Uncategorized

A RATIONAL PLANET

Posted on April 16, 2012 by halviv

One of the great disappointments I will have endured, is that in my lifetime we will not have made contact with beings from another planet. Space is so vast that the development of technology to enable us to travel to another inhabited planet probably won’t occur for at least a thousand years. But it would have been so cool to be able to examine life on an alien planet and see whether they were able to get it right, or whether they fucked it all up the way we have on planet Earth. Even some basic stuff would be fascinating. Do they have sex with the same organs used to remove bodily waste? What kind of foods do they eat if any? Do they require sleep like we do? But the most fascinating thing of all is whether they were able to develop a civilization that lived in peace and harmony, or did they have a history of constant war, strife and bloodshed as we have had. In other words, did they live lives of rational common sense, or in constant fear, paranoia, and irrationality as we have done.

So it got me thinking that if we ditched our usual fears and the delusional thinking that goes with those fears, how much better life on this planet would become. For example, when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, there was virtually an unprecedented rush to buy guns and ammo that occurred almost over night. Gun stores couldn’t up with the demand, especially for bullets, as the surge to buy weaponry cleaned off their shelves within days after the election. Apparently, a good segment of the population went into a full fledged state of paranoia, believing that the election of a liberal Democrat would result in the Government stripping every citizen of  his or her weapons, and hauling protesters off to concentration camps. This, despite the fact that the subject of gun ownership was rarely, if ever, discussed during the campaign. Today we have millions of citizens armed to the hilt with multiple guns and storage sheds filled with nothing but bullets, still waiting for Government tanks to come rolling down their streets and haul them off.

Anyway here are some of the things we can do to achieve a more rational planet.Lets start with drugs. Every year we spend tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to outlaw marijuana, heroin and cocaine, while allowing drugs that kill far more people like tobacco and alcohol to remain legal. Every year we incarcerate tens of thousands of drug dealers and users at enormous expense, while tens of thousands of  of suppliers in this country and throughout Latin America are murdered, usually by drug cartels that make billions off the illegal drug trade. First of all, is it the government’s role to tell someone they’re prohibited from engaging in self-destructive behavior if such is their desire. If that is the government’s role, then the government should prohibit tobacco which kills about 400,000 Americans a year, alcohol which is highly detrimental to over users, as well as cheeseburgers, fries and pepperoni pizza which do nothing but clog people’s arteries leading to heart disease and other ills. Sound ridiculous? No more so than the so-called war on drugs which has been a monumental and extremely costly failure. Legalizing at least marijuana would reduce prison populations, reduce a major source of revenue from the drug cartels, and lead to an increased flow of government revenues as it could be taxed the way tobacco is.

Another rational move would be for all the world’s governments to eliminate tariffs on imported goods. Tariff is just a $10 word for taxes. When the government puts a “tariff” on say a pair of imported shoes made in China, you, the consumer are paying a higher price than you need to for those shoes. Tariffs are put in place ostensibly to allow domestic producers to compete with countries where it’s cheaper to make similar  products, but all it does is result in consumers having to pay higher prices than they should. Tariffs result in protectionism, which is highly destructive to most economies,and is blamed as one of the main causes of the 1930s Depression. It has been estimated by some of the world’s leading economists that if tariffs were totally eliminated, all world economies would significantly improve almost overnight, especially the economies in the poorest third-word countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Interestingly, both Mitt Romney and Donald Trump before him (they make a good pair) have been bashing China and threatening them with higher tariffs, if China doesn’t raise the prices on the stuff we import from them. I know that will gladden the hearts of all consumers.

Another exercise in sanity would have the government be the employer of last resort for the unemployed. In 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt took office at the height of the Depression, and the unemployment rate was triple what it is today, he quickly established what came to be known as the Civilian Conservation Corps. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed men were hired by the Corps to go into every community in the country and plant trees and shrubs and undertake other environmentally-friendly actions. By 1936 the unemployment rate was cut in half, and Roosevelt swept to a landslide re-election. Today, instead of just shoveling out unemployment checks to those that can’t find work, the government could use that money to also hire hundreds of thousands of people to do a myriad of badly needed infrastructure projects. They could repair our decaying water and sewer pipelines, repave roads and restore crumbling bridges, work on outdated aspects of the nations’s electrical grid, and also perform environmental projects. The unemployment rate would be dramatically lowered and as spending increased the economy as a whole would gather steam.

In any event these are just a few of the steps we could take on the road to rationality. I could go on and list hundreds more but you get the picture. I deliberately left unsaid some of the more contentious political irrationalities that ideologues like to indulge in,  like trying to ban a woman they don’t know from terminating an unwanted pregnancy. Ideologue, by the way, is just another 10 dollar word for fanatic. Will this planet start to come around and begin exhibiting more common sense and rational behavior? I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime I’ll have to console myself with old Star-Trek reruns.

 

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

DEPRESSION AT ITS ROOTS

Posted on April 12, 2012 by halviv

I thought that, for a change of pace, we would discuss a really fun topic like depression. No not the mental breakdown type, but the fiscal meltdown type instead. Although if you have a financial breakdown, it’s sure to cause a plethora of the mental type, so maybe we’ll wind up talking about both. They say that money can’t buy happiness, but tell that to the homeless guy sleeping in a cardboard box in a back alley or under a bridge somewhere. Or to the recent winners of the mega-millions jackpot as they were popping the champagne corks. It’s hard to imagine any individual or family where money doesn’t play a central role.

Throughout American history there’s been at least a dozen major depressions, or panics as they were sometimes called, starting as early as 1807. There was also a few milder recessions thrown in for good luck. (Ronald Reagan used to say that a recession is when your neighbor loses his job, and a depression is when you are thrown out of work. Not a bad definition.) But the depression I would like to focus on is the one back in the thirties. Not the 1930s, but the 1830s, or 1837 to be exact. It’s hard to believe they could have a depression back then when the entire U.S. population was only about 17 million. But not only did they have a depression, it was just as severe and destructive to people’s lives as the 1930s joyride. Those that are such strong advocates of capitalism somehow never get around to talking about capitalism’s failures, and how numerous they have been.

The U.S. government in 1837 was a modern day tea party’s dream come true in that it hardly did anything and hardly spent any money. It had a small Army and a few ships they called a Navy, a State Department that conducted a limited amount of foreign affairs, a small Attorney General’s office, and perhaps something that looked like an agriculture department to help out farmers. Even then people recognized that food was too important to deny at least some government involvement to help offset  the hardships that droughts or flooding rains may have caused farmers. But outside of these limited functions there was little government activity. Revenues came primarily from tariffs on imported goods, so tax rates on rich or poor was a non-factor.

In November of 1836, the only man in U.S. history to be elected from the House of Representatives directly to the White House, Martin Van Buren, became president in the following year, succeeding the the 8 year presidency of Andrew Jackson. Economic times were good at the start of the Van Buren presidency, as land values started to sky rocket in value because of increasing numbers of people pushing west. One might say there was a growing real-estate bubble, not unlike the one that has led to our current economic down-turn. Banks were eagerly encouraging people to borrow money and invest in real estate to keep land values rising.  Sound familiar? However, with all the cheap money flooding the market, inflation started to soar, and the government, in its infinite wisdom, declared that outstanding debt would have to be repaid in gold or silver, which made all the paper money on the market almost valueless. Instantly, there was widespread panic, as people rushed to their banks to withdraw their life’s savings while they could. Almost overnight, 40% of the banks in the U.S. had to close their shutters, since they were unable to meet their financial obligations. Financial destruction and ruin ensued on a massive scale in most people’s lives, from which  they would never recover.

Since governments in those days didn’t do much of anything outside of defense and foreign affairs, Van Buren was clueless as to what remedial actions the government might take to alleviate the hard financial times. So in the end he did nothing, and the unrelenting depression dragged on for 6  years until finally the economy started to improve in 1843. The depression caused Van Buren to lose his re-election bid in 1840, and he probably went to his grave insisting it was not government’s role to bail out the economy. Sort of like today’s far right, who are still monumentally upset that the current administration bailed out General Motors and Chrysler in their time of need,  instead of letting them go out of business, with a few hundred thousand more jobs going down the drain.

What is the relevance of the 1837 depression to our current world affairs? It’s not that capitalism is bad. Indeed, it’s probably the only real workable economic system at this stage of man’s evolutionary development. Even Communist China recognized that when they went to a market economy. But capitalism does have some deep fault lines that are ripe for exploitation by the unscrupulous. For example, when my wife and I bought our first house, people acquired real estate primarily for living purposes. We were required to put 20% of the purchase as a down payment. But early in the 21st century the fast-buck artists felt there was a quick killing to be made by constantly inflating real-estate values through convincing potential home-buyers to secure mortgages they could ill-afford with virtually no down payment. Real-estate prices could only go up, they told dubious buyers, before the crash came and all the foreclosures with it. And all the people now sitting in their homes with mortgages that are under-water. The 1930s depression was caused by the same-type of fast-buck artists that were exploiting the stock market, causing ever-increasing and unsustainable stock prices until the crash came.

So in the end it doesn’t matter whether it’s capitalism or socialism, or any other ism. What matters is the honesty and integrity of the people participating in what ever system is put in place. What’s important is to have the safeguards necessary to prevent the dishonest, the unscrupulous, and the out-and-out scammers from perverting whatever the chosen system of economics is. One final note. Mitt Romney has secured the GOP nomination, but during the primaries he referred to himself as a “severe conservative.” I wonder if that’s like a severe depression. Maybe it’s just a severe mental breakdown.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

HERE’S TO PRESIDENTIAL LOSERS (PART III)

Posted on April 9, 2012 by halviv

This is the last one in this series, I promise. We left off last time when Jimmy Carter assumed the Presidency in 1976 after a narrow win over Gerald Ford. Interestingly, Carter is still alive today and pushing near 90, while Ford made it well into his 80s, before saying sayonara. Being president seems to promote longevity. In any event, Carter’s presidency is often deemed a failure by most historians, but like Nixon, he did make some significant accomplishments.

James Earl Carter started off the 1976 race with like a 30 point lead over Ford according to reliable polling data. This was primarily due to how adversely the Watergate scandal had affected the GOP. By election day, however, Carter appeared to be in over over his head and entire lead had evaporated, leaving him to win by the slimmest of margins. He did this by carrying every southern state except Virginia, in a complete role reversal of today’s voting patterns. This occurred because Carter was a southern Governor with evangelical religious beliefs. Now, a Democrat can’t get elected dog catcher in the deep south. His presidency was marred by a poor economy, as evidenced by high rates of inflation and fairly high unemployment. They called it stagflation at the time. Nevertheless, there was considerable achievement.

Carter, using personal diplomacy, managed to pull off a peace treaty with Israel and Egypt, who had been in a virtual continuous state of war since Israel’s founding in 1948. In what came to be known as the Camp David accords, Carter got both sides to not only make peace, but to establish diplomatic relations, which was unthinkable in the Arab world at that time, and even to this day. He also turned over control and ownership of the Panama Canal to Panama where it belonged, despite the howls of protest from the Rush Limbaugh-types, that such action would allow Red China and Russia to invade and conquer the U.S. at will. These accomplishments paled, however, because during Carter’s presidency, the Shah of Iran was overthrown and the country was taken over by the fanatical mullahs that run the government to this day. One of their first actions was to invade the U.S. Embassy in Teheran and take all personal assigned there as hostages. As negotiations for their release dragged on and on, Carter authorized a daring covert rescue attempt. But 2 of the rescuers’ helicopters crashed in the air over Iran during this botched attempt, killing all on-board. It seemed to symbolize all the ineptitude of the Administration, and doomed Carter’s chances for re-election.

In 1980 Carter ran for re-election against a second-rate movie actor, who had managed to become Governor of California, named Ronald Wilson Reagan. Reagan talked as a tough conservative, but had a huge gift of gab, including a lot of self-deprecating humor, and had actually governed California as a moderate. In any event, due to the poor economy, the botched hostage rescue, and Reagan’s highly skilled campaign abilities, Carter lost the election in a landslide. Reagan set out to quickly change the political landscape by sharply increasing Defense spending, cutting social spending, and significantly reducing income taxes, especially for the wealthy. In the end, his cuts in social spending were modest and around the fringes, but his Defense  increases and tax cuts sharply led to huge deficit spending. The accumulated deficit from George Washington through Jimmy Carter was one trillion dollars when Reagan took office, but mushroomed to four trillion in the following 12 years, or a 300% increase. Today Republican candidates for President all hail Reagan as their model, but the truth is that the tea-party dominated GOP would never allow Reagan to be their candidate. He had too much common sense and pragmatism. Reagan eventually succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease which started appearing late in his second term.

Reagan was followed into the presidency by his Vice-President George H. W. Bush, a very decent, honest and down-to-earth individual. The year was 1988, and the Democrats put up the Governor of Mass. named Michael Dukakis to oppose Bush. But like the George McGovern candidacy and the Carter years, the Democrats and Dukakis went into a full incompetency mode, and Bush won the election easily. His 4 years in office were generally unremarkable, but he did agree with Democrats to a small increase in income tax rates, for which his was branded a traitor by right-wing Republicans. He also led us into the first Gulf war against Iraq, when Saddam Hussein tried to take over oil rich Kuwait. Bush was successful in freeing Kuwait, but he let Saddam stay in power, which we paid for dearly soon after.

In 1992 the economy experienced a slight down-turn, and it cost Bush his re-election bid to another southern Democrat Governor named William Jefferson Clinton. Clinton ran on a platform of: “It’s the economy, stupid,” and the country seemed to believe him, as he won easily despite a reputation of sexual affairs outside of marriage. The 8 Clinton years (he won re-election in 1996 against a hapless Bob Dole) were probably the best era of peace and prosperity in my lifetime, and I’ve been around over three-quarters of a century. We had a booming economy, low interest rates, low inflation, and except for a relatively brief scuffle with Serbia, the absence of war.  Of course, in Clinton’s second term, the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted, and Clinton became only the second president to be impeached by the House of Representatives. But Clinton survived the scandal, and because the times were so good, his approval ratings were through the roof when he left office. To this day, there are still those that bemoan the fact that he’s no longer president.

I’ve already written about how the election of 2000 was taken away from Clinton’s Vice-President, Al Gore, despite his winning at the polls, and how this led to the second Gulf war with Iraq and the ensuing huge loss of life and destruction. George W. Bush, son of the former president, George H.W. Bush, assumed the Oval Office, only to be hit with the tragic events of 9/11, eight months later. He is a decent man like his father, but he got us into a highly questionable second war with Iraq which took about eight and a half years to extricate ourselves from. Under his presidency the prescription drug benefit was added to Medicare, another huge accomplishment on the road to try to achieve universal health care. But the economy took a huge hit starting in 2007 and the country soured on the second Bush presidency. This paved the way for the first black president elected to the Oval Office in 2008, Barak Obama. We all pretty much know how it’s turned out since then. In 2013, either Obama will be back in office, or we will have the newly elected Mitt Romney.

In any event let’s drink a toast to those that made it, but , more so to those that tried and failed. How much different would our lives be, or would the nation’s affairs be, if the other guy had won instead. It would be interesting to theorize about it.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

HERE’S TO PRESIDENTIAL LOSERS (PART II)

Posted on April 5, 2012 by halviv

Just one footnote to the presidential race in 1960 between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon that I discussed in the last entry. I was still living at home in Brooklyn with my parents. (Yes, I put off growing up into a mature adult as long as I could. Some say there are still unresolved issues in that regard.) This would be the first election I was eligible to vote in, since the voting age was still 21 at that time. So imagine my excitement when the Kennedy campaign came to Brooklyn on a cold October day, and there was JFK standing up in a convertible limo with the top down, waving to the crowds as his motorcade rolled through the streets very near to my residence. Up until then, men always wore hats, especially in cold weather. You can see evidence of that if you ever watch movies made before the late 1950s. But JFK went hatless, mainly to show off his great looks and thick shock of hair. That started a new fashion trend almost overnight, where men started giving up wearing their hats, and the male hat industry quickly went out of business.

We left off last time with Richard Nixon winning the 1968 presidency in a close race with Hubert Humphrey. Now everyone knows that Nixon had to resign the presidency in disgrace over the Watergate scandal. But what most people don’t appreciate was that Nixon accomplished huge achievements during the time he was in office. If not for Watergate he could have been considered one of our greatest presidents. First, Nixon finally got us out of Viet-Nam, which was deeply dividing the nation. We had been involved in Viet-Nam since the 1950s, and huge protests against the war continued almost on a weekly basis. The generals in command were calling for another 200 thousand troop increase to go along with the 500 thousand troops already there. Instead Nixon started withdrawing troops and eventually signed a peace treaty with North Viet-Nam that enabled us to extricate ourselves from that horrible mis-adventure. By the time it was over, the war had cost us 58,500 American dead, with hundreds of thousands more wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese dead. Nixon being able to finally end that misguided effort was huge. Today we have peaceful relations with Viet-Nam and it is considered a valuable trading partner. In the end, all that loss of life and destruction was really in vain.

Nixon’s next huge achievement was opening up diplomatic relations with Communist China, who along with the old USSR, was considered our implacable enemy. Nixon had a reputation for being a hardline anti-communist, so  that he was able to pull off ending the cold war, at least with China, was almost unthinkable at the time. Today China is one of our largest trading partners, and holds about a trillion dollars of our debt. Nixon also established the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which consolidated and expanded public social services . The Education part was eventually split off and became a separate department, while the rest of HEW has now become the Department of Health and Human Resources. Nixon even wanted to institute universal health care, but it was the Democrats in Congress that balked because they felt his bill didn’t go far enough. Although he talked as a tough conservative, Nixon presided over an enlargement of social benefits almost to the degree that Lyndon Johnson or even FDR did. As I’ve said, his accomplishments were huge.

Nixon’s Achilles heel, however was that he was deeply paranoid. He felt he was continually besieged by people hostile to his administration, despite all his accomplishments. He kept enemies lists and made secret recordings of conversations he had with visitors to the White House. In 1972, he ran for re-eletion against a largely unknown liberal Senator from South Dakota named George McGovern. McGovern was a decent and sincere man, but the Democrats went into their full incompetency  mode, including not nominating McGovern during their convention until about 2 in the morning when everyone was asleep and could not hear his acceptance speech. As a result, Nixon won in a mammoth landslide, capturing 49 out of 50 states. However, during the election, a curious event occurred that would eventually destroy the Nixon presidency.

Late in the campaign season, a group of third rate Republican hacks one night broke into Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate apartment complex in Washington DC. God knows what information they were hoping to learn or steal, especially since it was obvious at the time that Nixon would win by a landslide. If Nixon had come out at the time that the break-in was discovered, and stated that he in no way authorized or condoned the break-in, and the perpetrators would be punished to the full extent of the law, his presidency would have been unscathed. But Nixon’s paranoia would not allow him to do that. Instead he and his closest White House advisors went through elaborate schemes to try to cover-up any higher Republican involvement in this third-rate burglary. The more the story made the news, the more elaborate the cover-up became. Finally, the entire story became public thanks to the diligence of two “Washington Post” reporters, and several Congressional and judicial investigations. Nixon’s involvement, not in the crime, but in the coverup became evident, and he was forced to resign the presidency.

Since Nixon’s Vice President also had to resign his office due to a different scandal, the Republicans chose Gerald Ford, who was their leader in the House, to take over the presidency. Ford was a decent and moderate Republican and his basic honesty helped clean up the mess in Washington and restore the people’s faith in their government. But Ford made one crucial mistake that cost him the Oval Office when he ran for election in 1976. He had given Nixon a pardon from any possible prosecution connected to Watergate for the rest of Nixon’s life. The public was still in an unforgiving mood as it related to Watergate, and thus elected a largely unknown peanut farmer who managed to become Governor of Georgia named Jimmy Carter. The Democrats were so delighted that they had a Southern Governor who not only wasn’t a racist, but had actually championed civil rights, that they practically handed Carter the nomination on a silver platter. Carter’s presidency would also end in failure, but like Nixon, he had several significant achievements which we will pick up with next time. It is interesting to note, however, that two Republican presidents, Nixon and Ford, would likely be drummed out of today’s tea-party, Rush Limbaugh dominated Republican Party.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

HERE’S TO PRESIDENTIAL LOSERS (PART I)

Posted on April 2, 2012 by halviv

Ever wonder what the destiny of our country would look like if the men that lost recent presidential elections had won instead. For example, if Al Gore had been allowed to assume the presidency in 2000 after an election he had actually won, it’s likely that Saddam Hussein would still be dictator in Iraq. But also, 6000 dead U.S. military and civilians would likely still be alive, and over 30,000 U.S. men and women that suffered life-destroying  injuries like blindness or severe brain trauma would have their lives back. Also, about a trillion dollars we spent over there could have been saved. So let’s look back at some of the near misses in recent presidential elections and perhaps drink a toast to the guys that almost made it but didn’t.

My earliest recollection of presidential politics was in 1948 when I was 12 years old. That year, the contestants were Harry Truman, who had taken over the presidency from Franklin Roosevelt when FDR died in 1945 (after winning an unprecedented 4 terms) and Tom Dewey the Republican governor of New York. Dewey had built his reputation as a crime busting district attorney that had put Murder Inc. out of business. (That was a Mafia-run enterprise where you could hire someone to whack anyone you had a beef against, usually for a hefty price like $50,000.) Dewey was a moderate to progressive Republican, (an extinct species in today’s politics) and all the polls said he would beat Truman by double digits. My father was bemoaning the fact that we would have to live under a GOP presidency, but some intuitive instinct told me otherwise, so, knowing virtually nothing, I proudly declared that Truman would win win the election. My father, looking angrily at me, said I better keep my mouth shut, lest the neighbors discover what an idiot child he had raised. But I wouldn’t budge in my prediction. Dad, don’t worry, Truman will win, I kept saying. The newspapers were so confident of a Dewey win that the Chicago Tribune already published the story before the election results came in. The next day a beaming and victorious Truman held up the Chicago Tribune paper that had the headline: “Dewey Defeats Truman.”

In 1952 the election was between war hero Dwight Eisenhower (Ike) and Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson. Ike, besides being the great war hero that defeated Nazism in Europe during WWII, had that great smile that made him instantly likable to just about everyone. He was considered a moderate and ran against Ohio conservative Robert Taft in the GOP primary which Ike easily won. I consider Adlai Stevenson perhaps the most honorable, honest, and decent candidate to run for office in my lifetime, but he had no chance against Ike. Oh, that smile, and the war-hero thing. It was Stevenson’s misfortune to be nominated again in 1956, and thus be shellacked by Ike twice. Eisenhower had a fairly unremarkable presidency during his 8 years. But he did send in federal troops to protect 9 black children when the segregationist governor of Arkansas tried to block the integration of a white-only public school in Little Rock.

In 1960, it was the famous battle between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon. It was also the first year they had televised debates between the 2 candidates. Nixon was a powerful debater and people who heard the debates on the radio thought he had won them. But on television, Kennedy was so much better-looking , and had so much more charm and charisma, that it lifted him to a narrow victory in 1960, but then, to eventual  tragedy. Kennedy’s short presidency was marred by the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, when the CIA tried to overthrow Castro but failed. The following year, the Russians tried to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, which led to the great missile crisis that year, which brought the world to the edge of nuclear devastation. Fortunately the Russians backed down and withdrew their missiles and the world was saved.

After Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 Lyndon Johnson became president and ran in in 1964. The Republican nomination looked like it was going to Nelson Rockefeller, the progressive governor of New York. But Rocky made the huge mistake of leaving his wife and seeking a divorce during the primary season, which was apparently too much of a scandal for the country at that time. So instead, Barry Goldwater, who was considered a radical right-wing senator from Arizona came off the winner but was trounced by Johnson in the election. Lyndon Johnson did a lot of great things during his presidency, like getting Medicare and civil rights legislation thru Congress, but he also got us bogged down in Viet-Nam which turned into a disaster. That ruined his presidency and he didn’t run for re-election.

In 1968, Robert Kennedy was running in the Democratic primary against Hubert Humphrey. Both were were excellent candidates, but I thought that RFK would have made a great president because of all the suffering he went thru at time of his brother”s death. It seemed to me that he knew and empathized with others who had also known great sadness in their lives. But 1968 turned out to be one of the most tragic years in American history, with the assassinations of both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King during that year. That enabled Hubert Humphrey to get the Democratic nomination. On the Republican side, Richard Nixon returned to the fray, after vowing to the press in 1962 that they wouldn’t have Nixon to kick around anymore. Also in the race was third-party candidate George Wallace, a fiercely segregationist governor of Alabama. In a very tight election, Nixon edged out the win for presidency he had so long desired. The burden of Viet-Nam was to heavy for any Democrat to bear.

Some months after the election was over, they had a “roast” for Hubert Humphrey on TV that was run by entertainer Dean Martin. Martin arose before the mic to speak, and said words to the effect that: I want to introduce a person of such high honor, decency, integrity, and honesty that he’s sitting here next to me tonight at this crummy roast, rather than being in the White House. Truer words were never spoken. Even Humphrey couldn’t stop laughing.

We’ll pick up at this point next time around.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

LEGALISTICS

Posted on March 30, 2012 by halviv

Many moons ago when I was still working, I had a close friend whose brother suffered from multiple illnesses. Unfortunately the brother, who was in his forties at the time, was also poor and could not afford health insurance. So he decided to gamble everything and move to Canada, which had, and still has universal health care. That simply means that if you’re sick, you go see a doctor, and the Government picks up the ensuing costs. The only hitch to this scheme, however, was that you had to be a Canadian citizen to use their health care system, and in order to become that, you had to reside in Canada for at least 18 months. So taking a shot that his health could hold up for a year and a half, he moved to Toronto and hoped for the best. The last I heard, he had made it through the 18-month period, and was being treated by Canadian doctors.

I find it fascinating that we are the only first-world country on the planet that does not provide universal health care. It exists through most of North and South America(even Cuba, as poor as they are), throughout Europe, Japan and the rest of Asia, and so on. France has one of the best health care systems in the world, where all medical and dental bills are paid for by the state. The French plan also includes in-home nursing care for mothers of new-borns, or people whose health has deteriorated to a terminal status. Yet somehow, the most affluent country the world has ever seen cannot put together a system, where rich or poor, everyone could receive adequate medical treatment. Yes it’s true that if your poor and come down with an illness, you can visit any hospital emergency room, and they can’t turn you away for lack of insurance. But you can wait hours to see a doctor, and if you’re lucky enough to where the only thing wrong with you is a sore throat that can be treated with a bottle of anti-biotic pills, or a broken ankle that can be put in a cast, you will receive adequate care. But if your unlucky and have something far more serious like pancreatic cancer, you can bet that the hospital in question will not want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, to try to save your life, if health insurance is lacking.

All this came to mind this past week as the constitutionality of the Affordable Health Care Act, more fondly known as Obamacare, was argued before the Supreme Court for 3 days. The most contentious provision for opponents of the Act is the individual mandate that requires everyone to purchase health insurance by 2013. Of course, since all things political in this country these days are done with monumental irrationality if not stupidity, it’s helpful to look at the facts and leave the emotions at the front door. The Act provides that if you don’t purchase health insurance, the Government can assess you a fairly small penalty especially in comparison to the cost of health insurance. But if you don’t pay the penalty fee, then what. The answer is …Nothing. They don’t slap the cuffs on you, they don’t throw you in jail, they don’t even make you go to re-hab. The individual mandate is a clause without teeth since in the end, if you don’t accept it, nothing will happen to you. Yet opponents of Obamacare become apoplectic just at the mention of it. Democracy in this country will cease to exist, capitalism will be gone, and the country will become a Marxist, Socialist, Communist (choose one) dictatorship.

Now it’s true that the Act is a 2700 hundred page behemoth that would be cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment for anyone to have to read and understand it, as Justice Scalia asserted. The Democrats, in their full ineptitude mode, spent nearly 2 years putting together this Frankenstein of a bill, in an attempt to achieve universal health care. With commanding majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats chose total incompetency and let a golden opportunity slip away, as opposition to this Act continued to build up and resulted in voters turning to Republicans in 2010. All the Democrats had to do was extend Medicare to everyone, and put those that couldn’t afford the Medicare premiums on Medicaid, and then pay for the whole thing through a 3-5% national sales tax. The bill could have been written in less than 10 pages and passed within 6 months before widespread opposition was allowed to build up. But, as I said, the Democrats chose to let supreme incompetence rule the day, and thus, suffered the consequences.

As convoluted as Obamacare is, it’s still a serious attempt to allow 30-45 million uninsured people to gain decent medical treatment when the need arises. However, out of the 9 justices on the Supreme Court, 4 are rock solid conservatives, and 4 generally vote along liberal lines. The ninth justice, Anthony Kennedy, is also a conservative, appointed by Ronald Reagan, but once in awhile takes an opposing view in his decisions from the other 4 conservatives. Through all the legalistic machinations that went on this week in both sides’ arguments, there is no question that 4 justices will rule Obamacare unconstitutional while the other 4 will likely say that it does pass muster. Thus the fate of the Affordable Health Care Act then comes down to Justice Kennedy’s decision. The early betting is that, at a minimum, the individual mandate will be ruled unconstitutional. Also from Justice Kennedy’s line of questioning and his comments, it appears that he, along with his 4 conservative brethren, are ready to rule the entire Act is unconstitutional. Thus, by a 5 to 4 vote, an attempt at universal health care in this country will fade away. The Justices will twist themselves into legalistic pretzels, writing lengthy opinions justifying their decisions, but in the end there is nothing in the Constitution that even remotely discusses this subject.

In the end everything is politics and everything depends on which side of the aisle you sit on. And if the Act is declared unconstitutional we’re back to square one, with sharply rising medical costs and insurance premiums, and millions of people unable to obtain decent medical treatment when needed.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

LIFE’S CERTAINTIES

Posted on March 27, 2012 by halviv

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” So wrote Dylan Thomas, the Irish poet, as a memorial to his recently deceased father. Unfortunately Dylan Thomas, himself, would be dead three years later at the much too young age of 38. I don’t suppose it really matters if you rage or go peacefully, you know what’s coming at the end of the road. It’s the one certainty we have in life. A lot of people say there are 2 sure things in life: death and taxes. But a some people have figured out how to avoid paying taxes so we’re left with the one surety. All I know is, that when you’re young and you look down the road of life, it’s usually sunny and clear as a bell with nothing to mar the view. (Unless you’re one of the unfortunate few that has a genetic defect or some other catastrophic event in your young life.) But at my age when you look down that very same road, you see Death flitting among the bushes, or peeking out from behind a tree, to use some Ingamar Bergman imagery. (If you don’t know who Ingamar Bergman is, look it up in your Funk&Wagnells.)

When I was a young teenager, maybe 13 or 14, I remember standing around one day with a group of guys my age, watching the old people in the neighborhood as they shuffled along. Invariably all their teeth had fallen out and they had false teeth, everything hurt them, they walked bent over with a cane, and if they were in a park, they barely had the strength to make it from one bench to  the next. If you never have had the image burnt into your brain of what someone with false teeth looks like after they take them out at night to put into a glass of water, think “Night of The Walking Dead” or other such zombie movies. Suffice to say that getting old in those days was not a pretty picture. So we youngsters unanimously agreed that, ugh, this was no way to live. We all vowed that we would never want to be in that condition, and that we were better off dying by the age 60, or 65 absolute tops, to avoid the horrors of old age. After all, 50 more years down the road of life seemed like forever. I remember saying something to the effect that I just wanted to make it to the year 2000, (which would put me at 62) as if an artificial demarcation on the calendar would bring some magical occurrence. So here I am some 60 years after that conversation, with some of my teeth falling out, but no false teeth yet, and so far, still being able to walk without a cane. I’m assuming the other guys in that conversation are pretty much in the same boat.

However, life after you turn 70, certainly does change, and usually not for the better. You may have what people generously  call “senior moments” where at times, you may forget some basic stuff like the brand of your car. If it doesn’t happen repetitively, you may get the benefit of the doubt that you’re not senile. Also old people generally enter a state of total obliviousness, where they feel that the focus of all the the energy in the universe is entirely on them. Everyone else that exists is totally incidental to their needs. For example, and I see this all the time since I live in a seniors community, they may be driving down a residential street and spot someone they know walking on the sidewalk. They will then stop their car in the middle of the street to strike up a conversation with that friend, totally oblivious to the possibility that another car may be behind them seeking to pass. Perish the thought of having to endure the extreme hardship of pulling off to the side of road.

If you make it to your eighties, you get a free pass on just acting weird or cantankerous. For example, not too long ago, we were in a group of 4 senior couples meeting for dinner at a local restaurant. The last couple who came about 15-20 minutes late was perhaps in their early 80s. Now I’m always hungry and ready to eat, but some seniors apparently abhor the thought of food, and have to be coaxed into eating, or so it seems.  Such was the case of the woman in that late-arriving couple. First she had to relate to us all the exciting things that occurred during her heart-pounding day, before she even recognized there was a menu in front of her. She seemed to have an attitude of: “What, we’re here to have dinner? I thought we were meeting to play dominoes.” With the rest of us waiting, she finally decided that she would now take a side-ward glance at the menu. Doing so she frowned, and the expression on her faced seemed to ask: “Why have they given me a menu written in Portuguese.” Being assured that the menu was indeed in English, she favored us by rummaging through her pocketbook (which couldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes) to find her glasses, so she could read the menu with utter disdain. When the waiter finally came to take our order, there was, of course, nothing on the menu, as presented, that would suit her needs. The poor waiter, after much grilling, had to agree to have the kitchen make various substitutions to particular dishes before she would agree to order. By now, I was so famished, that I contemplated crawling around on my hands and knees under the table, looking for some crumbs or a crust of bread the previous party might have dropped on the floor.

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you get the picture by now, of what you have to look forward to in your senior years. Maybe us young teenagers weren’t so crazy after all.

 

 

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | 2 Comments

WAR GAMES

Posted on March 22, 2012 by halviv

The first recorded war in history happened about 4700 years ago between what are parts of Iran and Iraq today. (Some things never change, do they?) There was obviously earlier wars, since’s man’s propensity to slaughter his fellow man seems infinite, but the first time war was actually recorded was about 2600 B.C. I guess weapons of mass destruction in those days were clubs and perhaps a spear or two. Fast forward through history, and an untold number of wars in which millions were killed, to World War I where weapons of mass destruction were bombs being dropped from planes. Bombs had been around for at least 2 centuries, (they’re mentioned in our “Star Spangled Banner”), but WWI was the first time they could be dropped from the air on a hapless population that were unfortunate enough to be on the ground beneath them.

WWI was also famous for its trench warfare. Both the German and French sides drew huge trenches in the eastern part of France where the war bogged down after the German invasion. Besides the constant bombardment between the 2 sides, life in the trenches was a living hell. It continually rained or snowed, so the trenches were always a muddy, rat-infested hellhole, where hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, more due to disease from the miserable living conditions, than to enemy fire. Trench warfare continued for about 3 years as the war degenerated into a stalemate, until the U.S. entered the war, which enabled the allies to push Germany out of France and finally ended with Germany’s defeat. So many lives were lost in the trenches that burial was out of the question. Instead they built a huge structure around all the dead with side glass panels. To this day visitors can look inside this monument to the dead and still see their bones.

Fast forward now to the late 1930s when Nazi Germany was gearing up for the next war. When the Nazi’s were re-arming, in violation of the treaty that ended WWI, France could have easily intervened and put a stop to the re-armament process, and probably could have put an end to Hitler’s rise to power. But France did nothing, primarily because the French military and population were too demoralized by the horrific losses they had suffered in WWI. Everyone knows about how the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain came to Munich and tried to appease Hitler in 1938 by ceding over parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler’s demands. Chamberlain apparently believed he had achieved “peace in our time” through appeasement of perhaps the most evil dictator of all time. What many people are not aware of is that the French Prime Minister was also at that meeting in Munich. His name was Edouard Daladier, and unlike Chamberlain, he had no illusions that Hitler could be bought off. He knew full well that Munich was just a prelude to WWII but he was too worn down by French malaise to do anything about it. Getting off the plane when he returned to Paris, and to throngs of people cheering him because they had believed Chamberlain’s proclamation that peace had indeed been achieved, he looked tired and haggard, with large bags under his eyes. Looking at the waving crowd,  he was heard to mutter to one of his aides:”The damned fools.”

Of course, instead of peace, war ensued and about 60 million people lost their lives in Europe, with millions more lost in the Pacific. The good guys (the Allies) finally won, and those Nazi war criminals that hadn’t committed suicide were hung at Nuremberg. But most people are unaware of just how close the Allies came to losing, in which case it would have been Truman and Eisenhower, and Churchill and Montgomery that were hung at Nuremberg, and Nazi rule prevailing throughout the West. Within a matter of weeks after the war begun, Nazi forces rampaged through and took over all of western Europe except for England. Thereafter Hitler invaded Russia in eastern Europe, and his forces marched almost unopposed over a thousand miles to the gates of Moscow. If Moscow had fallen, Russia would have been out of the war, and to try to retake Europe by fighting on just the western front would have been nearly impossible. Stalin, himself no stranger as an evil dictator, ordered the Russian military to defend Moscow at all costs, or to the last dead man, and somehow, although heavily out-gunned and out-manned, Russia held on, and the Nazi army was finally force to retreat back to Germany in the dead of winter. Hitler still had one ace up his sleeve, however. The Nazis were within weeks of developing an atomic bomb as well as rockets that could have reached New York and Washington before the Third Reich was finally forced to surrender. That’s how close we came to total disaster.

In the Pacific, the only thing that saved us, after the fiasco at Pearl Harbor, was that our carrier fleet, with all its hundreds of war planes was out at sea, instead being in port, when Japan struck. As bad as our losses at Pearl Harbor were, we could have never recovered if our carrier fleet had also been destroyed. Indeed after the destruction at Pearl Harbor, the Roosevelt White House fully believed that Japan would invade our west coast. We were so militarily unprepared, that had such an invasion occurred, Roosevelt believed we could not have stopped it. Military planners were prepared to set up a line of defense around the Chicago area, as a last-ditch effort against an invading Japanese army. The only thing that saved us was that Japan never realized how unprepared and vulnerable we were. It’s amazing how often wars are won and lost based on sets of missed opportunities.

Which brings us to the the present and our conflicts in the middle east. With Iran feverishly in the process of developing a nuclear arsenal, the next war could make the casualties suffered in previous wars look small in comparison. With Americans sick and tired of the wars in Iraq (which we are out of now), and Afghanistan where we’ve been bogged down for over 10 years, there is absolutely no desire for another conflict, especially not with Iran. Yet if we don’t take out Iran’s nuclear development now, that window of opportunity will soon be gone. We are at a point where France was with Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. France still had time to take out the Nazi war machine as late as 1938, but was too demoralized to take action. Are we also in the same category?

 

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

TEAPOT CRACKPOTS

Posted on March 19, 2012 by halviv

Most of you have probably never heard of Dick Armey.  He was a Republican Congressman from Texas during the 1990s, and along with his fellow GOP Congressman from TX, Tom Delay, was chiefly responsible for the impeachment of Bill Clinton over that Monica Lewinski  thingy. In any event, after serving several terms in the House of Representatives, Armey felt that just being in Congress did not satisfy his thirst for pyrotechnics. He quit Congress in the early 2000s, and was the guiding light behind forming several ultra-conservative political organizations. Working from the shadows as fit his shadowy and unsavory  persona, his biggest success came from being the primary force in developing the recent tea-party movement. Almost everyone, even those not politically inclined, has some knowledge of the tea party involvement in recent politics,  but almost no one is familiar with the man who energizes the tea party initiative behind the scenes. If you ever caught one of his rare public appearances on TV or elsewhere, you would understand why he prefers to manipulate strategy behind the curtains. Not one of your more pleasant fellow human beings walking the planet.

Anyway we all know about the tea party successes in the the 2010 elections. The tea party movement, which basically seeks to cut Government expenditures and regulations back to 18th century levels, won the House for the Republicans by a wide margin, and sliced the Democratic lead in the Senate. Just for the record, however, tea partiers don’t want to cut all Government budgets. For example, they are quite willing to spend tens of billions to build like a 97 foot wall across the entire length of our border with Mexico, and station a couple of hundred thousand troops there, to make sure that not even one illegal alien slips across the border into the U.S. They are also quite fond of spending billions for military hardware. But as I said, they had much political success in 2010. But they also suffered some notable failures.

For example there was Delaware, where a seasoned seasoned politician named Mike Castle was supposed to win the Republican nomination, and then be a sure winner for the Senate seat election that November. Instead the primary win went to a young, pretty, pert woman with a bubbly personality named Christine O’Donnell, who had heavy tea party support. The only trouble was, that once she started campaigning, she made Sarah Palin look like another Albert Einstein. Apparently, in the 1990s, Christine had dabbled in witchcraft ( a harmless enough pastime) but when running for the Senate, somehow felt the need to apologize for it. She cut a TV commercial saying, “I’m not a witch.” (It was so 17th century of her.) That and other brilliant gems caused her to lose the Senate race in November. Karl Rove, the Republicans chief campaign strategist, nearly had a nervous breakdown on Fox News as he watched his dreams of a Republican majority in the Senate fade into the sunset.

The most notable tea party failure occurred here in Nevada where I currently reside. (And I’m not proud of it.) Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader was running for re-election with probably the highest negative poll numbers of any candidate since Ben Franklin discovered electricity. His negative ratings were well above 50%, and it was generally agreed that there was no way he could win re-election. Running in the Republican primary to oppose Reid was a very smart, conservative businesswoman named Sue Lowden. Polls showed her leading Reid by  at least 10-12%. Also running in the GOP primary was a man named Danny Tarkanian whose father was a former highly revered basketball coach at UNLV. Polls also showed the Tark with a very comfortable lead over Reid. The tea party, however, in its infinite wisdom, chose to back an obscure state assembly woman named Sharon Angle, who was such a dim bulb, she made Christine O’Donnell shine with brilliance.

Angle’s claim to fame, and the reason for the tea party endorsement, was that she voted against virtually every spending bills in the State legislature, even mundane stuff like road repair and bridges. When reporting this, State newspapers referring to a vote on a particular bill, would say the vote was 42 Yea 1Angle ( in lieu of Nay.) Once out on the campaign trail, it was clear what a disaster she was. About a week and a half before the election, for some strange reason, she gave a speech before a local high school assembly that was mainly populated by Hispanic students, almost all of whom were too young to vote. During the speech she came out with the weird statement that she often has difficulty differentiating between Hispanic and Asian people. The students looked at each other in deep puzzlement, scratching their heads. Even if true, why would she ever say something like that. Still, right up to the end, the polls she her with a small lead. Come election day, however, sanity prevailed, and Reid won re-election, by a narrow margin, still with the highest negative ratings ever.

All this is a prelude to the upcoming presidential election this year. Will the GOP propelled by the tea party movement, do something incredibly stupid again and hand Obama an undeserved win. Right now, as any grade school student could testify, Romney has such a commanding lead in the delegate count that it would be mathematically impossible for any other candidate to wrest the nomination away from him. Romney already has more than half the delegates he needs for the nomination, and the big states like California and New York which haven’t yet reported, are almost sure to go his way. Still wild, whacky Ricky Santorum and fantasy chaser Newt plow on hoping for a miracle. Santorum’s latest walk on the wild side is that as President he will ban internet pornography. That’s what I love about this primary season, the laughs never stop coming.

Forget the fact that internet pornography is a multi-billion dollar business, and far outstrips any other form of commercial activity on the web. While it’s true that porn is watched almost exclusively by men, it’s also true that a lot of men are users. Guys will put up with a lot of stuff they’re not happy with, but try to take their porn away, and you would probably face a lynch mob. In fact I was considering putting dirty pictures on this site as a way of sprucing up viewership. I could even change the name of the site to: Porn and Politics. They’re practically the same anyhow.

I sure will miss the GOP primary process when it’s over. As I’ve said, the laughs never stop coming.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

TWO STATES OF DELUSION

Posted on March 15, 2012 by halviv

In the 19th century Mark Twain said: “The more I get to know people, the better I like my dog.” In the 20th century the French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre said: “Hell is other people.” Sartre also came to the conclusion that man’s belief in God and religion stemmed from an overwhelming fear and sense of abandonment if man believed he was alone in an empty universe without a supreme being. It’s as Christopher Hitchens said in his book, “God is Not Great,” God did not create man. It’s the other way around. Man created God.

People, you can’t live with them but you can’t live without them. Actually you can live without them if you’re willing to become a hermit. But that doesn’t sound like tons of fun either, and it also brings on its own set of unique delusions. All this is the long way around of getting to 2 polls that were taken in Alabama and Mississippi that caught my attention. No, they weren’t polls showing that weird, whacky Ricky Santorum would win those 2 states in the Republican primaries over Mitt the Lionhearted, and Newt the Fantasy Chaser. ( Mitt displayed his fearlessness yet again when he responded to a question from the press about Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown Univ. student a slut and prostitute, by saying, “those are not the words I would have used.” How much more of a hard-hitting rebuke can you get than that. As for Newt, about the only place where he wins the Republican nomination is on Fantasy Island.)

The poll that I’m referring to is the one where they asked the citizens of Alabama and Mississippi whether they believed that Barack Obama was a Christian. Only 15% believed that he was. Unbelievably, about 50% were convinced he was a Moslem. After all, what else could he be with a name like Barack Hussein Obama. (The other 35% were too busy keeping up with the Kardashians to give a damn, one way or another.) This despite Obama”s often repeated assertion that he was a Christian, and his often publicized church attendance over several decades. Now, understandably, you can’t get any deeper into the bible belt than those 2 southern states. But the hatred there of Obama, because he is perceived to be a dangerous, radical, socialist bent on destroying America, is such that a majority of people are willing to ignore reality and, once again, slip into that comfy state delusion. One more way in which irrationality becomes most people’s life-style.

After all if we were a rational society, would we conduct the political primary process in the manner that it’s conducted, with a hodgepodge of caucuses and elections starting way too early, and giving way too much influence to small states like Iowa or New Hampshire. In a rational society, there would be a primary election day sometime in June or July, where all 50 states would vote to select each party’s candidate to go forward into the general election. If we were a rational society. And does anyone understand why states have caucuses instead of outright elections. Near as I can make out, its because people have some sentimental belief that political business was conducted in that manner back in colonial days.

Nevada is a caucus state, and in 2008 the wife and I decided to attend the Democratic caucus for the party’s nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. (Now we are older and wiser and will never make that mistake again.) Anyway we were told to report on a Saturday morning to a local school room where the caucus for our area would be held. Fortunately we arrived early enough to get seats in an enlarged but overcrowded school room where people kept pouring in. Soon the room became overheated and there was standing room only. Finally a moderator appeared (I have no idea how he was selected or who he even was), and announced that everybody who supported Obama go to the right side of the room, and all Clinton supporters to the left side. This would facilitate the counting of votes. I had intended to support Obama, but I was OK with Clinton too, and I happened to be seated on the Clinton side. We agreed that there was no way we were going to give up our seats to go stand in the too hot room, with the rabble on the Obama side. So we remained seated, and thus were counted as votes for Hillary. There you have the democratic process in action.

But the irrationality of the primary process pales in comparison to the way we select the most powerful man or woman in the world. As I’ve written before, every office in the land, from dog catcher to Senator or Governor is decided by a simple majority of votes cast. Not so for the presidency, as Al Gore found out, where the electoral college decides who the winner is. This system was written into the Constitution because of our founding fathers deep distrust of the judgements of the rabble that would be allowed to vote in future elections. Of course, they did have a valid point. On the average, about 50% of people eligible, fail to vote. Of the remaining 50% percent that do vote, maybe about half of that is somewhat conversant with issues at stake. The rest likely base their selections on radio or TV commercials. So perhaps 25% of the eligible population takes enough interest to know what they’re doing when voting for the President or Congress.

A third or fourth world banana republic country might legitimately raise the question: Is the United States ready for democracy?

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Blog at WordPress.com.