The Supremes miss the boat

You have got to hand it to the Supreme Court of the United States: They probably have done more damage to the country than they realize.

In two days, in my opinion (and one shared by many people), the justices in split decisions have done considerable damage to the rule of law in the United States.

Granted, I am not saying that the justices don’t have that power, because they do, and however wrong I, or anyone else, may think their reasoning and conclusions may be, what they say is how the law is supposed to be interpreted and applied in the United States. That is the compact we live under. I don’t have to like it. You don’t have to like it.

But love or hate the decisions they make we have to accept them as the new rules that govern the nation (at least until the political process can come up with a new way someway to interpret the compact that stands the scrutiny of the justices). If you don’t like that, then move to another country.

Now, having said all that, I think the Court’s rulings on both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and on “gay” marriage are faulty. Both of them for basically the same reason: They chose to redefine words with established definitions.

To some people this may not seem to be a big deal, but in the realm of the law, its rules live and die on definitions. How words are defined is established by tradition and precedent, and in both these cases the concurring justices chose essentially to say that neither tradition nor precedent was enough to warrant not changing the definitions.

Now, liberals and progressives will tell you this is as it should be because words evolve, the language evolves and over time things mean differently than they did before. Only in these cases, that really is not the situation. The justices just decided it was.

For example: the word “state” in the context of the U.S. Constitution and Congressional legislation has a pretty specific meaning that has been held for roughly 228 years. That definition is no longer valid. When legislation or regulatory rules are made now, rather than meaning just the political subdivision of US called the “state” (of which there are 50 of them), the word now means either the states (in the traditional sense) or the federal government, depending on how you want to interpret it in the political/social context.

I understand the argument that ruling the PP&ACA (Obamacare) would have adversely impacted millions of Americans and I imagine that played a significant role in the thinking of the justices. The court is loath to play bull in the china shop with the U.S. economy and usually seeks ways to avoid doing it. Of course, the court could have done as it did 30+ years ago with the bankruptcy code and stayed striking it down in Toto and told Congress it had six months to fix the problem. But that would not have served the ends of those on the liberal end of the court whose political view of the world is that role of the government is expansive and such things such as health care are a right (wrong … but that is an argument for another day).

The justices did the same thing with granting equal rights to same sex marriages.

Look, I have no problem granting two people of the same sex who wish to enter into a contractual relationship (which, legally, is all “marriage” is) and receiving government benefits equal to those granted “married” couples. No problem whatsoever. But you have to recognize that this really isn’t about people loving each other or living together; it is about those benefits. All the rest really is just window dressing.

Granted, it is an effort by a minority of our population trying legislate social acceptance of behavior which is, by any estimation, a tad bit on the abnormal side and in most cultures is considered something other than acceptable behavior. In some it may be tolerated more than others but pretty much universally it is considered aberrant.

So, the justices decided, based pretty much on a loud and orchestrated campaign of political correctness, to say that such pairings had right to be called “marriages” and were indeed a constitutional right (S0 that they had to be recognized in all 50 states). In essence, they redefined the millennia old meaning of a word in almost all cultures and religions to fit what they thought was correct in our evolving world.

The court, however, was correct in saying what is a contractual right in one state has to be in all states. So, in that sense, they did do something right.

To me, at this junction, I don’t have a dog in this fight. My objection is to the laisse faire playing with the language. Now, I know this is what lawyers and judges do all the time and it is what they get paid to do. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I see it as an assault on the rule of law, for remember the law hinges on words and how they are defined. Start changing the definitions and you tear at the foundations of the law. And if people can change definitions at will, then we become a nation of men and not law, as the old saying goes.

In one footnote, I would say that this ruling opens the door to polygamy becoming a constitutional right. You might say “nah, never happen”, but 20 years ago people were saying the same thing about gay marriage.

Obama still doesn’t get it.

I am not responsible. I am sorry, but it was not really my fault

 

President Barack Obama gave an televised interview this week where he said he was sorry that his actions led to thousands, if not millions, losing the health care insurance policies they liked after he had repeatedly promised they wouldn’t.

See, scream the liberals, progressives and his supporters, he apologized. Now everything is hunky dory. He didn’t mean for it to happen.

Folks, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and the intentions here, it would seem obvious, were not necessarily good.

First, according to the New York Times “Mr. Obama said he had not purposely misled anyone. He said it was always his intention that no one should lose a plan he wanted to keep.”

If that was true, then the caveats and codicils that got tucked away in the law and its resulting regulations would not have made policies that administration minions decided were not good enough for people to have had to be dropped if they changed one twit after a certain date would not have been written. But they were and that was with malice aforethought. It became a way to get the insurance companies to drop current “inadequate” policies and replace them with the politically acceptable policies mandated by the administration.

IF the president didn’t know this was going to happen, then folks, he is a dolt. Either that or his staff is about the most incompetent group of yahoos that have ever worked on Pennsylvania Avenue.  It is not like years ago, people in the various executive branch departments were not saying: “Oh, yeah, and large percentages of existing policies are going to go away when we put this new stuff into effect.”

Did he just turn a deaf ear to these reports, or did his staff shield him from them? I don’t know, but in either case, he screwed up as a leader and that is what we hired him for (well, at least some of voted to hire him).

That there are a whole lot of incompetent senior executive service people still holding their jobs is really telling. The president is saying, admitting, that there is no accountability in his administration (and we thought Dubya was bad).

I hope that management and leadership programs across the nation are taking copious notes on how NOT to be a leader. Unfortunately for the United States, our president is giving a lesson in how to do that.

Politics should stop being politics

Obama: Congress should stop bickering

The President thinks that the Republicans and Democrats should stop fighting and arguing over how the federal government spends its money. They should stop “manufacturing” crises and stop being “out of touch” with the American people.

TIME OUT!

Mr. President, what world are you living on, because it sure ain’t the same one the rest of America lives on.

Sorry, but the Republicans and the Democrats pretty much are doing what they are supposed to do: Represent the interests of the people who sent them there. Now that does not mean everybody in their district or state, but the people who voted and supported them. That, Mr. President, is how a representative democracy works. You don’t like that, then move to a different universe.

I know that I am a voice in the wilderness here, but, people, we have to understand that the US does not speak with one voice. It never has and it never will. Currently there are more that 310 million of us, each with our own mind and our own view of how things ought to be. Neither of the major political parties represents the view of the majority of Americans – especially on every issue. That is what makes politics politics.

Mr. President, you want Congress to pass a budget? Then call Harry Reid over in the Senate and tell him to pass the next budget bill that comes over from the House as is. Don’t play around with it, just pass it. And then you sign it. But, you and I know that isn’t going to happen.

And it hasn’t happened since the Republicans became the majority in the House. Every year, since 2009, the House dutifully passes the various and sundry authorizations and appropriations bills (like some 26 of them each year) and every year during that time the Senate has piddled and diddle and not one thing has it resolved. Why? Because the Democrats won’t accept what the Republicans have passed.

Every year, the Congress ends up passing a “continuing resolution” that, I guess, now extends all the way back to 2009 (it actually doesn’t but that is a different story). As Pappy used to say: That is one heck (he WAS a gentleman after all) of a way to run a railroad.

All continuing resolutions do is kick the can down the road to be dealt with again whenever it runs out.

So, the problem has not been in the House. It has been doing its job all along. And the problem is not with the Senate Republicans; they are just standing by what their House brethren have sent over. No, the problem lies on the other side of the aisle.

Now, I will guarantee you that you will not see it reported that way because it does not fit the establishment narrative of the problem.

I saw this back in 1994 when the GOP first took the House after being the minority party for more than 40 years. The establishment media was in a quandary. Over 40 years the reporters and pundits had established where they could go to get information and where the levers of power were. In an election, all that was washed away and it upset them. No longer could they go to the “usual suspects” and get the low-down on what was going on the backrooms and the cloakrooms of Capitol Hill. For a reporter who has spent years developing news source relationships, that is a very disconcerting feeling.

The new folks in power on the Hill, a bit chary of those who had developed such deep relations with their opponents, were less than welcoming to the established reporter and pundit class. So the feeling became mutual and the media bias grew to a deeper chasm.

Now, Mr. President, I know that neither you, nor any of your staff, or anyone else of note or power will read my ramblings (well, maybe someone at the NSA who is bored to death might), but please quit blaming others for your own lack of leadership.

The budgetary train wreck, the health care train wreck, the foreign policy train wreck, they are all your responsibility. Don’t slough them off on your minions. Don’t ask your co-equals in government (the ones who are to set the polices and priorities that you are to execute with the resources they give you) to do things that you apparently are unwilling to do.

Compromise is a two-way street and Congress is a co-equal with the Presidency (as is the Supreme Court). That is how the American republic was designed and how it is supposed to work. (Not by executive order and writ, as you just demonstrated with the setting up of new panels, etc., to sidestep the role of the uncooperative Congress – AND that is yet another rambling I will not digress into)

Nuff Said. Have a nice day. 

Unbelievably incompetent

Obama "blindsided" by Obamacare problems

Kathleen Sebelius says President Barack Obama didn't hear that there may be problems with the sign-up portal for his signature health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – aka Obamacare - until it went live on October 1.

You have got to be kidding me.

If he didn’t know, then as a leader he was not asking the right questions and that is inexcusable. If he wasn’t told, then he was being served by incompetent subordinates – and that is being charitable.

One basic rule of management: You, the manager, never should be surprised when things go wrong. In fact, a wise manager expects it and prepares for it. By the same token, competent subordinates never, ever, ever, let the boss get blindsided, especially if they are aware that something MIGHT go wrong.

So, President Obama did not know until the web portal for his most important legislative achievement was rolled out to serve the public that it was in deep trouble and had serious problems with it implementation. Ah, that is not the fault of the Tea Party. It is not the fault of Congress. It IS the fault of the man in the Oval Office and his immediate staff. That he didn’t know about it does not absolve him of any of the responsibility for the disaster that has occurred since Oct. 1.

President Obama needs to take note that, as President Harry Truman said in a legendary sign on his desk, the buck stops there, in the president’s office. No where else. It is not the fault of the Health and Human Services secretary, regardless of whether she is willing to fall on her own sword or not. It does not fall on his chief of staff, or the various people on down the government food chain that oversaw the development (at a cost of more than a half-billion dollars) of the program that was supposed to be as easy as booking a flight on Travelocity, the online travel agency (and that is pretty easy. I have used it for more than 15 years).

That Sebelius still has a job is amazing. That people are letting her be the fall guy is appalling. Yes, she bears some responsibility – it was her people who were supposed to get it right and to warn her (which apparently they did) when it looked like there would be problems so she could give the boss the heads up that things were not going to be hunky dory, but the buck does stop with the president and he should be lopping off heads.

Of course, that is not going to happen. You see, it seems (and I may be wrong) that in the progressive/liberal mindset there should be no consequences for failure. No, that would be unfair and inhumane. Because all people are good people and bad things never should happen to such people.

Well, if you buy that, as the old saying goes, I have some oceanfront property to sell you in Arizona.

Now, even good people make mistakes and sometimes even do bad things. The problem we have is there has been a track record of no accountability and it is plaguing our entire social construct in the United States. 

Unfortunately, it appears that our leader is one of the worst offenders in this department.

People, we have a problem in this country and it goes straight to the top. We have a leader who refuses to engage and who seems never to accept that the burden of leadership makes it his fault, not his subordinates, when things go wrong … and when things go dreadfully wrong, it is even more important that the leader step up and assume the mantle of responsibility.

Short of him resigning, which would be the proper thing to do, we will have to put up with three more years (after five already) of this incompetence. Bend over, as the saying goes, and get used to it (if you aren’t already).

Lastly, as a retired newspaper editor, I am deeply saddened by my compatriots in the journalism profession for their failure to pillory this administration for its incompetence. However, I have grown to expect it.

Who is blocking the solution to shutdown, debt limit?

Senate Democrats block progress on debt limit, shutdown

Reid nixes bipartisan compromise in Senate

The folks over the Huffington Post are all happy because the people they like in the Senate are all over throwing various compromise solutions back in the faces of the Republicans if they offer any.

 

NO SURRENDER! NO RETREAT!

 

I think the American people deserve a little bit better than this, but I understand the sentiment and it is a two-way street. However, having said that, it seems egregious to me that the Majority Leader in the Senate, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, rejected a compromise proposal by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, that had the support of at least six Democrats. Not enough to invoke cloture (should someone decide to filibuster it), but enough to pass the bill if all the Republicans bought into the measure.

So, the narrative remains that it all the Republicans’ fault. I am sorry, but that meme doesn’t fly anymore. This has become a situation where the progressives/liberals are saying “We won the White House. We still control the Senate. It don’t matter what the House says, especially since it is controlled by the opposition. What we want goes, period. End of sentence. End of story. And if you don’t like that you are a hostage-taking, kidnapping, baby-killing, ransom-demanding, terrorist bomber.”

If it were left to me, and I was the only one whose vote mattered, I would start with serious clearing out of the halls of Congress in November 2014 (if not sooner in those states where recall elections are permitted) and I would start with the liberals and progressives, and probably would continue on down to all the elected folks, and then start on the career staff that man all the policy-affecting offices in the congress members’ offices. Now, that is not going to happen, but it is what I would do.

Of course, there is little I could or would do with the blatant partisanship among the various news gathering and news disseminating organizations, other than call them on the fact that they are not fair and balanced, especially the ones in the broadcasting field but also including those in the traditional print media.

Sorry, but label what passes for journalism now as what it is: in the traditional sense of it, we are living again in the heyday of new era of Yellow Journalism.

Wikipedia's defines "Yellow Journalism"

Now, if you don’t know about Yellow Journalism, you need to go back a little more than a century or so, and look at the way the news was covered by the “majors” … not a pretty sight.

The “objective journalism” standard never really has been the norm, but for a brief shining period there in the 1950s and 1960s (and maybe into the 1970s and early 1980s) it was something that mainstream journalists professed as their goal. Not that they even came close, but it was the dream of a lot journalists that trained in that era.

So, I think it is time for us to let go of that illusion and realize that is not the case. Time to realize that everyone has a point of view and to them, it is fair and balanced and everyone else’s is prejudiced.

However, I would like to disabuse those who say that the House has no right to defund programs it doesn’t like. Sorry, but that dog don’t hunt. You may not like it, but the same thing was tried when the Iraq War went south. Remember the people who voted for the war before they voted against it? If you don’t remember that issue, then you need to have your memory checked because it wasn’t that long ago.

And just because some law has passed Congress, and has been upheld by the Supreme Court, does not mean that law is engraved in stone … and unless it is an amendment to the Constitution, it is not necessarily the supreme law of the land. Federal statutes do take precedence over state law, but that does not equal constitutional status.

If it were the case, then little things like the Fugitive Slave Act and the Volstead Act would still be the law of the land. Or Plessey v. Ferguson would still be in effect. Nope, laws can be changed. Courts can change their opinion on what is constitutional and what is not.

Even if it is a law, Congress (especially in the case of the House) has the prerogative to vote against providing any funds to enforce or put any law into effect. Heck, it has been underfunding immigration enforcement for years.

I really would hope, however, that more people would look at the situation unfolding in Washington, D.C., and recognize that despite the repetition of the canard that it all is the fault of the party that controls the House of Representatives, the fault for this mess does indeed lie elsewhere.

To me, the answer is obvious beyond debate.

Nuff said.

I think Jimmy Carter should stick to building houses

Democracy is not working in US: Jimmy Carter

Former President Jimmy Carter does some pretty amazing work with his wife through his efforts with Habitat for Humanity. I really laud his efforts there.

Unfortunately, when he strays from that he kinda loses me.

For example, I think Habitat for Humanity is an incredible program. It helps build homes for people who otherwise might not have one and those people have to put some sweat-equity into not only their new home, but others as well. It is part of the Habitat contract with the individual. No, these homes are not just given to people gratis. Sorry, that isn’t what the program is about.

In addition, in most places, it is not a government program. I think that is one reason that it works so well. It is a non-governmental effort that makes agreements with families that through donated labor and material a home will be constructed to modern standards as long as the person agrees to put in so many hours working on their own home as well as helping build other homes. I think that is a fair trade.

However, I think President Carter implies a lot more than he bargains for when he starts saying that things like housing, health care and education are “rights.” Yes, they are necessary things and things that one would hope that most people would have at least some access to. 

Having said that, I would start to question where one draws the line on providing necessities to people. It is the old “How much is enough” question and who gets to decide what enough is.

For people like Carter, it seems that government is the answer to who should be doing the providing and begs the question of who decides how much is enough. And of course, if government is not guaranteeing food, housing, health care and education, then obviously democracy is failing.

Sorry, Mr. Carter, but that is a bunch of hokem and you should be old enough and smart enough to realize that it defies human nature. You and the folks with Habitat are smart enough to require a contract from the new homeowners, but it seems that when something becomes a “right” and is provided by the government, then the contract that requires some return from the purchaser (receiver of goods and/or services) gets lost somewhere.

Actually, Mr. Carter, democracy is alive and well in the American republic. Maybe you don’t like the way things are going, but then you had your chance and the American people chose a different course than you were offering some forty years ago. Sorry, but the American people weren’t buying what you were selling. (I remember, because I had to endure double-digit inflation and mortgage rates pushing 20 percent and witnessed double digit unemployment when benefits were far less generous than now.)

I am afraid the President Barack Obama is having to learn the same lesson that President Carter had to learn. Sometimes, a large number of people in the US tend to resent things just being handed to them or someone else. They see the ultimate fairness in exchanges – like the sweat-equity contracts demanded by Habitat for Humanity – for goods and services.

A lot of people look at 99 weeks of extended unemployment benefits and scrunch up their noses and eyebrows and wonder what the heck is going on. They also look at people expecting the government to provide them with housing, healthcare, food and cellphones and wonder whatever happened to the contract where you had to give in order to receive?

Take the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Mr. Carter: Interestingly enough a slim majority of Americans (at least reflected by the people they sent to represent them in the House of Representatives) seem to think it is not working out like it was projected and maybe there should be some changes in the program … like making it apply to everybody and not just those unfortunate not to have the pull to be exempted from its provisions and face fines etc. if they don’t get with the program. So their representatives are using the constitutionally-mandated power given them to rattle a few cages and try to get the attention of the Senate and the Executive Branch to maybe tweak the law some.

You need to put a call in the Mr. Obama, Mr. Carter, and tell him that maybe he should be listening more to the people and less to the media, the pundits and his political cronies.

Just a random thought there.

New Narrative: GOP moves goal posts

CNN: GOP changes demands to resolve impasse

I love politics … because it is so predictable … at least in the US.

Ok, to be out front – the way I see it – the shutdown could be ended today if the SENATE would pass the funding resolutions in its current hopper.

That won’t happen because the SENATE is holding out for one big omnibus continuing resolution to fund ALL government operations. It is either the omnibus spending bill or no bill – the so-called “clean CR” – according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and President Barack Obama.

However, I am seeing others starting to pick up on the point of view that what the House of Representatives is doing is IN FACT just what those silly dead white men 225 years ago wanted it to do in cases like this when they wrote the U.S. Constitution. This is exactly what those evil “framers” or “founders” of our government expected and wanted the House to do. It is performing its role as a check on the Senate and the Executive Branch (the president) by exercising its power over the purse.

Now, there are those, mainly progressives, who see this as a bad thing (although they were busy trying to defund military operations in Iraq just a few years ago), but it really is what people like James Madison and the others who sweated the summer of 1787 out in Philadelphia to contrive a more perfect union meant to happen.

What those less than three-score of gentlemen did really is quite remarkable, when  you look at the diversity (yes, Virginia, they were a diverse cultural lot) of the group and the interests that they represented.

It indeed was a grand compromise, that no one went home 100 percent satisfied with the result (the biggest rift was over the institution of slavery), but it still put in place a formula for governance that pretty well stood the test of time … until we all got complacent about it and for reasons discussed very well by the guru at Strafor (George Friedman) we have let ideologues grab the wheels of power.

(The roots of how we got here)

Still and yet, the government is functioning pretty much within normal designed operating parameters – despite the rather bizarre rhetoric and talking points being distributed by the leadership of the Democrat Party and its supporters.

As I told one person today, it ain’t time to man the barricades just yet.  Her concerns are well grounded, I told her, and not all people are quite as tolerant and generous as she might be but while we may be in the latter stages of the infamous “Cycle of Democracy”, there always is hope. Hope does spring eternal, despite what we might think in moments of despair as we watch/hear/read the news each day from various sources competing to get us to accept their view of world affairs.

That most of them – at least all those people who talk at us via the TV and Internet these days as well as those who we have elected to lead the government - really are being disingenuous (being charitable here) is most distressing and, as Pappy used to say, you just want to knock some heads together to knock some sense in them.

Does it not seem strange that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting can get a chunk of money (some $445 million) while the $100,000 that supposedly goes to the survivors of American service members killed in the line of duty (roughly two dozen since Oct. 1, including four killed in action in Afghanistan) has been suspended because the government can’t afford it?

Or how about a rally on the National Mall by supporters of amnesty for people who have entered the United States without the proper documentation or have overstayed the visits they said they were going to have when groups of aged veterans from World War II are denied access to the open-air memorial on the same mall and threatened with arrest if they come back?

How about people being denied access to their privately owned homes and businesses that happen to have ended up on property owned by the federal government in the creation of various national parks?

Or the National Institutes of Health enrolling a half-dozen or so sick children in special treatment programs even though they have been forbidden to do so by the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office Building next to the White House?

If that does not sound to you like misplaced priorities, then I would question whether you should reexamine those priorities. I definitely think there is some serious misrepresentation of issues going on here.

And no, the federal government is not going to default on its debt payments, unless someone in the executive branch really screws things up.

A) Under existing funding legislation (and that already passed by the House) funds are available to pay the interest on the national debt … hence, no need for a default because that is what is required. It is when you don’t make those payments that you default. It is a bit like paying your mortgage (even in the worst of times, if all you can do is pay the interest portion, the lender probably will not give you too much of a bad time).

B) The federal government does not need to raise the debt ceiling in order to make these payments, because it takes in enough money in taxes, tariffs, duties, etc., to cover the interest due along with a whole bunch of other things.

The debt ceiling debate is sort of like arguing over which credit cards you are going to try to pay this month, with one side let’s just raise the credit limit and the other side saying that it might be a good idea to start cut back on how much we are spending.

Unfortunately, what we are being treated to daily by those we have hired to run our government is a whole lot less than the truth and a whole lot of stuff to try to scare us into demanding that one political party’s viewpoint is the only acceptable one.

I don’t think so.

But that is enough of my random thoughts for this go around.

Nuff said.

I hate being prescient

Senate committee passes bill to define "journalist"
Forty years ago, as a young college journalist, I attended the national convention of Sigma Delta Chi as a student delegate. SDX, as it was called at the time, was what is now known as the Society of Professional Journalists.

At that meeting, during a session on the Watergate scandal involving the Nixon Administration, I got to ask a question of Benjamin Bradley, then the executive editor of the Washington Post and the response I got was “I was hoping no one would ask that question.”

My question? It was simple and straight forward. Mr. Bradley was on a panel and I directed my question to him:

“Sir, in light of all the investigative reporting the Post has done on the Watergate affair, what is your view of shield laws to protect journalists?”

There was this long pause, and then Mr. Bradley said, “I was hoping no one would ask that question.”

What followed was a lively discussion between the seven panelists (including one from the Watergate Special Prosecutor’s office (OSP)  who was in charge of negotiating with the media over getting information they had uncovered in their investigations). At one point, Mr. Bradley revealed that the Post that day had been served with a subpoena from the OSP, at which the poor fellow from the OSP about twisted his head off to look at the Post editor. You see, he was the first step in issuing those subpoenas and legal writs and he knew nothing about this one.

Now, I think Mr. Bradley and I shared a problem with Shield Laws. You see, the protections of the First Amendment apply to all American citizens, not just to people who work for newspapers, magazines or TV and radio stations (add in Cable Networks now).

So, if you are trying to protect freedom of the press by shielding reporters, etc., from having to divulge sources of information that ordinary citizens can be forced to divulge by court order then you have to define who is protected and who is not protected.

That is a very difficult problem because freedom of the press, as I have repeatedly pointed out over the intervening years, belongs to everybody, whether he or she is employed by a news gathering and disseminating organization or just somebody who is passing out leaflets on the street corner (or blogging on the internet). The people who promote shield laws want to make themselves protected like priests and lawyers but in each of those cases you have to meet a minimum requirement and basically be recognized (or licensed) by the government for the protect to apply.

My contention is that when you start “licensing” journalists then you are infringing on the freedom of the press of those people who are not employed by “media”. You see, for the court to say who is included in this special class of people, then somebody has to define what is qualifying news gathering organization.

If the court (government) only recognizes (therefore allows) only certain people the privilege of protecting their sources, then two things happen.

1. The equality before the law that is supposed to be the great hallmark of our system of governance is breached big time.
2. The government gets to say who gets to play and who does not and that opens the door wide for the suppression of unpopular views or even simple dissents from the consensus viewpoint.

Note that there is no way to define a journalist without running afoul of this trap, as I have patiently explained to an number of attorneys who were advocating journalist shield laws in a couple of states. They admitted I was right but argued that it was for a greater good.

My response to that is who set up journalists as gods and what requirements do they have to meet to be so designated. I say that because in my 30-plus years as a working journalist at 12 different newspapers across the United States, I have found many a good reporter / photographer / “journalist” who had none of the degrees or certifications that would qualify them as a “professional” other than their contributions to the publication that I was working for at the time.

I quit one editor job after the publisher told me that if he ever got sued, he was going to sue me. And he wanted me to play watchdog on local government officials? Oh boy, I got out of there as fast as I could.

Now, it seems the federal government is going to define who is a journalist and who is not. I warned people that this would happen if they started enacting shield laws. It also was just the first step in controlling the media. I repeat that warning now.

This is a bad law and I hope it won’t go anywhere.

Inequality is life

Obama: Inequality is morally wrong

 

President Obama, never my favorite person, just leaves me shaking my head with wonder.

Where did we find this guy?

Look, I think somebody needs to explain the realities of life to him (not that I expect it to happen).

When one speaks of  “equality” in the political/historical sense, we are not talking about equality of outcomes. We are not talking about everyone having the same as everyone else, or even anything approximating equality of what we may or may not possess.

No. what we are – or should be – talking about is equality before the law; with government treating us all equally and not showing favoritism toward any individual or group (or the flip side, persecuting or discriminating against any individual or group). However, it seems that concept has been lost in transition between generations somewhere … or maybe it was in translation.

Granted, the generations that came before us were not perfect, nor were they omniscient or omnipotent. Like us, they were flawed individuals who strove to make a more perfect union. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell people like President Obama and other progressives, that “union” does not mean people are to be shaped with a cookie-cutter to be exactly the same.

Equivalence of outcome is not the same as equality of opportunity, or – even more importantly – equality before the law.

As the President said in his speech this week, many people are being conditioned to believe: Inequality is wrong.

At first glance, it is hard to argue that “inequality” is wrong, but we have to define what is not being equal. If we are talking about economic outcome, then we are talking about something that is not the Provence of any government.

People are different. Individuals are essentially unique and therefore implicitly and explicitly INEQUAL. Sorry, but it isn’t going to happen. You can not use government to make everyone equal in life … it is impossible.

But our President is decrying the inequality of economic conditions and pledging to use the powers of government to correct this perceived problem … and if Congress doesn’t cooperate, he plans to do it by executive fiat.

If this doesn’t scare you, then you don’t understand that freedom isn’t free, liberty comes at a price and that if you want either then you have to accept that some people are just going to be different.

But no, we can’t have that. We have to resent all that others have.

That is beginning to scare me. I see far too many people, the President included, saying this group is wrong and that group is wrong and it is the federal government’s job to correct all that they define as evil, or wrong or an injustice.

We have lost our way, and unfortunately, the more I look at it, the more it seems that Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was politically prophetic.

 

This however is so very true:

Life is like a cup of coffee

Abdication of responsibility

Reid tells Obama not to wait for Congressional OK to raise debt

Did I miss something, or has the Senate been out to lunch for a few years now.

Ok, Congress is split between the Republicans holding the House and the Democrats controlling the Senate. It has been a recipe for gridlock (which really isn’t all bad) but it supposed to be a recipe for compromise. Unfortunately, it seems, under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, compromise with the House is beneath the Senate under his watch.

Note that the Senate has not passed an actual budget in more than three years, and now Reid is telling the president that he can raise the congressionally mandated debt ceiling by executive fiat and to ignore those idiots in the House who are demanding some cuts to federal expenditures as the price for raising the debt ceiling.

It matters not that the federal government already owes $15 trillion (yes, that is TRILLION as in 15,000,000,000,000 – yeah … with 12 zeros). It will run into a problem, because it is borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar it spends these days. Of course, it is all in the name of stimulating the economy.

However, it is Congress, not the Executive Branch, which controls the federal government’s purse strings according to that document nobody seems to want to remember these days called the Constitution. You know the basic law and charter that underpins who does what in the federal government and what the federal government can and cannot do. Yeah, that obscure document.

Well, it seems to me that Sen. Reid and his cohorts have pretty much punted and have abdicated their responsibility for the last three years. Now, it seems they want to give up even more responsibility to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

You know, just how modern American is that. Nobody seems to what to take responsibility for what they are supposed to do, society-wide, it seems. Okay, I am being a bit harsh on a goodly chunk of Americans, but it does seem that the mindset of let the other guy (i.e. government) take care of what needs to be done is carrying the day.

Washington Post political columnist George Will recently pointed how just how much the Democrats have basically given up on ever balancing the federal budget. Time for a balanced budget

It really is sad, when the people who are supposed to be representing the states can’t seem to do their jobs. But then again, I remind myself, this is what 52 percent or so of the country voted for back in November.

Just remember two things when the train wreck hits.

1. It is all the Republicans fault.

2. The federal government can spend all the money it wants because the “rich” will pay for it.

But that is the way it is in America … instead of a nation of industrious ants, we have become a nation of grasshoppers as per the ancient fable.

What was it the poet laureate of my generation used to say?

“What? Me worry?”   – Alfred E. Neuman.

Just how far?

Obama requests $60 billion for Sandy relief
The president has asked Congress to approve a special appropriation of $60 billion-plus to help the states hammered by Hurricane Sandy … and the governors are complaining it isn’t enough.
I am sorry (and I really am for those people impacted by the storm), but I am not sure why the federal government needs to go another $60 billion in the hole here. Yes, it would be nice, if the federal government had the money just laying around somewhere like so much pocket change, but it doesn’t.
The saddest thing to me is that the request and the complaints illustrate rather well how we have come to view the federal government as the source for all bailouts. It shouldn’t be. It wasn’t intended that it be. However, that is how the current crop of Americans views it.
It really is sad. I know that thousands upon thousands of people are affected by the devastation wrought by the hurricane. Just like what happened in Mississippi and Louisiana during Katrina. Guess what? Things like hurricanes happen when you live on the coastal regions of the eastern half of the United States. Yup, almost as regular as clockwork, one or more hurricanes is likely to hit somewhere along the coast every year.
It is not the result of climate change or global warming. It has been happening for millions, if not billions, of years. You really have to be a dope not to realize that sooner or later, no matter where you live along the coast, that sooner or later one of these bad storms is going to come along and do bad things. Granted, they do very bad things, but that is the thing about Mother Nature: She is stronger than anything man can build and we have to realize that.
Now, fortunately for human life, Americans have a pretty good warning system that pretty much helps them get out of the way of such storms, but the things that don’t move … well, they are going to take a major hit.
Of course, if you are smarter than the average cookie, and you have a place by the sea, then you have made preparations for the inevitable … but then again, maybe you haven’t.
In that case, I supposed that you always can call on the federal government with its bottomless pockets (remember, it prints the money) and it can come restore everything to status quo ante and even better (if you play your cards right). It really doesn’t matter anymore that the federal government basically is broke and living on its credit cards. That never hurt anybody.
But then again, maybe we haven’t learned anything from the near economic collapse four years ago.
I know I sound cruel and heartless, but I am not. I am only questioning why it is that Americans now always look to Washington to solve their problems. It didn’t used to be that way, but then communities were much stronger back then and you really knew your neighbors and families were closer. Future Shock’s nuclear family (or at least a shadow of it) now is the norm and with the telecommunications revolution making even international crises seem like local ones, it is a small wonder that even self-sufficient Americans turn to one source for all solutions.
It is not a good thing, in my humble estimation, but it is the way things are. Sad, because I fear there will be a really steep price that will have to be paid eventually. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I doubt very much (as old as I am) that I will be here when the piper comes demanding to be paid his due.

How can there be a vote with nobody there?

Harry Reid: Filibuster Changes Will Take Place In January

“Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has been working with Reid on the proposed changes, which would effectively force any senators wanting to delay a vote to visibly take to the floor and talk. Once every senator had left the floor and could no longer debate, a cloture vote would be taken that would require only a simple majority rather than two-thirds of the chamber in order to pass muster”

-  Quote from Huffington Post story on reforming the Senate filibuster rules.

Ok, let me see if I understand how this is going to work:

There is only one person left on the floor to debate and then they take a vote to cut off debate. Who the heck is voting? That one person? That would be a majority of one.

I thought a Senator had to be on the floor to vote, but I guess they now have early voting (they don’t?) and absentee ballots (they don’t?) or some other magical method to cast a vote without being in the Senate Chamber (i.e. on the floor).

It would seem to me, that the moment another senator returned to the floor, the debate would, in effect, be rejoined.

However, under Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, this is how Congress works folks with a huge hole in logic and understanding.

Then there is the little matter of having a quorum of Senators present in order to have a legal vote.

And people wonder why our faith in the federal government institutions is being sorely tested.

Election embarrassment?

America’a election process is an embarrassment
CNN Anchor Fareed Zakaria is not happy with his adopted homeland.
It seems that our highly decentralized system of voting is too archaic for him. It seems our transplant from South Asia, and I am glad he chose to immigrate to the United States and become a United States citizen, sees much more value in having instantaneous results available the moment the polls close according to some national schedule run by a centralized national board. All that would be fine, if all we were deciding was who was going to be president; unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) when we hold our general elections we are not just voting who will get to live in the White House for the next four years.
My first problem with Mr. Zakaria’s viewpoint is that it assumes that the central government always can do things better than the local government. Now, I would say that such a view is open to considerable debate. I think a lot of people in America would look at the statement: “I’m here from the federal government and I’m here to help” as an oxymoron.
I suspect, but I do not know with any certainty, that Mr. Zakaria’s grounding in American history is a bit on the shallow side. It certainly seems that he doesn’t understand that, as former House Speaker Tip O’Neill (D-MA) once was quoted as saying, “All politics are local.”
And when you are dealing with a country that has in excess of 300 million citizens (of whom about half are voters) and extends over about six time zones, that trying to run everything from an Election Central really isn’t all that feasible … or even practical.
The second problem is that he keeps confusing the U.S. with being a democracy. It isn’t. It is a democratic federal republic and that is not like the governmental organization that he grew up with. It is a different beast and a lot of people these days, addicted as we are to our ability to instantly communicate seem to think that we need to centralize not only our news gathering processes, but we also need to centralize all our political processes.
Now, looking at it from a news gathering perspective makes a whole heck of a lot of sense. It is literally easier for a journalist if all political decisions are made in one place rather then having to run around to a bunch of places to find out what political decisions are being made. I know, I have had to do that. One little newspaper (with our staff of five) found ourselves run ragged covering the local news, which included a county council, five city councils, several unincorporated communities, four different public utility organizations, two school boards, a community college, and a host of other local agencies and boards that spent public funds … and that was right there with telling the stories of our churches and schools and interesting people, as well as keeping tabs on a state senator, three state assembly representatives, a U.S. Representative, two U.S. Senators and a plethora of state elected and unelected officials. That is not counting 19 fire departments, seven different law enforcement agencies and some other stuff.
I would have loved to have had to go to just one stop, and have all that news just handed to me, but that is not what America is.
Mr. Zakaria needs to realize that, despite what he may think, we pride ourselves in governing ourselves. (Or at least we used to; his views have me getting worried). That means local people doing stuff like running elections because they include not only national elections but state, region, county, city, township and district elections. That is why ballots sometimes run to several pages, unless you want to put it all in such tiny type we all have to bring huge magnifying glasses to read the ballot.
No, his complaint is that when we hold a presidential election, we also hold all these other elections at the same time. He needs to get with the program here.
He also pointed out that our system relies a bunch on local people being honest. Heck, a whole bunch of states don’t require identification to vote … I seem to remember that the Democrats think that is an evil conspiracy by the Republicans to depress their vote.
Well, my point would be that I would much rather have a bunch of people trying to do their best at the local level, then to have some amorphous so-called “non-partisan” group from “Mount Olympus” trying to run the show.
Of course, modern technology would be wonderful and it would be wonderful if there was a one-size fits all solution to all the voting problems that seem to plague every election. But unfortunately, something which Mr. Zakaria seems to fail to address, is that for every solution there is a new problem. And, given what we have seen about computer hacking and other digital fubars, There is a lot to be said for the decentralized system and its ability to point to problems that really involve fraud and abuse.
Lord knows I am not saying the U.S. system is perfect.
To paraphrase my hero Mr. Winston Churchill in what he had to say about democratic forms of government:
It is a very bad way to run elections; it is only that others seem to be so much worse.

Failure to understand

Failure of the campaigns
American political system is not working
No matter how Tuesday’s (Nov. 6) election turns out, at all levels, we will have those 21^st Century types that don’t understand how this venerable American political system designed in the 18^th Century is working actually the way it was designed, which really is an amazing tribute to the people who have shaped it over the last 225 years.
In both of the above referenced articles, the authors complain of the “failure” of the American political system. Apparently, if I am interpreting their rhetoric correctly, the failure is in that the government apparently is gridlocked and cannot agree on solutions. This is bad, according to them.
Well, count me among those who say maybe it isn’t so bad.
Yes, both sides of the political spectrum are being fairly obstructive, but then that is their jobs. Their jobs are to represent the people who voted them into office, not their constituency at large. Now, I am not saying that these people are not educated, or unintelligent, but I am saying that I don’t agree with their understanding of how a democratic republic is supposed to operate.
To that end, I am reminded of a line from one of my favorite movies: What we have here is a failure to communicate.
First, there is a failure to communicate exactly what Americans view as their expectations of the role government (especially the federal government) in their lives, in their finances, their health and nutrition, and in the economic affairs of the nation in general.
There is a great divide in America right now between those who see a big role for the federal government providing for welfare of the American people and those who are suspicious of the federal government intervening in the lives of individuals. That divide, unfortunately, is wide and probably can’t be reconciled, but it will have to be accommodated somehow.
Second, somewhere along the line, two concepts were missed in translation and apparently failed to be communicated to the generations in the 21^st Century. The first concept is that instantaneous gratification really is not possible, no matter how much we want to believe it is. Part two is that winner takes all is not part of the democratic equation; rather it sows the seeds of conflict in the future, especially in a country that has more than one vision of what that future ought to be.
So, we have people looking at the American system and saying “It is broken” or “It is dysfunctional” when they really mean that it is not providing the solutions that they think it should. That seems to be more a problem of their expectations than whether the system is broken or dysfunctional.
However, assuming that it is “broken”, I would be very curious as to what their “solution” would be. My question is that while they may think it is broken, could it not be that the “system” is thinking, trying to ascertain what the best solution might be.
You see, your first reaction sometimes is not the best reaction. Sometimes it is, and then again sometimes it isn’t. We used to value people in this country people who would take the time to consider their actions, rather than merely react to certain stimuli. I fear that carefully considered approach is waning, to be replaced by the demands of those who require instant gratification.
I mean, just look at our wired world today. Millions, if not billions, of people have the ability to access information nearly instantaneously, make a snap judgment on that information (as incomplete as it may be) and then move on to the next thing that may attract their attention.
It takes no thought to do that. I would call it reactionary, but I suspect that many of those who are addicted to the swiftness of modern communications would revolt at being labeled as such, particularly progressives who seem to be enamored with the benefits of such technology.
We seem to have forgotten that it takes time to lay foundations and to build new edifices to our dreams and hopes for the future. No, we seem to have lost that perspective … and this is not just a left-right deal or liberal/progressive-v-conservative argument.
It is more of a generational thing, where those who vaguely remember what life was like before television, cell phones and the internet can recall having to wait … and wait … and wait … sometimes. Not just for decisions, but for the information to base those decisions on. Patience is not a virtue that Americans have.
The election, whenever it is decided, will not change things immediately. I hope people realize that. The system will continue its slow, inexorable process toward resolution of issues large and small … and no, the world is not going to come to end on Dec. 21.
The system is not broken or dysfunctional … it merely is not spitting out solutions at the pace your video game has taught you to react to.

Another civics lesson

Sometimes I think I missed my calling and should have been a high school civics teacher or a professor of history at some Podunk college. Still, I find within me this insatiable need to speak to my readers – whether here on my blog with its terribly few followers or at the small newspapers that I used to work for – about the American system was to be, historically, and how it really is.

For example: Taxes.

Why do we have taxes? To pay for those activities that we as the people who make up the governed – no matter what level, township, village, city, county, state or federal – have indicated to those elected to represent us that we would like to see government to provide for us.

Now, one of the two predicates for the American Revolution was that the American people wanted to have a voice (which parliament in London denied them) in the taxes that were levied on them. The second predicate was that that as citizens of Britain they thought it wrong that they would have to pay taxes that were not levied on other British citizens. They saw this as being patently unfair … I agree, and it still is.

Now, if you accept that definition and the precepts that the people have a right to voice in their taxes AND that those taxes apply to all citizens equally, then we in the United States have a major problem. Why? Because our taxes are not being applied equally to all taxpayers but rather there are giant differences, depending on a whole host of variables and factors that discriminate against individual taxpayers.

In other words, the government does not, will not and cannot treat all taxpayers equally. Now, you can say this is hunky-dory. You know, those who can pay more (a higher rate) should pay a higher rate. And those who do things that we as a society approve of or want to encourage get to pay less taxes than those who don’t do things we (generally as a group, with the majority ruling and sometimes only a plurality) like paying more.

Now, we have a whole variety of taxes and fees (which legally are different critters, as was pointed out by the Supreme Court this last summer in the ruling on the Affordable Care Act – known colloquially as Obamacare) that we Americans pay at each level of government. Local governments get to levy taxes on property, states and some cities get to levy taxes on sales, the federal government and states get to levy taxes on some products and activities (known as excise taxes) and the feds, states and some cities get to levy taxes on income and what is known as capital gains and interest income.

Pretty confusing isn’t it? I sometimes think it is all malice aforethought so those running the show can get away with what they want to do and line the pockets of their buddies, but I know that is being awfully cynical of me (who said being cynical is bad).

What complicates things even further is that these levels of governments can grant abatements, credits and deductions to encourage various things, like having a company or corporation open a new plant in your neighborhood to boost the tax base and bring in new jobs. Unfortunately, this is where things begin to go south, as the saying goes.

What happens is that those people who we elect to represent us … well, they are human, and most of the time they mean well … but business is business and anything to lower costs and maximize returns. Now, you can’t fault businesses, which are run by individuals who are trying to get the most from their investments of time, labor and capital – from the shop floor to the executive suite.

So, what do they do? They talk to the level of government that they want to curry favor with to grant them these indulgences. Something like what was going on in the Catholic Church back in the Middle Ages. Know you are going to sin? Well, go to the church and make a contribution and they will grant you an indulgence to absolve you of that sin and you won’t have to spend as much, or any, time in purgatory and go straight to heaven. This got to be a really big thing in the Middle Ages, especially with the wealthy who found they could just about do anything their little hearts desired and buy off the bishop to save their souls from damnation.

Well, that lasted until a priest by the name of Martin Luther came along and posted 95 reasons why the church was screwing up, screwing people and generally theologically wrong with this business of selling indulgences (and a host of other practices).

We need a Martin Luther for the tax codes in this nation. You see, as it stands now, everybody is out to game the system and get their own tax credits or deductions.

Look, nobody but nobody likes to pay taxes. That is a given. We pay taxes as part of our contract with our neighbors and fellow citizens. You know, we all chip in and then our government does something for the greater good, or something for each of us that individually we couldn’t afford.

For example, how many of us could afford to buy a fire truck, man it and operate it for that outside chance that we might have a fire on our property? So, we agree to pool our resources to fund the fire department. Now, here comes the hard part: Which is fairer? Everybody paying the same amount (flat fee) or how about we pro-rate it on the value of the property a person owns (a property tax), or on how much cash they have available on hand to pay (income tax) or maybe on how much value there is on the things they purchase (sales tax)?

I don’t have a magic wand and I don’t know what is best, but that same concept applies all the way through government and everything it does. With the federal government, which gets its income through customs duties, excise taxes and income taxes, this revenue applies to everything from Social Security to Medicaid to the Defense Department to the simple job of paying the people who clean the buildings on federal property and process all that paperwork we seem to want to generate.

Now, I do have some views:

Sometimes, a flat fee is appropriate.

Sometimes, an excise tax is appropriate … which is like a flat fee, only it varies by the product, such as the tax per gallon on gasoline or liquor.

Sometimes, it seems that an income tax seems appropriate. Only what seems inappropriate to me is the plethora of adjustments that can be made to the rate being paid. I am sorry, while I understand the rationale for all these deductions and credits and such, but they are the reason our representatives seem to be up for the highest bidder and that is wrong.

And then there is the argument about tax cuts and tax increases. Well, it all depends on whose baseline you want to take. To me, whatever the current rate is the baseline, but I know I am in a minority there.

I also am doubtful about raising the rate just because someone has the cash available to pay more. How would you like that at the store? You know, you get the same product at the check-out stand, but the cashier charges you more because you are dressed more nicely than the slug in front of you. No, I don’t think that is right.

So, as you muddle through your thoughts this election season, stop and think about those promises those candidates are making. You know what they really are doing is to buy your vote. Are you willing to sell it, just so you benefit or do you really want us all to chip in as we can to buy that fire truck, tank or whatever.

A puzzled person

What is it about this election that makes people hate so viscerally? I haven’t a clue, but I see it even in people that I hold in some respect.
I see it when individuals call political candidates “lying bastards” and other deeply offensive slurs. Why is it our language has become so coarsened that such pejoratives are acceptable … especially in public discourse? I see it when people attack others for disagreeing with them in terms that defy civility.
I watched the presidential debate on Wednesday night, and either I am totally blind or I didn’t see any flat out lying … and I certainly didn’t see any bastards. Oh, did they tell the absolute unvarnished truth? Give me a break. However, there was truth in everything that they said, depending on how you want to parse the facts. It was in the spin, rather than the facts, the mistruths were slung.
You see, I have become painfully aware that we all seem to view Plato’s shadows differently. We view things, I have come to realize, through different prisms and some of them are starkly different than others.
It makes me question my own reality and as hard as I can, I find it hard to find empirical evidence that disputes the perceptions I have gained over the six decades of my life.
Yes, politicians shade the truth to fit their cause. There was plenty of that on Wednesday night, on both sides. Maybe I hold a too high a standard to call out people on “lying” rather than telling the truth from a particular point of view.
So I look at what people say, and ask why? What is it that drives people to be so visceral in their hatred of their political opponents?
And then I step back and I look around the world at conditions in other countries and I realize that Americans are not any different. No, we are humans, just like everybody else. It would be nice to think we are “exceptional” but as humans we are not.
We do have an exceptional form of government and an exceptional (well, less now that at other times, maybe) economic system, but as a people, there is little different from others around the world. The dogmas may be different, even the ideologies, but the essence of our human nature is not different.
As I watched the debate, it was obvious that the challenger was beating the incumbent badly. It seemed such a mismatch. Mitt Romney came across as the civil individual, while President Barack Obama came across as angry and offended that anyone would challenge him. That bothered me a lot.
Now, I don’t know what issues the president was dealing with that night, but he definitely wasn’t cool, calm and collected.
Now, I know that Romney impressed me, but I could also see how he was parsing his facts in ways that could be construed in various ways as to make him seem like he was not telling the truth.
The classic being the difference between tax rates and tax revenues, profits and profit margins, tax credits and tax deductions, and if you don’t understand the differences between those terms, please look them up. Educate yourselves.
Tax Rate vs Tax Revenue
Profit vs Profit margin
Tax Credit vs Tax Deduction
So, when Romney said he was going to lower tax rates but keep them revenue neutral, it really isn’t an oxymoron. Economists will tell you something about what is called the Laffer Curve which is the point that Romney was trying to make.  (Laffer Curve explained.)  While it is difficult to chart exactly how the curve will be under any given tax rate situation, it really is not hard to understand how it works. Most people don’t understand.
Most people think, that the higher the rate, the more the government will get in taxes, and history has shown that to be false in the 1960s, the 1980s and again, in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Still, it bothers me that people I respect very much somehow see the world through such different prisms.
I joked with one of them, who was saying that the very rich should pay so much more in taxes, that since he made more than I did, would he send some of his money to me. I mean he is richer than I am, or so it seems. (Well, since I now have rent a two-bedroom apartment and he apparently owns a small farm and has access to a condominium in a very expensive building – at least by my standards as I would never been able to even consider owning either, while acting as the COO for a software gaming company that has the rights to a few of the top selling games of the 1990s and at least one or two of the top rated games for the latest IPODs in the 2010s, would make him appear to be more wealthy than I am, living as I do.) He got very upset with me, for making such a suggestion, since his company is a restart of the 1990s version, and said I was “enjoying my retirement.”
Again, we probably are making asses of ourselves – you know the old cliché that when we ASSUME you are making an ASS of yoU and ME.
However, my point was what gives him the right to demand that others pay higher taxes to transfer their wealth to others, if I don’t have the same right to make that demand of him. However, I think it all got lost in translation.
And maybe that is what puzzles me the most: We all seem to have lost any sense of humor. Hey, given my life, one has to look back at it and laugh. Otherwise, you probably would either be crying or committing suicide – neither of which option appeals to me right now.
Still, if you push me really hard, I would have to say I know who I am not voting for … now if I just could figure out who to vote for that will most effectively represent what I believe. I still am left puzzled.

Conspiracies: Tactics versus logistics

9/11 Truthers
I have been having an interesting discussion with another of my progressive friends out west. This person, methinks, that I am a raving idiot, but I don’t return the favor. I just blame the differences in our world prisms.
The contention, in the above link, is that the three World Trade Center buildings (1,2 and 7) were not brought down by factors related to the impact of the two passenger jets that struck Towers 1 and 2, but a government-caused controlled demolition. While I respect the sincerity of the people in the 90-minute video, I also respectfully disagree.
Why do I have a problem with their argument? Well, it goes back to something you are taught in the military, especially if your career lasts long enough:
Amateurs talk/think/are concerned with tactics, while professionals talk/think/are concerned with logistics.
In short, you can have the best tactics and equipment in the world, but if you don’t have the logistics to get them to where you need them to be utilized and the ability to support them, then they are useless.
So, you can argue all day long about “how” the World Trade Center buildings actually collapsed and, in the end, you will basically have an argument about the tactics (physics) of how the buildings came down.
The question then has to revolve around how those physics came into play and, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, that is where if you rule everything else out, then even the most improbable of answer comes into play … which usually is the simplest or Occam’s Razor solution.
Note, while I respect the points made in the video, I am reminded that not all evidence is equal … and often, in science, you find what you are looking for, not for what is there. They make that point about the “official” and “unofficial” reports that support the hypothesis that the planes (and their hijackers) ultimately were responsible for the structural failures.
The problem I have with all government/military conspiracies is that they depend on absolute secrecy and the integrity of that secrecy. I am sorry, but that never happens, at least not when you are dealing with more than one human being.
So, to assume the people in the video are correct:

1. First you have to have someone who has the skills, capabilities and resources to achieve the objective. Obviously, this is not something you can pull off on the spur of the moment. It takes considerable planning and preparations. Note that even Al Qaeda took years to get their people trained and into place. So, you are talking about years for someone or some organization, resources (money) and foresight to train the operatives who were to place the exotic explosives along with appropriate control devices, as well as have someone develop the exotic explosives and control devices. This type of training would be impossible to keep secret. These types of explosives and control devices also would be very difficult to keep secret.
2. Second, you would have to find a way to model what you wanted done, and then apply that modeling to the structures involved. That, the demolition expert would tell you, is not done on the drop of a hat, but takes considerable time to develop the optimum method to achieve the objective. So, what you are talking about is a group of people who can go unobserved, basically, for several months – if not years – in the three buildings preparing the explosives for their eventual use. Is this possible? Theoretically, possibly; practically, no. Somebody not involved in the effort is going to notice something that should not be there.
3. Third, you would have to arrange a suitable “cover” to give an alternate explanation to the event … otherwise, you are leaving a trail that leads back to you. That would mean, in this case, that the hijackings had to have been government-inspired/controlled. Are you serious? The US government? The one that routinely can’t find its left hand with its right, much less has any clue what it is doing. Even the best of the best, like Seal Team Six and the 160^th Aviation Regiment (Special Operations), have things go wrong – big time wrong. Witness the “oops” with the helicopter left in Pakistan when ST6 people assassinated Osama Bin Laden.

Assuming all that is correct, then exactly what would be the motive? Invading Afghanistan? Get real. Invading Iraq? No one seriously thought Iraq was involved in 9-11. (Yes, Saddam was busy helping all sorts of terrorists, just not the ones involved in 9-11) Helping Halliburton? Give me a break. Ok, helping the military/industrial complex? Hello, ever heard of herding cats? Defense contractors are very much like cats; they are out for themselves and not the industry.
So, to believe the 9-11 Truthers (like the Birthers),  you have to suspend all the disbelief about what is accomplishable logistically, and accept their view that what happened tactically is the only possible explanation.
Now, I am not saying I am an expert on anything (although I was trained how to use explosives and how they are made and what they are made of), it just seems to beggar belief to accept the dogma of the Truthers. For, no matter how or what caused the buildings to collapse, you have to answer the questions of who did it, how they did it and why they did it. This is not just an intellectual exercise of what if. Just saying, but it couldn’t have happened that way, doesn’t wash. Not when there are competing theories out there. You have to answer the total package.
Unfortunately, their explanation doesn’t. The various reports pointing to 19 terrorists hijacking aircraft being the proximate cause does. It may seem improbable, but the others have to be ruled out due to lack of evidence to support the entire package.
 

Assault on the Electoral College

Electoral votes not equal

How the Electoral “College” system works

It seems, of late, we go through this spasm – mainly by progressives – over the U.S. Constitution’s specifications for electing a president. You see, according to them, it is not “democratic” (it was never designed to be that way) and not everyone’s vote is equal (which is true).

You see, when you vote president in November, you really are not voting for one of the candidates but, in 48 states and the District of Columbia, you really are voting for a slate of “electors” who are pledged to vote for the candidate who gets the plurality of votes in your state. Two states apportion their electors by congressional district with two going to the candidate who receives the plurality of votes in the state.

Note: I said plurality and not majority. There is a major difference. A majority would be 50 percent of the votes cast plus 1, while a plurality merely means the candidate got more than any of the other candidates on the ballot (and remember you will see more than Barack Obama and Mitt Romney among your presidential selection choices when you step into that voting booth. Not that you would know it from what you see and read in the most of the media. The other candidates have been deemed by said gatekeepers of the news to be “unwinnable” and hence not worthy of coverage. Ain’t that a hoot and a self-fulfilling prophecy? Also note that at least one candidate, Gary Johnson will be on the ballot in 47 states and possibly all 50, if the Libertarian Party’s court challenges keeping them off the ballot are successful).

Now, there is a movement afoot to have states agree to allocate all their electors to the winner of the national popular vote, but then what would be the point of having states? Note that this is being pushed in states where the Democratic Party has control of the legislatures.

Now, why do we have an “Electoral College”? Surprise, it is a compromise. You see there were those who wanted the president to be elected by popular vote, but enough of the wise people who wrote the constitution were too wary of “the Mob” and the vagaries of popular emotions to go that route. Others wanted the president to be selected by Congress, but then that would leave the president beholden like a prime minister to the congressional faction that elected him, which most likely would be from the Big States to the detriment of the Small States. So, like the Congress, which represents both the states and the people (before popular election of Senators, but they still represent their states at-large), a compromise was struck that each state would get the number of representatives and senators it had in Congress. Since the minimum number is three (two senators and one house member) and the maximum number of House representatives is 435, then some votes carry more weight in terms of popular support than others. Consider that the District of Columbia, which is not a state, also gets three, you can see why the Small States like the current setup.

Now, it was left to the states to decide how to select their “electors” and most choose to do it by allocating all of them to the winner by a plurality in a statewide ballot of qualified voters. Unfortunately, when you do that, sometimes (as in 1876, 1888 and 2000) someone who didn’t win the nationwide popular vote ends up being president. Note that is not unusual for a president to be elected with less than a majority of the popular vote, in fact, that really is the norm.

However, there has been one instance, where a president won the popular vote and led in the Electoral College (but did not have a majority and in the Electoral College vote you have to have a majority) but ended up not being president. That’s ok, he got his revenge and was elected four years later and basically revamped how the executive branch was run.

Now, if it was just left to the popular vote, candidates basically could write off most of the states and the nation and focus merely on a few big cities. Sweep those, and you got the popular vote in the bag. But that is not what this country is about. It is a federal republic and not a democracy … despite what academic political scientists and progressives will want you to believe.

So, while the current system, which will remain in effect for the current election, may not be the best way – my vote would be to allocate electors by congressional district with two at-large and staying with the plurality rather demanding a majority (unless you wanted to have runoffs a few weeks later between the top two candidates in those states where nobody got a majority – which would be such a big hassle it is not worth the bother).

What is bothersome about the current spate of complaints is that once again it seems designed to throw the results into question and rather than accept it as it is designed, it seems to want to promote the idea that your vote doesn’t count. It does count.

Each and every vote counts and rather than put the election up in question, let’s support our candidates and quit worrying about what goes on in other states. That is what it means to live in a federal republic and is why we have sovereign states. You don’t like that, then go live somewhere else.

No budget

Fiscal cliff?

Continuing resolution

Ok, I guess it covers it. The federal government is supposed to be operating on a budget that goes into effect on Oct. 1 every year. However, this session of Congress, like the session in 2010 and 2011, didn’t really pass a budget. It passed what is known as a “continuing resolution” which basically is kicking the can down the road, as one politician put it.

Being a product of political grid lock, such resolutions basically permit the government to continue functioning on the basis of previous budget authorization and spending laws. In this case, it seems that while the House did pass a budget (meeting its constitutional responsibility), the Senate as it has done every year since 2009 has found it  politically inexpedient to pass the budget, opting instead to authorize the government’s various agencies to continue spending for the next six months while a compromise is sorted out.

Unfortunately, apparently, the grand compromise from 2011 has to have a “budget” passed and not a continuing resolution or the great sequestration goes into effect.

Not bad politics, if you think about it. It is not like the Senate could not have passed a budget. It could have, and it could have been substantially different than the House-passed version. Then, however, the good senators would have had to have been on “the record” so to speak about what their budget priorities were. Not good.

So, the House has gone on record – and being controlled by Republicans – and that gives the Democrats a good foil to use during this election year … and relieves them of any responsibility for the fiscal affairs of the nation.

Personally, I think it is all porcine scatology. Well, even more than that: It is about “transforming” the country, as President Obama says. I may not approve the way the Obama Administration is going about this transformation, but it is getting a lot of help from the Senate, which is depressing. I also may not approve of the nature of the transformation, but until more people vote against it than for it, I will be in the minority and, therefore, must accept the results. That, folks, is what you do in a democratic republic.

Of course, that course may change … and I hope it does.

Political cover for Hillary

Sebelius won’t be punished for Hatch Act “violation”
Office of Special Counsel Advisory on Hatch Act.
Hatch Act of 1939
What part of the following does the Office of the Special Counsel in the Obama Administration not understand?
“(T)the law permits employees who are appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to widely engage in political activity while on duty and in government buildings, even these employees are prohibited from soliciting, accepting or receiving political contributions.”
Office of the Special Counsel – 2/14/2001
The Hatch Act of 1939, officially An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, is a United States federal law whose main provision is to prohibit employees (civil servants) in the executive branch of the federal government, except the President and certain designated high-level employees of the executive branch, from engaging in partisan political activity.
Wikipedia article
It provides that persons below the policymaking level in the executive branch of the federal government must not only refrain from political practices that would be illegal for any citizen but must abstain from "any active part" in political campaigns, using this language to specify those who are exempt:
(i) an employee paid from an appropriation for the Executive Office of the President; or
(ii) an employee appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, whose position is located within the United States, who determines policies to be pursued by the United States in the nationwide administration of Federal laws.
Fox News may be reporting the news correctly, but the Office of Special Counsel in the Obama Administration is putting out a line of equine manure.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, the former governor of Kansas, did not break any federal law when she spoke at a “Human Rights Campaign Event” back earlier in 2012. Sorry, but you idiots at the OSC need to go back and actually look at what the law says: “An employee appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, whose position is located within the United States, who determines polices to be pursued by the United States in the nationwide administration of Federal laws” is specifically exempted from the provisions of the Hatch Act.
The HHS secretary is, at least the last time I looked, an official member of a president’s cabinet and head of a specific executive department, subject to approval (advice and consent) of the Senate. If Sebelius does not fit that description, then why is she called the HHS secretary.
According to the Fox News report:  In her North Carolina remarks that prompted the report, Sebelius urged voters to make sure Obama "continues to be president for another four years." 
Sorry, but that doesn’t rise to the level of  “soliciting, accepting or receiving political contributions.”  The only area that the Hatch Act does apply to cabinet officers.
No, folks, this is the OSC covering up for the State Department’s and the White House’s claim that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could not legally attend the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte last week. I really wish someone in the national media would get their fricking act together and point out that this OSC statement that Sebelius violated the law, and the subsequent statement, apparently, that all was made good by her changing her status and the campaign paying for the trip, and she would not be prosecuted, is so full of bovine scatology that it isn’t even funny anymore.
Sorry, but the OSC is wrong … and I will continue to say it is wrong, until someone can come up with some specific language in the Hatch Act that unexempts cabinet secretaries from the law.
Doesn’t this tend to make you angry? It makes me angry because this country is supposed to be one of law and when you go about misrepresenting what the law says, then you are doing the country no favors. In fact, you are actively trying to hurt the country and that type of behavior I will oppose to my dying breath.
I may not agree with the law, but I will pledge my life, my wealth and my sacred honor in its defense, of that have no doubt.