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Archive for the ‘Opinion’ Category

Monday outside my window

Posted in Favorite Things, Opinion, Video, tagged , on September 27, 2010| 4 Comments »

Monday morning and the world is still spinning, at least it seems to be there outside my windows. 

Last week on CBS Sunday Morning, there was a segment with Ben Stein doing a monologue with him bemoaning the fact that though he is in the highest tax-bracket  he is not rich and that he feels he is being punished for being successful by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire or by letting the cuts continue for only those making less than $250,000 per year.  It’s nagged at me for the past week and I wanted to comment on this new surge in whining by those in higher tax brackets that seems to be popping up more and more these days. 

But this morning I find myself just tired of the whole thing.  There is just so much data out there to counter all this whining and doomsaying by those who say that a return to the tax rates of the 1990’s would be apocalyptic that it just seems like an exercise in futility.  I want  to point out an article from the NY Times this past weekend by Richard Thaler  and another article on Tax.com from David Cay Johnston that provide a lot of content about the negative effects on the economy from the actual Bush tax cuts.

But that’s it this morning.  I think I will stick with what I do, which is paint.  Just paint and let the world spin outside my window this morning. 

To that end, here’s a song called Favorite from one of my favorites, Neko Case.

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Idiots and Freedom Stealers

Posted in Current Events, Opinion on September 22, 2010| 2 Comments »

Page 10 of Walker's "Plan"

Oh, Wisconsin.

First, the Republican candidate for Governor, Scott Walker, recently released a 68-page plan for economic recovery in Wisconsin.

Impressive, huh?

Well, maybe not.  You see he released his in response to his Democratic opponent Tom Barrett’s 67-page plan, which was a serious outline to help jumpstart the struggling economy in Wisconsin.  So Walker outdid him with a stunning 68-page plan.  One page more–it must be better!

Unfortunately for the people of Wisconsin, Walker doesn’t take the problems of economic recovery there seriously and instead took this opportunity to act like a high school sophomore.  You see, his 68-page plan is done in a huge font that, when condensed to a typical font, actually covers less than 4 pages.  The plan is is full of slogans and fluff without any real depth of thought or planning.  Walker was more interested in acting like the class clown than a chief executive.  It is both idiotic and deceitful.   Apparently, that is what the folks in cities and towns of the Badger State want in theeir governor.  Walker is ahead of Barrett by 8 points.

Oh, Wisconsin.

And now there is the revealing of a plot involving the Wisconsin Republican Committee, the Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity and various Tea Party groups there to engage in the practice of voter caging in the upcoming elections.  Voter caging involves targeting minority and student voters– typically Democratic voters– in certain areas and challenging their residency eligibility at the polls on election day.  This forces the voter to then submit a provisional ballot which requires follow-up by the voter on the day after  the election.  It provides a false barrier that the voter must go over in order for their vote to be counted and as a result, many of the votes would go uncast.  There is an on-going investigation into this episode.

Funny how the Tea Party which claims the Constitution (well, their interpretation of it) is the basis for their whole movement would try to deny and steal the right to vote of the citizens of Wisconsin.  Sounds very un-American to me.  Sounds like the oposite of freedom and liberty.

Oh, Wisconsin.  I don’t mean to pick on your state.  I know your situation is no different than most states in the country.  It’s just your’s seems so typical of what is happening all over the country.  Simpletons with nothing more than talking points, populist rhetoric and little substance leading in the polls.  People like the Koch’s who manipulate the population like pawns on a chessboard and when that doesn’t seem enough, seek to steal the rights of those who might oppose them.

Let’s wake up, folks.  Democracy is not a spectator sport.  Put down your gadgets and toys and pay attention for once.  There is a lot at stake here and you need to be part of the process.

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Big Old Goofy World

Posted in Opinion, tagged on September 19, 2010| 2 Comments »

I was going to write about other things today.  Things that bother me.  Like Mike Huckabee’s comments at the Value Voters Summit the other day, where he equated those with pre-existing conditions seeking health insurance coverage to people with burned down home or wrecked cars trying to obtain insurance after the fact.  Comments that seem to be lacking in compassion, not ot mention the pure idiocy of finding equivalency in a living human with a medical history of any sort with a destroyed house or car.  Or lacking in intelligence for attacking the one aspect of the Healthcare bill that is by far the most popular and widely accepted by the general public.

The comments bothered me as did the lack of coverage they received in the mainstream press.

Or there was Republican strategist Jack Burkman who caused a minor buzz on a Fox News broadcast when he made comments about closing down the US Postal Service while somehow bringing in the subject of Nigerian and Ethiopian cabdrivers.  It drew the ire of  Ex- Senator Al D’Amato who called Burkman’s comments “rascist bullshit’.  But it wasn’t the comments about the cabdrivers or even the closing the Postal Service that caught my ear.  It was the last line Burkman uttered in parting, where he stated that Postal workers, like much of the middle class, were basically unskilled and needed to be pushed down.  I assume he was talking about pushing them down the economic ladder.  A telling little comment, if that is the case, for a so-called strategist of any political party.  Read into it what you will.

But that is all I can write about these people.  And I use that term loosely.  I need something to keep my head from exploding so I’ll turn to a tune from John Prine.  I think this song pretty much sums it all up…  It’s a Big Old Goofy World.

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Greed

Posted in Opinion, tagged on September 13, 2010| 4 Comments »

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.

——Mahatma Gandhi

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There was another thing that Styx said to me at the Cracker Barrel restaurant the other day that surprised me.  He asked if I had seen an interview with  Stephen Hawking where Hawking had said that man’s existence on Earth was doomed because of his greed. 

“Ain’t that the truth!’ he had exclaimed in that Virginian  country twang.   Maybe I was surprised to hear the Hawking reference or just the thought about greed which pretty much jibed with my own.  Whatever, it made me think this morning.

Throughout history, from the Greeks onward, we have been warned of the dangers of our own greed.  It has been the cause of most if not all wars and many of the great injustices of history.  Our history of slavery here in the US was the result of greed. 

Yet, greed never ceases, never slows a bit in our species.  We fail to see it in ourselves, blinded by our own rationalizations about our perceived need for more and more.  I remember at the height of the financial disaster of 2008, hearing an interview with an anonymous hedge fund trader.  Just a trader and not a manager, he was pulling in about $10 million a year.  Had been making it for quite a few years.  He said he had more money now than he could spend, perhaps for all the rest of his life.  But when asked if it was enough, he very coldly answered that no, it was not.  He needed more money.

That interview scared me more than all the other revelations about the abuses in the financial world that were coming out every day at the time.  It wasn’t an action that could be simply corrected but an entrenched mindset, one filled with a greed that can’t be swayed and one that trumps all virtue.  It was a mindset that took the human need to better one’s self to the furthest most extreme excess.  And we had started to accept this mindset as the norm. 

The “greed is good” mantra of Gordon Gecko had become gospel.  I’ll get mine and damn the consequences.

Think about it.  What awful thing hasn’t been the result of greed of some sort?   And what are we doing to avert this tidal wave of greed that is swallowing us whole?

Nothing.  If you aren’t grabbing all you can, you’re considered a sucker and if you try to do something about other’s lust for more, you’re considered anti-capitalist.  Socialist. Commie.

There has to be  middle ground somewhere, where common sense and moderation prevails.  Where it is and how to get there, I haven’t a clue except to try to keep my wants to a minimum and savor what I do have.  My grass is green enough here on my side of the fence, thank you.

Thanks for the thought provocation, Styx. 

 

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Motivations

Posted in Opinion, tagged , , , on August 24, 2010| 5 Comments »

David Koch of Koch Industries

I had a high school English teacher who was a big influence on me.  He talked about judging people’s actions on the motivations behind them, taking into account not only the what but the why behind every action.  The same action done by two different people with two differing reasons  should not be judged as the same action.  For instance, the person who stole to feed their hungry children should be viewed through a different lens than the person who stole simply out of feelings of greed and envy. 

For a naive high schooler this was a revelation.  Everything, every action,  to that point was judged as being simply right or wrong, regardless of the reasoning behind the action.  It changed how everything must be viewed and judged for me.
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Which brings me to the subject of today’s post, an article published in the most recent New Yorker magazine by Jane Mayer titled Covert Operations.  The article is about the life and actions of Charles and David Koch, the billionaire industrialists who own the second largest privately owned corporation in the country (and 16th largest out of all corporations, private and public.)  Their combined wealth is only eclipsed by that of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates here in the states.  They and their company, Koch Industries,  are probably fairly anonymous to most people.  I have to admit that they were well off my radar.
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Koch Industries is involved with many things, primarily in the production and delivery of many of the critical raw materials used in industry.  They have refineries and pipelines in the petroleum industry.  They produce chemicals, polymers, fertilizers for industry and have extensive pulp and paper operations.  All operations which remain relatively low profile in the public eye yet have a big impact on many aspects of our lives.
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The company was started by their father, Fred Koch.  I’m not going to go into any detail here except to point out that he handed down an immense congolmerate to his sons and he was one of the founders of the John Birch Society, the radical right-wing organization.  The Koch brothers claim no affiliation with the society but over the past several decades have used their immense wealth in support of libertarian and conservative causes.  Well, causes that fall under the libertarian flag but meet the needs of their agenda.
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And what is their agenda?  Is it truly a stance for personal liberty or is it something else?  What is their motivation?
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Well, they are the primary movers and funders of the movement to deny climate change.  They’ve spent over 48 million dollars in the past decade to create doubt in the public’s eye that there is really climate change taking place. 
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They also are the one of the prime movers, although staying deep in the shadows, of the recent Tea Party movement.  The Koch brothers had been stong supporters of the Libertarian Party until the early 1980’s when they realized it had no future as a populist movement.  Which is to say, they recognized they were not going to be able to pull in enough foot soldiers to create cover for their agenda, which is a corruption of the concept of liberty that most of us hold near and dear.
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They want to be free of all constraints, all taxes, all government intervention and regulation of any sort.  As a theory, this is appealing to many Americans until you understand their motivations, which is that they crave the freedom to run their environmentally dangerous operations with no societal obligations.  They are the very reason we need regulation and intervention. 
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Okay, I feel a rant coming on so I’m going to wrap it up. I’m tired of people like the Tea Partiers being exploited  by people like the Kochs, Larouches, Armeys, Becks and Limbaughs of this world for their own agendas.  Read the article for a more coherent outline of the Koch brothers’ activities. 

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A Cheerful Nature

Posted in Opinion, Quote, tagged on August 19, 2010| 2 Comments »

There is one thing one has to have: either a soul that is cheerful by nature, or a soul made cheerful by work, love, art, and knowledge.

———Friedrich Nietzsche

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Interesting quote.  I know that my life is made more cheerful from work, love and art. It’s the knowledge part that I find myself questioning.  Sometimes it feels that knowledge takes away cheerfulness, as thought the more we know the more dire the situation seems.  But I realize that I’m confusing knowledge with information.  Knowledge is taking information and having the ability to use and cope with it, to see how information fits into a larger framework.  A distinct difference there and one that most of us confuse. 

We’re bombarded with new information all the time, in an endless barrage of charts and numbers and words.  We are living in the world of information today, after all.  And after taking it all in feel as though we’ve obtained knowledge. 

 Information, yes.  Knowledge, no.

So, maybe Nietzsche is right after all.  Having true knowledge, an ability to cope with all this information in a coherent manner, would cheer me up. I guess I’ll keep trying to gain some.  I would so much more enjoy living in the world of knowledge than the world of information.

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The Sadness of the Crazies

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged on August 11, 2010| 6 Comments »

We’ve been fairly fortunate in  this area to have been spared the full brunt of nutty political protests on a regular basis.  No big Tea Party gatherings.  No Obama Is Hitler signs. Very little to be seen around these parts.  It’s not that the people who support these causes aren’t around because they are out there.  Oh, yeah. They’re out there.

Yesterday, we got our first taste of it on a personal basis at our local Horseheads, NY post office.  On the the front corner of the property was a table with posters all around, saying the typical things like Impeach Obama.  Nothing remarkable.  Then I spotted it.

The Obama poster with the Hitler moustache.

I am all for First Amendment Rights, being able to make the public stage your own bully pulpit, but something about this just went against the grain for me.  There is something truly hateful in that poster that goes beyond mere protest.  Surely it shouldn’t be allowed on postal property.

So we complained and the post office supervisor apologized, saying she had tried everything but so long as they didn’t approach folks going in and out of the post office itself and weren’t campaigning, they were unable to have them removed.  She said she had received a non-stop stream of complaints all day and was clearly flustered by the ruckus.

Leaving, I noticed at the top of their posters the name of the website behind this crap.  It was Lyndon LaRouche!  The conspiracy-driven schemer, de-frauder  and ex-con was behind it!  I’m not going to go into the absurdity that is Lyndon LaRouche here.  There are thousands of sites to find out more for yourself.  His movement is classified by many not as a politcal movement but as a cult and has made him a wealthy man over the many decades he has been in action.

So the Obama-Hitler poster is his product!  The anger I felt at the fools standing in front of them turned quickly to a real sadness.  The sadness that comes from seeing weaker minded people being exploited.  Sad that these people, who were concerned and upset with our nation and with their lot in life, had fell prey to someone espousing such  hate and nonsense.  Someone who played to their deepest fears and stood to profit from it.

Even now, as I sit here this morning, it is not outrage I feel but a queasy mixture of sadness and worry.  Worried that their are so many others like these people out there, waiting rise up, without questioning with their own commone sense, at the call of someone like LaRouche. I had always seen the Obama Hitler poster as idiocyand hate but now see it also as  a symbol of exploitation…

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Queen Meg

Posted in Opinion, tagged , on August 4, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Whenever I read anything about Meg Whitman’s money-encrusted crusade to become the next Governor of California, I am filled with all sorts of thoughts.  Thoughts and revulsion.

She’s already spent $100 million in her quest, $91M of it her own, to quash Democrat Jerry Brown.  Without even considering how much better that money could serve the world, it seems to me that she doesn’t seem to be getting much bang for her buck  as Brown is leading her in recent polls, even though he has yet to spend a million dollars on his campaign.  Brown has always been one for austerity.

He has also been receiving a lot of help from groups who oppose Whitman, such as the nurses’ union, the California Nurses Association,  that came up with the character shown to the left here, Queen Meg.  Queen Meg follows Whitman’s campaign all over the state of California, showing up to make royal proclamations such as her being “rich enough to rule.”  It has been quite effective.

Now I’m not naive enough to think that Whitman is the first to try to buy her way into office.  Just think a few years back to Jon Corzine’s campaign in New Jersey.  Although we pride ourselves as a nation on our claims of being a democracy of the people, our history is primarily one of the wealthy dominating our political landscape. 

In the past, our press held the primary position of protecting our democracy against these incursions from the ruling class, holding their feet to the fire over the accuracy of their statements and the the overall direction in which they wanted to lead us.  I know that the press soemtimes came up short in this aspect but the threat of having the truth exposed was always there.

But we live in a post-press world now and candidates like Whitman can use their money to push  half-truths and non-truths on their potential constituency in old and new ways without little fear that their statements will be fully challenged.  And even if they are challenged, the statements are already out there and many of those who heard them will not even recognize that they have been discredited.  The wealthy candidate has the resources to overcome the power of whatever free press is left in this society.  So, they shamelessly spend.  Or shill for more money.

Take for example, Sharron Angle, the Nevadan Tea Partier who is vying for Harry Reid’s seat.  She refuses to speak with press, often nearly breaking into a trot to avoid their microphones and cameras.  That is, she refuses to speak to those who won’t allow her to make plugs for donation on her website.  She makes no excuses for her behavior or her disregard for the responsibility of the press, saying that while she would like  “to have the press be our friend,” she wants the press “ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.”  That even has the folks at Fox News scratching their head in disbelief.

So, I lament once again the loss of the protection an active and free press once offered to the populace.  It obviously wasn’t perfect in practice but this glimpse of a post-press world is much worse.  The wealthy will continue to try to maintain their political power, selling it to us, unchecked,  with the idea, much like the concept of supply-side economics, that if their policies are good for  the wealthy, they are ultimately good for us all.

Hopefully, the good people of California are not buying it.

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Feeling Trickled Down

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , on July 30, 2010| 4 Comments »

When I first heard the term trickle down used to describe supply-side economics, the idea that giving tax-relief to those at the highest income levels will cause them to create more jobs for those in the economics classes below them, I was around twenty years old.  I was working in a factory where the management was constantly striving to get more and more from its workers for less and less.  There was no sense of any sort of paternal feeling from this company. 

 Their job was to extract the most financial return from us at the lowest possible expense. 

I had no problem with this concept.  That is just a fundamental of business. 

But I knew that without the protection of our labor union and governmental agencies like OSHA, they would pare away at us without mercy.  They would pay us less and less.  They would change job specs to require less and less manpower, to the point where many jobs became exceedingly difficult and dangerous.  It was a neverending  struggle to maintain our status quo,  to keep a fair, decent wage and a safe workplace,  against their onslaught.

So when I heard about the trickle down theory, I was somewhat suspect.  Even at that age, with little life experience, I could see what would happen.  Oh, there would be a tiny trickle in the form of a few jobs but most of the cash would go into the coffers of those at the top and stay there.  They were at the top because they had a drive to continually make more and more.  Giving them more wasn’t going to make them spend more.  It would only serve to whet their appetite for even more wealth and power.

It seemed so obvious.

Now , the term is being bandied about again as the talk of the day turns to extending the Bush Tax Cuts of the early part of the decade.  Don’t get me wrong.  I don’t enjoy paying taxes any more than the next guy.  But the wealthiest 3% of the population are paying less now than at any point in the last 70 years.  The real income of the average American has been flat for over 20 years yet the growth rate for this top level over this same time period has been astronomical, creating a wealth gap between the haves and have-nots that rivals the days of the robber barons.  Our national deficit is growing  and there is a need to raise revenues.  Oddly enough, many of the same deficit hawks who think it is our number one economic priority at this point to cut our deficit are calling for the Bush Tax Cuts to be extended.  I say oddly because this will add a cool trillion dollars or so to our deficit.

You can’t have it both ways, folks.

It’s always perplexed me how this concept of giving money to the wealthy will somehow benefit the lower classes and over the decades since I have seen no proof that this works in any way.  Interestingly, yesterday on CNBC I saw one host, Erin Burnett, interviewing a proponent of extending the tax cuts , ask him if he had any proof, any real data,  that this idea of trickle down economics had ever worked.  He was at a loss for words and basically said no but taxes are bad.  You see, that’s the problem.  This is a theory that doesn’t work but is easy to sell to the masses by simply spouting the taxes are bad mantra over and over, even though the masses are little affected by the relatively small tax raises in the higher brackets.  There was a good article on the Financial Times of London’s website from Martin Wolf  called The Political Genius of Supply-Side Economics.  Very good read.

If you’re not sure how trickle down economics work, here a little primer from Stephen Colbert:

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word – Ownership Society
www.colbertnation.com
 
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

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Some Things Never Change

Posted in Opinion, tagged , on July 26, 2010| 6 Comments »

I have started avoiding the news as of late.  It’s not that I simply find the news of the day too grim or upsetting.  It’s more of a reaction to the way the news is meted out to the public and the manner in which the  media is manipulated by those with self-serving interests.  It has become painfully obvious that there is no segment of the newsmedia that seeks to protect the public, the common man,  from the wealthy and powerful. Even populist movements, like the Tea Party, that have grown through news coverage are, when examined closely, the products of rich and powerful men.  They appear to represent the best interests of the wider population but at heart serve the interests of the very groups that created the conditions that gave birth to these groups.  The common man and the groups to which he belongs are often the product of the news and information he receives from the newsmedia.

   I came across this some time ago and have had it rolling around in my head since then.  It was written in the early 1920’s by newspaper publisher Edward Scripps, founder of the Scripps Company and the news service that transformed over the years into UPI, United Press International.  He knew as well as anyone the power and influence of the press in furthering and protecting the agenda of the wealthy and powerful few.

The press of this country is now and always has been so thoroughly dominated by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the great mass of the people that correct information concerning political, economical, and social subjects which is necessary that the mass of people shall have, in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect themselves from the brutal force and the chicanery of the ruling and employing class.

It was disheartening to read this clip from almost 90 years back.  The domination of the press by the wealthy and powerful certainly hasn’t diminished.  If anything, it’s become more pervasive and more impenetrable to those who seek the real truth or question this unholy alliance between the wealthy, powerful few and the press.  There is a thought out there that with the rise of the internet there is a democratization of information, that the truths that they need will get out to the people through smaller, more agile outlets.  Nice thought.  But realistically, while it may be effective for smaller movements among people in certain niches, it seldom reaches out to the wide spectrum of the population that is needed to affect real change or action in our society.  If anything it has created clouds of information that hamper people from seeing anything in a clear and palatable way.   Or fractured potential movements into ever smaller, narrower groups of interest that will never reach a wider audience.

As with many things, I don’t know why I bring this up today.  The press certainly won’t change today.  The wealthy won’t suddenly decide to stop using their power to influence the media.  I guess I just needed to vent and hope that somewhere out there someone will figure out a way to bring light to the masses.

Another snippet from Edward Scripps–

A newspaper fairly and honestly conducted in the interests of the great masses of the public must at all times antagonize the selfish interests of that very class [the advertisers] which furnishes the larger part of a newspaper’s income. It must occasionally so antagonize this class as to cause it not only to cease patronage, to a greater or lesser extent, but to make actually offensive warfare against the newspaper.

Wells said, Ed.  Too bad there’s nobody around today willing to take up your sword…

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