To Pay or Not to Pay
Joe Nocera in the New York Times has attacked the NCAA with accusations on various levels against that not so august body. Nocera’s most vociferous complaint, however, that the colleges make huge amounts of money on the play of student athletes and therefore should pay them a salary is way off base. Forgetting about the problems that would bring to the surface and the fact that it would take away any last remnant of amateur standing for student athletes, the fact is that they already get what amounts to a very good salary in the form of room, board, tuition and books, plus first choice of cushy jobs when they need extra cash. This amounts to over $50,000 a year at most colleges today. In addition, most colleges have fund set up to take care of emergency situations that require quick but limited cash.
Besides the value they get, the athletes get a chance to develop their skills at a very high level, which for the most talented few, could lead to professional riches. For those with a historical perspective it looks very much like the apprentice programs that have existed in crafts since the Middle Ages.
$50,000 by the way is a damn good salary for an 18 or 20 year-old kid whose only skill is that he can run, throw or shoot a ball. Sure the schools make a lot of money but the ones that have not given up their sense of being educators use most of that money for scholarships for non-athletes and other school expenses. I’m not speaking about the likes of Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, Ohio State and Kentucky but I am speaking of Vanderbilt, Duke, Notre Dame, Stanford, Northwestern and that group.
Probably the biggest problem for college athletics, and Nocera doesn’t touch on it, is the one and done syndrome where kids, especially basketball players enter a college program only until they are old enough (19) to go into pro basketball. These kids, while often wildly talented, are actually pulling down the sport. Most have no interest in school and I think that the NCAA, if it had the guts, would institute some ruling to stop this most unfortunate practice. The problem arises because the pros don’t have the guts or inventiveness to police their own programs. A history of immature players directly out of high school, getting in trouble and failing to live up to their potential and thereby wasting a lot of owner’s money, prompted the 19 year-old rule.
The colleges should institute a contract that would apply to all athletic scholarship students that would require them to pay a penalty out of their first year professional contract, if signed directly out of college, in which, they would have to pay some significant amount to the school’s non-athletic scholarship fund. The amount would be regressive the longer the student stayed in school. That is say 100K if he left after 1 year, 75K after 2 years 50K after 3 and zero after graduation. The purpose would be twofold. Help the schools non-athletic scholarship fund and keep the student-athlete in school.
Would that be fair? I think so, mainly because, by the student-athlete taking the scholarship for one year and then going pro, he creates two negative situations. One, he takes the scholarship away from someone else who may not be as good an athlete but may stay in school, get an education and become a more productive member of society and two he hurts the team long range by keeping it in constant turmoil. John Calipari, the coach of this year’s excellent Kentucky basketball team would not agree with me. He has managed to triumph over that turmoil with a series of one and done athletes, but then he coaches at a school that cares only minimally for education when it is measured against success in sports.
If Nocera really wants to attack the NCAA he should do it for its gutless obeisance to the BCS and its current football bowl system, which does not allow for a playoff tournament like all the other college sports.
The Economy Rules
While the Romney camp celebrates its victories over what is incontrovertibly the dumbest, most untruthful, seriously inept cast of comic characters in the history of American politics and Obama tries to figure out which cowardly Democratic congressmen can be counted on to crawl out of their holes an give him even marginal support, the rest of us are wondering what kind of a campaign we are going to be spectators at.
In 2004 the GOP, recognizing that their core support came from a mixture of gun loving bigots, born again religious fanatics, rich industrialists and splinter groups that saw every government move as an assault on their freedom, stayed far away from anything that was significant to the running of the country, assiduously avoiding the 2 unfunded wars we were fighting and the fact that we had let New Orleans all but disappear. They glossed over what everyone with any economic foresight was warning about, the overextended economy, the credit card looming disaster and the first warnings about the coming housing disaster and they sold us on the true dangers of gay marriage and abortion, two serious problems that actually affect maybe 2% of the nation. Their base believed them and we got four more years of war and a direct line into the greatest depression since 1929.
Are we going to face that kind of race again or are we actually going to get a chance to see what the candidates have to say about important things?
It definitely appears that the road to election or re-election in 2012 is through the economy. Almost everything else has been settled. One guy is bright, articulate and charming with a very mixed record in office, the other is handsome, rich and out of touch, with a record of being a shark in business. One has taken a foreign policy completely trashed by Bush/Cheney and restored us as a world leader and the other thinks the Soviet Union is our greatest fear. Unfortunately not one of his advisors has seen fit to tell him that the Soviet Union no longer exists. Neither seem very high on social justice or the freedoms laid out in the constitution. Neither has an acceptable immigration policy. One is for universal health care and the other, despite the fact that he authored the concept while a governor is now against it. So if you leave out the military, a budget item that everyone wants to cut, but no one has the balls to attack, that leaves the economy.
Of course there are other topics that could be discussed like immigration, contraception, abortion and gay marriage but the GOP doesn’t want to bring them up this time around. They’ve already lost anyone who has any interest in these subjects so they have nothing to gain by airing them. Obama doesn’t want to bring them up either, he’s already won everyone who has any interest in them and talking about them is only an invitation for someone to screw-up and say the wrong thing.
The economy is where it gets interesting because they couldn’t be further apart on how it should play out. The problem for most Americans is that neither seems to have a realistic idea of how to end unemployment and get people back to work. I say realistic because they both think they know how to do it.
Obama tried with the Stimulus and that’s the way he wants to go again, providing federal funding for jobs projects that will lead to short term recovery and education money that will lead to long term long term stability. The GOP loves to say that the Stimulus failed, but that’s a blatant lie. 1.2 million jobs saved, just in the auto industry, is not a failure, it’s a rousing success. If they were, at least, honest with themselves, the GOP would see that. Of course the Stimulus could have been more successful if the Republicans in the house and the weak kneed Democrats in the Senate hadn’t forced Obama to use 40% of the money in the Stimulus for tax rebates which anyone with any concept of economics will tell you become savings not stimulus. Yes, the Stimulus could have been gloriously successful if not for the interference of the GOP and Democrats cowering behind their chairs in the Senate.
So let’s go to each guy and look at his plans for solving the problem and their chances of working. Romney, with Paul Ryan doing his thinking for him, is looking at austerity. Reduce the national debt, cut taxes further, cut entitlements, with no mention of what to do about military spending.
Obama wants to raise taxes, probably across the board; he wants to spend on infrastructure and education, thereby attacking both the immediate and the long-range solutions to unemployment. He hasn’t yet said how he will do this but it’s looking more and more like it will need both houses of congress to get it done and that’s a very tentative situation.
The Romney/Ryan plan depends on a thesis that has failed historically everyplace it has ever been tried and is currently failing in Europe. Austerity is just not the way out of depression. It is the coward’s way to hang on until you slowly starve to death. Yes, the deficit is important, very important, but not as important as people feeding their families. Fortunately, there has never in history, been a time, where the size of the deficit is less important than now. Why? Because interest rates are so low that it is the perfect time for our government to borrow money. It is definitely not the time to raise interest rates. Cheap money allows the government to run a larger deficit at the same price as previous lower deficits that were achieved at higher interest rates.
All we have to do is look around at the rest of the world. The BRICS; Brazil, India, Russia, China and South Africa, the nations that were pushing the limits of expansion, just a few years ago are slowing precipitously, due, to a great extent, to the increased price of labor in those countries,. Europe, which, went down as fast as we did, pushed hard for austerity programs, but those programs have all but destroyed their economies, sentencing the entire of the EU to a growth rate slightly under negative -.5% while we struggle along at between positive 2 & 3%. Not great but a hell of a lot better than Europe.
So what happened, Europe is catching on. Conservative governments have been voted out in Greece and France and more are on the skids.
I hate to go back to the definition of insanity, but the right wing keeps wanting to do the same old thing, and somehow expects to get a new outcome. It just ain’t gonna happen folks and the sooner you realize it the better off the country will be.
There has never been a better time, interest rate wise, to borrow money and pump it into the economy than now, but that’s not the only way. We have to raise or change taxes. Doing both would be best. Our current tax code is just a favor factory for rich powerful interests. How do we fix it? I think we should take away all personal deductions except for certain charities and first house mortgage interest for those who make under a certain figure, like $200,000 per year. The only charities that would be deductable would deal with health, children’s services, poverty and specific educational situations like scholarships but not building programs. Religious and political giving would no longer be considered charity, simply because it’s not. Look up the definition.
On the business end, the rates would be lowered to reflect other countries but all the perks would be cut out. The only deduction would be for cost of goods and services. The concept of capital gains would be eliminated from the code. It is one of the most regressive tax concepts ever imagined in the wildest wet dreams of the rich. Why should a man be taxed less on the rewards of money invested than on the fruits of his actual labor. It’s a ridiculous concept. Of course all subsidies, like farm, oil and others would end. To be fair, certain ones, like farm, would be replaced by some kind of disaster insurance, which will be sorely needed if we do not immediately change our ecological policies, especially in regard to energy. That is what the Democratic policy should be and what I think Obama could win on. It remains to be seen how much of it he agrees with and how much he has the stones to adapt
On the other side there’s the Romney/Ryan plan. It’s simple and direct. They’ve made it so, for the benefit of their constituency. Cut entitlements, to encourage people to be self-sufficient and to hold down the deficit, lower taxes on the rich to encourage them to use that money to create new jobs. This will in fact create new jobs but they’ll all be in the yacht building business. And finally don’t touch military funding.
Based on these two approaches, which I think I have stated fairly, (my conservative friends will think differently), I don’t see how Romney can win. But it is the GOP that has stated that it will push the economy as its main platform. Why are they doing this?
Well, to be fair, they do not state their platform exactly as I have. They think that Obama has not pulled us out of the recession and that this is their wedge. I watched Grover Norquist, he of no tax pledge fame, babble about how Reagan dragged us out of the recession in the ‘80s but he doesn’t get that lie to float. What Reagan faced was just a small wrinkle compared to what Obama faced when he took office. Norquist doesn’t want to hear hat 890,000 people lost their jobs in the last quarter of the Bush administration or that the country GDP dropped by 9%. Conservatives don’t want to hear that. Norquist, himself has said that the modern GOP (get that-modern) doesn’t support Bush or his policies. That’s interesting considering that they are trying desperately to go back to those policies by trying to change all the restraints that the Dodd/Frank bill had put on the big Wall Street firms. Once again the truth escapes their mouths.
Let’s hope that the American public, most especially the undecided center will have the insight and do just enough work to get the facts on these two possibilities. If they do it will be crystal clear which will lead the country to prosperity and which will doom us to be another Japan,
The Wrong Approach
When people on the Right attack people on the Left for calling them liars and stupid they should understand that there is a basis for those accusations and that, that basis is the GOP’s current presidential candidate.
Yes, Romney’s at it again, this week calling attention to a closed factory in Ohio and labeling it a symbol of the Obama administration’s economic failure.
It sounds good doesn’t it? Look at this crumbling pile of rubbish. Think of all the jobs lost, all the families with no food or housing that once worked here. A real tearjerker. Only one problem, the factory closed during the Bush administration.
See, that’s why the Left calls the Right, liars and stupid. Either Romney knew the truth about the factory and was flat out lying about it to get an edge or he didn’t know, was fantasying , and was dumb enough to think nobody would check.
How can a guy who wants to run the country be so (pick one or more) lazy, dishonest or dumb? If Romney and the rest of his backers and stooges would stop and listen to the basic bullshit they are trying to sell to unaffiliated voters, who are after all the targets of both party’s high cost campaigns they would understand that those unaffiliated voters are the smart ones, the thinkers, the non-followers, the considerers, not the nose in the butt crack followers of one side or the other. As such it takes a little more than just shouting gay or abortion, black or illegal immigrant, to get them to pay attention to your faulted rhetoric.
The Right keeps harping on the Obama job losses, hoping against hope that no one will actually do their homework and find out that most of the job losses, over 350,000 per month happened in the last year of the Bush administration and that the last few that actually happened after Obama was sworn into office happened in the first three months of 2009 before Obama could put any policies in place.
Could Obama be doing a better job promoting new employment? Sure, but the truth be known, most of what he has tried in that realm has been stymied by the GOP whose only governmental aim during the first three years of Obama’s administration has been to keep him from getting re-elected; this by their own admission. If that’s the only aim of any political party that is supposed to be trying to run a country than that party is nothing but pathetic, and that’s what the GOP has proved to be.
Not that the Dems are much better. Stunned by the 2010 elections, they have floundered around doing nothing; hoping desperately that if that don’t get noticed and don’t get anyone angry at them they can hold onto their pathetic jobs one term more.
In this process, both parties have abandoned the electorate, greedily hanging onto their patronage and their perks and ignoring the needs of the people who elected them and the country.
The President has also had big failures but they have been somewhat mitigated, by at least attempts to solve problems. His healthcare bill, not perfect but at least a start where no other president was able to get even that far, his attempts to regulate Wall Street and the banking industry, his sometimes confusing forays into energy and the environment and especially his policies of pursuit and execution of our countries enemies have stood head and shoulders above anything either party has done in congress.
His biggest failure appears to be his inability to get more people back into jobs but he has tried and it appears that he is trying some more. To accomplish these aims, he needs one of two alternatives to happen. Either the Dems have to get up off their asses, put some push into their whine and wheel and deal with those they can speak to on the other side in an attempt to back the presidents policies or the GOP has to sit down on their asses and stop getting in the way of progressive programs that will give the work force a chance to get back on the job
These are not earth shattering concepts. The way to reduce unemployment is to create jobs. The jobs we have to create now are jobs that can be filled by our currently unemployed. We are speaking about an undereducated employment force that can’t wait three years to get educated to the new technology. That will come later. Right now we have to create jobs for the people who need them and those jobs have to be long on muscle and short on tech know how. Our country is desperately in need of infrastructure repair, high-speed rail transportation and airport facilities. Those are the jobs we need and the ones we have unemployed workers to fill.
This is the kind of stuff that can take years to get off the board or it can come off in a flash, the way it did during and after WWII. It’s all a question of will and cooperation. If the White House has the will and if the parties decide to cooperate, it can be done and it can be done fast. But that means everyone, for once, has to drop his or her agenda and focus on doing the job, not pleasing their backers or some lobbyist or the guy whose mother controls ten votes in the second district.
I for one don’t think we have that kind of ability, honesty or integrity in congress. I don’t think we will ever get all those hacks to function and focus on something as important for the country without putting their own agendas first. I would love to be proved wrong but if I’m not then that s a sure sign for November. Vote them all out.
I once said, that based on the results of the 2010 election and the disastrous Tea Party victory that took about 60 seats and elected about 3 functional people to them that such an action was counter productive. I still think so but the current bunch of crooked, do nothings in congress can’t be any worse than a new bunch of stupid do nothings so why not give it a try.
We need to do something to get people back in jobs. People who work, pay taxes, do not collect unemployment insurance, create product, add to GDP. The lack of this is the primary problem in this country right now. If we don’t solve it we are truly screwed.
Drugs; We just Can’t Get it Right
I hate to go back and beat dead horses but when even senile idiots like Pat Robertson can see that one of our most costly and nationally debilitating processes is a disaster it’s time for those in more functional positions to get off their butts and do something about it.
I’m speaking, of course, about the war on drugs, one of the most ill conceived operations in the history of our Federal Government. I’ve listened to all the nonsense about how drugs are destroying our youth and how they are being used to finance major crime and terrorist networks and whatever morsel of truth can be found tin these arguments can just as easily be turned around as reason to abandon our entire national drug policy.
The same arguments that were used to establish our national drug policy were used to establish prohibition and they were as fallacious then as they are now. We finally figured that out when it came to booze, when are we going to figure it out in regard to drugs.
I’m not saying that we should legalize all drugs, not right away, at least. What I’m saying is that we should, at least, legalize marijuana, which I can say as a current non-imbiber has very little impact for all the noise that’s made about it. To anyone who has ever used marijuana and also drunk alcohol, if they are honest, they will tell you that booze has a much stronger effect on behavior despite the fact that it remains legal. Why is this?
The answer has nothing to do with the social aspects of drugs but rather the economic ones. There are a lot of people making a lot of money by keeping drugs illegal. We spent over thirty billion dollars of your tax money on the war on drugs in 2011. Thirty billion! That’s money stolen from every other program of the United States government.
We spend 6 times more in jail costs than we do on education. We now have over one million inmates in this country, more than five times more than any other country in the world. We have 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. Over half of the people in prison are there on drug related charges so the people who own prisons don’t want the drug laws changed. Just in case you didn’t know it, the prison business has been privatized. The government isn’t in the prison business anymore, not in any significant way.
In the last ten years we have built 21 prisons in California and one college. They spend on average $8,667 per college student a year and over $50,000 per inmate. If that doesn’t make prisons big business nothing does. So if we want to legalize drugs, the first thing we have to do is go through the people who run prisons, the people who make billions for no good reason. They don’t want to lose half their population because it means they lose half their money. Besides it’s a lot easier to control a population of stoners than it is to control a population of gang bangers and killers. We also have to fight the DEA which makes its living off the drug wars. Then there’s the bad guys, the drug dealers who don’t want to see it legalized because that would end their business just like ending prohibition ended the money pot for the rum runners.
Over the past forty years we have spent over $1,000,000,000. That’s one trillion bucks fighting the drug war and we have nothing to show for it. The greatest waste in human history. Even drug czar Gil Kerlikowski admits that the war is a failure. “In the grand scheme it has not been successful,” he concedes. What more needs to be said? It’s time we stopped throwing good money after bad, recognize the fact that people want to use drugs, just like people want to drink, gamble and screw, and get on with the legalization process, a process that would have two very beneficial effects. One it would empty half of our prisons of people who are in there for such picayune offenses as simple possession and two it would enable the government to collect taxes on the sale of those drugs which now cost us billions to regulate.
It’s a win/win situation, all we have to do is convince our bribe taking congressmen that it’s better to pass legislation legalizing drugs than it is to get caught on the take and join the drug dealers in jail. Not an easy task when lobbyists for prison owners and the DEA are throwing rewards at them from every direction but it is something that must be done.
Will there still be people turning out illegal drugs like there are still people manufacturing corn; absolutely but like those currently making illegal booze, they will be a miniscule part of the problem.
We have to get out of the drug hole and the only way to do it is to legalize them and make them a source of tax income rather than the enormous burden they currently represent.
Sports Mouth
There’s a great deal of controversy going on right now over Ozzie Guillen’s little speech about how much the likes and respects Fidel Castro. This has brought out all those who have something to say about athletes, speaking their minds on subjects outside sports. Politico’s Jonathan Allen has declared that athletes should “Just shut up.” Maybe Allen should do the same.
We are a nation that worships celebrity. We have always listened to movie stars opinions, right or wrong. I mean look at that old cowboy actor who became president. Right now we have Pitt, Jolie, Clooney, Penn, etc. all speaking and doing things in the social and political sphere; all on the power of their celebrity. So why shouldn’t Guillen have his say?
Let’s face it, folks, despite the howls of anguish from the Miami Cuban community and major league baseball, Guillen had something very valuable to say. He might not have said it as well as it could have been said, but the, out of control, response just shows that there was more than a little truth in what he was not loquacious enough to say effectively.
Major league baseball’s outrage can be easily dismissed as fear of losing revenue. They know that the Batistero community residing in the Miami area represents the team’s principle fan base. They’re just afraid they’ll lose a couple of bucks at the gate.
The Batisteros themselves are another matter. They were the Cuban, 1% when Castro overthrew Batista. My father was in Cuba when the revolution started. He was, as were all Norte Americano businessmen, closely allied with Batista. But he saw what was wrong and he left.
The fact is, that Castro asked our government for help first. We refused because we were afraid that we would endanger U.S. business interests that were allied with Batista. Our business community in Cuba and the mob, which controlled Havana are what kept us from supporting Castro, who was, after all, the people’s choice. It wasn’t until after we had turned him down that Castro went to the Russians. They were more than happy to help him and that’s when he became a Communist.
What did we get for our corporate greed and stupidity? Sixty years of having a hostile country ninety miles from our coast. Sixty years of a bunch of right wing Batisteros wielding political power in southern Florida, fighting to hold onto their tenuous thread to Cuba and thwarting any attempt to solve the Cuban problem by our government or our people.
Guillen may not have known how to say that, but just opening up the discussion again was important. It’s too bad that the greedy brain dead leaders of what they like to call, the national pastime, are too stupid too understand what free speech means. They are a disgrace to American sport and the Cuban, Batistero community in southern Florida is a serious drawback to any positive accomplishments that could be made in US/Cuban relations.
Our current policies toward Cuba are a joke. The only thing that is keeping us from attaining a realistic arrangement is the opposition of a community of rich former Batista backers who still yearn fruitlessly for their former place in that dictators hierarchy. It’s time to push them to the curb and get on with life in the real world.
The American Disgrace-The Court
It’s unfortunate that those arguing the case for the health care law before the Supreme Court have sunk to the clownish level of talk show hosts. It seems that the principal argument against the mandate to buy insurance has to do with broccoli. It’s obvious that Scalia and Thomas have dragged us down to their idiot level.
I really hate to have to go into this, mainly because it seems to me that the answer is self evident, but any number of my right wing friends have tried to make the same inane point so here goes. The anti Affordable Care Act people claim that you cannot regulate what citizens choose not to do. If you could, you could make them buy more broccoli, or in the case of states’ attorney, David Rivkin, it’s more Froot Loops, than they want or need.
The first part of the syllogism is wrong because the government can regulate what citizens choose not to do. The government does it all the time and has for as long as we have been a country. The most obvious current items include; you cannot choose not to have a license if you wish to drive, you cannot choose not to pay your taxes if you wish to stay out of jail, you cannot choose not to have a license for your machine gun, etc, etc. In all these instances, the government is regulating what you choose not to do. It is saying you cannot choose not to have such a license or not to pay taxes if you want to participate in life in this country. The health care plan is saying the same thing. You cannot choose not to have insurance if you want to use the healthcare system. If you want to opt out completely, that’s a different thing, and provisions for such a situation are already in the law. The guys who are trying to change the law should try to read it.
The second part of the syllogism is just buffoonery. It tries to give a consumable, food, the use or non-use of which, has no effect on any other action, the same relevance as a function of the law that effects both the people and the systems around it.
Now I understand that Scalia used this to try to subvert the argument and that Thomas just didn’t understand it, but I would have thought that Rivkin would have had the brains to ignore it, instead of trying to use it, and make a fool of himself.
And while I’m mentioning Scalia and Thomas, let’s discuss their deportment on the court and how it cannot be either excused or allowed to continue. There is supposed to be some semblance of impartiality on the court, mainly because of the nature of the judges’ lifetime appointments, appointments that were made lifelong to keep these judges from being politically influenced. This pair and their buddy Samuel Alito have desecrated this concept by actions that are a disgrace to the bench and an assault on the concept of ethical, impartial behavior. This is more than evident when, as they did recently, they appear at a fund raiser for the off-the-board right-wing, Federalist Society, which was sponsored by Bancroft PLLC a firm involved in litigation against ACA on the same day they reviewed an appeal brief from Paul Clement, the Bancroft lawyer, the same lawyer whose arguments they received so favorably last week.
At that affair, Clement sat between Scalia and Thomas and with Mitch McConnell who told the gathering that he would rely on Bancroft to help undo the ACA. Alito was at a nearby table despite the federal judicial ethics rule against such an involvement in political fundraising. Obviously this bunch of hacks doesn’t know what ethics means.
Earlier reports have Scalia duck hunting with former Veep Dick Cheney, which, at least, shows that Scalia has guts. I mean, you need guts to hunt with old eagle eye.
Scalia, in his questioning of witnesses sounded like a Rush Limbaugh clone, not an impartial judge, which, even if he doesn’t understand it, is supposed to be his role,. The fact that he’s wed to the radical right is a subversion of the court’s charter. Thomas shouldn’t be sitting on the bench at all, but particularly on this trial. Thomas’ wife, Virginia received $1.6 million from conservative, anti-health care reform groups for acting as a lobbyist against ACA between 1997 and 2011 and she stands to earn millions more if she is successful in convincing her scurvatious spouse to vote against ACA. No other judge in America would have the audacity or the fundamental lack of moral character not to recues himself from this trial. The fact that he hasn’t, should make him an instant candidate for impeachment and the whole process a sure shot for mistrial. Whether or not this will happen is still up in the air. It seems that there must be, between the two remaining conservative judges, at least one, who retains the integrity and moral fiber to stand up to the travesty that is being played out in what used to be an honored organization but what has turned into a hack vaudeville team.
While not participating in these unethical activities, Chief Justice Roberts, has in the past, supported them, when he spoke in support of upholding a West Virginia judge who failed to recues himself from a case involving the environmentally disastrous, A. T. Massey Coal Co. It didn’t bother Roberts that Don Blankenship, Massey’s principle owner, had donated $3 million to the judge’s reelection campaign. Fortunately for the cause of constitutional ethics, Justice Kennedy stepped up and cast the deciding vote to uphold the right to adjudication by an untainted judge. Let’s hope he does the right thing again in the ACA case, while still surrounded by this trio of immoral, blatantly prejudiced right-wing disgraces to the court.
Unfortunately, the latest solution to this problem, one that has been gathering adherents by the bundle, lately is to take away the appointment process by which Supreme Court judges are seated and have them elected by the general public. This, I think, is a panic motivated concept. The election of judges across this country, a process in which we now are deeply involved, has proven to be much less stable than our current methodology, whereby potential judges are put forth by the president and then vetted by congress. When this process works, as it has for much of our pas, and at least basically impartial judges with intelligence and moral fiber are appointed, the system is far better than the election process, mostly because those involved in the appointment process know the individual judges better and have a better perspective on how to fill the Court’s needs. That’s what happens when the process works. When it doesn’t you get a court packed with party hacks like Scalia, Thomas and Alito.
I understand that the upcoming election has dire consequences on our economy and that who wins can make a big difference on how millions of Americans live in the next four years but the real, the most important outcome of the election will be how it effects the Supreme Court because the makeup of the Court will effect the nature of the country for decades not just years. One more conservative judge will turn this country into a bad version of a totalitarian oligarchy.
If the Citizen’s United decision, which turned our election process into a rich man’s wet dream wasn’t horrible enough, if this current ACA debacle doesn’t turn your stomach, then maybe the latest decision which allows strip searches of anyone detained for any cause, should put you on a plane for someplace with a little personal freedom like Somalia.
America, the land of the free and the home of the concentration camp! What the hell is happening to this country? All around the nation cops are acting like Nazi storm troopers, spraying tear gas and worse into the faces of defenseless women at peaceful demonstrations, the president signs a law that allows for unlimited detention without evidence or trial for anyone accused of being a terrorist, completely eliminating the concept of habeas corpus from our legal structure, and now the Supreme Court gives any half trained, bigot in a uniform the right to strip search anyone they want to, pretty much without limit. Where are we, Europe under Hitler or Argentina in the ‘70s?
This deterioration of American justice has to stop and it has to stop right now. It’s no wonder the gun nuts want the right to keep their M16’s. They seem to be the only ones who have the prescience to have seen that they are going to need them to resist the totalitarian ambitions of our own government.
These new laws that take away our freedom in the name of fear are exactly what Osama bin Laden predicted, exactly what he wanted to achieve and because of our gutless inability to take the hit but keep our freedom, he is getting everything he wanted and more, even in death. What everyone in our government from the President to Congress to the Court is doing, is buckling under to a threat that barely exists and selling our free democracy down the river rather than standing up on their hind legs, like men, and saying, do your worst, we will resist and we will live up to our obligation to continue to support a free America. We will not buckle under and steal the rights of our citizens just because of an outside threat. That is contrary to everything that we have grown up believing and contrary to the principals upon which our country and its democratic government is based. The November election is the time for every American who cares about the kind of country he wishes to live in, to stand up and vote. Vote out those who are trying to steal our liberty and let’s see if we can get a couple of people on the hill who understand what our founders had in mind when they broke from England and set up, what until now, has been the world’s shinning light of freedom and liberty. If this erosion of liberty continues, this will no longer be the land of the free. If we are to escape that ugly fate, it had better become the home of the brave.
Bits & Pieces #20
The Pope, in another decision right out of the middle ages has made Timothy Cardinal Dolan, a prince of the Church, a title that says it all about where this top heavy, power crazed organization is coming from. A prince, royalty; another prelate to step on the necks of the masses, another dictator to tell them how to think; this despite the fact that he hasn’t had an original thought in his entire tenure.
Now, Dolan, proving that he is as out of touch as any degenerate Renaissance prelate, has announced that the cash strapped diocese will throw away 45 million bucks to renovate an already sumptuous St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Way to go Timmy baby. You ignored and protected predatory priests. You wasted millions needed to help the sick and poor, on law suits that were the result of your defense of the, anything but Christ like behavior, exhibited by these degenerates, and now when the diocese is closing desperately needed schools for lack of funds, now when St, Vincent’s hospital was forced out of business for lack of funds, now when Catholic Charities has more need of funds to feed and house the poor then ever before, now you decide to throw away much needed millions to pretty up a tourist attraction.
*****
Contrary to the Republican candidates ridiculous accusations, gas prices are not caused by war, lack of drilling or anything else except Wall Street traders who deal in oil futures and commodity traders manipulating the market. They are the cause of high gas prices and it’s about time everybody accepted that fact. They actually add about $1.00 per gallon to gas prices as they trade oil futures back and forth, making a profit on each escalating trade.
The Newtish one claims that he doesn’t want another American president to bow to a Saudi King. In making that claim he is obviously catering to his unsophisticated redneck base. In reality, anyone with any brains or knowledge of international affairs knows that said bow is merely a matter of respect, something, respect, that the Newted thing proves he knows nothing about when he bows to the degenerate Rush Limbaugh.
But on another side of the coin, Newtey is spot on in his opinion of how we are handling the Koran burning crisis. Let’s face it, the books were burned because the Muslim prisoners were using them to pass messages, thereby desecrating them before our soldiers ever got their hands on them. If they had been using the Korans only for prayer this incident never would have happened. The Muslim fanatics who are making such a stink about the burnings are full of crap and we should treat them like the lying scum they are and we should also retaliate against anyone who brings violence against our troops.
Most of all, we should be pulling every American kid out of their worthless country. We don’t understand Afghanistan and they don’t want our help or our presence.
***
The GOP keeps complaining about Obama apologizing to people of other nations for bad things we, as a nation and George Bush our previous out of touch president have done. This, contrary to the GOP’s twisted logic, is not a bad thing and they should just get over it. Their attitude reminds me of a couple of macho kids who don’t want to back down so they get into a fight over nothing. Our previous screw up in the White House got everyone in the world to hate us by his superior attitude and disregard of international civility. Barak has just been trying to show the rest of the world that we are not a nation of arrogant assholes like Bush and Cheney.
Obama understands that his job is to keep the world on our side and to keep our kids from getting killed in dumb wars. Let’s hope he holds firm to that attitude because the next war we are facing is against Iran and there are a lot of warmongers who would like to start that one right now. Obama’s number one job is to show them that the solution to the Iran problem is to convince Iranians that it is in heir own best interest to abandon any nuclear plans.
*****
I keep hearing people say that the United States is a Christian nation. Where the hell do they get that idea? The First Amendment clearly states that, “Congress shall make no law representing an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” It’s one of the first things that our founding fathers dealt with and was constantly on their minds
George Washington stated in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796 that, “…the government of the United States is not, in any sense founded on the Christian religion…” How clear can you be? Sure we have lots of Christians in this country but the point of this country is that there shall be no religion that dominates our government. So when a bunch of Baptists or Catholics or Presbyterians starts bitching that the mayor won’t let them stick a kresh in front of town hall there’s a reason for his actions. How would those same Christians feel if the mayor let a bunch of Muslims hold their prayer service on the football field?
This country was founded by people fighting to escape the tentacles of religious power. The last thing they had in mind was the founding of a religious nation. They did not want the pressure of religious power, limiting the freedom to live their lives as they saw fit. So get it straight, this isn’t a Christian nation, we’re just a nation that’s ass deep in Christians.
*****
Well, it finally happened. Even the Republicans have gotten sick of all the lying they’re doing. The Newtish one finally got fed up and accused Romney of lying so much that he, Newt, couldn’t go on with the debate. He used as an example; an opponent who is adamant that two plus two equals five, so the discussion has nowhere to go. This is what he claims Romney is doing and he’s right. Of course Newt did it too. Politicians have been famous through the ages for lying but the present day Republicans have brought the process to a new low.
***
The religious right is, at this moment in time, surging in popularity, but there are now and have always been, stable conservatives who understand the dangers of a secular country
being too strongly influenced by religious fanatics.
In the words of someone who should know:
“Mark my words, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican Party and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damned problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
Barry Goldwater
***
And finally, Governor Jan Brewer, the woman who thinks like a very dumb man, signed into law a bill that defines the beginning of life in Arizona, as the first day of the woman’s last period. To those of you who are bad at math, that means a woman is officially pregnant in Arizona, about the time she starts thinking some guy is looking pretty good.
Playing at War
The idiot is at it again. Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is leading a group of almost one third of our less intelligent Senators in a resolution that would have us attack Iran if they have even the “capability” to create a nuclear bomb, This is whether or not they actually produce one. Yeah Joe, and you should be the first one out of the plane, hopefully without a parachute, when we invade.
This piece of gross stupidity comes in the wake of our intelligence agencies agreeing that Iran has decided not to build a nuke and our former head of military intelligence proclaiming that an invasion would be “pre-mature.” That’s intelligence speak for “Jesus! Don’t even think about it.”
Both the Israeli and American intelligence communities have agreed since 2007, that Iran had stopped work on a bomb in 2003 and had never resumed. That still holds true. Iran isn’t developing a bomb mainly because they have nothing to gain my having one, and that makes the right wing very sad. These guys think war is fun, mainly because their kids get exemptions and they’ve all got stock in Remington and Uzzi.
Sure, US neocons, Israeli headhunters and the news media want a war. The neocons like to kill things and make big bucks off the process. The Israeli right wants to show how powerful they are, even if they have to destroy their own country to prove it, and the media loves war because it gives even the least talented something to write about.
To deny Iran, the capability of creating a nuclear weapon is to deny them the ability to generate nuclear power and that is a road to war. Where do we get the right to tell another country what kind of power they can use? We don’t, mainly because we’re sitting on more destructive nuclear potential than anyone in the world.
But the stupidity of Lieberman and his war loving cronies is that even if Iran did develop a nuclear weapon, there is no practical use for it. One weapon? Israel probably has a couple of hundred, we have over two thousand ready to go and God knows how many more in storage. Iran will have one! Please!
What’s really amazing is that a couple of Lieberman’s backers are politicians that I used to think were pretty smart, legislators like Chuck Schumer of NY, Mark Udall of Colorado and Kirsten Gillibrand of NY. Of course there’s always the real warmongers with established moron, Lindsey Graham heading up the list. I would expect Graham to be backing a proposal like this but I am surprised at the other three. Maybe it’s just a cynical bow to the up and coming elections with the otherwise liberal senators looking to pick up some conservative votes due to a plan that they never expect to have legs. It’s a very dangerous game to be playing just to get a few votes and they should be ashamed of themselves.
So should the Republican candidates for the presidency; all screaming that we need to invade Iran just because they know that this will instill love in the blood thirsty gun lobby. Any degenerate clown who preaches war with Iran after what this country has been through in the last ten years should, himself, be put down.
When do we have enough of war and killing? What do we possibly have to gain from invading another country in the Middle East? Iran will never attack the US. It would be suicidal, a war they could not win. I was arguing with a right wing friend the other night, and stated that it was illogical to think Iran would do such a thing, My friend argued back that I couldn’t bank our safety on the concept that Iran would act logically. He was wrong. The problem we face is not Iran acting illogically. It is our own country doing so. Iran doesn’t want a war. Why would it? What could it possibly have to gain by being decimated, turned into present day Iraq? The people who are acting illogically are the religious right in Israel and the neo-cons in the US, all screaming to invade. They must be silenced or we will again make the same mistake Bush/Cheney made twice. That is something that our country is in no condition to survive. Not without destroying our economy.
Despite the obvious facts above, we are again on the brink of war. Why? It’s simple. Only one half of 1% of the United States public is fighting our wars. This makes being at war un-American, this is why we have been engaged in 2 wars for the last ten years and despite this we are now talking about getting into a third one.
Jon Krakauer states accurately that we are asking our soldiers to do two jobs when they are only trained to do one. We ask them to fight, which is their business but we also ask them to nation build for which they have no affinity. They are not the Peace Corps. They are trained to kill people, not teach school or run day care centers.
Critics scream that we are always at war and this is true. We are a warlike nation. Maybe this time it’s because most American’s have no skin in the game. We are disconnected because we are not involved. I was a child during WWII. If you walked down any street you could see little flags with stars in almost every window. The nation was at war, the whole nation, not just a small minority who could easily be overlooked. Now a few hundred thousand professional soldiers are at war and the rest of us have nothing to do with it. Once America eliminated the draft, a huge step was taken in the direction of eternal war. Our citizen soldiers are gone and we now have a professional army and that’s what professional armies do – they fight.
I am not advocating the reinstitution of the draft, mainly because I don’t think our politicians have the balls to pass such a law but I do think that it’s time for some kind of national service to be enacted. I think it’s time for our young people… all our young people… to get an idea of what it means to be part of a nation. I’m talking about a national service from which there would be no exemptions, a broad based program hat would allow for military service, social service, infrastructure service, a whole raft of mini programs that would allow for service on enough levels that something would suit everyone and all would benefit, especially the country.
I will have more on this idea in a later blog but the point here is that for us to feel the pain of war or the joy of peace we must have a sense that we are all in it together, a sense that does not exist in this country, today. Maybe if more of us felt the pain of war we wouldn’t be so anxious to partake in its folly.
Maybe if a few wealthy mothers had to mourn the murders of their children fighting meaningless or for profit wars, their husbands would withdraw their investment in the machines that drive them.
The Warmongers Are At It Again
Why the hell are we so in love with war? What is wrong with the people of this country that they just aren’t happy unless our kids are risking their lives and ending others in places that have nothing to do with us?
We have barely gotten out of a stupid, illegal, non-productive war in Iraq, we are still engaged in an even more senseless, unwinnable mess in Afghanistan and we are already looking for an excuse to start another war in Iran. The Pentagon has decided that the 30,000 pound bomb they developed at a cost of $330 million isn’t up to the job of cracking Iran’s secret nuclear labs so they are asking for another $82 million to develop a bomb that s even bigger. No wonder people who can still think logically, want to cut the Pentagon budget. That bunch of fugitives from Dr. Strangelove, down in the five-sided building have gone completely over the edge. No one has ever accused the military of being logical thinkers but it seems to be time for those who are, to put the brakes on this bunch of hair-brained war-mongers before they go over the cliff again and we find ourselves involved in another senseless war in the Middle East.
Let’s just try to take a calm look at the whole picture because if we don’t the same crazies who got us into Afghanistan, Iraq, Nam and Korea will have us in Iran and undoubtedly with the same, destructive to the USA, results. These pseudo patriots don’t care how much they damage the nation as long as they can rattle their sabers, wave their flags, make some serious money and shout phony patriotic slogans to a mesmerized faithful. Did I say serious money? Yeah, I did, because that’s what it’s really about, oil and guns, that’s where the big bucks are.
I think the first question we have to ask ourselves is why would Iran want an atom bomb. What would they stand to gain by having one? They’ve had plenty of chances to see what happens to a country like Iraq, when it is falsely accused, by our Pentagon warmongers, of just having a little yellow cake. Do they really want that to happen to them? Are you dumb enough to think the answer is yes? They are already pretty much at the top of the heap in the Middle East. Now that Iraq is off the board, no nation in their region can threaten them militarily except Israel and even the few level heads in Israel don’t want to start a war.
The Iranians aren’t stupid, well, not all of them. They know that Israel fearing any kind of military advance by a nation that hates it, will act, as they are doing now, to stop that advance. There is no way they will give Israel an excuse to attack them on a larger scale. Everyone knows that Israel has a nuclear capability and no one doubts that they will use it; given the fact that they are surrounded by millions of Muslims who want to see them buried under the desert sands.
Our government knows this. We know that there is no real evidence that Iran is pursuing a weapons program. Our Intelligence Community, the Obama administration and IAEA report that Iran’s nuclear program is civilian in nature.
Why aren’t we all bent out of shape about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons? Pakistan is the most unstable nation in the region. What about North Korea’s?
No one in the Middle East wants another war, least of all Iran, which has the most to lose. The Iranians look at what we did in Iraq and they quake with fear. We took a functioning country with a nasty dictator and using the excuse of non-existent WMDs, we turned it into a trash heap with no stable government and no prospects for decades. Does anyone really think the Iranians want that?
And what about Israel? Do they want a war? I think not, at least I think that the sensible people don’t. Right now they have nothing to gain by a war. They have an economically thriving country with a serious Palestinian problem that has been pretty stable for the last thirty years. They know they can’t solve the Palestinian problem but they have been successfully living with it for so long that it has become like piles; they itch but they won’t kill you. Yes, there is a far right, religious element, (why is it always a far right religious element), that thinks war is the answer to everything. Of course most of them are too young to remember what happened to the Jews in the last big war so they think back only on the triumphs since 1947 instead of what happened before that in Germany and Russia.
No one, not Iran, not Israel, not the United States, not anyone has anything to gain by a new war in the Middle East and they all know it. Iran isn’t building a bomb because it is more dangerous for them to have one than it is for them not to have one.
Israel isn’t looking to attack Iran because that act will absolutely start a war in which all the surrounding countries will have a stake and right now the Israelis are too fat and sassy to risk what they have on such an unstable endeavor.
The sane heads in the US don’t want a war because we don’t want to lose any more of our kids just to give the nut cases in the Pentagon something to do. We don’t need another war that we can’t afford on either a human or a financial basis.
In the last ten years we have fought two wars that we didn’t need to fight. They broke our country economically, they caused untold heartbreak to American families who lost loved ones for no good reason. They resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of civilians who had no reason to die. When is it enough? When will the murderers who preach war have drunk enough blood? As American’s we have a just pride in our military but when will they finally be used to keep peace in the world instead of as a tool of those who pursue oil, power and the wealth assured by the needs of the military war machine?
The Republicans will now be demanding that the President endorse an Israeli strike against Iran. Obama must resist doing that. He doesn’t have anything to prove on the defense front. In fact he has spent the last three years cleaning up the two wars that the Bush gang started and getting rid of bin Laden and most of his commanders, something the Republicans were unable to achieve. He has gotten us out of Iraq and if he continues on the current track will have us out of Afghanistan in another year. It’s time to put wars behind us and concentrate on building a working world peace.
The Smart & Dumb of it.
I keep wondering what kind of country we’re living in, where we spend more than twice that of any other civilized country on health care costs and end up rated last among those countries in health care delivered. I wonder why so many of us feel so angry at those less fortunate than ourselves, simply because they need assistance to get through their daily lives.
I have a lot of Republican friends; one of them has asked me not to always be calling Republicans stupid. I know that Angelo is right. All Republicans are not stupid. There is actually a segment of the Right that is smart, and acts like real human beings. Then there is another segment that is very smart. Unfortunately, most of the very smart ones are showing their intelligence by screwing everybody else.
Let me explain why I feel this way. I had a discussion last week with a smart guy who was complaining about the welfare state, a common complaint from many conservatives. This guy is extremely well off and to the best of my knowledge uses his wealth in the right ways. But he was going on and on about the evils of unions and about people who collect unemployment insurance but don’t look for jobs, etc, etc. I was forced to point out that there wouldn’t be unions to have evils, if there had never been abusive management. He grudgingly agreed but was still unhappy with their existence. Then I pointed out that for every lazy clod who collects unemployment insurance and doesn’t look for a job, thereby gaming the system for a couple of hundred bucks a week, there is a an oil company president, a banker, a hedge fund operator, a lobbyist, a congressmen or a judge who have gamed the tax system to screw the entire nation out of millions a week and that’s who he should be worried about.
America has long wallowed in its notion of exceptionalism and it should. We are the biggest, most exceptional bunch of crooks in the history of the world. Everyone who is able too, is stealing with both hands.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think the Republicans have a monopoly on dishonesty or stupidity. We all share equally in those All American attributes. The Republicans are just more out front about them. They just don’t seem to care if you know they are thieves because they feel, as I do, that most people are functionally unable to figure out the basic realities of life, and that they can get their followers to ignore the fact that they are stealing them into abject poverty by convincing them that red flags like abortion, contraception, gay rights, immigration, Planned Parenthood and a few welfare cheats are more important than the reality that they can’t feed their own kids.
When I speak to a guy, as I did last month, who has lost his home to foreclosure, who had to take his sick kid to the emergency room because he didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford a doctor’s visit and whose wife is seven months pregnant and has seen an obstetrician only once, and he tells me that the problem with this country is that we have lost our faith in God and that immigrants are the cause of his being out of work because they charge less than $45 per sheet to tape sheetrock, I know that there are people who are just too dumb to breathe and I also have found that most of them vote Republican.
Sure I see guys like George Will and David Brooks who are conservative and smart as hell and I remember some of the heroes of my youth like William Buckley, who was exceptional, but these guys are the exception. They have intelligence that is supported by some kind of moral conviction. They are not hate mongers and they do not try to turn us against our fellow man to give them an advantage. They understand and often speak against the ludicrous stances of the NRA, lobbyist organizations, big oil, big gas, Monsanto and the Kochs; whose only goal is to turn this country into an oligarch dynasty where the super rich rule and the rest of the nation become serfs.
Of course the super rich hate big government. They hate it because its function is to protect guys like you and me from them. When do the oligarchs get behind any legislation that is aimed at helping the everyday Joe and his family? Never! But look at what they are attacking. Look at what they brand socialism and attack as un-American; Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, unemployment insurance, any program that helps the poor or middle class.
The oligarchs scream that we have too much government, that government is big and wasteful. It is big and wasteful, but it wouldn’t have to be big if it weren’t so taken up with fighting those who are always trying to game the system and screw the little guy. It wouldn’t be wasteful if there wasn’t always some rich guy with an angle, trying to get it to buy some product or institute some service on which that guy can make a buck.
A simple example is our defense budget, probably the most wasteful area of our national economy. Why is it wasteful? Because there are always thousands of defense contractors and munitions manufacturers, paying millions of dollars to lobbyists to sell their product, useful or not, to the generals who buy the goods.
Take the Abrams Tank. The military says they have more than enough of them and wants to stop production. Lt. General Robert Lenox, the Amy’s deputy chief of staff told the Senate last month that we should close the factory that makes them for three years because we had more tanks than we know what to do with. He included the information that the move would save American taxpayers $1.3 billion in defense spending in 2012 alone. General Dynamics, the manufacturer, let loose its entire lobbying force and convinced 137 House members that saving this kind of money was bad for America. How do you suppose they did that? Do you figure it was money, favors or just old fashioned hookers? It doesn’t make any difference and it shows that the problem isn’t big government the problem is twofold, big business and complicit dishonest government, government that is in the pocket of said big business.
Now I understand that the congressmen from Ohio where the plant would shut down are against the proposal. They should be, because it’s going to cause employment problems in their district but the congressmen from Mississippi should be, full out, for it, because it will release federal money that can be spent on education and medical care, both of which, are sadly lacking in Mississippi.
But both groups are fighting against the reduction. Why? Because, guaranteed, General Dynamics is spending millions in lobbying costs, perks and favors to make sure that factory stays open, continuing to make a product that we don’t need at a cost we can’t afford. This is what I meant above about the very smart using their intelligence to fleece the not so smart and the not so smart being dumb enough to support the very legislators who are screwing them because those legislators know exactly when to mention, gay marriage, contraception, God and the little brown people who are taking away their jobs.
Loading...