," the fed will fire up the printing press, and eventually we will all be in economic difficulty again, and again, and again. If we are going to depend on a money-based economy, it is absolutely necessary to return to the gold standard.
Literally, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” The solution to the problem, and just about to every problem: We need to evolve over time to a moneyless society. It’s absolutely necessary to take the profit out of many things, eventually out of everything, but especially, right now, healthcare. And, by the way, over time, it can be done; it is not a utopian concept.
a
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