Chorizos!

(That’s New Mexican for Hot Links)

“The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.” – Robert Reich.

This is my way of reducing the size of my “Favorites” list. When I see a page on a subject I might want to write about I add it to the list, and I don’t have time to write about all the ones I’ve added. I figure that if I pass these on as links, I won’t feel guilty about deleting them.

“The Body” speaks: Jesse Ventura, the flashy wrestler who served as governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003, has penned a “Letter to the Ruling Class” that really says it all about the class warfare we’re enduring: http://weaintgottimetobleed.com/

Income inequality: Blogger Brit at the Daily Kos praises President Obama for finally mentioning the widening gap between the extremely rich and everyone else in a speech at George Washington University on April 13th: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/13/966615/-He-Went-There!-Obama-Attacks-the-1

Health care is diseased: “One trained medical billing advocate says that over 90 percent of the medical bills that she has audited contain ‘gross overcharges.’” That’s number 23 in a list of “25 Shocking Facts That Prove That The Entire U.S. Health Care Industry Has Become One Giant Money Making Scam” on the website The American Dream: http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/25-shocking-facts-that-prove-that-the-entire-u-s-health-care-industry-has-become-one-giant-money-making-scam

What’s the real poverty level? The New York Times reports that “a single worker needs an income of $30,012 a year — or just above $14 an hour — to cover basic expenses and save for retirement and emergencies. That is close to three times the 2010 national poverty level of $10,830 for a single person, and nearly twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.” See:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/economy/01jobs.html?_r=2

Outsmarted and outsourced: While politicians across the spectrum are promising more jobs, “US” corporations continue to move jobs out of the country. Read and weep here: http://www.truth-out.org/top-us-corporations-outsourced-more-24-million-american-jobs-over-last-decade/1303196400

Tax the rich: Robert Reich, who was Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, explains why in a well-written essay: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/04/04-9

Why isn’t Wall Street in jail? Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi presents the prosecution’s case: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-isnt-wall-street-in-jail-20110216

Has the GOP gone too far? David Corn of Mother Jones says the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the House Budget Committee chairman, and passed with only four Republicans (and all of the Democrats) voting no, will harm the party. “With this vote, the GOP is embracing the caricature of itself: telling the poor they'll have to do with less, throwing granny out of the hospital bed, and easing life for gazillionaires,” he writes: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/04/ryan-2012-budget-passes

We’ll really miss you, Glenn: Faux News’s incomparable whackadoodle Glenn Beck will be leaving that network at the end of the year. As a tribute to the Beckaroo, Mediamatters has collected “The 50 Worst Things Glenn Beck Said On Fox News.” If you’re not a regular viewer, or if, like me, you only see Glenn Beck on The Daily Show, you can find some gems you missed here: http://mediamatters.org/research/201104060047

If you find this an interesting collection of chorizos, let me know and I’ll do it again.

Say It Over and Over and Over

Oft-repeated Lies are Still Lies

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”   – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832.

I seriously doubt that you could find a single Republican representative or senator who hasn’t repeated the following statement at least three times, in public, in the last year: “We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem.”

That statement is not true. It is a lie. Saying it over and over again does not make it anything less than a lie, but say it over and over again they do.

Our real financial problem was caused by a long-term campaign by Republicans to dismantle the safeguards enacted after the stock market crash that started the Great Depression. It took them almost seventy years, but they got it done.

As a direct result, unrestrained financial speculation and downright fraud caused our economy to come perilously close to another crash. Only extreme measures to prop up banks and brokerages and insurance companies in the final days of the Bush Administration kept a total collapse from occurring.

And even though such devastation was prevented, the United States of America lost almost half of its wealth in a few hectic weeks. Houses lost value, companies laid off workers, people defaulted on their mortgages and stopped buying non-essential items, retirement savings were devastated, more companies laid off workers or went broke, more mortgages went into foreclosure, and our economy spiraled down toward the abyss.

In the midst of this furor, Barack Obama replaced George Bush, Jr. In order to stop the spiral, he convinced Congress to pass a huge stimulus program.

It worked. The economy gradually quit falling and started on a slow upward slope, but almost half of what we thought we were worth was simply gone, as if it never existed. Actually, it never did exist. It was simply hot air. It was the emperor’s new clothes. It was smoke and mirrors. It was the inevitable result of unregulated speculation. Instead of letting the extra air out of the system a little at a time, we allowed it to blow out like a tire. Our economy was stuck on the side of the road.

If the bailout of the banks, et al, and the stimulus program had not been approved by Congress, we would have had a second Great Depression. That’s what happened after the 1929 crash. Republicans were in power and they didn’t do anything to stop the downward spiral, so it went all the way down. The bankers and stockbrokers and insurance agents would have borne the brunt of it this time, too, and we would have seen a repeat performance of such people jumping out of windows.

But everyone else would have suffered, as well. We wouldn’t have lost 45% of our economy; we would have lost close to 90%. Everyone would have suffered greatly, and strict new regulations on speculation would have been passed unanimously, or close to it.

As it was, such regulations barely squeaked through Congress. The margin in the Senate was one vote. And Republicans are already doing their best to dismantle those safeguards.

People with good jobs lost them and started collecting unemployment. Those people used to pay income tax; now the government was paying them, but not much. Those people stopped buying IPods and Cadillac SUVs and movie tickets and filet mignon and even potato chips. Their money was gone by the time they paid their mortgages and bought basic food.

It should be no surprise that income tax revenues tanked as income tanked. All of a sudden, the United States government had a revenue problem.

President Obama’s response to this situation was to create jobs, restore financial regulation, and reform the health care industry, which used to take about 5% of our gross domestic product but was gobbling up almost 20% while treating its consumers with heartless indifference. He succeeded in these measures but failed to get Congress to end a Bush-era tax cut for those who made over $250,000 a year. That would have produced more revenue than Republicans have tried to cut.

Let’s look at who was hurt by Obama’s actions: the entire financial speculation industry, the health care industry, and the very rich, to name a few.

Let’s look at who contributes to Republican candidates: the entire financial speculation industry, the health care industry, and the very rich, to name a few.

Congress was forced to continue deficit spending in order to maintain approved government programs. This continued to add to the national debt, which had already exploded during the Bush years because his two wars were “off-budget.”

Two years after Obama was elected, the people of the United States asked themselves if they were better off than they had been, determined that they were definitely worse off, and, with characteristic ignorance of what had caused their distress, gave the House of Representatives to the Republicans in a landslide.

The Republicans hammered at the deficit and the debt in that campaign and promised an agenda to reduce unnecessary government spending and to bring the country more jobs. How are they doing with that?

Well, they haven’t created any jobs. Period. As far as cutting spending, they’ve spent lots of time trying to shut down programs they detest, like family planning, infant nutrition, Food Stamps, Medicaid, public broadcasting, and the like, while ignoring the waste within the military behemoth. House Republicans even voted to overturn the health care act, which would take us back to the status quo ante of spiraling costs and patient abuse.

We’re spending too much! they groan. Our children and grandchildren will have to pay our bills! Don’t raise taxes! We don’t have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem!

Since Saint Ronald Reagan laid out the talking points thirty years ago the richest of the rich in this country have made obscene gains at the expense of a majority of our people. Many of the latter are people who used to be comfortably middle-class, who paid their taxes and didn’t need Food Stamps or LIHEAP or unemployment. Things aren’t working out very well for them.

Unfortunately, many of those in this situation have little historical awareness. They have chosen to blame Obama and the Democrats for their distress and have run to the welcoming arms of the Republicans, who caused all of this to happen.

Abraham Lincoln said that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but I would add that you can sure fool a lot of them most of the time. I want to scream at these people and tell them that the very people they are voting for are the ones who cut their net worth in half, made them lose their jobs, and are now tilting at windmills in the House.

But I refrain from screaming. I still have faith that they will figure this out for themselves.

You can’t fool all the people all of the time. You can’t fool all the people all of the time. Maybe if I keep repeating it…

You've Heard of Right and Left Brains

This Is About Right-wing and Left-wing Brains

“Brain: an apparatus with which we think we think.”   – Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914.

In the first half of the 19th Century “phrenology” was all the rage. Its premise was that all the activities of human behavior have their origin in the brain, and in specific parts of the brain. Phrenology, as it was defined then, has been debunked for over a century now, but there is a modern version of this theory, based on a much clearer understanding of the various parts of the brain and how they interact.





Illustration courtesy of Wikipedia

 We now know that the human brain has evolved, and that certain structures are older – that is, they’ve been with us longer on our trip up the evolutionary ladder – than others.



The oldest brain is the brain stem, which sits atop the spinal cord like the thick top of a tapering cane. It is the mechanism that keeps the heart beating and the lungs breathing. Atop that is the limbic system, which acts as a sort of gateway for sensation, performs basic memory functions, and is the seat of emotions. Next is the cerebellum, which helps regulate the way our bodies move. All these are “old” brain parts. Even some very rudimentary animals have something comparable to a spinal cord and a brain stem; more complex ones have developed something like the limbic system; yet more advanced ones have a cerebellum.

But the most recent part of the brain, evolutionarily speaking, is the cerebrum. Only the most advanced animals have it, and only in human beings is it so extremely large. This is the brain structure that allows us to reason and speak and have self-awareness. This is what makes us human.

A new study by London neuroscientists indicates that conservatives and liberals have different portions of their brains enlarged that correspond with their political attitudes. You might call this “neophrenology.” I find this discovery disturbing, but enlightening.

The testing that was done included 90 “healthy young adults” in London. They were asked to describe their political preferences on a five-point scale from very conservative to very liberal. The parts of their brains were then measured through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Remember, this is in England, where there are both Conservative and Liberal parties, which do not precisely correspond to our Republican and Democratic parties, but presumably the two basic concepts are similar in both places.

The study found that conservatives tend to have larger amygdalas and liberals larger anterior cingulate cortexes. The amygdala is in the limbic system and is apparently where the decision is made to fight or flee when danger is perceived. The anterior cingulate cortex is part of the cerebrum, and is thought to “monitor uncertainty and conflicts.”

There are a couple of cautions that should be made at this point. First, we don’t know if people think and act as they do because certain parts of their brains are enlarged, or if those parts are enlarged because they think and act as they do. Secondly, the science of brain function is far from complete, and even though we can identify, to some extent, what kinds of thoughts are processed by various structures in the brain, we don’t have full knowledge of how all those structures work together.

I have to restrain myself further, as well. I am tempted to accept this one study as proof of a sort of theory of everything political. I will try to avoid doing so.

But oh, this really seems to explain a lot! Conservatives have an emotional connection to politics and liberals a rational one. That would explain why some people don’t respond well to logical dialogue, why “intellectual” is a pejorative term in some circles, why Faux News’s appeal to fear and hate has so much traction, and a lot of other things that have perplexed me over the years.

I’m tempted to wonder whether conservatism can be “cured,” but I’m sure there are others out there wondering if there’s a “cure” for liberalism. But if nothing else, political operatives from both sides will be looking for ways to phrase their arguments to convince those with the other kind of brains.

Horses, for example, depend greatly on their amygdalas. They are quick to flee in the face of frightening or uncommon or confusing situations. Horse trainers know this and adjust their methods to avoid those situations. Perhaps we liberals could try to sway conservative opinion by similar methods. Perhaps conservatives would have more luck with us using rational discourse instead of fear- and hate-mongering.

What I can say for sure is that future discoveries in the area of “neuropolitics” will be fascinating. It’s hard to say how far this could go. It could be in the future that a person is informed that he didn’t get a job because his anterior cingulate cortex is too small or his amygdala is too large.

We often hear the proposition that there are two kinds of people. What if it’s really true?



It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Government Shut-down Dangerous for Republicans

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”  – George Santayana, 1863-1952.

The mantra that smaller government is better government resonates among a certain percentage of the population, and it has been repeated as gospel since Saint Ronald Reagan’s successful campaign for the presidency. (The people who do so ignore the fact that Reagan did nothing to reduce the size of the federal government.)

Support for reducing the size of the government evaporates when that government is shut down. We saw that happen in 1995, when an impasse between the two political parties in Congress resulted in such a shut-down. It wasn’t that long ago, but many seem to have forgotten it. Republicans forget it at their peril, and I’m delighted.

Bill Clinton had been elected president in 1992 by a healthy margin over incumbent President George H.W. Bush and independent spoiler Ross Perot. The Democratic Senate majority was increased by one to 57; the Democratic majority in the House was reduced by nine members, but was still a healthy 258 to 176.

The pendulum swung the other way in the 1994 mid-term elections. The Democrats lost a net nine seats in the Senate and the Republicans took over with a slim 52 to 48 majority. The House did even better, with the GOP getting a 230 to 204 majority.

Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who became the new speaker of the House, and several of his colleagues had captured the votes of a significant portion of the electorate by offering a “Contract with America” in which they promised to make several changes in the way Congress conducted its business. (If you’ve forgotten what those changes were, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_America.)

Despite their fragile majorities, the Republicans arrived in Washington in January, 1995, ready to “kick butt and take names.” Does this sound familiar? It should. They were still full of vim and vinegar in November, when a continuing resolution to increase the federal deficit was about to expire, demanding that President Clinton agree to certain budget cuts or face a shut-down in non-essential government operations. It was widely described as a game of “Chicken.”

Neither side blinked, the government went into shut-down, and most voters blamed the Republicans. They didn’t like the results, temporary as they were. Their neighbors who worked for the government were furloughed without pay. It was always hard to reach the Social Security Administration, but now it was impossible. National parks were locked up. Passport and visa applications weren’t processed. Veterans’ health services were stopped. Even when the impasse ended, there were long-term residual effects. The economy suffered, and lots of people were mad. And they weren’t mad at the Democrats.

As I have been writing this I have been listening to the last day of debate about the current budget in the U.S. Senate. There seems to be agreement about numbers, but the big issue remaining is whether to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. Republican senators keep saying it’s about spending, but apparently it’s more about the usual partisan social issues. We’ll have to see whether the majority of voters will appreciate this recalcitrance. Remember that this is only about spending for the rest of the current fiscal year, which ends September 30th. The real fight is about next year’s budget, and that has yet to commence.

The founders of this country put together a remarkable combination of institutions to share political power. We tend to think of those founders as wise and detached, but the Constitution they created was the result of knock-down, drag-out battles with strong emotions on all sides. The document they drafted insured that such infighting would continue forever.

The House of Representatives is the institution that most closely reflects the whims of the electorate. It’s where the newest fashions are tried on, and we all know how permanent fashions tend to be. House members may all be sporting top hats or kaftans or bola ties or bare midriffs, but Senators stick with their dark suits and wide ties. Only if the new fashion displays some permanence will they gradually follow suit. (No apologies for the pun.)

Will bare midriffs still be fashionable in 2012? We will soon know. Will voters fondly remember the federal shut-down of April, 2011? We’ll know that, too.

As I write this, only a few hours remain before this shut-down occurs or is prevented. I don’t think the Republican Party will gain in either case.  

Tea Party Leaves More Republicans Behind

Extremists Losing Conscientious Conservatives

“This is an impressive crowd: the Haves and Have-mores. Some people call you the elites. I call you my base.” – George W. Bush.

One of the nice things about dealing with extremists is that the more extreme they get, the fewer people go along with them.

I was delighted to read in my local paper on April 6th that at least one conservative, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, had found a line in the sand that even he wouldn’t cross. Here’s how he started his column:

“During the 2008 presidential campaign, when candidate Barack Obama told ‘Joe the Plumber’ that he wanted to ‘spread the wealth around,’ it sounded to a lot of conservatives like socialism: ‘From each according to his ability to each according to his need,’ in the words of Karl Marx.

“There is a kind of wealth spreading, however, that ought to meet the political litmus test of conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats and radical Independents.”

Mr. Thomas went on to say that when there is so much unemployment and so few new jobs, “it is disheartening to see so many CEOs having recovered enough from their personal recession to pay themselves salaries and benefits that would have shamed the super-rich in America’s Gilded Age.”

Wow! When Cal Thomas starts sounding like Bernie Sanders, things must be getting bad!

He went on to quote USA Today as reporting that median CEO pay increased 27 percent last year and that the average CEO received compensation of $9 million. He cited as an example a report last year in the Baltimore Sun that the tool company Stanley-Black and Decker, in Towson, MD, planned to lay off 4,000 of its 38,000 employees. A year later, apparently as a reward for saving the company so much in salary expenses, we find the company’s CEO, John Lundgren, got 253.1% more salary in 2010 – he took home over $32 million.

Even Thomas thinks this is obscene, but not enough to demand government action. His solution? Read these three jaw-dropping paragraphs:

“If I were a CEO being paid such astronomical amounts and people were being laid off, or struggling in a recession, at least in part due to the lack of pay increases, I would feel morally obligated to take less money.

“I would ask the chief financial officer of my company to share some of my wealth with loyal employees so that they could continue caring for their families.

“One doesn’t have to be a liberal who believes in income redistribution to see the unfairness in disproportionate pay.”

So Thomas calls on CEOs to do the honorable thing, and let their pay scales sag a bit for the greater good. He also suggests that President Obama should be “shaming those companies that lay off workers while paying their top management such exorbitant salaries and benefits.”

I’m glad Mr. Thomas finds the situation distressing, but his response is laughably ineffective. If there is one thing we have learned in the last four years it is that there is no shame on the top floors of the big U.S. corporations.

I’m not for redistribution of wealth (and that is not what candidate Obama meant, either). I believe we can continue to have a capitalistic economic system as long as it is kept under control by reasonable regulation. What I am for is a total overhaul of the U.S. tax code. I think we should leave everyone whose income is at or below the poverty rate alone, and I think that anyone who makes $32 million a year ought to pay a hefty percentage of it to support the government.

The extremists on the right, who have taken over the House of Representatives and think they now run the entire country, want to cut back all the programs that help those with lower incomes eke out a living, but they’re unanimous in opposing any tax increase whatever for the fat cats who make millions. Most of them, of course, are indebted to those very same fat cats for their political existence.

So it’s nice to see a crack in the dam. Cal Thomas is a hard-shelled conservative, and it’s encouraging to see that even his sensibilities are offended by the current economic inequality. Here’s how he ends his column:

“Making money is a noble American objective; making a living is a nobler one.

“Corporations ought to have enough decency and compassion to make sure no worker is let go solely to increase the bottom line or pad the boss’s pockets with more money than he (or she) can ever hope to spend in a lifetime.”

I couldn’t have said it better, but we can’t depend on the decency or compassion or even shame of our big corporations for anything. If the problem is to be fixed, the government will have to do it. I mean the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, not the one of the corporations, by the profiteers, for the money.

A Great Deal More Than a Balanced Budget

Amendment Carries Lots of Baggage

“The budget should be balanced. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered, and assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 BC.

A gaggle of GOP senators gathered for a press conference March 31st. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-KY, the minority leader, announced that all 47 Republican senators had signed on to a resolution calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, who has taken the lead on this issue, said, “I think most of us would agree that this government is incapable of living within its means, and we have to go to this extent in order to get things done.”

Hatch’s new junior senator, Republican Mike Lee, pointed out that “perpetual deficit spending brings about a particularly pernicious form of taxation without representation.” In other words, congressional overspending today increases the interest that future generations will have to pay.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-KS, said such an amendment would lead to long-term fiscal stability. “If we send a message like this,” he said, “I think it will signal to the American people we’re serious, and more especially to the world, and more especially to the financial community.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, finally mentioned in passing the one factor in the fiscal equation that Republicans usually avoid: “You’d have to tighten your belts,” he said. “You’d have to deal with entitlements. You’d have to look at revenue. You’d have to do things that people in the real world do every day.”

It’s the “you’d have to look at revenue” part that I was listening for, and only Graham mentioned it.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-WY, said he met with constituents back home and asked them if they believed they had a better life than their parents had, “and every hand goes up,” he said. “And then I ask the question, ‘How many of you believe that your kids will have a better life than you have right now?’ and the hands all come down. And we talk about why that is, and the reason, fundamentally, is the debt. The debt is the threat to our future.”

Well, I like the idea of working toward a balanced budget, and I’m all for a government that lives within its means, and I don’t like taxation without representation, and I’m all for long-term fiscal stability, and so on. But I’ve noticed over the years that Republicans tend to say a lot less than they mean, so I downloaded the resolution.

I didn’t find anything to criticize in the first section of the proposed amendment:

“Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a roll call vote.”

Well, I thought, that’s one way to go about it. Now all that’s needed is some sort of provision for wartime or national emergency, when we might have to spend more money than we have, and spend it quickly. I don’t see why they couldn’t get enough Democrats to go along to pass it, and I think they could probably get the necessary ratifications from 38 states. I read on.

The second section threw the monkey wrench into the machinery: “Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed 18 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States for the calendar year ending before the beginning of such fiscal year, unless two-thirds of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific amount in excess of such 18 percent by roll call vote.”

Huh? What has that got to do with a balanced budget? That’s an arbitrary limit on the size of the federal government. It might be an appropriate limit, but it has nothing to do with collecting as much money as is spent. And why put that into the Constitution?

The third section requires the president to propose a budget, within the 18% of GDP limit, each year.

The fourth section adds other non-germane stipulations: “Any bill that imposes a new tax or increases the statutory rate of any tax or the aggregate amount of revenue may pass only by a two-thirds majority of the duly chosen and sworn Members of each House of Congress by a roll call vote. For the purpose of determining any increase in revenue under this section, there shall be excluded any increase resulting from the lowering of the statutory rate of any tax.”

Where have I heard that crap before? Oh, yeah. I think the House of Representatives passed something very close to that at the beginning of this session. Now I’m getting mad. This resolution isn’t about a balanced budget. It’s a package of all the Republican wet dreams they’ve been espousing since Saint Ronald Reagan took office. I’m not going to parse it further; you can read it yourself here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/52020805/GOP-Balanced-Budget-Amendment-Text, if you don’t mind having your browser history forever revealing that you signed on to an official Republican website.

It becomes clear that the Republicans have no intention of getting this resolution passed. Oh sure, they’d pass it in a minute if they had super majorities in both houses and a president who would sign it, but they just want to be able to whine to the electorate that, “Well, we tried to get a balanced budget amendment passed, but the Democrat[ic] Party wouldn’t hear of it.”

“You’d have to look at revenue,” Lindsey Graham said, but he obviously didn’t mean it.

I should have known. The last time that Republican senators were unanimous about something was in last winter’s lame-duck session, when they all signed a letter saying they would block all legislation until and unless all of the Bush tax cuts – including those affecting people with the highest incomes – were reauthorized.

We are going to have to “look at” revenue. We can’t get out of the hole we’re in by just cutting spending, but the proposed resolution would all but prevent any increase in taxes. It is a disingenuous, hypocritical, fraudulent deception to call this travesty of legislative phraseology a balanced budget amendment, and every one of those 47 senators knows it. It’s grandstanding at its worst, and, once again, it distracts Congress from its pressing business: helping the economy recover and getting people back to work.

Happy April Fools' Day!

Weird and Weirderer


Julius Caesar invented the Julian Calendar in 45 BC to reform the earlier Roman Calendar, which was based on the moon and found to be inadequate. Caesar’s new calendar introduced the concept of leap years every four years, as we have now. Regular years had 365 days, and leap years had 366, so the average year was 365.25 days. The Julian Calendar started the new year in March.

It worked fine for a while, but the actual solar year is about 11 minutes short of 365.25 days, so after a few centuries people noticed that particular days kept coming later in the year. Pope Gregory XIII fixed this in 1582 by removing leap years that are divisible by 100. This only happens three times every four centuries; we did it in 2000, which, under the Julian Calendar, would have been a leap year, but, under the Gregorian Calendar, was not. (Is everybody following this? There will be a test!) I know you were wondering why there wasn’t a Sadie Hawkins Day in 2000.

Gregory also changed the first of the year to January 1st. Lots of people rejected the new calendar and continued to use the old one. Since their calendar started in March, and since March came later each year, advocates of the new calendar called them foolish. It has been claimed that this is the derivation of the term “April fool.”

Whatever its origin, the world has never had a shortage of fools, in April or any other month. In honor of the holiday, here are some of the latest to claim the title:

Winning. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling found that among independent voters, Charlie Sheen would beat Sarah Palin in a presidential race, 41% to 36%.

What’s in a name? Lindsay Lohan has announced that she will join such luminaries as Cher (whose last name used to be Bono), Bono (whose last name used to be Cher), Madonna, and Sting, and will hereafter be known simply as Lindsay. I wonder how Lindsay would do in a poll with Charlie and Sarah.

Don’t make me LOL. The newest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has added “LOL” (laughing out loud) and “OMG” (oh my God), favored abbreviations of the text and tweet generation, to its list of words, citing them as “noteworthy” and saying they can now be found “outside of electronic contexts.” The OED also accepted the coinage of the term “muffin top” to describe the roll of fat that collects above the waistband of a pair of tight trousers. How did we ever do without that one?

Look! Short sleeves! Ramzan Kadyrov, the governor of the Russian Federation province of Chechnya (you know, the one bordered by Ingushetia, Stavropol, and Dagestan provinces and the country of Georgia), has imposed a dress code of “modest attire” for female citizens. What’s the penalty for violating this code? “Unknown men dressed like law enforcement officials” drive around in cars and shoot violators with paintball guns. “Ouch! He got me right in the muffin top!”

Teapot Dumb Scandal. Democrats have been singing in unison about how extreme the Tea Party is. Senate Republic[an] Leader Mitch McConnell disagrees. “Anybody who follows national politics knows that when it comes to a lot of the issues Americans care about most, Democrat[ic] leaders in Washington are pretty far outside the mainstream,” Mitch averred. “Despite the Democrat[ic] leadership’s talking points, these folks [the Tea Bags] are not radicals. They're our next-door neighbors and our friends,” he said. Maybe so, but they’re losing popularity. A CNN poll released March 30th shows that 47% of U.S. adults now have an unfavorable view of the Tea Party, while 32% have a favorable view. This is a flip-flop since January, when the percentages were 33% favorable and 26% unfavorable.

States’ wrongs. The Tea Party has pretty much taken over the House of Representatives, but that isn’t enough for some of its supporters. Rep. Ron Paul, R-TX, the father of Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, and a darling of the Teapot crowd, has taken a page from the 1950s backlash against the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which determined that “separate but equal” schools for Whites and Blacks were unconstitutional. Many Southern members of Congress took the position then that states had the right to “nullify” that decision if they didn’t agree with it. Paul, Sr. dug that dead horse up and beat on it at an Iowa home-schoolers’ event. “The chances of us getting things changed around soon through the legislative process is not all that good,” he complained ungrammatically. “And that is why I am a strong endorser of the nullification movement, that states like this should just nullify these laws.” I’m sure the feds are just as prepared to contest the point today as they were in 1956.

Way to go, Bernie! What do Exxon Mobil, Bank of America, General Electric, Chevron, Boeing, Valero Energy, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, ConocoPhillips, and Carnival Cruise Lines have in common? According to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, they are ten of the worst offenders when it comes to avoiding taxes. The Republicans in Congress have been complaining that U.S. corporate tax rates are too high, but they fail to mention the volumes of deductions and incentives and other loopholes in the tax code that allow huge corporations to avoid taxes even when they make large profits. The Center for Responsive Politics added that the ten companies Sanders targeted together spent $117 million on lobbying in 2010 – presumably to keep their tax breaks.

Call 911! An unidentified man pulled into Birdie’s Food and Fuel in LaPlace, LA, last month to fill his gas tank. The cost of regular, he said, was $3.049, but while he was pumping, the price in the little window changed to $3.189. The man complained to a store attendant, who just shrugged his shoulders, so he decided to appeal to a higher authority: he called 911. No charges were filed against the man for tying up the emergency line, and it turned out that he was getting his gas at the lower price anyway. A month later, $3.189 sounds mighty cheap!

Lost and found. A contract security guard found a package outside the federal building where he works in Detroit last February. He brought it in and put it in the “lost and found” area, where it sat unclaimed until March 18th, when someone decided it should be x-rayed. Yes, it was a bomb. The bomb squad recovered and detonated it. The building houses offices of Sen. Carl Levin, D-MI, the Social Security Administration, and, embarrassingly, the FBI. The rent-a-cop was suspended.

He’s back! Finally, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican chief executivator of California, is returning. Just three months after he said “Hasta la vista, Baby!” and handed over the reins to Jerry Brown, Ahnold and Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee announced that an animated TV show and a comic book will chronicle the adventures of a former body-builder, actor, and California governor turned crime fighter called, of course, The Governator. No fooling!

Hanging NPR in Effigy - III

NPR Doesn’t Always Tell the Truth

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” –Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1865.

In my defense of National Public Radio I have been very critical of the far right-wing media and their infidelity to the truth, especially their dalliances with such floozies as the “birther” nonsense. I have pooh-poohed Faux News’s claim to be “fair and balanced” while praising NPR for being “extremely fair to all points of view, bending over backwards to give every side a voice.”

Well, I have to admit I once caught NPR in an intentional lie.

I was working 68 miles away from my home, and Morning Edition and All Things Considered were welcome companions on my daily commute. I was able to track down the All Things Considered program to which I refer: it was aired on April 1, 2005, and you can listen to it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4571982.

I know I risk giving fodder (good grief, I have to stop using these horse metaphors!) to those who would like to tear NPR apart, but I can’t withhold the truth.

The trusted, mellifluous tones of All Things Considered host Robert Siegal informed me of a real crisis occurring in the forests of New England. He said maple syrup sales were at an all-time low because of calorie-conscious consumers and foreign competition. Then he told me something about sugar maple trees that I didn’t know:

“Untapped maple trees can explode like gushers causing injury and sometimes death. If untended, quiet stands of nature’s sweetness can turn into spindly demons of destruction.”

He explained that the depressed market for the syrup had caused tree owners to neglect tapping their trees – with dire consequences:

“The Vermont Health Board reports 87 fatalities, 140 maimings, and a dozen decapitations from sap-buildup explosions this year. That’s the highest ever.”

I should explain that I live in New Mexico, where there are few sugar maple trees, if any. I’ve visited New England, but only in the summer, long after the sap-tapping season. So that night, I brought up the subject to my girlfriend, who once lived in Maine.

“Oh,” I said. “I learned something today on NPR that I didn’t know. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but I never knew that if you don’t tap sugar maple trees they explode!”

My girlfriend is something of a skeptic anyhow, but the look she gave me reflected more than skepticism. She pointedly asked me if I knew what the date was.

I must have been daydreaming or looking at the scenery as the story continued, or I might have figured it out for myself. Mr. Siegal explained that the maple syrup industry has been hurt “by a cheaper syrup knock-off from, of all places, the islands of the South Pacific. Here in Venoboff, formerly Danish Samoa, workers are making a cheaper maple syrup substitute. It’s called table syrup. They saw apart used maple tables, chairs, knickknacks. The expense of importing these pieces of furniture halfway around the world is more than made up for by abundant cheap labor, by the lack of unions, health care, government oversight.”

Danish Samoa? Don't expect NPR to tell the truth all the time. Not on the First of April, anyway.

Hanging NPR in Effigy - II

Eggheads and Know-Nothings

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” –Thomas Jefferson, 1762-1826.

I was born during the administration of Harry Truman, but the first sitting president I remember was Dwight Eisenhower. He was a Republican, and the Democrat who opposed him both times he ran, in 1952 and 1956, was Adlai Stevenson.

Stevenson: egghead.

Eisenhower’s vice presidential running mate, Richard Nixon, called Stevenson an “egghead” during the 1952 campaign. I was not quite five years old, but I remember the fuss about it on the radio. (We didn’t get a television for several more years.) At the time I thought it was a very funny word. My mother tried to explain it to me, but I remember wondering why they were calling Stevenson an egghead when both he and Eisenhower were obviously quite bald.

“Egghead” was an epithet for an intellectual, and in some circles it was quite a disparaging term. Adlai Stevenson was smart and well-educated, Nixon was saying, and that made him suspect. I must admit I’ve never really understood that sentiment. But Eisenhower and Nixon won, both times.

Is that the problem with National Public Radio? It’s for eggheads? Is there something wrong with that?

Eisenhower: just bald.
(Wikipedia photos)

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, who led the crusade to pass HR-1076 to defund NPR, found it necessary to point out that NPR listeners were better educated than the U.S. population as a whole, and that they made more money. I would think parents who heard her statistics would encourage their children to listen to NPR. Apparently, in some circles, it produces the opposite reaction.

Blackburn and Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia both claimed that NPR’s news coverage was biased. Blackburn said taxpayers (she is quick to speak for all taxpayers) didn’t want to pay for programming “they do not agree with,” and Cantor said federal funding shouldn’t be used “to advocate one ideology.”

What the hell are they talking about? I’ve listened to the NPR news programs for decades, and I’ve always found them extremely fair to all points of view, bending over backwards to give every side a voice. The richness, depth, and diversity of the subjects NPR covers, compared to other news programs, are like a sip of Guinness Stout after a couple of cans of Coors Light. I’m assuming that it’s the news that offends Blackburn and her cronies and not Lake Woebegone or Click and Clack or Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me.

I can only assume it is that very richness, depth, and diversity that rankles the right. If you compare NPR with Faux News, you’ll find the former giving perspectives from several points of view while the latter repeats a single theme of gloom and doom and “us and them.” Perhaps Blackburn, et al, are afraid their followers will lose their way if they’re exposed to NPR. As the World War I song puts it, “How ‘Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree?)”

Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe NPR is an insidious agent of subversive thought and not a refreshing compendium of interesting items from a diverse and complex world.

Nah. I just can’t go there. I’m sorry. As several Democratic representatives said during the debate, NPR is a national treasure.

There is one matter that wasn’t elaborated during the debate. HR-1076 prohibits local public radio stations from purchasing programming from NPR or any other source. My local station airs several non-NPR shows like “Democracy Now” and “Counterspin.” Perhaps it’s programs like this the Republicans are targeting under the blanket of NPR. No one ever accused Amy Goodman of being non-partisan.

But I don’t think that’s all of it. I think the raucous right really has a problem with Morning Edition and All Things Considered. They make people think. People who think don’t follow blindly and they ask too many questions. And that’s dangerous.

Ignorance is simply not knowing something, and can be corrected by instruction or research. Stupidity, though, is intentional ignorance, and is much more difficult to correct. Unfortunately, the United States has a long tradition of self-righteous stupidity that long pre-dates Nixon’s “egghead” epithet.

The “Know Nothing” party of the mid-Nineteenth Century wasn’t named for its lack of knowledge, but for its secrecy. It was an anti-Catholic, anti-immigration group of Protestant males of English heritage. When questioned about the party, members were instructed to reply, “I know nothing.”

What the Know Nothings feared was change, and the undermining of perceived authority and the status quo. The Scopes trial in 1925 reflected the same fears. In fact, fear itself is often the motivation of those who appear to reject rationality. If you don’t believe in global warming, you don’t have to worry about it. If you pass a law making English the official U.S. language, and build walls along the borders, maybe all those strange people with their strange words and strange foods who have moved into your neighborhood will go away.

National Public Radio celebrates new ideas and discoveries. It provides us with voices from all sorts of places expressing all sorts of opinions. Perhaps this is the problem: it engenders fear.

So how do ya keep ‘em down on the farm? Don’t let ‘em even hear about Paree!

Hanging NPR in Effigy - I

Hypocrisy on Parade

“Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo.” –Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs!” the Republicans said in the last campaign. Increasing employment would be their mantra, their crusade, their sacred priority.

How’s that working out for them? Well, as soon as the new session started the House of Representatives dug up the dead horse they call “Obamacare” and beat on it for several days, finally passing a repeal that is just as dead as the horse in the Senate. They balked and bridled (sorry about these horse metaphors) at passing a continuing resolution for spending during the current fiscal year, which is already half over, demanding draconian cuts and only postponing the inevitable for two weeks, and then another three weeks – which will be up very soon. And last week, on St. Patrick’s Day, they took time to debate an “emergency” bill that never saw the inside of a committee room to cut funding for National Public Radio, and passed it, 228 to 192.

Jobs, it seems, are on the back burner while these more important matters are dealt with.

The NPR fiasco was billed as an emergency because it would save money. This was a brazen lie, but one that didn’t seem to embarrass anyone who presented it.

House Resolution 1076 would cut off federal funding for NPR, and would prohibit public radio stations across the country from using their federal funding to purchase NPR’s – or anyone else’s – programs. They would have to use the money they collect from listeners in those long, boring pledge drives to create their own programming in-house.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-TN, doled out the time for the Republicans. She started out by telling the truth: she said HR-1076 was “a bill to get the federal government and federal taxpayers out of the business of buying radio programs they do not agree with.” That was the real purpose of the legislation, not saving an insignificant amount of money.

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-CO, was the original sponsor of the bill. He was less honest.

“According to NPR,” he said, “federal funding to supplement operations amounts to less than two percent of its annual budget. Some have said this Congress should not bother with such a small amount of money. Only in Washington would anyone say $64 million is not worth saving.”

Aha! Now we have a dollar amount. This is roughly equivalent to the cost of the 110 Tomahawk missiles that were fired at Libya on Saturday, or about twice the amount it cost us to buy the F-15 fighter jet that crashed there on Monday.

“You have to start somewhere,” Lamborn continued, “if you’re truly serious about getting our fiscal house in order.”

Yeah. Truly serious. We only need to find 218,749 cuts of equal size to zero out our $14 trillion national debt.

The House majority leader, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-VA, weighed in next.

“…we’ve seen NPR and its programming often veer far from what most Americans would like to see as far as expenditure of their taxpayer dollars,” he said. Later he asked, “Why should we use taxpayer dollars to be used to advocate one ideology?”

Cantor, too, was being truthful. It’s the content, not the cost, that riles him and his colleagues.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-NY, tried to shame the Republicans with satire for bringing up such a trivial “emergency.”

“Crisis averted, ladies and gentlemen!” he began. “What a relief! What a relief! I’m glad we got the economy back going. I’m glad we’ve secured our nuclear power plants. I’m so glad the Americans are back to work. We’ve finally found out our problem! We discovered a target we can all agree upon! It’s these guys! This is the problem! It’s Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers!”

He held up a poster of the silly but popular brothers on NPR who give callers advice on problems they’re having with their cars. Weiner’s humor provided a short but welcome break in the dismal doings.

Rep. Blackburn brought out some statistics. She said about 65% of NPR listeners have bachelor’s degrees, compared to only a quarter of the population as a whole. She said NPR listeners have a median household income of about $86,000 annually, compared to a national figure of about $55,000, and could easily afford to cover the cost of buying NPR programming. Then she propounded the underlying fallacy:

“This debate is about saving – taxpayer – money!” she prevaricated strenuously. Then she assured us that “the American taxpayer has said, ‘get NPR out of our pockets!’”

I am always reluctant to accept the claim of a party that was elected by a majority of a minority (the 2010 election brought out less than 41% of eligible voters) that it speaks for “the American taxpayer” or “the American people.”

I have primarily been quoting Republicans, because their statements were so outrageous, but congressional debates are like tennis matches, with each side getting a shot in turn, and a succession of Democrats interspersed the GOP remarks to point out the high quality of NPR programming, its growing listenership (if that’s really a word), and the fact that the bill would not reduce the amount of money going to local stations; it would just restrict the use of that money. There would be no significant savings gained by passing it.

Blackburn demurred, pointing out that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and three other federal agencies give direct funding to NPR amounting to some $1.5 million to $3 million per year.

(Aha! Another real number! If we cut $3 million, we’d only need 4,666,665 cuts of equal size to pay off the national debt.)

“Our country does – not – have – the – money to spend on this!” Blackburn insisted, emphasizing each word and working up to a real harangue: “NPR does not need the money; they will not be able to get these grants; we will save those dollars! The American taxpayer (there she goes again) has said, ‘Get your fiscal house in order!’ This is a step in that process. I know they (the Democrats, presumably, and not the American taxpayers) don’t like it, but you know what? This is something, this is something we can do, this is something we will do, this is something the American people (t.s.g.a.) want to make certain that we do, so that we get this nation back on a firm fiscal and sound fiscal policy. The day has come that the out-of-control federal spending has to stop! A good place to start is by taking NPR out of the taxpayer pocket!”

Enough of that. Here are two of the more rational comments:

Rep. John Dingell, D-MI, the longest serving member of the House, said, “The majority continues to force members of this body to waste the time and energy of the House, a critical asset of this nation, on political witch hunts with respect to health care and the environment. Now we find that we’re adding public broadcasting to this list. Public broadcasting is a national treasure. It provides us impartial, honest coverage of facts and news. It provides information not available elsewhere, and, yes, it sheds a little bit of culture on our people, something which, probably, my Republican colleagues find offensive. It has done so at very low cost to the public…”

Rep. James Moran, D-VA, said, “This has nothing to do with the deficit. It’s an infinitesimal fraction of our national debt. It jeopardizes nine thousand jobs and it distracts us from solving the real problems this nation faces while trying to destroy one of the primary sources of an enlightened electorate.”

What is this all really about? Obviously it is not about money. What is it about “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” and all those other great programs on NPR that is such a burr under the Republican saddle? (I promise: no more horse metaphors.)

I’ll try to examine that question in my next post. Right now I’m worn out from all the invective.

Have We Had Enough of This Nonsense?

What an Unfortunate Waste of Time

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” –Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890-1969.

The three-ring circus currently playing in the House of Representatives, on Faux News, and on all those clear-channel radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh and his clones isn’t just annoying and reprehensible, it’s keeping our country from its true destiny as the exemplar of liberty and the leader of human progress.

The United States of America has a dark history of ethnic, sexual, religious, and economic inequality, but we have made great progress in righting those wrongs over the 234 years of our existence. The Ranting Right would like to reverse that progress.

We have built our economic stability by creating a large middle class through universal education and protections for those who work. The Party of No and its new fringe group, the Party of Hell No, are doing what they can to “dumb down” the populace and stifle the demands of labor.

We have made astonishing advances in science and technology that have made our country wealthy while improving every aspect of our daily lives, including the purity of our air, water, food, and medicine. All these improvements are at risk in the hands of the Backlash Boys of the radical right.

We have created a regulated capitalist economic system that encourages entrepreneurship while restricting the fraud and abuse to which unfettered economies are prone. Several decades of Grand Old Party initiatives gradually dismantled the protections put in place after the Great Depression, the inevitable fraud and abuse occurred and almost caused Great Depression II, and now the Republicans are doing all they can to convince the electorate that it was the fault of the Democrats.

But what’s worse than any of the errors in this catalogue is the current GOP message that the United States is bankrupt, financially and morally, and that it has lost its pre-eminence in the world.

This is not true. Over the course of our history we have come together to fight a revolution, survive an incredibly bloody civil war, and make the sacrifices necessary to win two world wars. Meanwhile we have continued to make things better for each new generation despite booms and busts and social strife. We have two and a half centuries of “can do” tradition and indomitable spirit. Our inventions and innovations have been the envy of the planet, as has been the liberty enjoyed by our people.

Yes, we’re having a hard time – a very hard time. The people on the bottom are the ones feeling it the most. Increasing gas prices, for example, may be a nuisance to the wealthy, but they are disastrous to the poor and much of the working class. The last gas price increase was the trigger that ignited the collapse in 2008, and most people haven’t yet recovered. Now the price is rising again, not because of reduced supply, but because of speculation – again.

Meanwhile, the new majority in the House is passing cuts that hurt these same people in other ways. We’re in dire straits, they say, and we have to cut unemployment compensation, Pell grants, Head Start, homeless veteran programs, and on and on.

It’s as if Dad, who had maxed out the family credit cards by purchasing a new Cadillac SUV, a wide-screen TV, and season tickets to the Cardinal games, were to call a family meeting and suggest that the kids needed to cut out their school lunches. It’s upside-down thinking and it’s unconscionable.

Even if we were to cut out the entire discretionary budget we wouldn’t be able to get out of this hole. We have to increase our revenue. The Republicans got a lot of votes last November by promising to create more jobs, but what have they done? Well, they’ve tried to repeal the health care act and cut funding for research and development, and they’ve taken pot-shots at some of their favorite targets such as National Public Radio and Planned Parenthood. In Wisconsin they’re targeting teachers and other public employees. In Georgia they’re trying to tax Girl Scout cookies.

Where are the jobs?

Well, they’re not where they used to be. New jobs are going to have to come from new industries. The federal government can help create those industries in two major ways: by educating the workforce and supporting research and development. If we cut spending in those areas, we’ll be cutting our collective throat.

We also need to help those who already have jobs. The best way we can do that is to reform the tax code, to reduce the tax burden on those who are struggling and cut out the tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.

And, yes, we need to cut duplicative and inefficient spending. That may well include welfare and housing and employment programs that overlap each other, but it should also include the many wasteful corners of the unaudited military budget and some of the corporate welfare in the farm budget.

I don’t usually agree with Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican, but thanks to his efforts we now have a partial list of government programs, and it is revealing a lot of waste and duplicate effort. Consolidating such programs could reduce administrative costs without hurting those they are intended to help. But this won’t be enough to do the job.

One nice result of helping those who are unemployed get jobs and those who are employed increase their financial security is a reduction in welfare, Food Stamps, utility assistance, health care and rental subsidies, and unemployment expenses. And gainful employment is the only way we can increase revenue and begin chipping away at the debt and its concomitant interest expense.

So should we freak out, give up, throw in the towel, admit defeat? Certainly not. We were making good progress ten years ago when Bush, Jr. took over. With a little luck and a lot of common sense, we’ll start making progress again.

The United States is not broke. The United States has not lost its place in the world. All of our problems are temporary and can be remedied, not by draconian cuts that hurt the working class but by confidence and investment in our people.

Republicans, Teabags, and corporate media hacks: Stop wasting our time!

Whoops! Blogger Makes Blooper!

Boy, did I get taken in. In my previous post I showed a picture of this sign from the Westboro Baptist Church that read "God Hates Happy People." Well, it was a fake. Somebody has set up a web site (http://www.says-it.com/wbc/) where you can type in your own message. I was so busy looking for examples of placards this despicable group has displayed that I didn't check the site out carefully enough.

Mea culpa. These yoyos may have had a sign that said God hates happy people -- they've quite a repertory of "God hates" messages -- but the photo I posted is a fake.

For more counter-Westboro signs see as well http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/the-3o-best-anti-westboro-baptist-church-protest-s

A Law We Can Live With

Having a First Amendment Isn’t Easy

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” –The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Two unrelated news items I saw this week point out the difficulties we brought upon ourselves by adding the above words to our Constitution. Please be assured that I am in no way advocating the slightest change to those words; I’m just pointing out that the exercise of those freedoms can be annoying and even a source of outrage.

 “The freedom of speech” can be a prickly thing. It includes, as these news items make clear, the right to be despicable and the right to lie.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged the right of members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, to picket gravesite ceremonies of U.S. soldiers. The church’s placards have included such messages as “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Is Your Enemy,” “Thank God for 9/11,” “God Hates Fags,” “God Hates America,” and, perhaps most telling, “God Hates Happy People.” These are not happy people.

The court ruled eight to one that these hateful messages were protected under the First Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out that in this country we have chosen “to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

Of course, he is right. It was the correct decision. We have to live with this kind of thing if we want to maintain our own right to say what we think.

“Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case,” wrote the lone dissenter on the court, Justice Samuel Alito. We all tend to agree with his sentiment, but look again at his words: “vicious” is a very subjective adjective while “assault” is quite objectively defined in the law. Although the vast majority of citizens would agree that the Westboro placards represented “vicious verbal assault,” it’s very difficult to prohibit such activities without curtailing the rights of others.

I agree with the chief justice. We just have to live with it.

On a lighter note, while we also have to live with the lack of journalistic integrity of Faux News and the Limbaugh clones, Canada has managed to avoid them. Robert Kennedy, Jr. reports that our neighbor to the north has a law that forbids lying on broadcast news (http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/276-74/5123-fox-news-lies-keep-them-out-of-canada).

“Canada's Radio Act requires that ‘a licenser [I think that should be “licensee”] may not broadcast ... any false or misleading news,’” Kennedy writes. “The provision has kept Fox News and right-wing talk radio out of Canada and helped make Canada a model for liberal democracy and freedom. As a result of that law, Canadians enjoy high quality news coverage, including the kind of foreign affairs and investigative journalism that flourished in this country before Ronald Reagan abolished the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ in 1987. Political dialogue in Canada is marked by civility, modesty, honesty, collegiality, and idealism that have pretty much disappeared on the US airwaves.”

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? We could sure use more civility and all those other attributes down here.

But, once again, we have chosen to bend over backwards “to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.” Go ahead and lie, Rush. Keep the “birther” nonsense coming, Faux. The First Amendment’s got you covered.

On the other hand, Rush and his cronies have to put up with people like me.

To paraphrase a slogan that supported the national 55-mph speed limit, “The First Amendment. It’s a law we can live with.”

The Reagan Legacy

Hell, Yes, It’s Class Warfare!

“The ten most dangerous words in the English language are ‘Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.’” –Ronald Reagan, 1911-2004.

The centennial of Ronald Reagan’s birth was celebrated recently. It gave those who revere his memory yet another opportunity to extol his virtues and his triumphs. Over the years I have been amazed at the reverence in which he is held. Someone even suggested adding his mug to the ones already on Mount Rushmore.

I remember the Reagan Administration with less affection.

My first memory of Ronald Reagan was back in the early days of television, when he hosted a show called, as I remember, General Electric Theater.

“At General Electric, progress is our most important product,” he would say at the end of each show. I was in the third grade or thereabouts, and I found him unctuous and insincere. I don’t know why, but I never really changed my mind about him.

When he was elected governor of California, I thought to myself, “Well, what do you expect from California?” (Later I had the same thought about Arnold Schwarzenegger.) When he ran for president, I thought that surely the citizens of the United States wouldn’t elect “that B-actor.”

Well, they did. Somebody called him “The Great Communicator,” but I never thought he was all that eloquent. I simply did not get it.

His eight years in office were almost as painful to me as the eight years of Bush, Jr. I disagreed with most everything he said and did, and towards the end I thought he was simply getting senile.

His stature in the Republican Party was, and is, just the opposite. He gave his supporters great hope and encouragement, and among them he is still their shining city on the hill. I take a more cynical view: his message, as I perceived it, was, “It’s O.K. to be selfish.” Oh, I know, I’m misreading his call for self-reliance and personal responsibility, but I still see it as, “I’ve got mine and you’re not going to take it away from me.”

It was during his time in office, and in large part through his efforts, that the “Christian Right” became a major force in the GOP, and the traditional fiscal conservatism of the party got all mixed up with “social conservatism” – which I perceived as bigotry and xenophobia. The Republican Party does not have a very big natural constituency because its primary concern is protecting the wealthy, so assimilating what was then called the “moral majority” (which, someone noted, was neither) made good political sense. That alliance has continued for the thirty-some years since.

Reagan increased defense spending significantly, which his supporters still maintain forced the Soviet Union to do the same, resulting in its collapse. I have never understood that logic.

Reagan preached limited government, and his party members drank deep of that Kool-Aid.

But his greatest legacy is what one of his primary opponents (George Bush, Sr., who later became his vice president and then succeeded him in office) called “voodoo economics,” and what the media nicknamed “trickle-down economics.” Its basic tenet is to leave the rich alone so that they will create jobs that will benefit those in less rarefied financial strata. It was nothing new – in the previous century this was referred to as “laissez-faire,” or “let them (the wealthy) alone” economics.

And how is that working out for us? You’ve probably heard a number of statistics that demonstrate how the poor and middle class in this country have been going downhill since Reagan was elected, but now Mother Jones magazine has collected eleven graphs that show that progression, well, graphically (http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph). Citations are provided for each graph so you can check their veracity. Here’s the first one; the others are just as dismal:

Some of these graphs show changes over time, and if you didn’t live through all this, as I did, remember that Reagan (R) was elected in 1980 and 1984; Bush, Sr. (R) in 1988; Clinton (D) in 1992 and 1996; Bush, Jr. (R) in 2000 and 2004; and Obama (D) in 2008.

I think we all recognize and accept that in a capitalist system there will be poor people, rich people, and very rich people, but when the inequality between them continues to widen, there’s truly a problem. The Middle Class has been the bulwark of our country, and it is shrinking dramatically. It’s an old cliché that the rich get richer and the poor poorer, but when it actually happens, it creates havoc, and when it happens at this lightning speed, it spells imminent disaster.

How do we stop this, or at least start “bending the curve?”

I would suggest revising the tax code and reforming campaign financing. I can’t think of anything more important, or more difficult, but if we cannot make significant changes in both of these areas, we face a future of economic decline or political revolt, or both.

The very wealthy spend immense amounts of money to persuade people that it’s really their fault that they aren’t wealthy, too, that if they just had enough “personal responsibility” and weren’t such crybabies, they wouldn’t have fallen in a hole. In Wisconsin, the governor and his cronies are blaming teachers (who, they say, get far too much full-time pay for part-time work and have bloated retirement plans) and other working people for the current recession. Unfortunately, we never have a shortage of gullible people who will accept just about anything that they see on television.

I hope the Mother Jones link gives you some of the ammunition you need to counter these pernicious assertions. We have to fix this before our republic devolves into despotic plutocracy. It’s not far down the road.

You bet it’s class warfare. And Uncle Sam needs you!