Sacred Cow Wursthaus

Wasted Money. Speak UP!

2012-01-12T15:10:00.000-08:00

Holy underwear, he's won again.

(I really don't need to elaborate, do I?)

And with that note, it's time to take note of the ridiculous amount of money being thrown around in election campaigns.

Let's see: In Iowa alone, 12.5 million spent just on TV ads, and that's just from the candidates. If one includes the PACs, an additional 14 million.

How effective was that money? Well, the biggest spender by far, Rick Perry, spent 2.86 million to finish a distant fifth. Or, to put it in gasoline terms, his political engine gets 35 gallons per mile. Rick Santorum, by contrast, barely spent anything and tied Romney. In terms of money spent, this is the equivalent of the Toledo Mudhens beating the New York Yankees. Maybe Rick Perry should have had a better stand on the issues and spent less money.

Nah, that would make too much sense!

Since its so blazingly obvious, and has been for a while, that TV ads don't buy victory, why the hell do politicians think they can buy their way in? The short answer is that, every once in a long while, a rich and unprincipled fuck really can buy an election.

We can't outlaw political TV ads, much as we would like to. That would violate free speech. But if professional sports teams have to live with a spending cap, why the hell can't our politicians and PACs?

Nah, that would make too much sense!

What really bothers me about this, is that the idiots wasting so much money on TV ads that ultimately don't matter more than what they do and say are the same morons who are going to get into budgetary battles. To put it in perspective, 5.3 billion was spent on the presidential campaign alone between Obama and McCain, including PACs. McCain, it turns out, actually outspent Obama by just a little bit. (Yeah, how'd that work out?) Republican PACs were outspent by Democratic PACs by a little bit. The annual budget for NASA is 17.8 billion. In other words, just for presidential politics alone, the cost is nearly one third of what it takes to launch things past the troposphere on a regular basis. It used to cost 450 million to launch a space shuttle. President Obama spent roughly 850 million on his election. In other words, just trying to get elected to the White House now costs about the same as launching two space shuttle missions.

Sheesh!

And these are the same people who will turn right around and argue on the House and Senate floors that we have better things to do with our money than launch things at Mars and Jupiter. I agree! But we wouldn't have to even have the discussion if the Space Program came out of your goddamned re-election fund, now would it?!

Here's what really puts it in perspective. The amount spent by the Republican Party during the 2010 election cycle was 1.77 trillion dollars. (The democrats spent 1.8 trillion, outspending them, to get their asses kicked. Case in point again.) I reported in a previous blog about how the national 2011 budget deficit was 1.267 trillion. In other words, both the Republican and Democratic parties outspent the national deficit by at least 30%, EACH! And that's during a midterm election!

Here's a thought: Let's enact an election spending cap, then take all that extra cash and solve our national debt and deficit crisis problems at the same time! Hell, let's pay for medical care for everybody too!

Nah, that would make too much sense!

So, if you think that our money would be spent better on other things, NOW is your chance to speak up! Let politicians know the waste will not be tolerated anymore! Or else, when the time comes to argue over whether to slash Social Security and Medicare, or raise taxes on the upper part of 1%, you will have LOST your right to complain!

I've got it! Let's levy taxes on campaign spending! Brilliant! (That would certainly tax the 1% easily, wouldn't it?)

Nah, that would make too much sense!

Eric

Iowa Caucases, And Reforms

2012-01-05T11:32:00.000-08:00

Holy underwear! Mitt Romney has just won the Iowa Caucasians, er, I mean, Caucuses, by eight votes!

I demand a recount! (Hee, hee!)

Bachmann's out.(Apparently, God was just kidding when he told her to run.) Rick Perry is on life support. Newt Gingrich is bitching like the limbless Black Night in Monty Python's "The Holy Grail." It's a beautiful thing.

The two finalists? You have Obamacare, Jr, Mitt "Holy Underwear" Romney, and the only legislator to have homosexual ass-juice named after him.

Oh, for those of you who actually DON'T watch Jon Stewart, let me teach you about the meaning of the word, "Santorum." It began in 1996 when Rick Santorum first won election to the Senate, and garnered ire from gay activists everywhere as he fervently preached that he would, given the chance, repeal all gay marriage. Okay, fine. Then, around the time of 2001, with the "No Child Left Behind" bill pending (yeah, how'd that one work out for us?), Santorum was the guy who added an amendment to require the teaching of Intelligent Design. Maybe I've got my chronology of events wrong, but it was way back then that I became aware that the gay & lesbian community had had enough of this clown, and engaged in the best act of name-calling since the "Pink Lady," Helen Gehegan-Douglas, tagged Richard Nixon as "Tricky Dick."

You see, that gross combination of cum, anal lube and well-churned shit that stains the sheets after two men have enjoyed an intimate night together, officially has a name -- and has for over a decade, now. It's called "santorum," named after you-know-who! And it's his unflinching religious-right-wing nonsense that earned him the title, and forever wrote him into the anals... excuse me, the annals, of history.

So Iowa has given us Mr. Shit, and Mr. Underwear. Put them together and you have... well, you know.

Really, I'm driving towards a serious point with all this silly-talk. Because Iowa has given us one brown-nose, and one brown-ass, and that makes me wonder:

WHY THE FUCK SHOULD IOWA HAVE ALL THE FUN?!

Or New Hampshire for that matter? Why do these tiny little states, have such a big say? Why does Iowa, which ranks 30th in population size, and New Hampshire, with only seven states with fewer people (including Alaska, Delaware, and Hawaii), get such a big say-so? By the time the primaries reach states like Wisconsin, all but one or two candidates have dropped out! Until Barack Obama came along, I really never got to vote for my #1 choice as president, and the tracks were littered with the corpses of all those I never got the chance to vote for. Paul Tsongas, Lamarr Alexander, Arlen Specter, Dick Gephardt... the list of candidates denied to me -- and indeed all of us -- goes on and on. It seems so unfair. And that's because it so fucking IS!

So, if we're to concede that these corn-munchers and cape-codders have too much say-so, what can we do to fix it? What can we do to give the rest of us a taste of the trillion-dollar advertising bombardment that makes us sick to our stomachs, and the inability to go to the grocery store without being glad-handed by some no-name we've never heard of?

Well, we could have the primaries be a national affair done all at once. Certainly we have the technology. But this pretty much guarantees that the candidates will spend nearly all their time in California, and maybe a little bit in New York and Texas. No, having states do primaries one at a time at least guarantees that some of us common folks get to meet the candidates themselves, and this makes just as much sense today as it did back in the days before jet-planes and the Internet meant that candidates had to campaign by shoe-leather and soap-box.

So how about moving everything up? Maybe we could have a January Bonanza? A super-string of Super Tuesdays? Again, this fails. Because even with primary elections taking place at least as frequently as football games (and with just as much hype) you still have the front-running states having too much say, and the later-running states having masses of people eager and willing to vote for a candidate who (damn it all!) drops out just before primary day arrives. It solves nothing.

So what are we to do? It seems we have a choice of evils. Let two or three states have too much power, or let two or three OTHER states have too much power. What's a concerned voter to do?

Here's my solution: LOTTERY! Instead of Iowa and New Hampshire getting first crack EVERY SINGLE TIME, why don't we cycle the order of primaries for each state every time there's a presidential election? We put a bunch of numbers in a basket, start it tumbling, turn on the vacuum cleaner, and the order that each state's number rolls out (with each state's number being the order in which it joined the union, for example Wisconsin, the 30th state admitted, would be #30) is the order of state primaries. So, every once in awhile, a state like Michigan, which has always been near-last, might get to be first! And they'll get a taste of the mind-numbing responsibility of being unqualified judges of who gets to lead the nation.

Not perfect, no. But way better than the stupid shit we currently have where Iowa always picks the person who seldom is the candidate, usually isn't qualified, and even less often the president. I say, give it some thought!

Eric

Christmas Day Scandal!

2011-12-24T17:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it's official. Santa's star player, Rudolph, will not be able to guide the sleigh this Christmas. Apparently, Rudy has tested positive for RGH, reindeer growth hormone, and has received a holiday-season suspension.

This is the latest in a series of scandals to have rocked the reindeer pen at the North Pole. From Blitzen's public struggles with alcohol abuse to Prancer's admitted cocaine addiction, it seems like the days when reindeer were all about innocence during Christmas are over. All eight of the females in the original team (and this is an interesting bit of trivia: female reindeer have antlers, and all Santa's reindeer, save Rudolph, are female -- which is part of why you put him in the very front; if you put him anywhere else, there could be a problem!) have come forward with tales of personal or emotional struggles that have made a simple thing like pulling a sleigh through the air at Mach 3 seem overtly complicated. Donner, who came out of the closet as gay three years ago, and still maintaining she's in love with Dancer, who refuses to speak with her, is not bowing to pressure from the American Family Association to recant her statement. Comet, a long-time opponent of global warming, who had her paddock fall through the ice last year, is still maintaining that was due to a fluke warm-water current.

And here we thought nothing would be more annoying to Santa than Cupid being diagnosed with Crohn's disease in 1987.

It's hard to fault Rudolph. He's even older than Brett Favre, and has to find some way to keep going year after year. And with all the young reindeer who have been showing up with the characteristic bright, shiny nose (which is a scandal in and of itself), there seems to be no shortage of potential replacements. Word is that with Rudolph out, Santa has turned to the Russian Caribou, Alexi Akhnigoyovich, to temporarily take point on the sleigh. There should be no language barrier with the new acquisition, as Santa himself, who wears a red suit and makes lists of people who are naughty and nice, is of course as fluent in Russian as any other Marxist-Leninist.

So here's hoping the best for Santa's reindeer. Hopefully, Vixen's gonorrhea won't attract a cruise missile over Afghanistan.

Eric

The Shroud of Turin? Seriously?

2011-12-21T05:53:00.000-08:00

Well, it's just been reported in the news that a team of "researchers" (I will not dignify them by calling them scientists) have come forward with the claim that the Shroud of Turin is authentic. The incredible part isn't that a bunch of religiously motivated people have attempted to twist science into confirming their faith. That nonsense has been going on ever since before Darwin turned the cannon of science against religion 151 years ago. What's incredible is that so many reporters would report it as though it were at all credible!

Now, everyone knows that radiocarbon dating put the shroud's age at between 1260 and 1390 C.E., thus making it a medieval forgery. But these researchers say that the sample of the cloth used to make this measurement was likely taken from a piece that was likely repaired with newer material after a fire burned parts of the shroud.

If the PolitiFact meter were put on that one, it would say, "Pants On Fire!"

Shown above, is the shroud itself. It's not as large as I would have liked, but it will do. That white rectangle in the lower left is where scientists clipped a 2" by 8" section which could be atomized for the Carbon-14 test. It's pretty obvious that this section is contiguous with the rest of the cloth. And if that's not enough, there's a PBS documentary that filmed the section being scissored out, and anyone can see bloody well that it's not a "repaired section."

But just for the sheer hell of it, let's play along. Let's say the shroud breaks with every Jewish tradition in folding the body up in a single piece of cloth (not done) folded the long way (also not done) and leaving a narrow, two-dimensional imprint pattern, as if the ultraviolet rays emitted from Jesus upon resurrection only went in a single parallel, straight up or straight down, rather than in a dispersed, outwardly-radiating pattern (as you might expect) which would have created an unrecognizably darkened smear instead of a photograph. You then have a scriptural problem.

The Book of John, chapter 20, verses 6 and 7 clearly state that Jesus' burial cloth was in strips, not a single piece, and that a separate burial cloth had been around Jesus' head. So, logically, we have only three choices: 1.) This passage from The Book of John is fake, 2.) The Shroud of Turin is fake, 3.) They are both fake! The only option we do not have is that either of these things support Christianity!

So go on, you stupid reporters, and uncritically pass along this story without one, single guffaw. Oh, how I miss Christopher Hitchens at this moment. Hell, I miss H.L. Mencken!

Meanwhile, most high school graduates in America can't find Italy on a map, much less Turin. Now you tell ME which is the more important story!

Eric

Brrring!!! Here's Your Wake-Up Call!

2011-12-16T05:42:00.000-08:00

Lots of stuff to talk about, but they all revolve around one, basic theme:

It's time for a wake-up call!

Brrrrring! Here's your wake-up call regarding education in America. Iran has captured a billion-dollar spy drone. And why? Was it shot down? Lucky grenade-launcher shot? NO! It was captured because the Iranians, these backwater, third-world, religious hacks with nothing to offer but oil, out-thought us in computer software technology! They hacked US? Yes, THEY HACKED US! And not only did they hack us, they hacked the most cutting-edge piece of expensive-assed technology in our military arsenal! Imagine! On the eve of the era of robotic warfare, Iran, fucking IRAN, mind you, has up-ended us!

This happened because we have been lax in our education standards. Not enough boarding schools in the inner city, poor education quality, cutting of funding at critical junctures, teachers unions having incompetent leaders, and bringing down slash-and-burn Republicans down upon all of us as a direct result. Hell-LO! We'd better start thinking of high school as middle school and college as high school, or we're in big trouble! We'll end up getting more third-world hackers upending us! And when the inevitable day arrives when we have robotic drones defending our freedom, we'll find some Islamic terrorist hacking our own robots and turning them upon our own cities. Or worse, Israel.

Brrrring! This is your wake-up call regarding so-called American supremacy! The United States can no longer sit back on its haunches and assume that we are leaders in world technology. Hell, we're not even leaders in world economy anymore! And unless we want our military weapons built in China, with software designed in India, we'd better get off our asses and quit playing around! That means we're ALL going back to school. Not just me! It doesn't matter how old or young you are. We're all re-taking technology 101. Because right now, we're still believing that desk-top computers are cool. Hell, Bill Gates built his company when everybody else was still ga-ga over digital watches! No, our smart phones and iPads are going to take over, and that means any terrorist hacker will have immediate access to everyone's belt-clip and waistline! Unless we wake up!

Brrrring! No more playing around with science and technology! If we're going to survive, as a nation, as a people, if democracy is going to have even a snowball's chance in hell, then we've got to stop pretending that science isn't science, and learn what's really true. No more creationism being taught to kids in high school and hoping our colleges and universities eventually clean up the mess! No more failure to recognize the brain as defining the being by fooling ourselves into thinking that conception is the place to draw the line regarding new life. No more wishing, hoping, and yes, even praying, that global warming is a hoax. Science, people! Not politics!

And speaking of which... Brrrring! Here's your wake-up call regarding the general scientific ignorance surrounding steroids in sports. Oh, yes! There's a connection, here. We're all stunned over the Ryan Braun allegedly positive test for (it's assumed) anabolic steroids. But as I dealt with in a previous post, false positives for drug tests are a real danger in any profession. Especially with sports, because what makes a great athlete great is a naturally high level of testosterone, above and beyond what the normal person has. That means a false positive for testosterone is just one fluke chemical imbalance or incompetent lab tech away. And the best athletes will always be at the greatest risk.

Am I calling Ryan Braun innocent? He's innocent until proven guilty, yes! But what I'm really trying to say is, the same general scientific ignorance that let one of our billion-dollar drones get hacked is quite possibly the same thing that let our million-dollar athlete get jacked! One incompetent fool in the wrong place at the wrong time can cost us big! Having too few science professionals and too many incompetent technicians virtually guarantees it! And if having terrorists gain control of our military doesn't scare the piss out of you, then maybe losing our star sports hero for 1/3rd of an entire baseball season will.

Brrrring! Here's your wake-up call regarding how silly it is to put sports above the stuff that really matters!

Enough with the scientific ignorance already!

Finally, let's all say a non-prayer for a hero of fighting scientific ignorance, who came forward to shake up our culture at exactly the right time. Christopher Hitchens, the landmark journalist and unabashed atheist, just passed away at the age of 62. Let's face it, 62 is young, these days. If you haven't read Hitch-22, please do so. He gave us all a wake-up call.

Eric

The Christmas Card Conundrum

2011-12-08T05:19:00.001-08:00

It's that time of year again. (I don't really need to describe it, do I?) And with all the shopping for presents and hubbub, there's the inevitable barrage of (ugh!) Christmas cards.

The problem with holiday cards can best be summed up this way: Suppose I want to send people cards. I make out a list of people to send cards to, and send them out, thinking that I'm doing something nice. But, without fail, there are always a few inconsiderate boobs who end up sending me a card when I didn't send them a card, making me look callous and insensitive to those nice people. Meanwhile, all those who received a card from me who didn't send me a card in return feel guilty due to the fact that I sent them a card, but didn't get one in return. It seems like the number of people who got cards from me but didn't reciprocate, and who sent me cards when I didn't send them one, always outnumbers the people who got cards from me and sent one in return! So, to those few friends of mine who were nice enough to NOT send me a Christmas card this year when I didn't send them one either, I decide to reward by sending a card next year!

You know what? Screw that. Now you all know why I don't bother with Christmas cards.

I don't much bother with cards in general, either. The people who send them mean well, I know they do. It's just that they think they're sending me a little piece of paper to let me know that they're thinking of me, when in reality they're sending a piece of paper to convince themselves they're doing something nice to a person they probably don't know very well and to whom they can't think of anything to say in a meaningful letter or e-mail. So, I get this sappy little message which I didn't ask for, and don't particularly want, which is supposed to make me all warm-and-fuzzy, when all it really does is put me in an ethical dilemma over whether or not I keep this useless item in permanent storage in a shoe-box, there to be toted by me from apartment to apartment and residence to residence for all eternity, or whether I have to subject myself to permanent guilt by throwing it in the trash. This is doing something nice for me? I didn't ask for this huge responsibility to be thrown upon my shoulders!

For this reason, I dispensed with the feeling of guilt over cards a long time ago. They go out with the sale ads, un-clippped coupons, and overdue tuition notices. If I get one, I smile, then throw it away without a second thought. The nice person who sent me one isn't really going to police what I do with it by stopping over and asking where on the mantle her card is being displayed (unless she's a Jewish grandmother), so why should I mind getting rid of it? For that matter, why should anyone else, especially the sender?

Not that I don't, at some level, appreciate getting a card. As I say, there is some genuine good feeling behind the act of sending one. But if it's going to make my friend feel guilty about eventually throwing it out, why send it in the first place? My more rational friends realize this. They never send me cards, and I gratefully show my appreciation of this by never sending them cards either. Not for birthdays, not for graduations, not for holidays. It's quite a relief, actually, to have such understanding friends who are so good as to be pleasant enough to spend time with, but who will never stuff my mailbox with clutter. Life is good.

Sometimes I rather like getting a card. For example, I got one recently from the National Center for Science Education, signed by Dr. Eugenie Scott and her wonderful staff. Now THAT'S a card I intend to keep in my files for all eternity, not just because such a prestigious organization would bother with me, but because those are all people I really love over there. And if some future biographers feel that I actually merit attention, and want to go through my things, they'll find that card, and know how genuinely close I felt to all those kindred souls. Beautiful! A card, when given in the right way, and given for the right reason, at the right time, can be a good thing!

Nevertheless, there are always people who think that giving a card is some ubiquitous thing that is to be done whenever one wants to give the appearance of being nice, and that's hardly being nice at all, in my estimation. Just yesterday I received a card from the office staff at work, most of whom go about their business in a different building from me, and who haven't seen me in a little over three years. They all signed it. I know that this was meant as a gesture to make me feel welcomed, part of the team, one of the family, etc. But really it's just a corporate gimmick designed to make me feel happier in a job that is far beneath my talents and abilities, and pays me according to that standard. I'm certainly not the only employee to receive such a card. Everyone, from the janitorial staff to the cafeteria cooks, got one. So how really special is it then? I honestly don't know which is worse: that this supposedly nice gesture came about as a result of corporate edict inflicted upon everyone by the boss from on-high, or that a percentage of resources, which at least included purchasing costs and the five or ten minutes (at least) of each staff member's hourly wage that everyone had to sacrifice in order to sign all these cards together. I could think of far better uses for their time, and considerably far better uses for the money! I'm thinking, just to get back at them, that I should send them a huge glossy saying "Merry Christmas!" with an overtly flamboyant flower bouquet. That would certainly serve them right, wouldn't it!

On second thought, nah. They wouldn't understand. They'd probably just send me an even bigger card next year.

Eric

Computers and Economics

2011-11-30T18:36:00.001-08:00

In this wonderful age of technology we live in, computers can do amazing things. They can bring characters like Golum to life so realistically that we can believe he can actually exist (or that a creature can be that anorexic and still kick a hobbit's ass). They can connect people together in a mass social network that requires terabytes of memory and gigawatts of power. They can bring us smart phones, teach us a foreign language in several weeks, or make a killing in the stock market based on a two-tenths of a millisecond faster processing speed than a competitor.

So why the hell can't all this computer power make us smarter in economics?

With the competing ideas of economics in our ridiculously hyper-divided political "system," in full scale war, what we, the people, need more than ever, is a game-like computer model that shows us just how economics works, whereby we can see how a nation like the U.S. does using various economic approaches. In other words, you can play the computer game as the United States, tweak government-controllable factors like money spent on education, raising or lowering of taxes, raising or lowering of interest rates, raising or lowering of social programs, and then hit "fast forward" to see how the nation will look in the future.

What a great idea! Every citizen could simply plug in Mitt Romney's ideas vs. Barack Obama's ideas to see which one produces the better future! And with a tool like that, all the rhetoric becomes meaningless! What an essential tool! Every voter should have one!

Unfortunately, all we have is Simcountry.

Why is it that games that involve money and economics always need some sort of war going on? You harvest crystals, gather spice, tap lands, or do some other inane thing for money which has nothing to do with the real world. What a waste!

Such computer models exist. We know they're out there. Ben Bernanke, our current Fed Reserve Chairman, developed such a computer model back in the 1980's. The University of Chicago has one. M.I.T. has one. The University of Wisconsin, I hope, has one.

What I don't get is why we all don't have one.

All it takes is one, JUST ONE economist who has access to such a computer model to releasee it into the general public, maybe even make it into a game, and all this political bullshit we're enduring will go away. Even if a model which is slanted to one side or the other is released, it won't matter, because the opposition will respond in kind, and people will be able to evaluate for themselves.

JUST ONE ECONOMIST! Is that too much to ask? Anyone out there? Anyone?

When economic information is so very critical to our survival, both as a nation, and to ourselves personally, I guess I can no longer fathom why we all clamor with "angry birds" or internet cats.

Eric

Your Designated Driver

2011-10-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

I'm sometimes given to quiet musings which are of little importance to anyone else but me. It is, in fact, my favorite way to spend my free time. But periodically I stumble upon a thought which the world must know about because it has world-changing and life-saving consequences. This blog post shares such a thought with you. Pay attention.

I see how our culture sometimes uses designated drivers on assigned party nights during the weekend. Good thing, there, but not nearly enough of that's happening. And I was watching our Brewers win over the Cardinals last night (Har, har!) when I saw a commercial for Captain Morgan, where a single rower was towing the party barge back to the Captain's ship. The caption read, "Designate a driver. Captain's orders." But how lonely that one rowboat guy looked!

That's when it occurred to me: Most designated drivers happen to be male, and they're missing out on some of the party to be the driver. So here's my big thought, and remember, it could save lives! If you are part of a party with a male designated driver...

Make sure that driver gets laid!

Just imagine how many more guys will be willing to be the designated driver if our culture insists that we repay their invaluable service with some well-earned nookie! With more designated drivers lining up to get behind the wheel and get lucky, drunk driving will decrease dramatically, and lives will be saved!

So there you have it! Call it the "tushy for taxi" rule!

Oh, and female designated drivers get their feet rubbed by a tan, muscular athlete!

Eric

More Applications of Poe's Law

2011-10-06T04:01:00.000-07:00

The more I contemplate Poe's Law (see previous blog post), the more applications I find for it. It was initially meant for fundamentalism, true, but there are so many other areas where something is so ridiculous that it can't be parodied without someone mistaking it as genuine. Specifically, I've identified several other areas where Poe's law fits:
Commercial advertising
Politics
Television and film production
Sports fans
Modern art
Hip-hop culture
Country/Western music

Now, at first glance, none of these things appear to have anything in common, other than they are so ridiculous that doing a parody would result in people mistaking them for the real thing. But why? Could there be some common element that links these seemingly disparate subjects together? Certainly hip-hop culture and country/western music are linked by low-brow, simplistic styles of music, and commercial advertising, politics and entertainment production all have the distinction of trying to sell sub-standard products to the masses. But what about the others? How do simple music styles and selling products relate? How do they both relate to fundamentalism? Or modern art? How to they relate to sports fans?

I believe the answer has to do with one thing. These ridiculous behaviors all come into play whenever there happens to be a large group of people following a trend or charismatic leader blindly.

It makes sense. When people follow blindly, rationality goes out the window, and with it, the sense of "Oh, my god, I'm really making an ass out of myself!" There's something about getting swept up in the mob mentality which appeals to our primal, animal brain, the core of which is, essentially, that of a rodent. Yes, there's a little bit of lemming in each of us.

Perhaps we might wake up to certain things in our lives as a result. We might say of hip hop culture, "You know, the music's only good because the Motown greats it raps over were originally good. These clowns have no musical talent." Or, "You call THAT art? My five-year-old could do that!" And it begs the question, just what OTHER areas are there in my life where I'm following blindly? Do I really have to tolerate commercials which announce "Omnaris, To The Nose!" by spending my money on their product? Indeed, can't we all just not buy any shit which REPEATS the same nonsense over and over again?

Homework assignment: Look yourself in the mirror and ask, "What am I doing in my life where I'm following stupid stuff blindly? And what can I do to change it?" We ALL have such areas in our lives, so no fair trying to insist that you've got no such areas. Go on, explore your life. Find that area where you're being led about by the nose.

And then eliminate it. Liberate yourself!

Eric

Class Warfare?

2011-09-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

It seems that Our Trophy President is making a big push for job creation, and is using tough language to get it through congress. He's even used the v-word (gasp!), which he hasn't used in the three and a half years we've been watching him. He says he'll veto any bill which balances the budgets solely on the backs of ordinary people, without ending the loopholes which allow the rich to be taxed at a much lower rate.

Bully for you, Barry. We knew you had a bit of fighter in you there, somewhere.

John Boehner, in response, said that he didn't feel "class warfare" was showing good leadership.

And with that "class warfare" comment, both Fox News and MSNBC have proceeded to fall all over each other in a comical effort to see who can miss the point the most. This is hardly unusual - we've come to expect this kind of partisan myopia from these sound-byte generators. And seemingly as always, I appear to be the only one in the Dairy State cursed with realizing what's going on.

The heads on the Right are insisting it's class warfare, while those on the Left are assuring us that it's not class warfare at all. Naturally, this is all an irrelevant tangent that both sides have gone off on. Even if it is somehow "class warfare," it does not follow that it would automatically be bad legislation as a result. Class warfare has often produced good legislation, such as the liberation of slaves, or the sufferage of women. So class warfare, if it is such, is entirely moot. The question we should be asking is whether or not it is fair legislation to ensure Warren Buffet's secretary gets taxed at the same percentage rate he does. So far, the public agrees that when Buffet highlights the discrepancy in taxation rates between low income and high income people, he's got a valid point.

That having been said, I wish to do something very rare. For once, I'm going to agree with John Boehner! That's right, I agree with him! This IS class warfare. And the Left is absolutely wrong in denying that. But it's not class warfare of the poor against the rich.

No, it's class warfare of the rich against the poor!

And those waging the war are the ones bent on denying anything remotely close to fair opportunity to the masses, and keeping the playing field as tilted as possible in favor of the super-rich at all costs. (Three guesses who.) In other words, it's not the poor waging class warfare against the rich, but rather it's the poor trying to get the rich to stop waging class warfare upon them!

And to those who insist "government spending has not created one job," I assign this homework assignment: Walk up to any police officer, fireman, teacher, highway-construction laborer or groundskeeper, and ask him/her if more government money has helped create his/her job. Yes, private industry creates most jobs, but some jobs are, in fact, government-paid, and we'd be very foolish to deny that.

It seems Our Trophy President's opponents are bent on a two-part plan: First, to keep Obama from being effective, and second, to then attack him for his ineffectiveness. (Brilliant, that!) Oh, and hope that no one fingers them as the cause of the ineptitude!

Here's a thought: How about for once, instead of making everybody suffer just to deny Obama one little victory, we let the President win one, and put people to work for once? We need jobs now! Not after 2012! I don't know about you, but I'm sick and damned tired of the scorched-earth mentality which is willing to sacrifice us all to the false idol of talk radio. Someone needs to come down from the mountain and put that particular golden calf out of its misery.

Come to think of it, I wonder if maybe the golden calf of the Biblical book of Exodus was not a cow's calf, but rather an elephant's calf?

Eric

Laws Of Human Behavior

2011-09-18T04:57:00.000-07:00

About four days ago, Penn Jillette was a guest on the Lawrence O'Donnell show. After the two of them watched a video clip from Michelle Bachmann's pre-political Fundamentalist days, where she ridiculously preaches that "God wants you to be a fox" (meaning sexy, although she tried to spin it into a spiritual context), they both laughed, and Penn reacted by quoting Poe's Law. Poe's Law (for those who don't know about it) was invented by the internet debater and blogger, Nathan Poe (no relation to Edgar Allen), and goes something like this:

"Unless it is blatantly labeled as humor, no one can create a parody of Fundamentalism without someone mistaking it for the real thing."

What a brilliant thought! It illustrates so economically how religion makes one so incredibly blind to the ridiculousness of itself. At a stroke, it describes how wild-eyed religion is a joke that its followers don't get!

It is precisely Poe's Law which explains the success of shows like The Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert simply acts like a Fundamentalist Conservative, and it's automatically a joke! It also explains the view that some conservatives have regarding the hyper-homophobic preacher, Fred Phelps, who is seen by them as being a "deep undercover" liberal, out to discredit the fight against homosexuality by parodying it.

This leads to my corollary of Poe's Law, which goes like this: "Unless it is blatantly labeled the real thing, no one can display Fundamentalism without someone mistaking it for a joke."

Classic example of this: Bibleman! The battle-armor-wearing superhero, portrayed by actor Willie Ames (formerly of Eight is Enough and Charles in Charge), is so face-slappingly insulting to Christians that one can't help but wonder if it wasn't invented by a bunch of atheists who were simply trying to make fun of Evangelicals.

So here's where my pondering of Poe's Law has me at a loss: It seems that one can come to the realization that certain beliefs one was raised on are silly, but it's a difficult process. It requires effort, courage, and enough receptiveness to new ideas to be able to change. In other words, you might finally get the joke, but when you do, you won't be laughing! I, for one, broke free of Fundamentalism, even when being so firmly committed to it as to want to enter the ministry and "save the world for God." But I managed to wiggle out of it when it stopped making sense. I broke my chains.

Why do I seem to be the only one?

I suppose I could try to pat myself on the back, assert to everyone that I'm of exceptional intelligence, and take all the credit. But while it's true that I happen to be a Mensa member, and probably am a little bit above average in the I.Q. department as a result, I refuse to be so narcissistic as to pass off my own liberation as "being gifted." No, I'm not a Mensa member because I'm especially gifted. I'm a member of this elite class of smart-cookies only because I kept pounding on the door of educational establishments until they finally let me in. I never declared my education "done." (And I never will.) If intelligence were likened to speed, I'm not a hare, I'm a tortoise. But I won the race, only because I refused to give up!

But even with that firm commitment to self-improvement, I still could very easily have remained a Fundamentalist. Suppose I'd married some nice, Christian girl, and become a father? I would have found myself in a situation where leaving the faith would have meant a messy divorce, or worse. And even if I'd done so, I would still have needed to put in extra work to pay for child support, and watch the kids on alternating weeks. It would have been so much easier for me to simply remain inside the faith, even if I felt it were stupid, just for the sake of the kids, and to avoid a bad situation.

The extra time I would have been able to devote to learning, would have been gone.

And here's where I sadly realize why I seem to be one of the lucky few to have escaped the confines of my childhood indoctrination: With no spousal ties to religion, I was free to explore, and to change my mind with few consequences. With no children, I was free to spend my free time furthering my education, both in college and in private study. I avoided the "two kids and a mortgage pitfall," and so was able to dig myself out of the hole that tradition and religious upbringing threw me down into at birth.

Okay, technically, I'm not the "only one." And there are plenty of people who, with kids and mortgage both, have freed themselves of their religious limitations to be able to think freely. To them, I'll grant the title of "gifted," for gifted they indeed are. But how insufficient their numbers are to make a difference! What a small percentage they make of the overall population! This leads me to another of my own new laws, somewhat a corollary of Poe's Law, but mutually exclusive of it. I call it the law of general stupidity. It goes like this:

"Humanity will always be doomed to general stupidity, because the most important years of cognitive exploration, one's 20's and 30's, are wasted on child-rearing."

By the time one has sufficient time to explore the complex issue of this world, one typically is in one's mid-40's or 50's, and by that time, the limitations of the human brain simply make it un-receptive to new ideas or radical changes in thinking. Any cognitive talents such a person has would then be spent, not embracing new truths, but defending old falsehoods. What a sad state to be in with this modern world, so full of science, and yet so populated with people ignorant of science. We are all trapped in a tomb of our own making, committed to populating a world already overpopulated, and consigning ourselves to ignorance as we do so.

It is a testament to the evolutionary power of the sex-drive.

To those reading this with kids and mortgage, let me not leave you depressed. My "law" is not necessarily a law at all. I strongly feel that by realizing this state more fully, we can likely circumvent it. The more we realize we are the prisoners of our own upbringing, the better prepared we are to break free. Explore the issues freely with your children! You will set the example of free inquiry to those who need it most. And when, in your 40's and 50's, you find yourself with free time to explore again, be willing to abandon your old ideas. Never mind about pissing off mom & dad, grandma or grandpa, your friends at work, at church, Father Mokehe, or whomever. Your mind is your own.

Commit yourself to truth, no matter what conclusions you must reach.

Eric

The Truth Behind Conservative Vs. Liberal

2011-08-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between liberal and conservative? Why is it that we tend to polarize into one or the other? Why, when this dichotomy so handicaps us, do we insist on lobotomizing ourselves and our culture in this way? These fundamental questions are ones I’ve obsessed over as I’ve watched, with increasingly nauseous horror, the transformation of our media from one where both sides were at least prone to giving token attempts at balance to one in which one-sided media remains entrenched on one channel, or the other – Fox news and talk radio on the right, and MSNBC and Comedy Central on the left. (And isn’t it odd that there is no comedy channel devoted to making fun of liberalism!)

What it boils down to is two of our very dearest values clashing together, not because they are incompatible, but because they tend to diverge among different personality types, and our naturally handicapped, tribal, hunter/gatherer brain takes over from there. On the one side is Freedom, compassion, and fairness. In short, a desire for a utopian condition. On the other side is purity, loyalty and security, a recognition of a tragic condition. I think, at heart, both sides recognize that both utopian desire and tragic recognition are necessary for the best possible society, but because our differing personalities prefer one over the other, we polarize, and then fight with each other about shit which is ultimately about as important as a mosquito, and equally as annoying.

As such, we wrongly demonize our opponents: With liberals being a bunch of latte-drinking, hybrid-driving, granola-crunching bleeding-hearted, atheistic Marxists, and conservatives being a bunch of coffee-chugging, SUV-driving, Wall-Street-hogging, heartless, Bible-thumping Rockerfellers. But, of course, neither of these caricatures is even remotely accurate. We both want the best possible world. We just disagree on the finer points of how to get there.

Take religion vs. government, for example. Both sides agree that some form of reciprocity needs to be in place to prevent criminals and freeloaders from spoiling society. Historically, there have been two forms of this (and not always separate): religion, and government. Those who favor the liberal side favor freedom, and so want maximum opportunity while young in life. As such, they favor large-scale solutions which benefit them, and so favor government. Those who favor the conservative side favor security, and prefer small, community-based solutions which benefit them while elder in life. As such, they prefer religion, and would rather government stayed out of it, except in matters of keeping everyone safe. This explains so many dispositions between the two sides that it’s mind-boggling. It explains why conservatives prefer small government, but will nevertheless spend ridiculous amounts of money on police, the military, and prisons. It explains why liberals, desiring to maximize freedom for all sentient beings, will be vegetarian to protect the rights of fellow sentient mammals, while being pro-choice, since an early-term fetus is not yet sentient. It explains why conservatives oppose abortion and euthanasia, but are typically in favor of the death penalty. It explains why conservatives want lower taxes to better enjoy their golden years while liberals would rather have more taxes and programs to benefit them right away before old age sets in. It explains why liberals want a strong separation between religion and government, and why conservatives prefer or pretend that the wall of separation between church and state doesn’t exist. It explains why colleges and universities are rife with liberals – because science requires the questioning of one’s elders as a major tenet, and so freedom to explore is the order of the day for scientists, engineers, philosophers and sociologists. The language arts must, of necessity, be populated by cultural explorers and this sieves out all but the most ardent of moral relativists. (And this would be true even if universities didn’t receive loads of tax-dollars.) The one exception is the obligatory business school, where one department preaches VonMises, and loathes and despises the sea of liberal thought it finds itself floating in.

It also explains why liberals want big government and conservatives small government, UNLESS the subject of sex comes up, in which case conservatives want drastic, government-imposed restrictions, and liberals would prefer big government to stay out of it! This would seem like a hypocritical shift, until one sees the underlying cause. Freedom of business vs. freedom of gonads. Fascinating!

Telling is how these two sides tend to divide among the values shared by young and old. The young want to strike out, explore, be sexual, live life to the fullest. As such, they prefer the freedom aspect of the ideal society. The old prefer safety, sanctity, the recognition that life can be cruel if you’re not careful. As such, they prefer the security aspect of the ideal society. But as the young grow old, they grow increasingly more like their elders, preferring to nurse their arthritis quietly and live the stress-free lifestyle as their hormones go into remission. This is perhaps why the once biggest liberal juggernaut ever – the Baby Boomers – have gone from being pot-smoking, anti-war hippies at Woodstock who elected Bill Clinton, to being grey-haired, Tea-Party, anti-drug activists irrationally afraid of the same sort of black president they would have begged for in their youth. The only similarity between the two is their staunch willingness to get out and march in protest. How have the mighty fallen!

Young and old divide among their planning perspectives as well. The old prefer a long-term solution strategy, having lived a long time themselves, and knowing that they will not be around to see it through. The young, by contrast, see no point in waiting until the next generation or two (or three) before real solutions to injustices manifest, and so desire intervention right away to make justice more immediate. This explains why conservatives would rather minorities strive for wealth on their own, while liberals tend to prefer affirmative action programs minorities so that opportunity isn’t something only enjoyed by their grandchildren. In reality, long term solutions are always better than short-term ones, as long as there’s no racial favoritism involved.

It’s the ancient battle between constrained vs. unconstrained, change-embracing vs. change-averse. Desire for utopia clashes with the acceptance of tragic reality. Science fiction author, Nick Sagan (son of my hero, Carl Sagan), phrases it this way: It’s the battle between the primal forces of delicious and nutritious. Delicious wants to enjoy. Nutritious wants to survive. And fittingly, just as our modern world has glutted us with foods which are artificially sweet and savory, with added sugars and highly-salted poly-saturated fats, as well as artificially nutrient-bearing vitamin supplements, so also has our media given us excessively sweet, salty, or bitter content. Right now, it seems as if liberals are gorging themselves upon Oreo-cookie soft-serve, while conservatives are turning their urine blue choking down all their vitamin pills. What ever happened to meat and potatoes?

You see, in the battle for delicious vs. nutritious, it isn’t impossible to have both. Ice cream for dessert is a good thing, and a vitamin pill in the morning is healthy. In between, a balanced meal with the occasional salad is just fine. In like manner, a little bit of Bill O’Reilly and Rachel Maddow is fine, but let’s not go overboard! Let’s get the bulk of our data from unbiased sources, shall we? How about eating foreign food once in a while (BBC or Canadian news services)? The variety does a body good.

And this balance begins with the ability to abandon the irrational hatred of our obviously bipartisan President.

Eric

How To Change The Things That Matter

2011-08-03T06:46:00.000-07:00

When I look at the things that matter the most to the quality of our lives, and the key issues that most directly effect whose side I prefer politically, I'm amazed that two things always repeatedly come up: economics and education. Economics comes up obviously because we all want better jobs, and want to punish those politicians who aren't doing a good enough job at helping us get them. Education comes up because everything about our society ties in to it, whether it be crime, money, stability, security... Nothing doesn't go south without good, quality education. And since education affects the economy, education is the more important of the two.

Yet what do we really know about these two key factors? If we want to change the things that matter, we must be more competent about these two things than anything else. But are we? Ask yourself: what's needed to give a child a quality education. No, I mean REALLY needed. Be specific. Phonics in grades K through 4? Algebra in grade 5 instead of 6? What is the ideal class size? 15? 20? 30? Is a central teacher-in-classroom model even effective? Or is perhaps a direct-tutoring model more efficient? Perhaps a more multi-faceted model is needed, where two or three teachers handle three levels of learning, depending upon a child's needs? Perhaps boarding schools, the one form of school which has proven effective for inner-city children, should be assigned across the board?

And how about economics? Will tax cuts for the rich really work? What kind of tax cuts? How big should a corporation get? At least some regulation is necessary - as we learned the hard way - but how far should rules of regulation go? What kinds of reforms would work? Why would they work? What measures would make it fail, and why would the failure take place?

When it comes down to it, we don't know jack. ALL of us! Even the smartest people know very little about the fundamentals of both education and economics. And yet poor quality, as well as poor quality of understanding, of both these topics is a sure-fire recipe for disaster for any civilization.

And where are the most radical changes happening right now? Yeah, you follow me. And you understand why we should be concerned. We're blind, at the helm, and have no clue where to steer clear of the rocks.

I certainly don't have all the answers. I don't know how exactly education should be reformed, nor have I yet worked all the kinks out of my synthesized economic model. But I know this much, and it's a reform that both political parties can agree to, and can be implemented right away. I hope everyone writes their legislators in support of this idea. And it is simply this:

Teach economics as a required course in high school!

Eric

Debt Ceiling Bill... Compromise?

2011-08-01T21:15:00.000-07:00

So, it seems the dual pilots of our National Airplane, Capt. Democrat and Vice-Capt. Republican, have finally decided to put their fisticuffs in the cockpit on hold long enough to jointly pull up on the joystick before the death-spiral tailspin crashes us, and everyone's globally-networked personal incomes too. And while it's refreshing to see that partisan politics can be put aside when the need is dire, it's equally disheartening to note that it took everyone's nuts being held in a vice, plus the loss of at least one testicle per legislator, before anyone finally compromised on anything. It seems that Our Trophy President, ever the Superman strategist I kept telling you fair-weather-fans he was, has hammered out a compromise with the most uncompromising of S.O.B.'s in order to literally save the whole world's ass. That's our man!

But what did we get? While Democrats are bitching that they get nothing out of this deal, pointing out how Republicans are getting everything that they demanded, some are wondering what the "compromise" actually was. And in spite of this, some in the GOP are actually complaining that it doesn't go far enough because it doesn't include a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Well, it's nice to see that there's something to piss off everyone, because that's usually the sign of a good bill. But seriously, what did Democrats get out of it at all? Taxes levied on the topmost who have most effectively taken the money supply out of circulation? No. Serious military cutbacks? Not right away. Shit, did the Dems get anything?

The answer is yes. I'll tell you what they got: They got President Obama a "Get out of jail free" card regarding our nation's economy.

You see, the two economic models at war with each other play on fundamental mechanisms of how money works. On the one hand is the idea that the money supply is kept in balance with a system of carefully levied taxes upon the uppermost, and a responsible methodology of spending upon infrastructure, medicine and education, which benefits all businesses and citizens. On the other hand is the idea that business flourishes better when it is "unfettered" (by which it is usually meant, "untaxed"), and allowed the freedom to grow. Both ideas have merit, and both are obviously incomplete - which is why a synthesis of the two is so badly needed. Unfortunately, polarized thinking has blinded many to this reality, and this debt-ceiling bill illustrates this fully.

What will likely happen as a result of this bill, I'm saddened to say, is an economic downturn - the last thing we need. Already, economists are warning of it, and the Republicans who just don't give a damn are refusing to believe it. Now, this bill has passed, and whatever happens negatively in our economy, the Republicans now have full responsibility, thanks to their sticking resolutely to their vaulted principles. Obama will no longer bear any blame, thanks to this bill - which is essentially a Republican victory. Republicans succeeded in blocking taxation upon the wealthiest in exchange for another four years of Obama. (I hope they're finally happy.)

Now, this is a test of my understanding of economics. All you who read my blog may judge my analysis with me. I've made my prediction, and put my balls out there. And while the scientist in me looks forward to the results of this real-life extro-laboratory experiment, my hypothesis can only be correct if people suffer. This is NOT the way I wish to win an argument! Such is never the preferred path to victory for people of conscience. Nevertheless, if I'm right, don't say I didn't warn you.

You know, however, this could be interesting. I've been right about a lot of things. For example, I predicted Barack Obama's victory. But I've also been wrong on this blog. In the interest of equal time: I was wrong about selling gold right away. I was wrong about Herman Cain being a serious candidate. I was also wrong about legalizing marijuana solving all our budgetary woes. (My own later analysis showed that it would make a dent, but wouldn't come close to solving everything.) So I'm certainly fallible. On the other hand, if I happen to be wrong this time, then everyone is benefiting from a healthy economy, and I'll gladly wear egg on my face for that. If so, our good economy will ensure incumbent victories, and Obama will win. If the economy goes south, Obama has a devil to blame for it in this Republican-led compromise bill. Either way, it's all Obama until 2016.

It's the oldest maxim in the world: People vote with their pocketbook. And when it feels the pinch - as I regrettably expect it will - people will simply have to put the blame at the most obvious cause. This budget fight was so big, and so well-covered by the media, that everyone, for once, knew the issues behind it. They will not forget come 2012.

Then again, experience has shown us that they just might.

Eric

Want More Jobs? Then RAISE Taxes. Really!

2011-07-12T02:36:00.001-07:00

The more I educate myself regarding how economics works, the more I realize how the Hayek model (named after Austrian economist, Friedrich August Hayek), also known as the "Chicago school of economics," which is currently championed by disciples of Ayn Rand and most Republicans, fails in many regards. It refuses to acknowledge the obvious factor of luck, inevitably the source of nearly all the success of the wealthiest 1%. Through their lenses, an undeserved dollar simply does not exist. An unearned buck is seen as having been gotten by the sweat of their own brow rather than by the winds of fate. Any tax system which compensates for this is seen therefore not as a counterweight for fairness' sake, but as theft of what's theirs. No wonder they scream so loudly about taxation!

But in our current budget fight, one thing outweighs the national debt crisis, and that's jobs. Currently, we have competing views on how to create jobs, and there's two main schools of thought. On one side, the idea is that if the wealthy are taxed, they'll cut jobs in order to hang on to more of their money. On the other side, the idea is that more taxes will ensure more government programs which strengthen social guarantees and the building of infrastructure -- both of which help create jobs, though not right away. The fight between these two sides has gotten rather heated as of late.

I've come to realize both sides are wrong.

Here's how it really works. Suppose you're wealthy (which is a very easy thing to both wish for, and imagine). You've just been given a big tax break. What do you do with the money? According to Republicans, you'll hire more workers. But that model assumes you're content with what you have, and primarily desire to build more business. This is hopelessly naive. You could just as easily want to take that extra money and do something else with it. Like party. Or travel abroad. Or finally open that Swiss bank account you've been pondering (which sometimes costs a premium to open, especially these days). Maybe a sailboat, or a winter home? Maybe buy gold. Maybe buy a mistress. All kinds of things besides hiring another worker to do with that money, and you know as well as I do that the chances are far, far better that those other things will come first.

You see, the wealthy will hire more workers, but only when it's in their interest to do so. If it isn't, then cutting taxes on the rich is as helpful to the "trickle down" system as filling the cistern, and then failing to turn the spigot! What good is all that liquidity going to do way up there if none of it "trickles down" to here because the rich didn't turn the damned faucet on? Oh, sure, there will be a few philanthropists, but most won't be. (There are too few Herb Kohls and Chris Abeles.) So, the trick is to make sure that it's in the best interest of the wealthy to hire more workers, of course. How on earth do we do that?

Let's imagine that you're wealthy again. (Fun fantasy.) This time, let's say that you've enjoyed the benefits of a large tax break for some time. Say, since the Bush II years. But now, that cushion's about to disappear, and you'll be returned to Clinton-era tax rates. Now what? It's the opposite scenario of the above, isn't it? Obviously, you'll want to restore that extra income, if you can. But how? Do you cut your business, slash workers' salaries and fire people? Well, you can't, because in this shaky economy, you've likely already done that. Your business has been waiting for the economic recovery, but the recovery has been sputtering, and you've been reluctant to hire. Now you're income is about to take a hit. You can't pare down. What can you do?

You have only one choice: Build your business and gain greater market share. In other words, because your taxes got hiked, your best bet at restoring your lost income will be to HIRE MORE!

Holy shit! REALLY?

Really. The way to make it in the best interests of the wealthy to hire more is to restore the balance between too much, and too little taxation. We've had an imbalance of too little taxation for a long time now, and so there's been too little hiring. Raise taxes on the wealthiest just a bit more, and more hiring takes place as they struggle to continue keeping up with the Joneses the way they have been. Isn't that what we want?

The current hue and cry is that raising taxes will be bad for the economy. Indeed! Okay, it's going to make those who have it made have to make a little bit more, but so what? Aren't these the clydesdales we want to harness to pull our economy out of the dumps? Why leave them in the barn?

Make no mistake, the "raise no taxes" line in the sand is exactly the same as a "hire no workers"

line in the sand.

Atlas has shrugged long enough. It's time for him to punch back in and go to work!

Eric

Marijuana Laws.

2011-07-10T08:21:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post recently reported that "the federal government" (the article did not specify what office or branch) ruled that cannabis had no accepted medical purpose. This, from people who've likely never smoked it and/or experienced its nausea-reducing effects on themselves or observed it in other people. No, these bureaucrats, most of whom I'm certain have no medical or even science degrees, have taken it upon themselves to declare what should or should not be prescribed.

You know, when between 70% and 80% of every state in the union approves of medical marijuana being made legal, you'd think that there might be politicians everywhere clamoring all over themselves to be the first one to endorse legalization. Aside from Ron Paul, I don't know of any prominent Republicans who are even bothering to address the issue. For the most part, major Republican players remain firmly opposed to marijuana for medical, recreational, or spiritual use. Could there be a deeper reason?

Here's a thought: In 1972, Richard M. Nixon declared his "war on drugs." At the time, he was firmly opposed in the war on Vietnam, and one thing every unpopular president loves to do is throw up a war and drum up national crisis in order to bolster bad polling numbers. But in Nixon's case, I believe it went deeper. Many of Nixon's opponents were hippies - long-haired bead-wearing young people who were smoking cannabis on a regular basis. How to go after these pot-headed peaceniks? Why, by taking away their weed, that's how! And in 20 years' time, who knows? The lack of marijuana could spark a war-mongering right-wing revival.

What happened? 22 years later, 1994, Bill Clinton watched his Democratic majorities in both the house and Senate disappear, as Republicans took control with their "Contract with America." The Republican revival was on!

Coincidence?

We should be cautious before drawing any conclusions, here. Correlation does not imply causation. It could entirely be just happenstance. But it doesn't necessarily need to be true, does it? What needs to be true, is that certain Republican party leaders believe it. If they think that legalizing pot will cause the hippies to come back, and result in more recreational-use-inspired liberalism to boot them from office, it would explain their stubborn refusal to bow to the overwhelming majority of their constituents.

Now, obviously smoking pot doesn't make you a liberal, any more than taking oxy contin makes you a conservative. But if politicians believe that such mind-altering drugs can indeed alter the mind in just this way, it would explain a great many things, wouldn't it?

Especially not legalizing and taxing, and thus boosting the economy, and jobs, and treasury revenues, at a time when our government is so desperately in need of a balanced budget, and a thriving economy.

To help end the Great Depression, prohibition of alcohol was ended. It worked. Yes, a war helped, too, but the recovery began before the war did. So isn't it time our government woke up and legalized cannabis? Like now, when it's so bloody obviously the right thing to do?

Eric

Some Brewer Observations

2011-07-02T13:52:00.001-07:00

A break from my usual stuff, even as the political right is trying so desperately to keep the fat cats from going on a much-needed diet while simultaneously playing chicken with the debt ceiling and the global economy which depends upon it. No, this time I'm bringing my number-crunching powers of observation to bear on our Milwaukee Brewers, and why they can't seem to win a road game against any team other than the Florida Marlins.

First, let's recognize that the problem is offense. Par-value offense or defense is 3 runs. The Brewers meet or exceed par offense in Milwaukee, but not in other cities. At home at Miller Park, our offense is unbeatable. Six of our regular starters are batting over .300 (Lucroy, Braun, Rivera, Fielder, Morgan, Weeks) while two more are batting over .290 (Betancourt and Hart). Even most of our starting pitchers are batting over .300 at home (Narveson, Greinke, Gallardo). At home, the Crew hits the damn ball.

But something happens when the team goes on the road. Apparently, aliens come down and kidnap the regular team and replace them with mannequins that resemble them somewhat. Away, only two players bat over .300 (Nyger Morgan, and, of course, Ryan Braun). Even Prince Fielder's average drops to .272 on the road (down from .326 at Miller Park). But the biggest disappointment when the team travels is Jonathan Lucroy. That man bats a whopping .364 at home, and an appalling .216 on the road! Next up on the disappointment list would have to be Yuniesky Betancourt, who bats .295 at home, and flirts with the Mendoza line at .191 when travelling. Corey Hart, who bats .293 in the home court bats a disgusting .230 when away. We might be tempted to brand Braun as the only player who can hit on the road, and even he takes a slight dip, batting .338 at home, and .306 on the road.

Jesus, that fucking sucks!

But amidst these foul-smelling numbers, one shining star does emerge. Nyger Morgan! At home, he bats a very nice .316. But when away, he does even better! A .333 average on the road!

I say, Nyger starts every road game.

What about pitching? So far as I can tell, it's worse on the road as well, but not markedly so. Each pitcher gains one ERA point when travelling. Randy Wolf has the lowest downside, with an ERA of 2.78 at home and 3.75 away. Gallardo pitches 3.47 at home, and 4.39 in alien ballparks. Narveson does 3.91 at home and 4.93 on a road trip. But Zack Greinke is the biggest disappointment, showing 4.26 at home, and 7.77 while away. Granted, that's only because of a couple of bad outings, but they were road outings.

Inexplicably, the bullpen seems affected as well. Kameron Loe, the apparent go-to guy in the eighth inning, has an ERA of 4.22 at home, and 5.19 away. John Axford has a sparkling ERA of 0.82 at home, but 5.02 on the road (Most of that thanks to the Yankees debacle.)

But again, there are some nice exceptions. Sean Marcum pitches 4.13 at Miller Park, and 2.26 everywhere else! (If only he could start every road game!) Tim Dillard pitches 7.36 at home, and 3.38 when sleeping in hotels. But the biggest difference, making me wonder why the hell he doesn't get more time on the mound, is La Troy Hawkins. At home, his ERA is a fantastic 0.75. And on the road? His ERA is 0.00!!!

Okay, La Troy Hawkins is definitely our set up man on the road!

So what's going on here? Could it be that when these guys are away from their wives and kids and not getting laid that they do worse? It's certainly possible, and if so, plane tickets for player's families might be a relatively cheap investment in road wins, especially down the stretch. The other thing (and I don't have solid numbers to back me up on this, but it seems true) is that hitters seem to swing outside the strike zone on the road. The number of walks the team gets isn't significantly higher at home than on the road, but there are sure a lot more strikeouts when the Crew takes a road trip! Almost double, in fact! How to correct this? Well, chiding from coaches has never worked. In 30 years of watching baseball, I've learned you can never coach a player into being more disciplined at the plate if that S.O.B. is determined to swing at shitty pitches. But what a coach CAN do (which is entirely within Brewer tradition) is put a game within a game. On the road, any player who strikes out by swinging at a pitch outside the strike zone scores a "shitlist point." The three players with the most shitlist points after a road trip have to pay for the next team party.

The Brewers win when they play with good ol' fashioned Milwaukee gemutlichkeit. Let's add some of that to the game by making a game out of doing the right thing at the plate, and winning on the road, especially for the hitters.

Eric

Law & Order: L.A.

2011-06-17T00:08:00.000-07:00

Law & Order Los Angeles. What a great idea! A perfect continuation of a winning franchise guaranteed to win viewers.

Except now, NBC has announced that after only one season, it's cancelling the show. The reason? Poor ratings.

Only a board of network executives could be that stupid.

Nielsen ratings, the real governing body of all things viewed on television, is conducted by installing ratings boxes in various homes around the country, and monitoring what it hopes is a representative sampling of television viewers throughout the nation.

It isn't, of course.

You see, Nielsen ratings are a dinosaur -- a sad, holdover remnant of a bygone entertainment era, every bit as irrelevant today as radio dramas were yesterday. How outdated are they? Put it this way: They didn't begin incorporating numbers including new video technology such as TiVo until 2005, five years after it became widely used. And these new figures aren't even used in the ratings system. Why? Because advertising firms have pressured Nielsen into not using them! They know that if corporations see just how much people are dodging their commercials, they'll insist on paying a lot less, television stations profits will drop through the floor, and every ad agency will get dropped like a hot coal.

But what about even newer technology? What about Hulu? Or Netflix? The Free TV Project? Program streaming on every other network website? More people watch television this way inside coffee houses on their I-Pads than ever before, and these are the ones with the kind of free time to be able to watch television. But Nielsen doesn't include these figures either. If they did, they'd see that networks could charge way more for internet ads, and make up the potential difference in lost revenue. But, no, Nielsen insists on only monitoring people who sit in front of their living room big-box, and for this reason, Jerry Springer will always have artificially higher numbers than Law & Order: L.A.!

Meanwhile, a bunch of grey-haired executives in NBC, who probably grew up watching Happy Days and I Love Lucy, are making the mistake of presuming that their biggest television hit is actually a loss -- because the old, outdated system of tracking is saying that the numbers are low.

Meanwhile, an entire segment of internet-streaming viewers are screaming "What the fuck?!" over the news that their favorite show is getting cancelled. What a travesty!

This is dumber than Dr. House driving a car through his girlfriend's bay window!

Now, there's an even bigger point to be made here. These are the kinds of corporate execs who, thanks to the Citizens' United ruling, can donate massive amounts of funds to whatever political campaign they want. Yet they make billions screwing up so badly, they can't even keep Law & Order L.A. on the air! I guess it's true what they say: In the entertainment industry, one fails upward.

Are these the kind of people you want to see having the biggest say-so in our political process?

I say, rip that power away from those fuckheads and give it back to the people where it belongs!

(They'll just have more money to spend on luxury yachts, that's all.)

Eric

Sell Your Gold - NOW!

2011-05-29T09:52:00.000-07:00

I've been taking a brief hiatus from blogging, as it does take up a lot of time, and leading up to a final exam, I wanted to make sure I passed it (which I did). But oh, the things that did transpire during that time. I'd like to take a look at Paul Ryan's spiel on healthcare reform. I'd also like to examine the ruling of Wisconsin court justice Maryann Sumi. But for now, let me simply issue a recommendation to all investors out there:

Sell your gold now!

Why? It's simple, really. Since Obama's election, conservative media outlets have been touting the buying of gold, mostly on the grounds that they think Obama will destroy the dollar, and that gold will be the safest investment for the future. It's a version of the golden rule -- whoever has the gold makes the rules -- but in truth, the conservatives who push gold were likely heavily invested in gold to begin with before they started pushing it as an investment strategy.

Historically, precious metals investing has been a good hedge against inflation. Buy gold or silver, and as the dollar devalues and prices go up, you end up retaining the same spending power safely. Then, when the economy stables, you sell the gold or silver at a nice profit, though in fact you are not really making a literal profit, but are only breaking even in terms of buying ability.

But this latest spike in gold and silver prices is caused by something else. It's not inflation, because we don't really have a big problem with that (except with gasoline prices). And it's not an unstable economy, because it's been showing signs of recovery for quite some time now. No, this spike in precious metals prices has been caused solely due to the Tea Party movement. Convicned that Obama is about to ruin everything, or that Obama is the Antichrist, or some other disaster involving Obama is impending, they buy up all the gold and silver they can, preparing for the cataclysm to come. Demand goes up, supply stays the same, so the price jumps. Basic economics.

Problem is, the feared chaos will never get here. The economy is stabilizing. The disaster predicted with healthcare reform did not happen. Transitions to hybrid and electric vehicles will soon make higher gasoline prices less relevant. And best of all...

Obama is the president that got Osama Bin Laden!

That marks the end of the big push for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our troops will begin to come home. The biggest budget-buster of all time, initiated by George W. Bush, will finally cease to drain the lifeblood out of the nation's pocketbook. We will have a balanced budget before Obama's second term is over, with a budget surplus, just as it was under Clinton.

In other words, there is no more reason to panic.

That means the wise investors are selling their gold -- while the price is still high. With the panic over, and the storm clouds of impending disasters having blown by, we see sunny skies. The price of gold is about to DROP. FAST!!!

Oh, maybe gold will continue to climb just a bit more over the very short term. The pan-Arab revolt to democracy still has a lot of people worried, particularly in how it will play out in Egypt and Syria. And the brouha with Netanyahu over the Israeli borders will rattle a few nerves. But the fact remains that America is stabilizing, China's never going to take over, the national budget will cease to be upside-down, and the dollar will be secure.

So clear is this future that Republicans can't find a decent candidate to challenge Obama. Many Republicans don't want to. They don't dare! Face off against an incumbent who saved the economy and killed Bin Laden? No way! Who'd want to run into THAT buzz-saw?

So if you've invested in gold, now's the time to sell. Take your profits while you still can!

And watch while all the tea-partiers, who will refuse to sell in their anti-Obama delusions, take a huge loss when the price tumbles.

Eric

Herman Cain: Your Next Republican Presidential Candidate

2011-05-06T12:23:00.001-07:00

Since before 2008, Republicans have lacked something they desperately need: A candidate. Now, they've got one.

Meet Herman Cain. He's smart, articulate, a successful businessman, an absolute conservative. Former CEO of Godfather's Pizza. Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Radio talk show host. Bachelors degree in mathematics and Masters degree in computer science. He's also a Southern Baptist, and an opponent of abortion in all cases, including rape and incest. The religious Right loves him. The Tea Party loves him!

Best of all, he's black.

We've seen it happen before: A party desperate to unhorse a sitting president will pick a candidate who contrasts well against that president's primary strength. Thus, in 2004, when the "war on terror" was the overriding issue, General Wesley Clark, who didn't really want to run, was a serious candidate, and the nomination eventually went to John Kerry, a military veteran.

Now we'll see this sort of thing happen with the political parties turned around.

He's the ideal candidate, except for one, teensy, little thing. He's picked a fight with the IRS. He wants something called the Fair Tax, which is a kind of national sales tax. He wants to return to the Gold Standard. Were it up to him, all estate taxes, capital gains taxes, and income taxes would be abolished.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

Every charity that receives donations from the wealthy who are motivated by write-offs will oppose the guy. Every big-time banking and accounting firm that builds its industry upon our current tax system will oppose him. Subchapter S corporations, which already pay no taxes, will have no real reason to support him. A lot of people with a lot of money will oppose the guy.

He's the African Steve Forbes.

But the disenfranchised with Obama will flock to him. He can easily eclipse other novelties, like Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin. He will win nomination. If somehow he flummoxes the nomination, he'll be the ideal Veep. He holds the promise of unifying the Republican front, of winning over some moderates, and splitting the black vote.

This hope is likely misplaced. Obama has faced this sort of candidate before. When running for the U.S. Senate, Republicans put their trust in another black conservative, named Alan Keyes. A former ambassador, Alan Keys was smart, eloquent, handsome, and a darker shade than Obama. But the black voters of Illinois weren't taken in. Obama not only beat him, he crushed him.

You see, contrary to popular conservative myth, black people are not stupid. They know when they're being pandered to, and they feel insulted when conservative special interests put forth a black candidate, as if they would all simultaneously abandon Dr. King's dream and vote on the color of skin rather than the content of character. There could only be one Jackie Robinson. There could only be one Rosa Parks. There is only one Barack Obama. African Americans already have their champion.

But the Tea Party doesn't know this, nor shall they. The entire movement is all salt and almost no pepper, all cream and no coffee. They'll look to Herman Cain as their savior.

Well, ya better hold on to that dream, people.

Eric

New Pro Life Commercial

2011-05-04T01:34:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to say about many things. Like, for example, how everybody should stop jumping to conclusions about whether Bush-era-style water-boarding was used to kill Bin Laden. But for now, I've got something more important to grouse about. Yes, more important than whether Obama used torture.

This past week, I've noticed on NBC's Nightly News and other outlets a brand new pro-life commercial, and it really has me pissed off. I've included the video of the commercial here, so that you can see what I'm talking about.

Basically, the video says nothing I disagree with, until they come to the all important point about brain activity being present at seven weeks. Then, the motherly voice says, "Who knows? Maybe he's even thinking."

Oh, it's ON now!

I've posted before about how the brain defines the being in my online book, "It's The Brain, Stupid!" So I'm perfectly prepared to deal with the issue of brain development as it pertains to the abortion debate. You can read my full argument here. In it, I repeated the claim about the earliest brain activity of any kind being present at seven weeks, but I point out how that early brain activity means very little. The cerebral cortex, which governs movement, doesn't form until the 10th week, resulting in sudden and dramatic fetal movement. The cerebellum, the all-important area of thinking, cognition, reasoning, and experience, doesn't form until the 20th week, or 4.5 months in. The half-way point.

So for this commercial to come along and say, "Maybe he's even thinking," is just flat-out misleading. And it's a deliberately calculated attempt at misleading to boot. Lying is one thing. "Obfuscation of the truth" is even worse. The morons who made this commercial knew they were occulting the facts, and didn't care. What hubris!

In particular, I want you to focus in on the blunt admission of how 7 weeks is the earliest brain-wave activity point. Do the math. That's almost two months. Meaning that very early term abortion can still be done upon a fetus with ZERO brain activity whatsoever.

By thy own lips do I condemn thee!

This means not only that it is irrefutable that early-term abortion should remain LEGAL and PROTECTED, but that any objections to morning-after pills have no scientific basis. Those who deny morning-after pills to teenagers are therefore monsters, those who deny such pills to rape victims are rapists themselves.

And there's REALLY no damned excuse for opposing embryonic stem cell research! I, for one, am sick of scientists being forced to dump billions of dollars down the primrose path of regressing adult stem cells down to an undifferentiated state, as if that technology were anything other than setting any treatment back ten to twenty years!

Conceptionism is dead! Long live neural-developism!

As the woman says in the commercial, "What was I thinking?"

Hell, I don't know, lady. What were you thinking?!

Eric

Give The Pres. Some LOVE!

2011-05-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Sweet, isn't it? The heart and soul of Al Quaeda is extinguished, terrorists can forever mourn their loss, and Americans can celebrate their victory. For that matter, Afghanistan has a real shot at a lasting government, and may well experience the first permanent steps towards liberation of women in... well, ever!

So now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. For all the brave talk about Americans being united, and this victory being a bipartisan one, I'm still waiting to hear it. Just one compliment for President Obama.

Come on! Just one, teensey, weensey, little compliment? Can any so-called "conservatives" say it? Come on, say it with me, "President Obama did good." It's not hard! You can say it! Really! "The President did good!" Each time it gets a little easier. "President Barack Hussein Obama did a good thing in killing Osama Bin Laden."

Better yet, I'd like just one tea-party member to say, "You know, maybe I was wrong about Obama."

Hell, I'll say it: I was wrong! Yes, I was wrong about Bin Laden being already dead. I claimed that he was long ago killed, and that we would forever be fighting a ghost. Now, in light of new evidence, I'm forced to recant, and admit my mistake. And I'd made a second mistake with it: I thought the troop surge in Afghanistan was probably a mistake. I thought maybe it was a desperate gamble on Obama's part to try and get Bin Laden, and likely wouldn't work. Well, lo and behold, it DID! And I'm forced to admit that Obama's gamble paid off, and that the troop surge, which Obama did in defiance of his own party, was a good idea. I was wrong.

You know, it's a rather healthy thing. "I was wrong." It feels good to say! Maybe that's because those three little words are what makes science possible. Because in science, oneself being right or wrong doesn't matter. One's ego doesn't matter. All that matters is Truth. (And notice, I say Truth with a capital letter "T"!) So in saying "I was wrong," I'm really doing the most important thing that anybody can do in the pursuit of truth, and that's bow to the evidence.

Some people don't want to bow to the evidence. Already they're saying that Bin Laden isn't really dead. People also say that Elvis isn't dead. Or that we didn't land on the moon. Or that Obama is the Antichrist. Or that global warming is a hoax. Or that evolution didn't really happen.

Our culture really hasn't emphasized enough how important being wrong is. It's good to be wrong now and then! The ability to admit that you're wrong is the heart and soul of all Truth-seeking. It is the Alpha and Omega of maturity. It is the one trait absolutely essential for true intelligence.

Strange that so many people don't have it.

Even stranger that so many people go out of their way not to have it, and violently throw it away if it happens to fall right into their lap. Rather than admit they're wrong, they'll ignore birth certificates, become activists, proffer conspiracies or even build massive fake museums in Northern Kentucky, all to insulate themselves against the Truth, and having to say those three, small, all-important words: "I was wrong."

Why not just wear a dunce cap and save yourself the trouble?

So yes, everybody, I was wrong! And I say it proud!

Now, to all you Obama-haters: Your turn.

Eric

Our Critical Tech Schools

2011-04-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

Wisconsin's budgetary outlays are interesting to read about. A few percent here, several percent there, but nothing breaks into double-digits. Wisconsin just doesn't allocate much in any one particular area...

Except education.

Education support is the one item which not only breaks double-digits, but consumes the vast bulk of the State's expenses. How much? A whopping 38% of the State's money goes to some form of educational support, whether it be public schools, state-funded colleges, or tech schools. Education spending is to Wisconsin what Barbara Streisand's nose is to the rest of her face. It's what Donald Trump's hairpiece is to the top of his head. It's comparable to the percentage of Rush Limbaugh's body fat, or the percentage of Scott Walker's brain-cells devoted to his own ego.

In other words, if one is going to balance the Wisconsin State Budget, one simply has no choice but to cut education support somewhere. There's no way around it. We have to cut.

But may I make an impassioned plea that the one place we mustn't cut is our tech schools.

Our inner-city public schools have been failing. Our businesses are starved for skilled workers. That means that there are hundreds of thousands of under-qualified Milwaukee residents, and thousands of businesses forced to hire outside the State, or leave outright. Bridging this horrendous gap is Milwaukee Area Technical College. With a dual-pronged approach of making up for the lost learning from high school and giving excellent collegiate educational quality for the dollar, MATC is the one, lone bridge allowing those in the realm poverty to cross over the troubled waters of education to reach the promised shore of decent wages. It's the one beacon of hope that desperate education-seekers have.

Oh, don't get me wrong, MATC has its problems! It has its own teachers union which has basically decided to protect its full-time personnel in favor of screwing over the part-time instructors. And it seems to have the habit of looking after its own members Ph.D. aspirations more than is healthy. But it really is a remarkable institution otherwise. Its bathrooms have no mirrors and barely any tissue paper (because it can't afford these creature-comforts), its downtown buildings are old and dilapidated, and its facilities are stripped so bare that its teachers are forced to bring in their own white-board markers because none of the ones the school provides are ever anything but bone-dry. But it gets the job done. As teacher pay gets cut, and need for skilled workers becomes even greater, the gulf MATC bridges is more important than ever.

Cutting funding to tech schools like MATC now is the stupidest possible move. Why shut the front door on a burning building full of people?

Unlike MPS, MATC is doing awesome. It, along with two other Wisconsin tech schools, namely, Northeastern Technical College and Moraine Park technical college, are ranked in the upper 10% of technical schools in the nation in terms of demonstrating high levels of student success.

In other words, MATC is succeeding where MPS is failing.

Cut everywhere else if you must, but cut MATC last of all! It's an institution that's desperately needed, desperately wanted, and best of all...

...it's working!

Eric

I Want A Chevy Volt!

2011-04-22T04:59:00.000-07:00

The Chevy Volt is out, and I want one!

It's the 2011 Motortrend car of the year, and for good reason. All the benefits of a pure electric, with a small gasoline motor to act as a safety-net for longer drives. Nice! And with gasoline prices blowing the ceiling right off of gasoline station rooftops, we could all use one, couldn't we? Looks like the Volt has arrived just in time to save America's economy from yet another gasoline-induced economic recession.

Well, guess again. GM has produced, for 2011, 10,000 models of the new Volt. Ten thousand! That's it! To put that in perspective, the village of Greendale has a population of 14,400. The Bradley Center seats 18,000. You could fit the entire run of Chevy Volts for 2011 in the parking lot of Miller Park, and it wouldn't come close to occupying half of it!

It'll be easier to buy a ticket for the Superbowl than it will be to buy a Chevy Volt.

So much for the rescue.

Why are we, who are so starving for this needed product being tossed these few, paltry crumbs? Why is the free market not rising to the challenge?

The answer is simple supply and demand. GM has produced one hell of a car, but it cost them one hell of an investment. The price tag for this new vehicle would have been equivalent to that of a gas-guzzling sports car, without all the traditional flash. So GM pledged to hold the price down below $35,000. As it turns out, the car has smashed through that ceiling, and is going for something like $44,000. Worth it? You bet. IF you can find one!

You see, if left to the free market, GM would be rolling Volts off by the hundreds of thousands, for the initial price of around $60,000. But because they made a pledge to hold the price down, they simply cannot make money if they produce high volume. So they produce low volume, take a small gain, or possibly even a calculated small loss, and make plans to ratchet up the production gradually. It makes good business sense, but hurts the rest of us, for whom this technology is sorely overdue.

It's 'Tickle Me Elmo' all over again. Remember 'Tickle Me Elmo?' Christmas of 1995, I believe. The manufacturer of that toy pledged to only sell at a set, low price. But then demand went through the roof as everyone's kid wanted one. To meet demand, the price should have been raised to pay for the cost of increased production. But no, the price had to stay the same -- they promised. The result? No Elmos on the store shelves. And when they did materialize, parents stampeeded for them like herds of wild buffalo, at times getting into fisticuffs with other parents who dared get to the toy first.

It's the effect of price-fixing. You can't force the market. If the price is forced to stay low, manufacturers cannot make money unless they produce far less. The Soviet Union learned this lesson the hard way. If one forces prices of bread to be low by law, then prices will be low -- but the bakery shelves will usually be empty. The "invisible hand" fights back against attempts to force prices lower than what the free market demands.

The manufacturers of 'Tickle Me Elmo' lost out on the opportunity to make billions. Likewise, GM is going to lose billions. Oh, it won't be operating under red ink. In fact, the Volt sales will likely show a small profit. But that's because they didn't have to break the bank on producing very many. What SHOULD have happened is for prices on 'Tickle Me Elmo' to have been raised, production lines increased, and vastly more money made, to say nothing of there being lots stress-relieved parents as a result. The following year, demand would come down, and the price would have dropped dramatically. Investments in production for the company would have been made, and the cost of production would be dramatically less. Lots more parents could get Elmos for a reasonable price. And GM? It should be selling Volts at $60K or more, making money hand over fist, then, next year, the 2012 models can come down in cost. The manufacturing infrastructure will have been expanded and improved. People will finally be able to flip the bird to the overpriced gas stations forever.

And GM will be rolling, rolling, rolling in cash. But nah, that would mean the corporate executives would have to be smart!

And in case you're wondering where else I'm going with all this, it's very similar to the situation with collective bargaining and teachers' salaries. Give legislators the ability to fix the price of hiring an inner-city school teacher to what they THINK it should be, and the salary will be affordable to the taxpayer -- but good luck finding anyone to teach science or math!

In the meantime, we'll have to make do with what other options are out there. A Toyota Prius is still an affordable option, with the power of a wet noodle and the mileage of a Harley Fat-Boy. Nissan has a nice all-electric car, the Leaf, if you're willing to never drive out of the city. Most don't. In fact, Nissan may be poised to run away with this thing! Or how about a Ford? Ford now has hybrid Fusions, Fiestas and Focuses (Foci?). If you want a hybrid, that's the most affordable way to get one, with prices under $20K. (NOW you're talking!) Nissan may have the best all-electric, but Ford has gone hybrid-crazy, and is now the leading car manufacturer again. Or, maybe one could go extra fancy and buy a Tesla. Those sports cars are not only all-electric and could take you from Milwaukee to the Twin Cities, they're SWEET! But they cost the equivalent of a luxury yacht.

Meanwhile, BMW is producing the electric crossover model, the Megacity, Mercedes Benz is producing the Blue Zero, and even Minicoops are now coming out with a "Mini-E" version. But look out! China's car-company, BYD, is producing the E6! The Panda has seen the future!

All this is happening because the demand for electrics and hybrids is so high. Ford saw it, and is currently #1 again. GM could have seen it, but stubbornly stayed married to the idea of too little, too late.

Just think of how wonderful GM's stock would be, and how stable our economy would have been, had GM not been stupid enough to kill the EV-1 model back in the early 90's!

Oh, the folly of it all!

Eric

Waiting for Superman

2011-04-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

I've got a lot to blog about, but there's just too much to summarize, so let me start with the one that's most on my mind.

I've just seen the documentary film, 'Waiting for Superman.' It's about the plight of the failings of our public school system, and what can be done to fix it. As someone working to become a teacher, I knew this was a film I probably wanted to see. So I put it in my Netflix cue and finally got around to viewing it.

Twenty minutes in, I was furiously taking notes.

I knew things were bad, but I had no idea that they were this bad. And the film illustrated the problem in the best possible way, by following the lives of a few kids, and their caring parents. One kid, an adorable Hispanic girl who said she wanted to be a doctor, broke my (and indeed, everyone's) heart when she didn't get into the school she wanted.

The interviews were enlightening, and the facts, staggering. I've long heard Charlie Sykes rant about the situation in public schools in Milwaukee, but one of the interviewees was none other than Howard Fuller, former Superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools. In an event which took place many years ago (apparently, while I was paying attention to something else), a kid walked into an MPS school with a hidden camera, taking pictures of teachers who were doing nothing, reading newspapers, with whole classrooms full of kids doing absolutely nothing. Fuller, when shown the video, yelled, "I'm gonna fire these people!"

The teacher's union stopped him. After he'd fired them, he was later forced to hire them back, with one year's back-pay.

Realizing he wasn't in charge, he resigned.

This acute Milwaukee connection got my attention. And there were plenty of other figures which blew me away. Here's just a small sample of what I wrote down in the notes I took from the film:

In Pennsylvania, 67% of all prison inmates are high school dropouts.

There, it costs $33,000 per year to incarcerate one inmate. Over the average period of incarceration, four years, that's $132,000 dollars.

A private school in PA costs $8,300 per year. So for K through 12th grade, the state could have put the same inmate through a quality school for 13 years. 13 times 83K is $107,000.

If they did, they'd still have $24,000 left over for that person to go to college.

Where is all the money going?

Here's another stunning fact: There are 14,000 separate, autonomous school boards in the U.S. That's a lot of cooks to spoil the broth! Any reform efforts must face fourteen thousand individual bureaucracies!

(This same multiplicity of school boards is also what allows creationism to thrive in science classrooms below the radar.)

This one really blew me away: A bad teacher retards a student's development by 50% of an entire year. By contrast, a good teacher can bring students up by 150% or more! And here's a juicy tidbit: If we were to eliminate only the bottom 10% of bad teachers, and replace them with only average teachers, our overall school performance would jump to the level of Finland, which has the best academic measurements in the world!

We've got to get rid of those bad teachers! But firing a teacher is harder than curing herpes these days.

In Illinois, for example, there are 876 school districts. Only 61 of them even tried to fire a teacher. Only 38 were successful. Ever.

Compare this with other professions. On average, 1 in 57 doctors will lose their license. One lawyer in 97 will be disbarred. But among teachers, only 1 out of every 2,500 will lose their teaching license.

Why is this? Well, Howard Fuller found that teachers had something called "Tenure." Interesting, that. Tenure was originally meant for college professors, and was designed to prevent them from being fired for arbitrary or political reasons. Even today, professors can teach college classes for years before they qualify, and many never even get tenure.

Tenure for high school teachers? And it's automatic after only two years? When the hell did that happen?

I've always held the opinion that you can't pay a good teacher enough, while you can't fire a bad teacher fast enough.

Sadly, teacher's unions have stood in the way of both these things.

This brings me to the subject of the unions, and the power they've had. I've recently put my good name on the line defending these unions, while simultaneously hedging my defense by advocating that these unions be reformed. I now know just how deep that reform needs to run. Unions need reform, and not just for public sector unions. The whole thing needs to be reworked.

A few blog posts ago, I detailed some needed overall union reforms. I errantly left out one BIG one, and for that, I apologize. The one I left out, the most important one of all, is this:

UNIONS MUST FIRE SLACKERS!!!

I don't think I can overemphasize this enough. The survival of unions depends upon this more than anything else. Over and over again, those who oppose unions cite the inevitable lazy son-of-a-bitch who doesn't produce, gets over-paid, and who can't be fired. Why is it that union leadership doesn't realize that if they could just change that one thing, and then change the perception of it, if they could just get that damned pro-laziness albatross off from around their collective necks, they could have complete political acceptance? Why do unions not realize they need to fire lazy jerk-offs more than they need oxygen?

The answer, I fear, is poor leadership within unions. A good union, with wise leadership, can be a sound system which benefits all. A bad union is worse than no union at all.

Which might explain why Walker went after the unions.

The secret-camera episode is what Walker should have cited when attacking the teachers unions, instead of listing all of the bullshit union "offenses" which I debunked in my blog post from March 13 of this year (yet another example of his overall incompetence). He probably didn't because it was an episode from back in the early 90's. But so what? The need to be able to fire bad teachers is still essential.

(Where was Howard Fuller during this whole Madison budget-battle, by the way?)

The film cited Michelle Rhee, who was given broad powers to reform schools in Washington, D.C., which has the worst performing public schools in the nation. She started to make progress, but she knew she needed to make sure the bad teachers were gotten rid of. Her proposal to the teachers union during a collective bargaining session was brilliant: Either teachers could accept "tenure" with modest pay increases, or they could relinquish tenure and potentially receive massive pay increases based on performance. It was a brilliant masterstroke! I must say, I think this Michelle Rhee is one hell of a woman!

The union didn't even let her measure come up for a vote, fearing it would pass.

Meanwhile, enterprising charter schools, such as the Kipp academy, and boarding schools such as SEED in New York, are working -- operating outside the sphere of influence of the teachers unions.

David Guggenheim, the director of the film, told it like it is, and really targeted the fact that most political contributions from teachers unions go to Democrats. He wasn't being political, he was merely telling the truth. As such, we're greatly indebted to him. This is the same guy who directed the film, An Inconvenient Truth! He's certainly no raging conservative nut-job!

So here's my new position, and I don't think it's too radically different from my old one: I intend to really pound hard upon the leadership of the Milwaukee teachers union to push for the firing of poor teachers, and to drop any attempts to defend residency rules. Those unions should be defending the quality of education just as much, if not more, than the teachers themselves. I'll watch them like a hawk! After that, it depends on what the union itself does or has to say. If they do the right thing, all's well. If they don't...

Well, then I'll be forced to eat my slice of humble pie, and admit that, in his sheer incompetence, and primarily out of political malice, Scott Walker may just have accidentally done the right thing in breaking the teachers' union.

And I'll be there afterwards to help with the work of putting the union back together again, only better this time.

Eric

Antimatter and Dark Energy

2011-04-14T02:12:00.000-07:00

Every once in a great while, I get hit with a really big realization, and I wonder why I never thought of it before. For example, just the other day I was suddenly struck with the insight that all the attacks against Chris Abele having paid no taxes were actually an indictment of Republican tax policy. After all, it's been the Republicans who have consistently given the richest 1% all the tax breaks they can muster. So should they at all be surprised that somewhere out there, as a direct result, there would exist a rich philanthropist who exploits every charitable loophole they themselves provided to pay no taxes? Strange, really. Those on the right-wing never seemed to have a problem with that, until such a wealthy individual decided to represent the left and run for County Executive of Milwaukee. I'm kicking myself for not realizing this obvious fact, and doubly kicking myself for not thinking of it before election day came.

But this most recent thought dwarfs the one about Abele. And, fortunately, it's not about politics for once.

There was a recent story I posted to my Facebook page about CERN, and about how the Large Hadron Collider may have discovered a new sort of anti-particle. Almost simultaneously, Fermilab, the older, smaller particle accelerator located outside of Chicago, announced that it may have made a breakthrough discovery. And these might give new insights into antimatter and how it works.

Strange thing about antimatter, though. There's so little of it. Or is there?

Thinking about the structure of the atom, I've often mulled over how atoms give off light if those atoms are put into an excited state with energy. So, if an electron "orbiting" a nucleus is charged with energy, it will move into a higher orbital. Then, when it returns to its lower orbital again, it will emit a photon of light. Different sizes of orbital shifts make different colors along the spectrum, including ultraviolet, gamma rays, radio waves, infrared, and so forth.

But that's matter. What if antimatter had it's positrons put into an excited state while orbiting a nucleus comprised of antiparticles? Would we then get a photon of "anti-light?"

It's an intriguing thought. Find some excited antimatter, and if you were wearing antimatter-seeing glasses, you could see an entire star which wasn't there before! Or maybe an entire galaxy full of them?

And this gives an interesting possibility as to the riddle of "dark matter." It's not really dark, perhaps. It just might be that dark matter is dark to our eyes because we have eyes of matter and the dark-matter is emitting anti-light which we can't see or yet detect. So if CERN finds a way to "see" in anti-light, wouldn't it be something if we suddenly found a whole shitload of galaxies that weren't there!

And black holes? Black holes happen when enough matter collapses in upon itself so that the very atoms collapse. But however small, however dense that black hole may be, at it's core is still what is essentially matter. So if you have a black hole, you could, in effect, have an "anti-black-hole!"

What happens when a black hole collides with an anti-black-hole? A quasar, perhaps?

This still doesn't solve the riddle of "dark energy," which seems to be making the universe's expansion accelerate. But just in case some dude comes up with this idea later, I wanted to throw up the idea first on this blog, just to gain primacy. Who knows? I may be right!

Then again, maybe I'm just brilliantly wrong.

On second thought, it doesn't look quite so brilliant to me. Maybe that's because it's shining in anti-light.

Eric

Inside Job

2011-04-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

I just watched the movie, Inside Job, which is a documentary about the banking crisis of 2008, and how it happened. In some ways it was not as good as the PBS documentary episode of Frontline, which covered the same topic, and in other ways it was better. But one thing mentioned in the film stands out with me, and keeps nagging at my mind over and over. The film claimed that anti-regulation ideology has become so entrenched within the financial world that it has (and forgive me if I'm paraphrasing, but I'm pretty sure this is an exact quote), "corrupted the halls of academia." In other words, students majoring in business are imbued with anti-regulation idealism rather than economic reality.

From personal experience, I can see where someone on the left might see it this way. Often, you can tell what a student's major is simply by observing the student's extra-curricular activities. If the student is a member of the Young Republicans, it's a good bet that his major is in either finance, accounting, economics or something else business related. If the student is a member of the SDS (Students for Democratic Society), that student is probably a humanities major of some kind. (Natural science majors don't often seem to bother much with politics at all.) So a perspective that sees liberalism as superior to conservatism might well regard this as right-wing corruption within the financial world permeating into our very colleges and universities.

Oh, I can hear the right-wing pundits now! "How dare these liberals think that unless their ideology completely dominates every square inch of college campuses that it somehow amounts to 'corruption!' Are they really so blind as to think that only their views can be taught to students? Are they really so frightened of what free market capitalism has to say?"

Well, speaking from the center-left, no, we're not afraid of what free market capitalism has to say. Even if it is based upon the outdated and unreadable novels of Ayn Rand, and the wild-eyed idealism of Milton Friedman. But we are afraid of only one side getting taught, regardless of the context. It's not right that business majors get taught only one view, while liberal arts gets taught another view, and natural science gets taught yet another view. Bullshit, I say. A more broad-based educational environment is needed. And liberal views ought not be shunned in Lubar Hall at UWM any more than conservative views should be shunned in Curtin Hall.

But that's not the real point of this blog. The real point is this: Why is it that there are still two competing economic views that make this campus-division even possible? Why are followers of Keynes still at war with the disciples of Hayek? Why are Democrats championing one view, and Republicans another? Why, in a world where penalizing economic success is every bit as false a doctrine as a flat tax and unbridled deregulation of corporate and banking institutions, do we not have a unified synthesis of economic theory?

It certainly can't be for lack of information. Hell, this is the information age! It can only be because those in both academic and political power don't want to find the truth!

This should not be surprising. In today's world, people have denied one fact after another, based solely on the propaganda of corporate-funded academics. We've heard their bullshit before:

Cigarettes might not give you cancer.

Burning coal doesn't produce acid rain.

Chlorofluorocarbons aren't eroding the ozone hole.

Deforestation isn't killing the spotted owl.

DDT should have been freely distributed to central Africa.

Humans aren't the cause of global warming.

And besides this, significant percentages of the public think that the Moon landings were faked, that aliens traveled billions of light years just to fuck with us using crop-circles, and that John Edwards can really talk to the dead. No wonder they think we're suckers!

And no wonder politics keep Keynes and FDR's politics separate from Hayek, Von Mises, and the Chicago school of economics. It's just too easy to muddy the water!

Here's my promise to you, my readers. I'm going to spend quite a lot of time researching the differences between these two schools of thought, and find out which parts of the ideas work, and which don't. I expect to find much merit in both camps, and also expect that there might be better ideas not thought of by either. It will take me awhile. Hell, it might even result in me writing yet another book. (Which gets passed over yet again for publication in favor of such nonsense as, "They Call Me Baba Booey.") But at the very least, I will blog my findings with you all, and give you a nice, little crash-course in economic wisdom.

Wish me luck!

Eric

Union Reforms

2011-04-10T05:57:00.000-07:00

Everybody has an opinion about unions. They might blame unions for the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, or maintain that unions are the only thing preventing a global corporate takeover. As usual, the truth is somewhere in between. A friend of mine maintains, and I partially agree, that the government has assumed much of the role that unions once played – providing employee protections such as OSHA and MSDS requirements, minimum wages, anti-harassment laws, and so forth. He therefore feels that unions should just go away to allow us to compete in the global free market. I, however, feel the time has come, not for union destruction, but for union reformation, and I want to share those ideas with you all. See if you agree.

First, some historical background. Unions claim that they were responsible for the building of manufacturing jobs in America. But were they?

On balance, no. The Great Depression came as a result of imbalance in the money supply (too few at the very top had all the cash, causing the economy to grind to a halt due to the friction caused by most people having no money to spend), and the unwillingness of industries to produce more and make more jobs. The second problem stemmed directly from the first. Business owners were financially comfortable living on interest without producing, so why should they have to build plants and/or hire workers just to make merchandise nobody could afford anyway? It was a deeply-rooted problem.

Unions did help to move the machinery of industry somewhat, but not enough. Furthermore, they were led by Marxist writings, which advocated revolution. This started a tradition of combativeness within union leadership. Industrialists quite rightly feared an assault upon their wealth, and responded to unions with violent force. Union leaders were often killed. Industrial leaders were sometimes attacked. Police were sometimes called in, persuaded by the politicians who had accepted Corporate money, to beat picket lines with truncheons. It was a frightening time. The inner war between workers and manufacturers threatened to topple the United States as a nation.

FDR realized that money supply at the lowest-rung was the problem, and put in a program based on Keynes’ economic model – that an influx of government money can break the deadlock. He put Americans to work with the “Alphabet Soup” of government employment programs, building roads, building infrastructure such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, even building entire communities such as the Milwaukee suburb of Greendale.

It started to work, but slowly. Sometimes unions helped, but sometimes hurt, FDR’s efforts. More people had more money to spend, but it was five loaves and two fish given to a multitude. The miracle needed to make this feed all the masses, and have twelve basketfuls of fragments left over afterward, came in the form of war.

World War II did several things: First, it forced industry to build, train, and hire workers. Second, it hired and paid hundreds of thousands of young men as soldiers, outstripping any previous government work-hire program. Third, it made the wealthy more willing to pay a fairer share of their taxes, knowing that such money was for the war effort. Fourth, it took out a significant percentage of the populations of the U.S. and Europe, relieving the population surplus which was hampering economic growth potential. Fifth, it made government and industry invest heavily in research and development – the lifeblood of a growing economy. In short, the war led to the biggest investment of government and industry both in the American economy. When the war was over, the rich were paying their fair share, and everyone had money to spend. What followed was an industrial boom, a housing boom, a baby boom, and an investment boom.

But America wasn’t done. There was another war to keep the trend going. The Cold War made sure that research and development never ceased, fueling NASA and the space race into developing the computer technology that would make our current wealth possible. It forced politicians to invest in education – something no government hoping to maintain itself can do without. Furthermore, fears over nuclear war caused us to build a network of interstate highways so that people could flee cities rapidly in the event of nuclear attack. The unintended consequence was to make our national transport network the most advanced in the world, thus ensuring our economic dominance for decades to come.

That’s what built America’s industrial dominance in the late 20^th Century. Government employment programs, combined with corporate willingness to train and hire, and the wealthy willing to pay their fair share.

Well, if unions weren’t responsible for building American industry, what about the opposite? Are unions responsible for the loss of manufacturing jobs in America?

Again, on balance, no. Unions did tend to demand wages that are higher than non-union wages, but non-union wages still were higher than wages overseas in nations such as China, Mexico, South Korea, Indonesia and elsewhere. That meant that the manufacturing jobs would still eventually have gone overseas had unions not been there. The process would have been slower at first, but the ability of banks to wire money in seconds to the other side of the globe meant that businesses could hire abroad and fly goods out that were made cheaply.

What ended manufacturing in America? Internet banking and globalization. The jet power brought about by WWII eventually made it possible to move goods from overseas to America in record time. But when the Internet made it possible to pay overseas workers with a mouse-click, the exodus of American jobs really began. Ultra-competitive retailers such as Wal-Mart accelerated the process. Fueled by a consumer-lust for lower prices and damn the quality, jobs moved overseas. (The subject of Wal-Mart is enough for an entirely separate blog-post. It’s not that the retail giant is evil. It’s merely a “catastrophic success.”)

So where does that leave unions? Well, with globalization, unions are a non-factor. Any corporation can simply go around any labor strike by moving manufacturing to a different country. Before technology made this possible, companies couldn’t move, and union demands had to eventually be acquiesced to. But today, even if a union strikes and wins, all they’ve done is make a competitor better able to manufacture for lower prices and thus seal their eventual job-loss doom. They might also strike and bring down the entire company at once, leaving everyone out of work. We saw this with Schlitz beer, Allis Chalmers, and several others. It seems that unions are done, and we are all doomed to see ever downward-spiraling prices and wages, coupled with an increasing dependence upon government to protect the labor force, or make welfare for those that get squeezed out by this new service-based economy. The only unions left will be those of billionaire sports athletes.

Not so, I say! Here are two lessons from history that show why:

First, General Motors. Oh, they’ve had their labor problems, but if you look recently, you see few strikes, and an air of cooperation between union leaders and corporate executives. This shows what wonderful things can happen when unions drop the young-Marxist ideology of combativeness towards business owners.

Second, look at a German industrialist of old, named Krupp. He hated unions. So, to keep unions out of his company, he took a radical approach. He paid his workers! Figure that! If you want to keep unions from forming, just make them too happy to bother. It worked! Krupp’s company gained fantastic success, and working for Krupp meant having your own company house, car, school for your kids, even a company church where you had your own funeral plot pre-paid. This shows the power of what happens when business owners have beneficence towards their labor.

So, with that in mind, here are my ideas for unions:

1.) Establish a tradition of cooperation between unions and corporations. This may involve re-naming unions altogether. Maybe we can call them workers guilds, or some such. But combativeness between executives and union leaders must end. Workers’ strikes should be rare, or non-existant. Nothing can legislate this. It can only come by patience and wisdom.

2.) To that end, union leadership must be radically altered. As it is, unions are often despotic, with a centralized leader. That should be outlawed! Unions must be decentralized democracies ruled by many representatives. The laws of our nation must be made to ensure this. No union will vote to destroy their own jobs by striking at the wrong time.

3.) The law must be changed so that corporations must have an open-book policy of their financial positions to union leaders. When a company states that an increase in wages will destroy the company, and show so on paper, the union oughtn’t think it’s a trick. Some state laws and a few federal laws already require this, but these laws need to be expanded and strengthened.

4.) UNIONS MUST GLOBALIZE!!! If corporations go global, then the unions must too. (Duh!) Workers won’t get the higher pay they deserve if corporations can simply move the work somewhere else. Thus, unions must spread to those nations where corporations might be tempted to move to. Then, when negotiations start, there’s no getting around it – wages must increase! It will take time, and much effort, but it can be done if unions get spread abroad – STARTING WITH MEXICO!

These reforms won’t guarantee unions will survive. It may already be too late. But if unions know what’s good for them, they’ll work towards these goals as quickly as possible.

And here's another thought: If unions take root in China, and demand better wages from an indifferent socialist government, it is only a small step for them to decide they want to demand other rights as well. Unions could bring democracy to China!

Sounds like a good idea to me!

Eric

Great, More Gridlock.

2011-04-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

Our democratic electoral system works fairly well, IF there's a clear margin of victory. Unfortunately, sometimes the elections are close. Then, all the little mistakes that inevitably happen get pushed to the forefront, and people have something to argue about.

Joanne Kloppenburg seems to now have lost. In the past, close races like this have resulted in the initial seeming winner to loudly maintain victory anyway, tell the other candidate to have class and bow out gracefully, and stop fighting the political process. Also, when voter corrections seem to consistently favor only one candidate, someone tends to scream foul, citing how suspicious it seems that all the "corrections" seem to be going one way.

We saw this pattern with Al Franken in Minnesota recently in 2008. Over and over again, Al was told to step down. He didn't. When his opponent claimed victory, he didn't give up. When the final votes showed that Franken won, Republicans whined that he'd stolen the election. We saw something similar in 1974 when, after several recounts, Republican Louis Wyman beat Democrat John Durkin for the U.S. House of Representatives. Congress called for a re-election, which Durkin won. In the Washington Gubernatorial election of 2004, Republican Dino Rossi appeared to defeat Democrat Christine Gregoire. A recount confirmed Dino Rossi had won. But a second recount declared Christine Gregoire the winner.

My take on all this is simple. I choose to lead by example. Instead of whining how Prosser "stole" the election, or some other nonsense like that, I will champion the democratic process, imperfect though it may be. If I hear any bitching or complaining from the Democratic party about it, I'll voice my opinion against it, and stand for what's right, even though it's contrary to my own personal wishes. I do this, because that's what Republicans should have done with Franken in 2008, with Gregoire in 2004 and with Al Gore in 2000. That's what both sides should always do whenever a race is close.

Still, you never can tell with these recounts.

Meanwhile, the budget battle on Capital Hill continues. My take on that is simple:

Planned Parenthood is worth shutting down the government to protect. Period.

And the health care reform funding is non-negotiable.

By the way, Obama's going to win re-election. How do I know?

Let me put it this way: Donald Trump? Seriously, Donald Trump?!

That's all for now.

Eric

A Perfect Political Storm

2011-04-06T20:56:00.000-07:00

A caller-in to the Charlie Sykes show earlier this morning got me to realize something. "This is an utter debacle!" He complained. "Scott Walker needs to re-think his strategy. If he'd just waited a couple of months, he'd have Prosser, and everything else he wanted."

And you know what? He's right! Walker's headstrong, ready-fire-aim approach has resulted in him getting shot in the foot.

Yes, if he'd waited a couple of months, Prosser likely would have won in a landslide. Instead, he's in a virtual tie, and possible loss, to a woman who, in spite of a lifetime of legal experience, has never been a judge before. But it goes even deeper than that.

Political bystander apathy resulted in the stage being set for this nonsense in the first place. In spite of a general left-of-center overall leaning in Wisconsin, liberals stayed home last November, allowing the 30% of pissed off Republicans who voted to take power. (I suppose I wouldn't mind that so much except that now, Republicans are audaciously claiming that "The people have spoken," as if they'd had some sort of majority back then.) The apathy continued during the judicial primary. Kloppenburg won the nomination to be one of the two finalists mostly because everyone assumed that Prosser would be a shoo-in, and Kloppenburg would be a sacrificial lamb. In a normal election cycle, that's the way it would have happened. Kloppenburg had plenty of courtroom experience, but kept getting turned down for judicial appointments. Doyle and Obama both turned her down multiple times. Most people assumed that meant there was something wrong with her, even though they couldn't tell what that might be. In actuality, politicians like appointing judges to high judicial seats if they've already won election to a more minor judicial seat. Why? Because that gives them some measure of assurance that such an appointment will be able to retain that position when running for re-election. Kloppenburg, who'd never run for any damned thing, was less than ideal only in that regard. Her inexperience in running a campaign meant an almost sure-fire victory for Prosser. But, she spent the most money out of any non right-wing candidate, and so she made runner-up. Then, Scott Walker happened.

To a budget that clearly needed a scalpel, Walker revved up a chainsaw. Everyone went up in arms. In the first month of his administration, he had Wisconsin, of all places, in a full-fledged revolt. Kloppenburg, who was by no means the first choice of those on the left, ended up running a ham-handed campaign which talked very good stuff about ending partisan divisions while allowing partisan interest groups to attack Prosser on her behalf without objection. Normally, that would blow up in her face, but people are so pissed at Walker, and so convinced that Prosser would be in his back pocket, that they voted for Kloppenburg anyway. This was also in partial reaction to another justice who shouldn't have won, Michael Gabelman, who won, some say, thanks to dirty campaign advertising against Louis Butler. Gabelman probably wasn't the ideal conservative first choice, either, but to defeat the man they'd nicknamed "Loophole Louie," he got the nod. Regardless, Gabelman showed that ethics don't matter in politics - only victory. Now, in addition to Gabelman, we will have Kloppenburg (assuming she edges out in her virtual tie-vote), making for two justices who are not the ideal choice on a panel of merely seven.

That's an overall lose-lose. And we largely have Walker's incompetence to blame for it.

Then there's the event I'm still puzzling about: Walker separated out the budgetary elements of the bill that would strip public sector unions of their bargaining rights, but only made this obvious move long after a virtual political civil war tore the state apart. Fucking WHY? Why did he wait for weeks on end to do this? Why did he seemingly throw the state into chaos, and then settle the contended issue as though he'd forgotten he'd left the solution to the deadlock in his other pocket that whole time?

Were I a conservative, I would fiercely want Walker recalled, not because I would disagree with his positions, but because of his sheer incompetence. He fails to plan, at all, makes up a tactically stupid plan on the fly, then sticks to that poor design plan, and shows "strong leadership" by not deviating from it. He's the type of guy who swats flies with a brick. He's the type of guy who listens to good advice, then ignores it. He's a hammer, and sees all the world's problems as nails for him to pound down. He's George W., without the stammering, all the steadfastness, and none of the brains. He's exactly the type of leader that liberals love because they can win by comparing their conservative opponents to him. Already, politicians are winning all over the state on the campaign slogan of, "I'm not Walker, vote for me!" And it's working.

In short, Walker is the Perfect Political Storm. P.P.S. for short. So, we can refer to Scotty, in future, as 'Governor Scott Walker, P.P.S.'

Yet another nickname for 'Little Boy Blue,' a.k.a. our beloved 'Slash & Burn Scooter.'

Eric

Tuesday's Elections

2011-04-03T23:25:00.000-07:00

Interesting how pumped people are about an election cycle that normally only gets noticed by those that have enough free time to be aware of it - namely, the retirement community. It seems that this time, an election day that would consider itself lucky to have 15% of the electorate come out and vote could have as much as 75% of the electorate vote, with each voter, regardless of party affiliation, mad as a white hornet.

There's a vote for the Wisconsin supreme court coming up. Kloppenburg v. Prosser. Now, I don't know what's scarier: The fact that justices are selected by the common ignorant lemmings who make up the electorate, or the fact that the alternative would be for those justices to be selected by the partisan nation-dividers we laughably call politicians. Personally I'm not inclined to allow politics to decide supreme court positions. I want five moderates on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. I want nine moderates on the United States Supreme Court. I want all moderates in every Supreme Court and every other court, for that matter. And I want nothing but a pool of moderates to choose from in every justice's selection process, whether it's as insane as letting everyday people pick a judge, or as slovenly as permitting a three-ring circus of legislators to vet a judicial selectee.

That being the case, I like Kloppenburg's campaign calling for a moderate voice in the court system and ending political partisanship. Whether she really believes it or not, it's about damned time somebody said it! The fact that her opponent, Prosser, is not echoing those same words is proof enough that he oughtn't to be taken seriously as a candidate. Instead, he attacks her on her experience, as if her lack of experience somehow trumps his negatives in that regard.

Remember back when Walker was elected? No, of course not. According to the numbers, you probably didn't even vote. And not long after that, back on February 8, there was another election you didn't vote in, which selected Kloppenburg and Prosser as the two finalists. Essentially, they all won because they got the approval of partisan morons - the only ones who seem to care. Then, by the end of February into March, Scott Walker happened, and everybody suddenly cared about the elections they should have voted in. Maybe if more people had gotten off their asses to vote, we'd be talking about Governor Barrett. We might also have two supreme court candidates who 1.) have more judicial experience and 2.) aren't so damned politically polarized.

You snooze you loose. You snooze on election day, we all loose.

We have two candidates for Milwaukee County Executive. Either one, graciously, is bound to be better than Scott Walker was. (And remember, Walker won primarily because people at the time were pissed off over excessive retirement benefits doled out by Tom Ament. Funny how the pendulum can swing the other way on the same issue, isn't it?)

On the one hand, we have a candidate whose nose is clean, but whose politics are dirty. And partisan. Technically, the County Exec is supposed to be a non-partisan position, but Jeff Stone is a Tea Party candidate, and everybody knows it. His political attack ads are more charged than a Japanese nuclear meltdown. On the other hand, we have another candidate whose politics are clean, but whose nose is practically covered in carbon-black. Chris Abele's dirty laundry has been aired out so thoroughly that I half expect Willie Mayes to come back from the dead and do an Oxy-Clean commercial using it.

I'm very close to advocating a complete ban on all political ads on television or radio, in spite of the free speech consequences.

I once voted for an ultra-conservative named Scott Walker for County Exec years ago, on the grounds that a county-level government position simply isn't one where conservative extremism can have an opportunity to manifest itself. While that's essentially true, it seems that a county position can be an adequate staging ground for enacting extremist positions later on. As such, I'm not inclined to think of county government as too small for a partisan candidate to matter anymore. I'm not making that mistake again. Regardless, I'm more willing to vote for the happy philanthropist over the grim sourpuss, even if the politics were reversed.

Besides, Abele once threw a firecracker at Attorney Michael Hupy. If having the balls to throw explosives at lawyers isn't worth my vote, what the hell is? Maybe next time he'll light a firecracker under some high-priced lawyer's ass.

So, here's hoping that the Tea-Partiers go home losers tomorrow. We could all use a break.

Eric

School Choice, Drug Testing, and Santorum

2011-03-29T20:58:00.000-07:00

Well, there's a lot going on, so this blog post presents a trifecta of insight:

First and foremost, school choice. I've been in favor of competition in schools, and have openly stated on more than one occasion how I am in favor of school choice vouchers, provided the religious institutions are kept out. The reason is basic, and fair: tax dollars should not be spent on indoctrination of a child into a particular religion on the pretext of basic education. Especially on the pretext of basic education!

But now, the numbers are in. After all its haughty promises, the school choice program has produced even lower test scores than MPS!

That's like a recently signed free-agent NFL quarterback actually under-performing Ryan Leaf!

Perhaps the private schools were under-prepared, and their teachers too little paid, to deal with the sudden influx of inner city students needing to play catch-up with the private school kids, and so the voucher students were simply ignored in favor of those parents who were paying out of pocket. This explanation makes the most economic sense. It's a little bit like low-rent housing having buildings that are treated worse than high-rent housing. You pay attention to that which you actually pay for. Conversely, you care more about those who actually pay. Or, perhaps after the vouchers were given, the parents chose the school, and then figured their job was done, problem solved, and went back to their old habits of apathy. Or, perhaps because the suburban schools were not a part of the program, the only private schools willing to take voucher students were institutions such as Messmer High, which frankly sucks.

A combination of all these factors is likely to blame, and maybe a few others. But whatever the reasons, one thing is clear: School choice is a failed experiment. It's been tried here, Boston, and D.C., and it has never worked. Pushing the poverty-stricken student into a private school where an under-paid administration hasn't the experience, skills, or willingness to help simply isn't the solution.

So why violate the separation between church and state for this failure?

You'll find that many politicians will remain firmly committed to school choice anyway, because more tax dollars spent on indoctrinating kids into Catholicism or Lutheranism translates to more votes for their variety of politician tomorrow. It's an investment in tomorrow's political economy.

Which brings me to my second rant: Rick Santorum.

In a recent trip to New Hampshire (Oh please run for president you fool! Please, please!) the former Senator from Pennsylvania stated that much of our Social Security woes can be blamed on abortion. The problem, he says, is that there aren't enough people being added to the population to sustain the retiring old people, and this has made the system unsustainable. We need less abortion, and more people, to save Social Security.

Of course! It's abortion's fault! What better to take the focus off of government overspending on entitlements and the military?

I shouldn't even need to deal with the logical fallacy of designing a system to be dependent upon worsening the looming population crisis. And if we really need more people to save Social Security, we can do that tomorrow by providing a fast-track for Mezzo-American immigrants and undocumented workers to become U.S. citizens. Of course, Santorum won't hear of that, so he blames responsible contraception.

Here's the economic reality: More teenage pregnancies means more mothers and kids living below the poverty line, which means less tax revenue for Social Security. On the other hand, fewer children, born later in life, means their parents are more economically secure, and can pay MORE money into the Social Security kitty!

An investment in proper birth control is an investment in the economy and Social Security of tomorrow, every bit as much as investing in childhood religious indoctrination is an investment in the Republican party of tomorrow!

It's pretty simple economics, really. Santorum's logic might work if every kid, unwed mother or not, were guaranteed an equal, and equitable, income as an adult. But, of course, that sadly isn't the case. Incomes are unequal, and an unplanned pregnancy is a virtual guarantee of permanent exile to the lowest rung. Unless Santorum wants to tax the poor, that's no solution to Social Security.

But some politicians actually do want to tax the poor! It comes in the form of drug testing.

What some supposedly small-government politicians want to do is drug test all welfare recipients. Never mind the fundamental right to be able to put anything one wishes into one's body, or the failed prohibition of cannabis which is every bit as idiotic as the one-time prohibition against alcohol. These geniuses would withhold welfare recipients any payments if they test positive for drug use.

In Florida, state employees are already undergoing mandatory drug testing.

Now, the 4th amendment strictly prevents unreasonable searches and seizures, and blanket drug-testing would certainly qualify. We're supposed to have probable cause before a drug test is done, which is why nearly all companies only require drug testing at time of hire, or if an accident on the job has occurred. (They know random tests can be legally challenged.) But somehow, enough legal wiggle-room has been found to test people and violate their rights anyway.

George Orwell would be proud.

All that would be enough to oppose this shit even if drug testing worked, which it doesn't! Case in point: Let's say a drug test were 95% accurate. Out of a population of 10,000 employees, let's say that 5% of them actually do drugs, that is, 500 people do drugs, and 9,500 do not.

Of the 9500 who do not do drugs, a 95% accurate test will test 9250 as non-using, but 475 will test as users (5% of 9500), even though they're clean. Of those who do do drugs, 475 will test as users, and 25 will test as non-users and get away with it.

Final score:

True negatives: 9250

False negatives: 25

True positives: 475

False positives: 475

Of those who test positive, 475 are really doing drugs and 475 aren't really doing drugs. That means the chances of a positive-test result being actually guilty are no better than 50-50!

A critic might say, "Well, just use a more accurate test." But if the test results are raised to, let's say, 98% accuracy, the results fare little better.

New final score:

True negatives: 9310

False negatives: 10

True positives: 490

False positives: 190

The above results indicate that almost 39%, or two in five, would be innocent, but presumed guilty. I don't like those numbers!

And what if, because employees fear the drug test, none of them uses drugs? That means that, no matter how accurate the test, 100% of all false positives are innocent!

A critic might say, "Well, just do the test again. 5% of 5% is only .25%, and that's way more accurate."

Wrong. The false positives come about because someone's body chemistry is different, regularly eats poppy seed rolls in sandwiches, or had an over the counter medication in their fatty tissues, or something similar. In other words, the false positive comes by biochemistry, not statistical variance. The repeated test would likely have the same results, would still be wrong, and the innocent would still be punished.

So why, oh why, do politicians still insist on drug tests when they're no better than lie detectors?

One can only assume they came out of the school voucher program.

Eric

Pan-Arab Revolt

2011-03-28T23:16:00.000-07:00

Tunisia, you've started one hell of a domino effect!

First you, then Egypt, then Yemen, Libya, and now, we hear, Syria is experiencing pro-democracy riots.

Now we're helping to make sure that this pan-Arab revolt for democracy doesn't reverse itself in the form of mass-genocidal repercussions by Ghaddafi, which would almost certainly ensue if were he to beat back the revolution in Libya.

It's a damn good move.

Seriously, for those bitching about Obama going ahead and committing to air strikes in Libya, can you guys truly say that any, and I mean ANY Republican president wouldn't have done EXACTLY the same, damned thing?

Of course any Republican would have done this. It's straight out of the Reagan/Bush Sr. playbook.

But there are legitimate concerns about whether this is the right time to be spending billions on another war in another Arab country. I think those concerns are well-founded, but entirely misplaced.

Instead of being concerned about spending money on a conflict in Libya, why aren't we being concerned about spending less in Iraq and Afghanistan?

If we were offsetting our military spending in Libya by scaling back in our earlier, ridiculous conflicts, we wouldn't be having a debate about spending more money, would we? With the new unrest in Syria, they won't be worrying about attacking Iraq any time soon. In fact, the Sunnis may want revolt in Syria so that they can take Western Iraq and make it part of the new Syrian democratic system. After all, they might as well, since the new Iraqi government is underrepresented by Sunnis. (Remember, the Sunnis were forced to boycott the 2005 elections because Bush fucked up the P.R.) And haven't we wasted enough time and money pretending Bin Laden isn't dead? I was in favor of Afghanistan before, but it's time to get the fuck out of there now, I say.

Besides, we seem to have a new policy of letting the Arabs fight for their own democracies. We already know that the second we're gone from Iraq, the Kurds will try to establish their own government. Why not let them?

Here's what I say: Instead of fighting over whether we should spend more on Libya, let's debate on spending less in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sure makes more sense to me.

Eric

Budget-Balancing Compromises

2011-03-25T06:11:00.001-07:00

The argument is being made, not unfairly, that since the United States has essentially run out of money, and so certain programs need to be cut. Unsurprisingly, Republicans instantly put PBS and Planned Parenthood on the chopping block. Faced with the consequences of cutting these, the counter-argument is, "Yeah, but we're just plain out of money!"

Well, okay, how about we meet you Republicans half-way on things?

You're gonna cut Planned Parenthood? Okay, but you have to cut funding to all your religiously motivated abstinence-only programs and efforts designed to "counsel" women into not getting their proper birth control. Yeah, I know, you want to tell women what they can do with their own reproductive organs, but as you already pointed out, we don't have the money anymore.

You want to cut PBS? NPR? Okay, fine, but you have to stop funding the F.C.C. The Federal Communications Commission is a dinosaur anyway, daring to censor the media that uses towers and antennas while leaving all other media uncensored. No censorship on cable TV, no censorship of the internet, no censorship of satellite radio. So what's the point of funding the puritans of 1950's media? I know, I know, you want to keep on restraining American free speech, but we just don't have the money, right?

You want to cut environmental programs? Okay, fine, but you have to stop subsidizing Big Oil. I know, you're worried about poor little Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell getting by on slightly smaller mountains of cash, but like you said, we just don't have the fucking money.

You want to cut medical benefits to the poor? Okay, but you're going to have to stop spending money to oppose medical marijuana. While you're at it, de-fund the entire so-called drug war, too.

You want to stop funding clean water? Well, then stop funding Blackwater.

You want to stop funding welfare programs? Well, you'll have to stop giving money to faith-based initiatives.

And hell, since you're so willing to wage war upon the American poor, for Christ's sake stop spending so much money waging wars in other nations! It's bad enough our government attacks its own people, much less people abroad!

Hell, with compromises like these, we might just balance the budget yet!

Eric

Why I Support Chris Abele

2011-03-24T00:11:00.001-07:00

My support for Chris Abele for County Executive is based upon the nature of the attacks directed against him. The Jeff Stone camp is big on playing up some of Abele's past indiscretions, but those indiscretions are really not all that bad. Abele's closet skeletons are little more than a discarded chicken-bone.

Abele pays no taxes because he donates so much money to the poor it offsets the taxes that would be placed upon his trust-fund-baby income. He has apparently once been a reckless youth, however. In addition to throwing his wealth at the poor, he also had the occasional night drinking, and once did so before driving recklessly in his sportscar. He's completely ignored putting a quarter into parking meters because, to him, 25 cents is little worse than 25 bucks for a ticket. But he's always paid the fines. And now, he's apparently once had a lien upon him from the IRS when they weren't too sure he truly didn't owe any taxes to them. This, from today's edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which made that a headline story.

To all this, I say, that's it? That's the best ya got?

We've all had our mistakes. We've all had our indiscretions. I'm frankly surprised that Abele hasn't gotten into more trouble in his youth. Even I certainly would have gotten into more trouble if I'd had that kind of money when I was in my 20's. The fact that he's only had one drunk driving incident and a bevy of immediately-paid parking tickets is impressive. This is a guy who, as County Exec, would never be tempted by dirty money. He's already rolling in it.

And he certainly wouldn't be the first young, rich man who didn't get his shit together until later in life. His past doesn't rule out his present, nor erase the fact that he stands for everything I stand for, so far as I can tell.

Yes, Stone appears to be the candidate with a cleaner record and greater integrity. If only he stood correctly on one, damned issue. Unfortunately, he doesn't, and that means I'd have to see Abele do something seriously lecherous before I'd consider holding my nose and voting for Jeff Stone this election cycle.

Frankly, I'm getting tired of the standard that a politician can't have done any little thing wrong. I was already sick of it back when Clinton's attorney general nominee got ruled out in 1993 because he'd paid his neighbor kid to mow his lawn without paying his FICA, and payroll tax. And the political candidate who's so clean he squeaks makes me worry. It makes me think this guy was the high school hall monitor who spent the last 20 years being a misanthrope before deciding he'd go into politics to finally make friends. Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh, but it's certainly easy to keep your nose clean when you're a hermit with his head in the sand, isn't it?

But buried in the headline that Abele was hit with an IRS lien, is an even more interesting story. Apparently, John Barrett, the brother of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and the clerk of circuit court, spotted Tim Russell (not the piano-playing politico formerly on PBS), digging through Abele's divorce file and other records at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. This guy, Russell, is a former staff member and campaign worker for Scott Walker. He has done volunteer work in Stone's campaign.

So he was digging for dirt on Abele, why? He says, it was out of personal curiosity.

Riiiiiight....

You know, those attacking Abele, nearly all of them one-time supporters of a cocaine-head of a former U.S. President from Texas, have done their best to find anything substantial, and all they've been able to find is that he's a recovering playboy. Well, good for him. He's got my vote.

By the way, did you notice that there's an all-important Wisconsin Supreme Court election coming up in less than two weeks? Yep! April 5. Prosser vs. Kloppenberg. Remember to vote!

Eric

Pro-Life? Well, Try ME!

2011-03-22T21:20:00.000-07:00

Oh, no, anything but another abortion debate!

Well, don't worry. There won't be a debate. Because the debate is over. Because it's a scientific fact that the brain, not conception, defines the being, and that means that the pro-life side, which married itself to conception as the place to draw the line, ended up hanging a millstone about its neck and throwing itself into the sea -- for causing so very many little ones, in this case teenage girls, to stumble.

The debate is over. The pro-life side lost, and I can prove it.

For my complete expose on the proof of the brain defining the line at which a fetus has rights, visit my free online book, which I'm working to release as a podio-book, and a free Kindle release:

http://www.carlsaganjr.com/Its_The_Brain_Stupid.htm

In the meantime, Republican legislators are publicly raping their own principle of less government by blocking the rights of those women who have been raped. In South Dakota, women now are required to undergo a 72-hour wait while going to a "pregnancy crisis center" first. This quack-infested "counseling" center is where those seeking abortion get subjected to as much pro-life indoctrination as possible before getting their medical care. It amounts to a government endorsed picket-line, where pro-lifers may harass women going to get an abortion all they want. That's certainly one way to get around being required to be 100 yards away from the entrance! It is yet another government-funded religious initiative, instituted at a time in which we are oh, so concerned about religion in the potential new government of Libya. Oh, the irony! This while the house votes to de-fund the drop in the ocean of government funding which is Planned Parenthood's meager support. That's right, fuck the cancer screenings. Fuck the education programs. Fuck the contraception to keep the abortions from being necessary in the first place. And then, fuck the women a second time after they've been raped. Oh, how stupid religious bias makes otherwise smart people!

Speaking of which, I defy any religious leader to show me ANY proof that God, that gratuitous slayer of post-born children in the Old Testament, of all people, actually disapproves of abortion. Go ahead!

God never said anything about abortion in the Bible, because abortion didn't exist then. It is only the tradition, invented by male clergy, that dictates that abortion is a sin. In short, when you were told that abortion was contrary to God's will, you were LIED to.

Were I God, I'd have a special place in hell for those who dared to put words in my mouth.

I have seen the future. The truth of the brain defining the start of a living being is simply not going to remain the elephant in the room everyone refuses to talk about. Sooner or later, people will wake up to the fact that early-term abortion is very, very, VERY ethical. And that means rape victims have a -- yes, I'll say it -- God-given right to their care, as do teenage girls looking desperately to avoid having their young lives ruined.

Republicans WILL loose massive numbers of elections if they do not remove anti-abortion from their political platform -- IMMEDIATELY.

And now I challenge you, my dear seven readers. Do you feel you can take me on? Are you passionately pro-life? Do you think you can defend your position? I challenge you! Go on! Debate with me! See if you silliness can hold up to science.

I triple-dog dare ya!

Eric

Attacking Gaddhafi.

2011-03-21T23:01:00.001-07:00

Well, it's official. We're launching surgical strikes against Libyan dictator Mommar Gaddhafi, with the full blessing of a U.N. security council resolution, and with the French on our side (for once). It's interesting how, in this time of an un-winnable military action in Afghanistan, Obama has initiated a very winnable one in Libya. We have a clear-cut definition of victory, namely, the insurgents win. We're spending small amounts of resources in conjunction with an international force to impose a no-fly zone. We're not putting boots on the ground. This isn't costing us a trillion. In short, we're doing this right. And it's in the finest Republican tradition of what the GOP expects from a President. At least, for once, the political right won't be able to criticize our Obama for...

What? They're criticizing him for it anyway? Oh, hell! What's the problem this time?

Well, they're saying how strange it is that the left, which opposed the invasion of Iraq so harshly, is now so much in favor of this action. This amounts to a way of disapproving with Obama without overtly opposing that which they know every Republican president would certainly do in his place.

Interesting. Okay, I, for one, am a slightly left-of-center person who did not oppose the war in Iraq. Hussein was a bad man with a long list of prior offenses. And I don't take silly positions such as it being wrong to oppose the removal of a brutal dictator. But there are some important differences in this case. For one, Bush used an expired UN resolution to invade Iraq, claiming it still held. Even those on the right agreed that was rather shirt-tail, but the UN held its tongue, because it was starting to feel rather toothless at the time. Second, we put our own troops on the ground without a clear plan for winning the peace. We're not screwing up THAT way again, are we? Third, we have an actual coalition of allies instead of us, and Great Britain making up the other 25% our forces didn't.

What really scares republicans is Obama getting his military stripes. If Gaddhafi falls, and I think he will, then Obama becomes unassailable as a liberal peacenik who would misuse our military. That makes him a 2012 shoo-in, and there goes the right-wing Supreme Court: which, of course, is the primary goal of this entire Rupert-Murdoch-fed and Christian-extremist fueled media machine.

It all boils down to Roe v. Wade on whether or not Obama's dealing with Libya is a good idea. Fuckin' A.

Hey, I'll give the Right credit. They're asking what kinds of people these insurgents are. They're wondering what kind of government Libya will have afterward. In short, they're asking all the questions they were too busy kissing Bush's ass to ask back at the onset of the Iraq invasion. And, once again, we must welcome back the Republican pennitant sinner with open arms, while asking where the fuck their common sense has been all this time.

We don't know what kind of government Libya will get. But at least our boys aren't in harm's way when the dust settles. And a democracy isn't even possible unless the dictator first falls, so whether the dictator should fall becomes moot. Libya may end up worse, but it deserves a fair shot.

Strike while the iron is hot.

Eric

Crisis In Japan

2011-03-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

Few words can capture the tragedy in Japan. The loss of life, the devastation of swaths of countryside... A great nation, once our enemy and now our dear friend, has taken a blow to the jaw from the hammer of Vulcan. It's in times like these that we're reminded why nature is referred to as a 'mother.'

But in the wake of the tragic tsunami, a handfull of idiots are actually surfing it. Not the least of these is Glenn Beck, who, learning nothing from Pat Robertson's hideous gaff over Hurricane Katrina years earlier, has declared this a possible message sent by God that maybe we ought to do things differently. The implication behind this is that the Shinto religion, practiced by the majority of Japanese people, is inadequate for them.

Fuck you too, Glenn.

Okay, there's Mommar Gadhafi, Charlie Sheen, and Glenn Beck. They're all mentally too far gone to sustain their careers. 'Nuff said. Unfortunately, it will be some time after Gadhafi's inevitable fall that Beck will finally topple. His followers will drink his Kool-Aid to its bitter dregs.

But I will say this: TEPCO, the company screwing up the relief efforts of the nuclear disasters in the wake of this devastation, is the new BP. Over and over now, they've said that the fires have been under control, only to have another explosion follow. It's track record was poor even before this point, and now it's even worse. Three Mile Island has been buried in this event's wake. Soon, it will overtake Cernobyl. And it's perfectly clear that the lies told by the corporate leaders of this company are partly responsible -- one does not deal with a crisis by being in denial about it, and trying to pass that myopia on to a public that's dying of radiation poisoning is just plain evil.

This does bring up a crisis about energy that I wish to say something about. It's not quite like the BP oil spill, where the same people who only two years earlier were crying, "Drill, baby, drill!" at McCain rallies turned around and tried blaming Obama for irresponsible deep-water drilling practices. But there are similarities. The BP spill made us look at our energy needs and ask if what we're doing to meet them is really the right course of action. Is it responsible to drill for oil so deep out in the ocean if we can turn to solar, wind, coal, natural gas, and nuclear fuel as alternatives?

Now the debate includes nuclear power.

I've been in favor of nuclear power in the past. I still remain so now. I'm not going to go so far as to say that this tragedy should cause us to abandon nuclear power plants altogether, but I think it's fair to say that we should now avoid putting nuclear plants near coastal areas prone to tsunamis, or near earthquake zones. We should also put in new safeguards in place, learning from what's happened in Japan, and avoid the same conditions.

But let's not go back to excessive or unsafe drilling for oil, or increase our dependency upon the oil of angry Arab despots who are finally beginning to fall from power, just because we've had another nuclear disaster in our lifetime. Let's not fail to lock up fissionable materials behind the heavily-bolted doors of power plants, thus keeping such weapons-grade material away from terrorists, just because one Japanese company has mishandled one disaster. The number of massive oil spills far outstrips the number of nuclear disasters, and the human cost of a nuclear meltdown pales in comparison to the loss of all human freedom if terrorists and extremists continue to get funded with Saudi oil money.

Go solar, go wind, go nuclear. And go, Japan! Let's everybody chip in to help our friends out over there!

Eric

Laughing at Andrew Klavan.

2011-03-15T05:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a funny video that an old friend of mine posted to Facebook. It features a journalist named Andrew Klavan, who attempts to discredit public sector unions. See how many fallacies you can spot! I found oodles of them!

Let me begin with the most obvious mistake this guy made. He says unions form, getting more money until their employer goes broke, and then has to go out of business, getting an "important lesson in being nice while the now unemployed workers enjoy a hearty laugh at his discomfiture."

Bullshit. If the union drives the business to close, the unemployed workers will be the ones discomfited because they are now unable to make a living, and the now ex-employer will be just fine, secure in the interest he can still live off of. Believe me, the workers wouldn't be laughing at jack shit!

While it's true that unions have occasionally driven companies out of business (Allis Chalmers and the Schlitz Brewery are two examples that come to mind), a union is best served by playing it smart and not doing that. It's a foolish boy who kills his golden goose. Unions are only as good as the union's leadership, and if workers allow their union leaders to get away with the same sort of shenanagins we let other politicians get away with, then the union might well do something stupid enough to induce an employer to close. The price of democracy is constant vigil. The price of being a union member - doubly so.

But if a union does destroy a company, it must be remembered why certain union leaders developed the kind of "take no prisoners" attitude that causes them to sometimes be unreasonable, and still occasionally persists to this day. It happened when unions were just beginning to form, and corporate giants responded with extreme violence, having picketers beaten, jailed, union leaders shot and killed, turning the police on protesters, and a host of other evils. True, this happens seldom today, but many of today's union leaders are still the sons of the men who were beaten with nightsticks only a few short decades ago. The rich employer didn't grant unions their rights by "being nice." The union got its rights through blood, broken teeth, and fractured bones. Let us never forget that.

I love the cherry-picked footage of the protesters in Madison, which is honestly one of the nicest cities you'll ever visit. It's Berkley, California, but with snow. After nearly four weeks straight of non-stop protests in Madison, it's not surprising a few nuts turned up. I'm surprised that more footage wasn't found instead of the 15 seconds worth shown in this video. I'm sure that this fellow would argue vehemently about how showing a picture of the tea-partier holding the sign that said "keep government out of my Medicare" is out of context and unrepresentative of the movement as a whole. Right back atcha regarding the union protesters, big guy!

He says unions are saying that "elected american officials, working to reform public sector unions, are akin to the tyrants in the middle east in the sense of... fara fubu faa."

Fara fubu faa?

Okay, that's not an argument. If you want to call the opposition a big baby, don't yourself talk like one!

Here's the sentence he meant to say: Budget-slashing governors are akin to tyrants in the middle east in the sense that both are angry despots. I've watched Walker for over a decade now, and never was there a politician more despotic than he.

And WHAT "reform" is he talking about? I'm in favor of collective bargaining reform, and reform of the union structure. But this isn't about reform. It's about union destruction. Scott Walker outright said so.

Kings and princes being likened to unions? Don't they wish!

Using that kind of image, this guy clearly seems to think that public workers are overpaid. It's been said before, and it bears repeating: When you compare similar education levels, public workers get paid significantly less than the private sector. Since a teacher or fireman could get paid more outside in the private sector, employee retention becomes a serious problem. When collective bargaining attempts to raise the wages up to what the free market says they ought to be, politicians typically say no, opting to try and short-change that which is in the public interest, especially for teachers, and firefighters. (Not so much police, because they know that an unhappy police officer is a very, very bad thing for everyone.) So, to make up for their myopia, and ensure that public employees actually want to apply for the lower-paying jobs, they are forced to sneak in perquisites or additional retirement benefits. These often work, and people want to get hired for lower pay - but not always. And slash-and-burn politicians often want to take even that away. Then we wonder why we're short on science and math teachers.

I love the part about public sector unions buying elections. He left out the part where the Citizens United ruling (a goddamned 5 to 4 decision, by the way!) allows big corporations to dump millions into elections. The only Davids left to fight these Goliaths, are those few unions which are left.

This guy thinks that's unfair? Unbalanced? Then we'll let him have our union dues if he'll take away Citizens United, how's that?

I'll bet he wouldn't bite.

He says that the bought elections ensure that the unions will take more of your money until you "have no more money left." Seriously, folks, as soon as you hear something like that, you know you're listening to a hyper-extremist hack. Of course they're not going to take ALL your money! Not even Charlie Sheen would exaggerate that much!

This is yet another thing that got posted to Charlie Sykes' blog website. Oh, Charlie! How I miss the old days when you were more rational! What's happened to you, poor soul!

I guess the same thing that's happened to much of the nation: The disease of polarization has infected his brain.

Get well soon, Charlie Sykes. We miss the old you.

Eric

Gov. Walker and Charlie Sykes on Public Unions

2011-03-13T20:09:00.000-07:00

Last week Monday, Governor Walker's office released what it felt were some of the biggest grievances to be laid against the public sector unions and their collective bargaining agreements. The following day, Charlie Sykes read them aloud on his radio program, and his songbirds called in to reaffirm his position. I wanted to go back, listen to his podcast, write out the list he read and then go over it item by item, but fortunately, the overconfident fool saved me the trouble, and listed them on his blog. So, for the benefit of all, let me detail what Walker, and by extension, Charlie, feel are the problems with public sector unions. As I list them, one by one, I'll shoot them down! Observe:

1. No volunteer crossing guards.

A Wausau public employee union filed a grievance to prohibit a local volunteer from serving as a school crossing guard. The 86-year-old lives just two blocks away and serves everyday free of charge.

Principal Steve Miller says, "He said, you know, this gives me a reason to get up in the morning to come and help these kids in the neighborhood."

But for a local union that represents crossing guards, it isn't that simple. Representatives didn't want to go on camera but say if a crossing guard is needed, then one should be officially hired by the city.

Source: WAOW-TV, 1/27/10

Sounds horrible, right? What sort of waste of taxpayer money is it to turn down a free crossing guard? And what sort of union would block saving taxpayer money?

Time out. Just who would this volunteer crossing guard be accountable to? No one, because he's volunteering. Who would be this crossing guard's supervisor? Nobody, he's a volunteer. If he screws up and gets a kid killed, can the family sue the city? No, because he's a fucking volunteer!

In short, the money the union demanded doubled as accountability protection and assurance for the city. AND, it kept the city from being dumb enough to dump a hard-working employee for nothing. That's money well spent!

Just imagine how you'd feel if some washed-up retiree offered to do your job for free, and you got the ax. Would you think that was fair?

Here's another:

$6,000 extra for carrying a pager.

Some state employees, due to the nature of their positions, are required to carry pagers during off-duty hours in order to respond to emergency situations. Due to the collective bargaining agreements, these employees are compensated an extra five hours of pay each week, whether they are paged or not.

For an employee earning an average salary of $50,000 per year, this requirement can cost more than $6,000 in additional compensation.

Source: 2008-09 Agreement between the State of Wisconsin and AFSCME Council 24

Okay, here's the reality of an emergency-responder. If you are required to carry a pager and be called in to work, you need to prioritize that possibility. Can you go out drinking? No. Can you babysit for your sister? No, because you might have to leave on a moment's notice. Can you do anything without planning for the possibility that you might have to drop it and run? NO! That's why that extra $6,000 is EARNED, EARNED, EARNED!

And some Republican hacks want to take this hard-worker and tell them that they shouldn't get paid for their work, and that their vigilance should not be funded. If you were the nurse, doctor, or EMT who was being told this, wouldn't you feel like there was little point to carrying that pager? Wouldn't you want that politician to spend a week doing your job before he claimed he knew what he was doing when he cut your pay?

How about this, isn't cutting this earned benefit no different than a TAX INCREASE?! Indeed! It's the same thing!

So much for fiscal responsibility! (You call these Republicans?)

Here's another:

Arbitrator reinstates porn-watching teacher.

A Cedarburg school teacher was reinstated by an arbitrator after being fired for viewing pornography on a school computer. The school district ultimately succeeded in terminating the teacher only after taking the case to the Wisconsin Supreme Court at great cost to the taxpayers.

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/23/08

And who was the arbitrator? The newspaper accounts do not say. But it was someone other than the school board and the teachers' union, or else the arbitrator would have had a conflict of interest. Hence, the ruling cost taxpayer money, not because of the union, or the collective bargaining agreement, but because the school board really, really wanted this guy's head, and was willing to pay YOUR tax dollars to get it.

Many conservatives would call this money well spent. I, for one, think it was stupid for this guy to be looking at porn on a school computer, but I also think that condemnation of porn is overblown. The evil of porn lies not in the fact that we see it, or even that we men jerk off to it. The evil lies in the fact that we ostracize it, leaving the women who star in it to be exploited by thugs. Our puritanism results in the suffering of the women we idolize. I call Bullshit!

I'm not afraid to say it: The arbitrator was right! Every boy in that school will find where his daddy's hiding his Playboy and Hustler magazines at some point, and will show them to his buddies on some hot, summer night in a backyard tent, or some other hidden venue. In short, this teacher did not expose kids to anything they wouldn't have found on their own anyway. It's a rite of passage for teenagers. This teacher was an idiot, but did not commit an offense that warranted being fired.

But oh, yeah, Walker is a puritan. That's probably why he doesn't see clearly on this one.

Here's another:

Milwaukee Public Schools teacher Megan Sampson was laid off less than one week after being named Outstanding First Year Teacher by the Wisconsin Council of English Teachers. She lost her job because the collective bargaining agreement requires layoffs to be made based on seniority rather than merit.

Informed that her union had rejected a lower-cost health care plan, that still would have required zero contribution from teachers, Sampson said, “Given the opportunity, of course I would switch to a different plan to save my job, or the jobs of 10 other teachers.

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 6/14/10

Fair's fair: An outstanding teacher should not be let go for less competent senior personnel. That's why collective bargaining needed to be reformed on this point. But one does not throw the baby out with the bathwater!

The whole story is this: 1. Megan Sampson was an English teacher. The fact that she was good made little difference that she was in a relatively low-demand position. Were she math or science, she would never have been let go.

And 2. Megan Sampson was immediately recalled from being let go the instant additional funds were made available for MPS. She refused to come back, and instead started teaching at Tosa East, where she remains to this day. Okay, she rightly felt slighted, but her job was not, technically, lost. The crisis happened over the summer of 2008, and if she'd wanted it, she'd be the one with seniority today.

Here's another:

Union Opposes Cost-Saving Lawn Mowing Program

As a cost cutting measure, Racine County began using county inmates to cut the grass in medians and right-of-ways at no cost to the taxpayers. A county employee union filed a grievance indicating it was the right of government workers to cut the grass, even though it would cost the taxpayers dramatically more.

Source: Racine Journal Times, 5/12/10

Okay, am I the only one uncomfortable with the idea of putting prison inmates in close proximity to gasoline and whirring-bladed fucking machines?! I'D sure pay more to keep inmates clear of those things! Low-risk inmates or not, I gotta say that if we want to save ourselves some money with inmates, it should begin with not jailing marijuana dealers and saving all that wasted cash! In the meantime, I don't mind the idea of chain-gangs cleaning up our parks. Hell, I'm all in favor of it! But unhooking that chain, then putting the inmate on a lawn tractor in the middle of a median divide, where the inmate is only one sterring-wheel-swerve away from car-jacking his way to freedom, well, all I can say is... BULLSHIT!

Again, I have to ask how you'd feel if your private employer colluded with the local prison (which is also likely a private enterprise, these days), to have your job replaced with some criminal who will work for free. Would you feel that's just a bit fucked up?

If you're gonna tell some poor guy he's out of a job, you'd better have a better reason for it than giving a prisoner the means of escape.

(Notice we didn't even need to get to the subject of unions on that one?)

Want another? Here you go:

A Year's Worth Of Pay For 30 Days Work.

Under the Green Bay School District’s collectively bargained Emeritus Program, teachers can retire and receive a year’s worth of salary for working only 30 days over a three year period. This is paid in addition to their already guaranteed pension and health care payouts.

Source: WLUK-TV, 3/3/11

Here's the real-world, free-market reality about teachers. They're NOT overpaid! For teachers, especially in science and math, who have masters degrees, their pay is considerably lower than those in the free market with similar education levels. Why? Because businesses are willing to pay a whole hell of a lot more for a mathematician or a science professional than schools are for such a person to teach kids. With English or History, private-college professorships pay considerably more for the same level of education. So how can a public school afford to make up the difference? To lure people into giving up that difference between free-market and public service, it is necessary to give a little extra perquisite to those who dedicate their lives to educating the poor. Without that extra incentive to reach retirement, one of two things are bound to happen: 1.) Teachers will leave to chase a bigger, fatter paycheck with a private company. Or 2.) People will not leave the private sector to become teachers in the first place -- the pay is simply too low for the kind of shit teachers have to deal with.

Cut the perquisites, the teachers leave, our kids go under-educated. That's the law of supply and demand, which, I can only assume, Republicans are supposed to give a damn about.

There's more:

The $150,000 Bus Driver.

In 2009, the City of Madison’s highest paid employee was a bus driver who earned $159,258, including $109,892 in overtime, guaranteed by a collective bargaining agreement. In total, seven City of Madison bus drivers made more than $100,000 per year in 2009.

"That's the (drivers') contract," said Transit and Parking Commission Chairman Gary Poulson.

Source: Wisconsin State Journal, 2/7/10

Let's do the math: $159,258 minus the $109,892 in overtime means this bus driver gets a little more than $50,000 per year. That's a fair wage for a CDL driver with experience. It's a little less than city bus drivers make. Over the road truckers make anywhere between $45,00o and $65,000 depending on experience and clean driving record. First year truck drivers are almost guaranteed to make $40,000 in their first year. But none of these have to deal with sniveling kids.

Okay, so why the extra cash for this guy? Overtime is time and a half, minimum, we know this. Let's be extra generous and speculate that union benefits negotiated double-pay for overtime. That's a pretty hefty sum for our hypothesis! But even with that, since this guy earned overtime totaling almost twice his actual wage, he had to have been working over 80 hours per week! Jesus Christ! As a school bus driver, that kind of non-stop working can mean only one thing:

Nobody is getting hired to drive school buses in Madison.

And why might that be? Could it be that nobody wants to drive buses in Madison for $50K per year? Indeed it does! The free market has spoken, and drivers with a CDL, who could earn $75K on the open road, and not have to put up with school brats and their shit, will do so. Nobody wants to drive a school bus when they could be making so much more. UNLESS, there is a union contract negotiating better overtime pay.

Again, politicians try to mess with the laws of supply and demand. You'd think these weren't Republicans!

This just goes on and on. Here's another one:

$150,000 Correctional Officers.

Correctional Officer collective bargaining agreements allow officers a practice known as “sick leave stacking.” Officers can call in sick for a shift, receiving 8 hours of sick pay, and then are allowed to work the very next shift, earning time-and-a-half for overtime. This results in the officer receiving 2.5 times his or her rate of pay, while still only working 8 hours.

In part because of these practices, 13 correctional officers made more than $100,000 in 2009, despite earning base wages of less than $60,000 per year. The officers received an average of $66,000 in overtime pay for an average annual salary of more than $123,000 with the highest paid receiving $151,181.

Source: Department of Corrections

I shouldn't have to keep harping on the legalization of cannabis requiring not only far fewer inmates, but far fewer guards to watch over them, but there you are.

Only thirteen officers? I'm surprised it's that low.

Pop quiz: What would it take to lure you into a career as a prison guard, potentially getting attacked by some of the most violent motherfuckers at any given moment? $60,000 per year? Nah, me neither. Talk $80,000 and maybe I'm interested. And that's me, who happens to be wallowing in student-level poverty, seriously contemplating selling blood for beer money at age 40. What must the free market demand?

Obviously, more than the public sector is willing to pay. Which makes for a problem if we want guards to staff our criminal training camp. Oops! I meant to say, prison.

But there's more besides. This benefit is in place in case a prison guard really does get sick, and then has to come in anyway- which does sometimes happen. This poor guard, sniffling, aching, surviving on TheraFlu while guarding people who want him dead, has EARNED that money! Now some numbskulled politician, sitting behind his safe, comfy desk, is going to tell him otherwise? Let me say what that prison guard would say: FUCK YOU!

Here's more:

Paid Time-Off For Union Activities:

In Milwaukee County alone, because the union collectively bargained for paid time off, fourteen employees receive salary and benefits for doing union business. Of the fourteen, three are on full-time release for union business. Milwaukee County spent over $170,000 in salary alone for these employees to only participate in union activities such as collective bargaining.

I find it interesting that this is the first item which doesn't have a citation. I'm also surprised it's only three people full-time. This would be teachers, police, firefighters, bus drivers, even zookeepers. Only three. Wow.

Here's how it works: The union says, "Look, we can negotiate for even more county workers to be able to pay three people full-time, which would be something on the order of a couple hundred workers, or you can pay our three people directly for us, and save money." Those who wanted to save the taxpayers money said, "Okay, it's a deal." Thus, this gentleman's agreement, which looks like a scam at the onset, actually saves the taxpayers hundreds of thousands. Now, if some fool of a slash-and-burn politician comes along and calls this an outrage, it threatens to upset the whole applecart, and cause 1.) a fight and 2.) a sharp increase in the number of union jobs, because you can bet your ass, these three aren't losing their jobs anytime soon!

Okay, again, let's do the math: $170,000 per year divided by fourteen is only a little over $12,000 each. Not chump change, but not overwhelming, either. It's a little more than what you'd get if you worked part-time at McDonald's on weekends. But three are full-time. The other eleven are part-time, and so get a lot less than that. Let's say each of those eleven get only 4,000. That leaves the three full-timers with about $40K per year. About the equivalent of an accounts receivable clerk. Not small, but certainly not huge.

All in all, it's rather a bargain.

There's a few more, but I'm skipping to the best one:

Viagra For Teachers.

The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association (MTEA) tried to use a policy established by collective bargaining to obtain health insurance coverage that specifically paid for Viagra. Cost to taxpayers is $786,000 a year.

Reference: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/milwaukee-schools-ban-viagra-teachers-union-sues-discrimination/story?id=11378595

Okay, time to do the math again.

According to Wikipedia, MPS has 6,100 full and part-time teachers in its employ. How many of them are male? Hard to say for certain. More male gym teachers and more female home economics teachers, I'll wager. But we'll split the difference evenly and call it 50/50. That makes for roughly 3,050 male teachers. If we divide $786K by 3,050, we get a cost per male teacher of about $258 per year.

Fuck, that's IT?

Okay, $786,000 sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But when we're talking about an operating medical benefits budget of something like $87 million (last I saw, that is, estimates vary), $786K just isn't very much by comparison. The lawsuit contended discrimination because the medical benefits still covered female sexual therapies, such as estrogen treatments, progesterone, or vaginal creams. It's a fair argument. However, the lawsuit, in light of recent events, has been dropped, so all this is moot, now.

Just an aside, would you want a sexually frustrated teacher instructing your kid? Me, neither!

Out of all Walker's points, endorsed, paraded, and championed by Charlie Sykes, not one of them really pans out or holds water. I'm surprised they're using these so flippantly -- as though there aren't citizens like me out there checking up on what they're saying.

These detriments overlook the primary benefit of a public employee union. Namely, that it keeps slash-and-burn politicians from making stupid mistakes that harm the public trust. Put it another way, you could save money by not changing your car's oil. That works, short term. But eventually, your engine breaks down.

Public unions make sure the oil gets changed.

Education is the key to our future. Sacrificing the children of tomorrow to pay the deficit of today ensures deficit spending in the next generation, and the generation after that. It's a stupid way to balance a budget!

I've argued all this, I'm not even paid by the union. Maybe I should be!

Eric

Well, The Budget Battle's Over

2011-03-09T18:49:00.000-08:00

There's a movie called "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," that I think was made during one of Hollywood's better moments. In it, Roger Rabbit ends up getting accidentally handcuffed to detective, Eddie Valiant, and ends up having to go through all sorts of disasters because neither of them can free himself. (There are no keys for the cuffs, you see.) Finally, Eddie finds a secluded spot where he can hacksaw the cuffs off from them both, but the surface that he's cutting on keeps wobbling. Roger removes his hand from the cuffs and steadies the workbench.

"Does this help?" he asks.

"Thanks!" Eddies says at first. Then, realizing what just happened, he glares at Roger, who guiltily places his hand back inside the cuff again. "Do you mean to tell me that you could have removed your hand from there at any time?!" he bellows.

"Not at any time," Roger jabs. "Only when it was funny!"

That's analogous to what's just happened in Madison, where Senate Republicans have just broken the deadlock by stripping the budget repair bill of anything having to do with a budget, and voting only on stripping the collective bargaining. Because this new version of the bill has no budgetary measures, it didn't need a quorum to vote, and so passed 18-1. (Yes, one Republican voted against it.) The Democrats who fled will return to Madison tomorrow.

"You mean you could have freed yourself at ANY time?!"

Not at any time. Only when it was... Funny? Sad? Pathetic?

No, none of those. What happened was that Walker offered a compromise on collective bargaining, only to have Democrats refuse it -- not because the Dems were being stubborn, but because they trusted Walker about as far as they could throw... No, wait, that's the wrong phrase. They could probably throw his skinny ass some considerable distance. Bottom line is that they wanted guarantees that Walker wouldn't double-cross. Walker couldn't give that, and so the deal, a good compromise, was rejected.

Remember that blog post, and the one before that, and the one before that, where I condemned how polarized partisanship clouds judgment? Hmmmm?

Anyway, that, and realizing that a few Republican Senators were getting disgusted enough to potentially break ranks, he and his colleagues finally started thinking outside the box.

Divide and conquer.

The solution was so simple, and so obvious, that I'm left wondering why nobody in the entire fucking State thought of doing this before. I didn't, but then, I'm not a legislator. Were I one, or a lawyer, or even just a Republican, I daresay this would have crossed my mind immediately. Why wasn't it done on day one? Why in hell was all this trench warfare even necessary? With the whole nation's cameras on them every day, nobody sent a clever e-mail or picketed with a sign suggesting this? Seriously?

Then I remembered, partisan polarized thinking makes one blind to alternatives. It prevents not only people seeing the other side, it obstructs clear thinking in every way - so much so that one can't even see solutions for one's own side.

Thus, sandwiched in with the good items that will come about, such as an end to the residency rule and merit-based pay for teachers rather than seniority, will come a slash-to-the-bone gutting of inner city school funds and hundred-thousand dollar giveaways to religious schools who will indoctrinate many of their kids against evolution.

So much for quality education.

Let's prepare for rebuilding mode, everybody. At least when we rebuild, the residency rule and merit-based pay will be in place for Milwaukee Teachers, so that's a plus. One benefit of a fire is that you get to rebuild the building with a better design.

That doesn't excuse arson!

So Walker, having just removed his head from his ass, will get in front of the TV cameras and declare victory, scarcely realizing that his head still reeks of his own colon. He'll say something grand and inspiring, but all I will hear is "Sorry guys, but I was too stupid to realize that I had this trump card here up my sleeve THE WHOLE FUCKING TIME!"

May I suggest you wipe the shit from your nose, Scotty? We'll see you in less than a year's time for your recall.

Eric

An Analysis of Walker's Budget Plan

2011-03-02T10:19:00.001-08:00

Well, I've had some time to go over what Walker is planning with his current budget proposals, and I've gotta say, on the whole, I don't like it.

Don't get me wrong. There's some good things in there. There's an end to the residency rule. Great! There's more open enrollment for charter schools and virtual charter schools. Good. Any four-year university can sponsor a charter school. That may spark some new schools on the back of the booming adult-extension-college industry. Outstanding!. There's increased aid to private schools and expansion of school choice into Milwaukee suburbs. Fine by me, though I fear Walker may try to use this to funnel public money to religious schools. How absolutely evil it would be of him to give away money for religious indoctrination after a budget crisis like this! And that's before we even get to the violation of the separation between church and state. No tax-exempt churches should benefit from tax-funded vouchers!

Seems like aid to schools comprises something like 35% of the state expenditures. This from the financial position papers which are available online. All other things the state spends money on are small-potatoes, and cutting them won't make much of a dent. So the bottom line is that schools are just going to have to get cut somewhere, I understand that. But what I fear is that, with an expanded school choice system, whole swaths of inner-city areas will go from having bad schools to no schools at all, both because the budget has been cut beyond the breaking point, and because no teacher would want to work in a high-need school with cut pay, especially in the areas of math and science, where teachers could leave teaching and make up to double or triple the money in the private sector. Yes, that's right. Because teachers really do earn way less than they would in the private sector. We'll have a brain-drain in those schools that need it most.

You see, it's simple supply/demand economics: How do you get someone to be a garbage-man? You pay him a premium! How do you get a worker to clean sewage at MMSD? You pay him a premium! How do you get a public school teacher into the inner city?

You pay a premium!

On top of this is a cut to the UW system, and cutting loose the main UW campus in Madison. Also, beginning plans to cut UWM form the system as well. There went local school tuition rates!

Actually, I have mixed feelings about that. Seems to me that if the main UW schools split from the state and became entirely for-profit schools, that they's have fewer politicians trying to dictate terms to people with five times their education. I'm going to have to explore this idea further.

Finally, there's a $71.6 million dollar cut in the state's technical college system. Oh, boy, is that ever dumb!

The bulk of new, marketable job skills that come into the workforce come from those technical schools. Also, tech schools with adult high schools, like MATC, are the only thing that can bridge the gap between the inevitable dropoff in education from Walker's budget cuts. Hey, MATC has its problems, I'll be the first to admit. And it's bureaucracy can be a headache, but it really is the best bang for the buck in terms of education and a thriving workforce. Slash spending here, and we'll have fewer workers trained for tomorrow.

Now, walker has been granting tax breaks to corporations to lure companies to Wisconsin. No problems there. But with these cuts in education, the companies that end up coming to this state will have nobody to hire. They'll end up importing workers from other states, resulting in very little overall economic gain.

This is stupid.

Okay, here's how I'd try to fix it. I understand some cuts are necessary, but first, let's make sure that inner city high-need areas are not slashed and burned needlessly.

1. Pay cuts for all legislators in Madison, especially the governor's salary. You want cuts? Great. Let's start with you guys!

2. Don't exclude the contributions from police and firefighters. Everybody's bellyaching about how the teachers have been reaping the benefits of not having to contribute to their health or retirement benefits. Fine. But as Mayor Barrett pointed out, more than 60% of the benefits expenses go to police and firefighters. Excluding them from having to contribute shoots the whole system in the foot. We all have to contribute in the private sector. It's wrong for the guy who writes you the ticket for parking while your at work to not have to pay while you do. Plus, that makes that much more in savings which won't have to come out of the hides of our education.

3. Bigger public schools. Ever notice that the biggest MPS schools, like Nicolae, are also the most successful? Oh, Nicolae has it's problems, but generally, for public schools, bigger is better. Small public school facilities out in the middle of high-crime areas are nothing more than tiny bunkers and can offer little support to students. These tiny public schools need to be closed, and bigger inner city schools built and opened. It's a long-term solution, but it needs to be done.

4. Revamp the incentives Walker is trying to use to lure businesses to Wisconsin with. Front and center: giving a two-year waiver on state taxes for those businesses who relocate to Wisconsin. Fine, except there's a provision in that deal that, if a business moves $200,000 worth of employment to Wisconsin, that business qualifies for the waiver as well.

Hang on: $200K? That's IT? That's only ten fast-food jobs, or seven unskilled labor jobs! WTF?

For a pittance, a mega-corporation can get no taxes for two years. Bullshit! Okay, 200,000 actual jobs instead of $200,000 dollars in jobs, now you're talking. I'd give a two year tax break for that. But only a few jobs? Walker's insane if he thinks that will lure any businesses here in any other way except on paper.

5. NO cuts to the tech schools! If we want education to work, then the tech schools, that white knight acting as the only thing standing between the eager poor looking to gain marketable skills and eternal poverty, need to be boosted, not cut! Instead of slashing $71 million, we might consider giving them a $71 million increase to help develop the workers that businesses coming to Wisconsin will need to hire. Plus, highly skilled workers being in our state is something which lures businesses to the state, thus increasing revenue long-term.

In short, I find Walker's budget to be reckless. We need a scalpel, and he's using a chainsaw. He wants to balance the budget by throwing tomorrow's generation away. I find that silly.

I've given the governor a few nicknames. Little Boy Blue, for starters. "Scorched Earth Scotty," comes to mind. Anybody have any others? Because "Slash And Burn Scooter," needs to be reigned in.

There's more, but that's all for now.

Eric

The Evil Of Polarized Thinking

2011-02-28T22:12:00.000-08:00

Breaking news: Libya has decided to make Charlie Sheen its new dictator. Meanwhile, NBC has offered a contract to Momar Gaddafi to do the next season of Three and A Half Men. This, the first move of the new Insane Celebrity Foreign Exchange Program, promises to solve two national crises a the same time.

Of course, I'm totally bullshitting. But isn't it interesting how, when people have been inside their own little world for a long time, they just don't seem to see things normally anymore? Charlie thinks he's beyond mentally healthy, beset upon by hordes of stupid network executives. Gaddafi insists that all his people love him, even the ones who have taken over the Eastern half of his country, and are threatening to take over his capital city.

The point is, when people insulate themselves from the truth long enough, the comfortable lie becomes too comfortable to let go, for some. But the essence of truth is to embrace reality no matter how painful it is.

If only that were to be realized more in politics.

Led by an ever-growing right-wing media hype machine, the tug of war has not significantly pulled the rope much one way or the other. But it has gotten more people on one side of the rope or the other than ever before. The more people get on one side of the rope and pull, the more others feel compelled to get on the other side and pull harder. Thus, when Washington Democrats rightly bitched about the irresponsible use of the filibuster for every damned, little thing, Wisconsin Democrats went and did what amounts to the ultimate filibuster. They didn't do it to be hypocrites. They did it because they felt they had no other choice (and they were right).

Comedian Paul Provenza said it best on this weekend's edition of 'Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!' the NPR news quiz show. Isn't it just like the Democrats, he said, to finally stand up to the Republicans and have a winning strategy against them, and it involves running away.

There was a better time when the rope was seldom pulled. There used to be lots of moderate Republicans and Democrats who would meet in the middle, come up with good compromises, and make fair solutions. Oh, things weren't perfect then, naturally. But they were a whole lot better than they seem to be right now.

Then, one era, a bunch of people - pissed off, white, religious, affluent or possessing delusions of future affluence - decided they couldn't let something as trivial as freedom to allow America to transform into something that didn't conform to their preferences. So they picked up the rope, and started yanking on it desperately to the right. All those who favored balance suddenly had no other option but to get on the other extreme and yank the other way. Now, it's become two gigantic hordes of yankers -- a confederacy of literal jerks.

To those who are seeing the culture war erupt into much more than mere metaphor in Madison, all I can say is, this is the way you wanted it, all you people on the right. This is the conflict you craved. This is your culture war. And you're not winning.

It's STILL a tie!

Where have all the moderates gone? Sadly, they've become an endangered species. There are a few moderates who are left of center, but to the right of that center, it seems like a barren wasteland until one comes to the extreme end of the right wing. There, it's suddenly quite crowded, not unlike a horde of lemmings massing on the edge of a cliff, about to jump off.

The unions have offered a compromise. It's a damned good compromise. And if Walker really wants to bust those unions up, he has four long years to cook up endless strategies that he and his majority in both Assembly and Senate can implement. There is simply no need to engage in this kind of trench warfare now, or ever.

But this is the danger of polarized thinking. It blinds people to rational agreement. It transforms our fellow neighbors into enemies. It makes enemies of coworkers, friends, family members, even blokes at the local pubs, which, as the Journal Sentinel reports, have had to disallow talking politics inside their establishments - it leads to fights these days.

Economist Noreena Hertz cites an enlightening study in human nature in a recent TED Conference talk. In this study, participants in an MRI machine were asked to listen to an expert in a given topic. Amazingly, the area of the brain that governs acceptance lights up, meaning that we tend to follow "the experts" blindly, without criticism. How interesting!

Even more interesting is that "the experts" are often wrong. Doctors mis-diagnose four out of ten cases. And you're probably better off preparing your own taxes than going to a tax expert in most situations.

We need the maturity to challenge "the experts," not follow blindly, and make our own judgment. That doesn't mean getting a Ph.D. in everything, but it does mean challenging those who do have the doctorates. It means demanding that they explain things in clear, concise terms. They'll be annoyed at having to do this, but tough.

Walker has no room for seeing things from both sides. He demonstrably could care less, in fact. The experts he's listened to have convinced him that he's married to this conflict, and it will make him or break him. He's trapped. But the rest of us don't have to be so silly. We can choose to weigh both sides for ourselves. I suggest we all do so.

Then, just maybe, we can all be friendly Wisconsinites again.

Eric

I Love Voter ID!

2011-02-26T04:14:00.000-08:00

Well, it seems like there may be voter I.D. in Wisconsin, meaning that if they want to vote, they're just going to have to do the same thing they already have to do if they want to drink, buy cigarettes, or get a job. Yes, people will required to show their drivers license at the polls.

Now, I'm at the age where I like getting carded. I only wish that this particular example of getting carded meant that I looked young enough to pass as a college kid. So I don't mind having to show my I.D. before going to vote against the people who implemented it. But it seems like Democrats somehow feel that such a provision would damage their electoral prospects. The rationale is that it would make it more difficult for young people to register to vote, and because young people vote predominantly Democrat, this would damage the vote totals for the Left. This view somehow seems to be shared by the Republicans (Finally! Something both sides agree on!), which is why they're trying to implement it.

Bullshit! Data have shown in states with voter I.D. requirements that young people vote more frequently. In fact, people young and old vote more frequently overall when there is voter I.D. in place. Why? Because an electorate which feels secure that their vote will count is more likely to vote. Young people especially are disenfranchised more easily, wondering if their newly-minted voting process gets watered-down by the din of the masses, or outright countermanded by voter fraud. With an I.D. requirement, they feel less jaded, and go to the polls. Furthermore, since the general electorate leans left of center anyway, more people voting leads to more Democrats elected. An additional unintended side-effect of voter I.D. is that elderly people will find it more difficult to vote. If they can no longer drive due to impaired vision or other health reasons, they must rely upon the shuttle service at the assisted living center to get them over to the DMV so that they can register for a general state I.D., and that's a major hassle for them. Many of these elderly -- a MAJOR voting bloc for Republicans -- may simply give up.

You know, it's beautiful when both political parties end up doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. When the beneficiary of a given bill ends up opposing it while its proponent stands to unwittingly lose, well, it warms the heart, it really does! It reminds us all that sometimes politicians are too stupid to do the wrong thing. But regardless of which side voter I.D. favors, Republicans do have a legitimate point about it. Namely, it's the right thing to do. We as voters need to be assured that the voting process is done with integrity, and it ultimately benefits no one to have fraud of any sort during an election.

Of course, the ultimate in voter fraud is when politicians try to make things so hopelessly complicated that voters simply don't vote, thus giving more power to those with the time and wherewithal to pay close attention. No proposal has ever come up to deal with that sort of voter fraud, but that's the subject of a later blog. (I've been saying that a lot, lately!)

Meanwhile, In the absence of the 14 Democratic State Senators, who have splendidly done their jobs to the best of their ability by vacating the premises (we're all mature enough to know the difference between commuting and telecommuting), Republicans gave initial approval to the measure without debate. Since it's a fiscally-related bill, it also can't receive final passage until one of the 14 Senators comes back. But the fact that it was brought up without debate from the opposition was clearly a move meant to lure Democrats back. Didn't work, but nice try.

The measure will likely pass when this all blows over. Good for them. Good for us all.

Eric

A Call For Arbitration

2011-02-23T21:02:00.000-08:00

Occasionally, possibly rarely, some ordinary person who is not a mover and shaker among the Controlling Heights comes up with an idea that's so good, and so right, and solves so many problems, that it needs to be implemented right away. Unfortunately, because that person's not in any sort of position of power, he can't get his idea voiced, the idea never gets implemented, problems don't get solved, disaster ensues, and people suffer.

I have such an idea. All I have is a blog and you seven readers. But I need to get this idea implemented, because I think this idea will end the impasse between Republicans and Democrats over the governor's budgetary bill. I need your help! And if our Democratic Senators don't hear this idea through the din, I fear the worst. Just hear my idea, and if you like it, join my voice in trying to get our lawmakers attention over it. Please!

I also have a second idea, to be heard by union leaders. I'll get to that later.

BUT FIRST, an observation:

I know not everybody reads the Shepherd Express. But I picked up a copy this past week, just to see what it said regarding the crisis over Walker's bill. The crisis apparently is still too new for any in-depth reporting to be done by a weekly rag, because only one editorial comment covered much about it, and it was merely an op-ed. However, what really got my attention was a cartoon, called This Modern World. For those who aren't aware, This Modern World is a cartoon that features stylized 1950's-style fatherly faces, the kind one might see on an old-fashioned public service message. Sometimes it features commentary from a penguin wearing welding goggles. Well, this week's Modern World cartoon took aim at President Obama. Slamming him for trying to have it both ways with everything, it depicts him as a jumpsuit-clad superhero named "Middle Man," whose superpower is taking the middle ground with everything. In this case, he tries to take middle ground while turning on his post-cold-war ally, "The Strongman" (a.k.a. Hosni Mubarek).

In a way, the "Middle Man" slam is as pivotal a moment, in my view, as when Doonesbury attacked President Bill Clinton by depicting him as a gigantic waffle. It's one thing to be attacked by the political opposition, but when a normally liberal-leaning cartoon starts lampooning its own president, its a sign of severe disappointment within the left. And for good reason. Most of us who voted Democrat thought we'd get the most liberal president we've had in 50 years, and to hear the right-wing A.M. radio shows and FOX News, that's exactly what they accused him of being. They insisted, again and again, that he was more liberal than Hillary Clinton. Boy were they ever WRONG! Little did we all know that he was actually Mr. Compromise. Mr. Capitulate. Mr. Be-A-Nice-Guy-To-Those-Who-Treat-You-Like-Dirt.

You know, I might be wrong here, but I think it's fair to say that the Republican party may have gotten more out of President Obama than they would have from John McCain! And they still think he's the Antichrist.

As if the Antichrist would ever have let himself get stomped on by the likes of Joe Liebermann!

Which brings me, finally, to my BUH-RILLIANT idea!

The Democrats of the State of Wisconsin need to call upon President Obama to arbitrate in this matter. Right now, we're on the verge of a deadline for state financing, and if a resolution can't be reached, there will be thousands of forced layoffs due to lack of funds. Then, inevitably, the blame-game will begin, with Walker blaming Senate Democrats and Democrats blaming Walker's bull-headedness. By calling on Obama to arbitrate, Democrats look as though they wish to bring speedy resolution regarding their compromise. If Walker refuses arbitration, then, come time for the forced layoffs, he assumes 100% of the blame, even if he tries passing the buck onto the Democrats. If Walker accepts arbitration, we have a balanced budget. And it's likely that Obama will give Republicans even more concessions than the unions have surrendered so far, since that's what Obama does these days.

Middle Man to the rescue!

There is precedent. POTUS has involved himself in labor disputes ever since Teddy Roosevelt got involved in the Coal Strike of 1902. Reagan dismissed striking air traffic controllers in 1981. George Bush, Sr. refused to intervene in an American Airlines Strike in 1989, but the mere threat of his involvement helped broker resolution. Clinton intervened in an airline attendant's strike in 1993. The list goes on and on.

Of course, there are no airlines in this case. This isn't business vs. labor. It's government vs. labor. But isn't that even more reason our President should be involved? Education is a top priority for Obama, and this bill directly affects how educational quality will be determined. It may just be (I can only hope!) that he will insist MPS drop its residency requirement and that all Wisconsin public schools implement a results-based pay structure.

Here's where I need help: I'm e-mailing, calling, and writing physical, hand-written letters to every Congressman and Senator I can think of. They need to hear this idea! If you join me in writing and calling, this little voice turns into a megaphone. I haven't contemplated going to Madison before, but I just might make up a sign that reads: "Have Obama Arbitrate!" and march around with it, just to make sure as many people have this idea as possible. This is the right move, at the right time!

And now, my idea to help union leaders, in the form of a letter to them: *Ahem!*

Dear leaders of the Milwaukee Public School Teachers' Union,

Walker's Budgetary Repair bill is but the first volley of a series of attacks which are coming your way. Our new governor has only been in office for barely two months, and already he has you locked in a desperate arm-wrestle. So far, it looks like your side has gone over the top -- for now. But even if you win, it will only be the end of the first wave. He has four, long years to plot against you. Walker will keep attacking and attacking.

The only way to put an end to this is to make sure that Walker has no excuses to attack you. He sees your presence as a hindrance to quality education in Milwaukee, and (let's be honest) the track record is not on your side. To upend this, you'll need to improve the quality of the education in your city, immediately and decisively, and there are two ways you can do this with swift results.

One is to end the residency rule. This has historically been very difficult for you, but desperate times call for desperate measures. You need the best teachers from every nook and cranny you can scrounge them from, and limiting yourself is as foolish as going into battle with your hands tied behind your back. You simply must remove this rule or die, it's that simple.

The other is to implement results-based pay for teachers. Again, there will be strong opposition to this, but if such a structure is suddenly put in place, Walker has no excuse to attack, and you win in the court of public opinion.

These changes are absolutely essential, and are the only means the Teachers Union can survive. Need I remind you all that Mayor Tom Barrett could take over administration at any time? It is in your best interests to implement these changes immediately if not sooner. Please do so.

We will all be very grateful for it.

Sincerely,

Eric Hildeman

Law of Unintended Consequences

2011-02-22T15:31:00.000-08:00

So far, the fight over Gov. Walker's Budgetary Repair Bill has focused on the rights of public employees to unionize and/or collectively bargain. What seems to be getting missed are the dirty little details which go beyond just that. The devil, it has wisely been said, is in the details. Let me show you some of the little devilry hiding in this particular bill:

For example, the Department of Health Services for the state is required to do a study to find ways to cut spending to Medical Assistance programs given to the poor and needy. No problem, there. But it's also required to request a waiver from the Federal Department of Health and Human Services for any new rules they might have to implement. Okay, here's the catch: If they don't receive said waiver from the Fed by the end of 2011, then ALL Medical Assistance to the poor becomes ineligible for those making more than 133% of the federal poverty line, which is the bare-minimum required under federal law. (Section 112)

'So what?' you might ask. But have you seen what the federal poverty line is? If you're single and under 65, the poverty line is little more than 11K per year. That's so low it's a joke! It means if you were barely scraping by on $15K per year (and you would almost have to live in your mother's basement to do so), you would not be eligible for aid if you contracted a serious illness.

Are you kidding me?

If you're a family of four with two kids, the poverty line is a little less than $21K per year. Meaning you're ineligible if you're at about $27K per year. Okay, maybe if your kids ate grass off the lawn you could live on that, but seriously, how likely is that to be the case? One of the kids gets whoping cough, and your shit outta luck? Your kid gets to spread the disease to anyone not immunized who happens to get too close? Bullshit!

Here's another tidbit my friend, Charlotte Schnook, shared with me. Under this bill, the state would gain the right to sell any public power, heating or cooling utility, with or without a bid. (Section 44.) That means that Wisconsin could sell off part or all of WE Energies. To whom? Well, the Koch company is the wild rumor. And it's a good bet that they won't hesitate to turn off the heat in the dead of winter if you don't pay your bill. Current rules prevent WE Energies from doing that.

Cutting funding to teachers is one thing. Hammering the poor is quite something else. Chris Rockwood asked me earlier about dire consequences. Well, there you go. One can hope that amendments will be proposed that will stop this nonsense from making a class of poor so desperate that drug dealing will be the only option left.

Yes, we want to keep the safety net from becoming a hammock. But there's a difference between booting the slumbering trapeeze artist off of it and throwing him off a jagged cliff instead! We can certainly find a way to balance a budget without doing that.

When we try to balance state and federal budgets by not asking the fattest to tighten belts, but rather telling the skinniest to go fucking die, I get off the patriotic bandwagon.

Eric

Sick Of The Walker Budget Crisis Yet?

2011-02-21T18:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I must say that I'm a little bit surprised.

What I somewhat expected from Walker was something my father insisted would probably happen. Namely, that Walker would first oversell his cuts, and in so doing get a compromise deal through which would balance the budget. Sure enough, he got his compromise offer. State unions are willing to grant all budgetary cuts, provided they retain their right to collectively bargain.

Walker says no.

Ooooohhhkay? Really? You could have a balanced budget today, and you say no?

That betrays what Walker's really up to.

But before anyone jumps to any conclusions about what that "up to" really is, please understand it's not what you think. Walker, in a very poignant interview with a WTMJ-4 reporter, was eloquent, decisive, and gave his reasons rather clearly. He's not the kid I assumed he'd be. But he let us all know what he's doing. The interview in question is here:

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/116514928.html?video=pop&t=a&bctid=CLIP_ID_1229783

Walker is directly asked by Charles Benson, whether the concessions offered by the unions would be a deal, he said no. The reasons? First, he lists the number of municipalities and school districts -- impressive, but irrelevant -- and states that he won't be able to balance future budgets if the collective bargaining is not removed.

Okay, bullshit. Collective bargaining isn't working when it gives additional money for public schools, particularly MPS, because the structure is flawed, meaning it won't matter how much money is given, the kids educations won't improve until the rules of MPS are restructured.

If Milwaukee Public Schools are not allowed to hire outside the city (and right now they're not) then Walker's cuts will result in a school system which is already hampered in its ability to be able to hire quality teachers to be hampered even further. Meaning fewer quality teachers than we have now, and the inability to hire quality teachers in the future.

Nationally, the Powers That Be are seeing this as a post Citizens-United fight. Now that big corporations are allowed to glut funds to Republican political campaigns with all the money they can scrounge, the only entities capable of threatening them are unions. So, target them and break them, and no Democrat will ever be able to raise enough money to challenge a Republican ever again. Personally, I think that issues and public opinion should decide elections rather than which candidate has the bigger purse, but that's just me. In point of fact, I'd cut out all public funds and PAC donations to politicians altogether. Politicians should go out, glad-hand, stump, and burn some shoe-leather to get elected. But that's another blog post. In the meantime, this fight has national implications.

But Walker doesn't see it that way. He probably doesn't give two hoots about the Citizens United decision at this point. What he really wants is to get back at the unions who blocked him time and again as County Exec. This is what he wants more than anything. This is payback. This is what he ran for governor to do - get revenge on those assholes who, in his view, kept him from doing his job time and again for eight long years. This is vendetta! Especially for the schools.

I can forgive Walker his misunderstandings. Under-performing public schools have been a bug-bear for all of us for way too long now. And school teachers shouldn't be abandoning their charges to go off and do a protest rally. A day or two, I can maybe forgive. But a week or even weeks on end? That's too much! So I can understand why people are pissed. MPS has had its funds increased again and again, and improvement in education hasn't happened. Not even school vouchers did much good in improving the education quality, either here or in D.C. (and that deserves a separate blog post). So Walker and his ilk assume that money isn't the problem, and decide to slash funding, as if that's somehow going to help the public schools, either. What we'll get is public education which will go from bad to complete hell.

Money wasn't ever the problem. The problem is the underlying structure.

Forgive me for going off on a tangent, but how do we REALLY fix that underlying structure? Not by hauling off and slashing funding without a plan, that's for damned sure! Here's how to do it right:

1. END THE RESIDENCY RULE!!! Shit, I'm so sick of this one I can't even say. Get the best teachers into Milwaukee's schools! I don't care if they come from Timbuctu!

2. END THE DRUG WAR!!! I have to keep harping on this until it happens. Drug dealers prey on kids in schools because they get lesser juvenile sentences in courts, thus making law enforcement less able to get them off the streets while dealing. By ending the drug war and legalizing at least cannabis, we cut the gang-lords out of our schools. Instead of cutting the incomes of teachers HOW ABOUT WE CUT THE INCOME OF DRUG LORDS?!?!

3. INSTITUTE RESULTS-BASED PAY!!! A teachers pay really should be commiserate with how well the student has learned, and there's no other way to evaluate that than to see how they do on standardized testing before and after the school semester.

Walker will find that with these reforms, money spent on MPS will come down on its own, even with collective bargaining. Now, if THAT's what Republicans were willing to start riots for, I'd be totally on their side. Instead, he's trying to break the unions for breaking the unions sake, because of old injuries. Well, fuck that.

The well-meaning are about to enact some pretty damned severe unforseen consequences. So don't say I didn't warn you. The good intentions that pave the road to hell have constructed an eight-lane highway. Whether we go down that road, is up to us.

Eric

Emergency Post: Correcting Media Errors!

2011-02-17T22:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, in continuing with correcting the media misinformation out there, it's time to set some things straight. First, it seems like the missing fiscal position reports are STILL missing. However, the general fund statement has been found by Rachel Maddow. Essentially, this is the statement of the Wisconsin state bank account. A link to this important document is found on Rachel's blog. You can read this official report here:

http://legis.wisconsin.gov/lfb/Misc/2011_01_31Vos&Darling.pdf

As you'll see from reading this, total revenues amount to 13.57 billion, while outlays (spending) amounts to $13.45 billion, making for a budget surplus of about 120 million. Subtract the 65 million required minimum balance by statutory requirement, and the state has an extra 55 million (rounded).

Now, that really doesn't settle this issue just yet. This bank account balance may be positive due to state borrowing. We won't know about that until I get to read the actual financial position reports, and those, we hope, will surface soon. Rachel errantly reported this as meaning that Wisconsin has a budget surplus. (Oops!) I've e-mailed Rachel regarding this error, and hopefully one of her aides will bring it to her attention. It could be very embarrassing for her if she doesn't learn of it, either from me or from some other source. In the meantime, I still want to know why the financial statements for Wisconsin are more AWOL than the Democratic State Senators.

Next, I must attack the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for getting it's "Politi-Fact" column just dead wrong on key points regarding this watershed event. Taking Ed Schultz's recent claim on MSNBC that union workers could lose up to 40% of their income overnight if this bill passes, the Journal Sentinel rates this as false.

Bullshit! The Journal Sentinel failed to account for the benefits package which includes tuition reimbursement for public school teachers. If this bill passes, that gets lost, and all that tuition, in some cases amounting to more than $80,000, needs to be paid back by the teacher, out of pocket. That means monthly payments which will, in fact, decrease net income by well MORE than 40%. So Ed Schultz got it right, and the Journal Sentinel got it wrong.

For the other two Politi-Fact errors that the Journal Sentinel screwed up, namely Alberta Darling correctly pointing out how this bill would reduce compensation to what it is in the private sector, and the AFL-CIO's contention that this bill will effectively destroy the unions, I must refer readers to my previous post. That makes for not one, not two, but three consecutive errors by the Journal Sentinel regarding one of the most important legislative issues ever. Certainly, the biggest during my lifetime.

This is no time for journalistic fuck-ups!

Eric

Madison In An Uproar (And My Solution)

2011-02-17T16:15:00.000-08:00

I came home this afternoon having taken a mandatory course in CPR from my employer, only to find once I'd gotten home that it was our State government which had a cardiac arrest!

Apparently, disgusted that Walker is trying to balance a budget and break a union at the same time, all the Democrats in Madison decided that the only way to prevent a disaster was to make a run south of the border -- the Illinois state border, in this case.

What a circus! I haven't seen people this pissed off since the vote on the Miller Park too-small-to-even-notice-it sales tax hike. You might remember, the one that got Racine state congressman George Pitak tossed out on his ass in an impeachment recall? Anyway, nowlots of those Racine people are wearing Brewer shirts and lining up for tickets, but this item, the one that really matters, is on the current docket. And it's a confusing mess! The more I watch the news, the more I listen to the pundits, the more confused I get. I hear bitching and moaning on both sides, and when it's over, I'm no closer to learning the true substance of this debate than I was when I started. Shit, that's frustrating! I'm sure all of you out there are in the same situation.

But it occurred to me that this fight pertains directly to me. After all, I'm trying to become a science teacher, and that achieved goal is right around the corner. It just might be that I'll have fought so hard to direct a classroom, only to find that Gov. Walker yanked my paycheck away before I've even gotten there. As such, I thought I'd really research this one fully so that I know for damned sure whose side I should take on this one.

And, just to be generous, I thought I'd share what I discovered with you. But this is a multi-faceted debate, with lots of twists and turns. So forgive me if this blog takes a bit longer than my usual rants.

Since Republicans are insisting that this needs to be done because of a 137 million dollar shortfall. I started by trying to read Wisconsin's financial position reports. This 2011 budget deficit was one very unspecified bastard, because it was first reported to be 2.2 billion, then changed to 3.3 billion, then went mysteriously down to 530 million (that's million, with an "m", or half a billion), and is currently quoted at 137 million. What's going on here? And if Walker has done so nicely shrinking the budget already, why go after public salaries now? So, I went to the Wisconsin government website to get some budgetary answers. I wanted to know exact revenues vs. exact outlays for fiscal years 2009, 2010, and projections for 2011.

You know what? I couldn't find them! The URL of the website (for financial statements CAFR) is missing from the government web site! Now that's fucking interesting, isn't it? At this exact moment, when we need those numbers the most, they're removed. Gee, is someone in Madison trying to prevent someone coming up with an obviously alternate means of saving $137 million? Hmmmmm?

So, I read the Budget Repair Proposal, which is the source of all this commotion.

The bill deals with MERA, the Municipal Employment Relations Act, and SELRA, the State Employment Labor Relations Act. These previously enacted bills allow for collective bargaining with the state regarding pay and benefits. What this new bill of Walker's proposes about these prior arrangements is two things: One, that they'll be changed so that only collective bargaining for base wages is allowed. No negotiating changes to benefits. And two, that wages can only be bargained upwards to a maximum based upon a percentage increase of the consumer price index. In other words, no increasing wages faster than inflation or buying power.

Essentially, this renders the unions toothless. They can only bargain for what they'd likely get anyway. Does this break the unions? Essentially, yes. The unions themselves would still exist, for a little longer, anyway. But since they have no real power to increase wages or benefits, they'd wither away and die. After all, who wants to pay dues for nothing? Hence, the outrage.

Interestingly, police and firefighters are ruled out. That's not what the bill actually says, however. It says "public safety employees" are exempt. Wonder why it might be phrased that way? Oh, wait, maybe it's because a member of the National Guard might be considered "public safety!" After all, can't have a Guardsman called upon to defend a bill that will cut his salary and benefits, now can we? (Probably only some of said guardsman's salary comes from state sources, but still... interesting.)

So, with police, fire, and any state funds to guard members ruled out, the primary victim... er, I mean, subject, of the bill, is teachers. Mostly public school teachers, but also Tech schools and the UW system.

I get the issues at stake, here. We want a balanced budget. We also want to cut out the fat. And public schools and state-subsidized colleges are a nice, juicy target. After all, in Milwaukee Public Schools, for instance, enrollment has declined while the budget has increased for each and every year since 2001, causing a net increase in spending of about 50% per student, ending at over $16,000 spent on every student in MPS in 2010. Meanwhile, teacher salaries at MPS average at over $52,000 per year, while benefits weigh in at $49,000 per year, for a total compensation package of $101,000 annually, per teacher. And for this money spent? We get failing students, incompetent in math, reading and science. Clearly, throwing money at schools is not solving the problem.

So, here comes Walker, ready to bust the union and save the schools, right? Well, no. The union is a problem because it retains bad teachers and fails to adequately reward good ones, this is true. But the fundamental problem is deeper. After all, wouldn't you think for $52K per year and huge benefits, plus summers off, would be a perfect gig? I mean, you'd think people would be lining up outside the MPS offices for work, wouldn't you?

But, no. In fact, most people would rather eat broken glass than work for MPS. New teacher turnover at MPS is something like 15%! In spite of the sweet deal! Now why is that?

Well, we know the usual culprits: Drugs on the streets, parents who don't give a damn until the kid is killed in a gang-crossfire and then, when the camera comes on, the weeping, overweight mother cries and bawls, "He was such a good kid!" (Puh-LEEZE!) But there's an even deeper cause. It's the most evil, most pernicious, and most wasteful pisser-away of taxpayer money piece of bullshit ever invented. It's called:

Residency Requirement!

In a nutshell, it means this: If you want to work for MPS, you have to live in Milwaukee. After all, you can't have people working to educate the city's children and not be willing to live there, right? That wouldn't be fair!

Yeah, except for the part where your pool of potential teachers gets severely limited as a result. Then, it's simply supply and demand. Low supply of teachers plus high demand for them means really big salaries get forced onto the state! Bad teachers get to stick around, because they're less fireable than a pedophile Catholic priest. Good teachers can't stand the crap that gets heaped upon them from the bad teachers, compounded with the lack of parental support, get frustrated, and leave. And this system of rewarding teachers whose only skill is being able to show up and keep the kids from killing each other for eight hours a day gets stronger and stronger.

Shit, there are outstanding potential teachers in West Allis, Tosa, Greenfield and, heaven forbid, Whitefish Bay! We can tap into that great resource and improve test scores overnight! Besides, have you taken a look at a Milwaukee map? The city border is a joke! If a teacher lives in West Milwaukee, and thus lives right near the inner city, he can't get a job at MPS. But if someone lives up near Butler, or the sliver of Milwaukee territory located Northeast of Alverno College, then he can always get a job, even though he doesn't have any inner city issues. What a crock!

So, end the residency rule, and what happens? Why, suddenly, the supply of teachers is high, and the demand for teachers is low. Wages come down, and the state of Wisconsin saves at least 137 million, maybe lots more! Schools are stocked full of quality teachers who work collectively to pester slovenly parents, and education actually happens!

Now doesn't that make a whole lot more sense?

You know, they say that the problem is that kids can't do math. But I rather think it's the adults who can't do math instead. More money isn't the solution. But then, money was never the problem. The structure of the system was the problem! And unless that's fixed, then cutting teacher salaries is going to make our schools WAY worse!

Oh, and incidentally, the big benefits package I mentioned earlier is so very large because of a program which pays back tuition to those people who become teachers. This encourages people, specifically people like me, to complete a degree in math or science and enter a teaching career in mid-life. Of course, if that gets taken away, then Walker's pretty much sodomized me with a splintered broom-handle, financially speaking! Still, it's about what's best for everyone, and it's not just about me.

I have way more thoughts on this. Like dozens of ideas to save money in the UW system, for example. Or why MATC is really worth the money, in spite of past corruption and the recent bargaining agreement which was sped through to head-off Walker's bill at the pass. I'd like to mention how a teacher leaving school to protest is fine for a day but wrong for a week. I'd even like to say how I support school choice vouchers so long as the religious schools are left out of it. But I think I've made my case. All those other speeches can wait. If Walker really wants to break the Milwaukee Teachers Union, he can simply give MPS over to Tom Barrett, which is yet entirely possible.

In the meantime, I side with Labor. Walker's an idiot!

Eric

Tightening The Belt? Try Adding Some Green!

2011-02-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

Well, we all knew it had to happen sometime. Our government is doing the necessary work of trimming the fat from the budget - by putting YOU on a diet, and tightening your belt for you. This, because we've excused the fat cat from the treadmill, at least for the time being. Still, we can't keep maxing out our credit card forever, can we? So here come the budget cuts. We all know about cutting discretionary spending. But no budget can be balanced unless we do one of four other things:

1. Cut Social Security

2. Cut Medicare/Medicaid

3. Cut Military Spending

4. Raise or levy a tax.

Any politician who tells you we can balance the budget without doing all four is lying. This is because our deficit is nearly 50% of our total tax revenue, and so eliminating that deficit means throwing away a full 1/3rd of the pie. That's one hell of a big cut! Even if all discretionary spending were tossed aside, the deficit still wouldn't be eliminated. That means some "entitlement" spending simply has to go, and some additional money has to be raised, and there's simply nothing else for it.

Yet I persistently hear politicians say that they can balance the budget by ruling out one of the above four items. On the right, they say that military spending is sacrosanct. On the left, that Social Security and Medicaire will not be tampered with. The right is screaming for tax cuts, and the left is screaming for infrastructure spending programs, as if we can afford to do either.

But wait! There is something that might, just might, make it possible to balance the budget and leave one of the four above items alone.

Really, you ask? What on earth could it be?

Simple. Stop wasting 18 billion dollars every year on a failed drug war, then legalize and tax cannabis, thus generating hundreds of billions in revenue!

I mean seriously, when our Little Boy Blue of a governor is blowing his horn about putting the National Guard on his own citizens' right to redress the government for grievances, was there ever a better time to stop lighting nearly 20 billion on fire every year? And for what? What does that 20 billion buy us? It buys the destruction of our inner cities and the strengthening of Mexican drug cartels, that's what!

The puritans who once burned witches have not gone away. They're still here, hiding amidst the DEA and the FCC, and still seemingly irrationally paranoid about toking kids who might try to end a war in Vietnam. If ever there was a time for inflexible old men to shake the cobwebs out of their skulls and get a clue, it's now!

Talk about reefer madness!

Eric

Stabilizing A Democracy. (No, THIS One.)

2011-02-14T22:27:00.000-08:00

Just a quick thought, really. I was reflecting on my most recent post, and I realized I'd missed something. We all want the best for Egypt now that it's taken the important first step of giving its dictator the heave-ho, and we're all keen on Islamicists such as those in the Muslim Brotherhood not taking over. In short, we want a secular Egypt. Well, fair enough, but in essence, what we therefore want is a strong separation between church and state in that country. (Or, mosque and state, as the case may be.)

Isn't the best way to help achieve this to lead by example, by strengthening the church/state barrier in this country?

It just seems odd to me that the same conservative interests who want religious leaders shut out of the process in a foreign country are so very keen on letting religious interests run rampant within our own. Of course, they don't see the hypocrisy of this because they're batting for Team Christianity. I, on the other hand, am batting for Team Freedom, and so don't want undue favoritism given to either Christianity here, or Islamism in Egypt. Or Iraq. Or even Iran, where protests against that regime have started up again recently.

In our country, we committed wholesale slaughter against the Indians because we saw ourselves as a kind of New Israel, conquering the savage Promised Land for God. And today? We have the Wisconsin National Guard being ordered out upon its own citizens just to balance a budget, while behind this smoke screen women's reproductive rights are being taken away wholesale. We dare Puritanically censor the supposedly free airwaves if four-letter words like the ones Dick Cheney bluntly used on the Senate floor ever get uttered, and even put monotheistic endorsements loudly proclaiming the falsehood of time-honored religions like Hinduism and Buddhism upon our very money.

In short, we're so afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood over there. What about the Christian Brotherhood over here?

Any religion which is frightened of playing on a level playing field with other creeds is a weak religion, incapable of standing on its own without clutching, haplessly, to the crutch of government support.

I say, let's kick the damned crutch out from under 'em!

Benjamin Franklin said it best:

"When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."

(From a letter written to Richard Price, October 1790.)

We Americans put dictators like Mubarek, Hussein, and the Iranian Shaw in power because we, in our immature and irresponsible use of democracy, put the Cold War ahead of the Pan Arabian good. It is therefore wrong to cast their nations as too immature for the democratic process. Like us, Egypt will have its problems, and its atrocities. But they will be their challenges to overcome. Not ours.

Let's hope we can do a better job of leading by example in the future.

Eric

Glenn Beck On Egypt

2011-02-10T21:05:00.000-08:00

I don't normally take time to deal with the inanity of Glenn Beck. If his own rants aren't enough to send his little cult of personality running for the hills and screaming, then there's nothing I can do or say that will snap them out of their trance. Yes, I'll admit that I've been tuning in to his television show just to see what he might have to say about the Egypt crisis, and one thing was immediately apparent to me: Beck is no longer a news commentator. He's a preacher. And so long as he remains a preacher, he will remain insulated inside his little cult.

But I do have a brilliant juxtaposition to make regarding what he's been saying recently, and so I will make it here. Apparently, Beck is deathly afraid that the revolution in Egypt will result in the Muslim Brotherhood's takeover of that country. From there, he says, a new Caliphate will arise, which will spearhead the effort to make the entire world Muslim. He is therefore warning people about it ahead of time, tacitly, if not implicitly, making the case that Egypt might be better off with a dictator who keeps the Islamic agenda at bay rather than a democracy which Jihadists might be able to take over.

Okay, I can't say it's wrong to be concerned. There is a very real possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood might take over, this is true. It is also very true that Islam does have an agenda of spreading Islamic law everywhere. (Christianity has a similar agenda, known as the Great Commission, which may be less militant but which still wants the whole world under one religion.) So Glenn does have legitimate grounds for worry. We'd be naive to think the removal of a dictator doesn't carry the risk that a worse regime might arise.

That's simply no excuse for opposing a dictator's removal!

Dangerous as the removal of a dictator might be, and as fickle as a democracy may get when a majority of its population belongs to an intrusive religion, the march towards human freedom demands that we must seize the chance at obtaining freedom over fascism wherever we can get it. Yes, there's danger, but that pales in comparison to the danger of doing nothing.

And here's my main point: Beck would clearly rather a dictatorship be in place in Egypt to prevent religious extremism from taking over. Fine. But isn't this exactly the same argument which was used by liberals about why we shouldn't have invaded Iraq? Didn't they argue, back in 2003 and 2004, that it was better to have a secular dictator like Hussein in power rather than risk Wahabi extremists gaining a foothold? Indeed they did!

This is why political polarization is so terrifying in its power to consign what would otherwise be a brilliant mind to stupidity. Glenn Beck's position is essentially the same as the Liberal position of only a decade ago. And this indicates that he's no longer thinking in terms of political sides. He's not seeing things as either Left or Right. He's seeing them as "us" vs. "them." It's no longer about political positions so much as it is about wanting "his team" to win!

That, my friends, is one serious level of crazy.

Beck says that if we think he's crazy for his neo-Caliphate fears, that we can go to hell. Yeah, well, if I, for one, end up going there, it won't be by the order of that guy!

The belief that the Arab world is too religiously extreme and immature to handle democracy is prevalent in our culture. But this is a form of fascism, pure and simple. The difference between it and traditional fascism is that it believes the fascism is better for other people, and not us. But we've seen a transformation in Arab attitudes. Arabs look at a tiny nation like Albania ascending to democracy and feel utterly ashamed that such a tiny nation gets the right to vote, while their nations languish under the jack-boots of dictators. (This, from a recent Slate article by Christopher Hitchens.) Arabs have been festering with this shame for some time, letting the hunger for democracy grow ever more steadily with each passing generation. When tiny Tunisia fell to democracy, the Arabs inhabiting the land of one of the oldest and proudest civilizations in history finally decided that they'd had quite enough. They want freedom! I say, give it to them!

Yes, they might not be ready for it. But neither were we! Yes, some religious nuts want to seize control of their democracy to advance their world-conquest agenda. But that's true here, too! Hell, Glenn Beck is one of them!

But then, it's not about Team Islam winning. He's more scared of Team Mormon losing, because he knows Islam is intolerant enough to give Mormonism a run for its money.

Of course BOTH sides fear the non-religious, a sect which is growing twice as fast as both those creeds combined! But that's the subject of a later blog post.

Eric

Michelle Obama Wears Commie Red Dress

2011-02-09T21:08:00.000-08:00

It's official: Michelle Obama has betrayed the Obama family's Communist leanings by wearing a red dress at the state dinner held for the Chinese president. This, according to Matt Drudge, who called the First Lady's dress "China Red," which was a theme picked up on and echoed by numerous right-wing pundits and bloggers. By the time the dust settled, Michelle's dress was a veritable confession as to her Commie leanings.

Well, what can I say? They got us fair and square on this one. The First Lady wearing a red dress is absolutely an indication of her husband's political leanings, and tantamount to wearing litmus paper for her political party. Want to know what the Pres. is thinking? Don't look at him, look at his wife's wardrobe. There's a dead giveaway, there! You know, we were doing a pretty good job of masking our President being a Communist, but those clever Republicans have sniffed us out by looking, not at the President, but at his wife. For that matter, look at the President's tie, or the trim on his sportcoat. If his tie happens to be red, you've got him! No true-blue American President would ever wear a red tie! Yet Mr. Obama has been seen in a red tie on several occasions, recently. It's as clear as crystal just how Communist this means our President is.

Those Republicans are so very clever!

Eric

What A Wonderful World

2011-02-08T21:11:00.000-08:00

It's 11:00, and all's mostly well. At least, it is from my vantage-point.

Egypt is falling to democracy. Bill O'Reilly got exposed as a disrespectful hack, by our president, on national TV. I'm acing calculus. The Green Bay Packers are Superbowl Champions again. And Keith Olbermann is coming back to TV.

Yes, Current TV (channel 226 on Time Warner Cable), the network co-founded by former Vice President Al Gore, is bringing Keith Olbermann back for a new news and commentary program, to be revealed later this year. You knew he'd get scooped up by a small network, which suddenly becomes a major network as a result. I hope MSNBC feels the fool for it.

But boy, Current TV needs Olbermann! Have you seen the lineup? Oh, sure, Current TV does have some cool stuff, like the documentary series, Vanguard. They also have The 50 Greatest Viral Videos, and Rotten Tomatoes Movie Reviews. But other than that? It's pretty much NPR television. And no Garrison Keillor! Some plot-driven thing called Bar Karma is supposed to magic-TV people into watching. There's a show called (I'm not making this up) Kill It, Cook It, Eat It, where the ones who eat the bacon actually butcher it themselves first. (Where's PETA when you need 'em?) They actually broadcast a television version of This American Life. This American Life! The radio program that has driven away more donors during pledge week than poverty, and it has its own television program!

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot!

That does it. We demand a new Star Trek franchise! We demand the return of Firefly! We want all the programs that made Discovery and the Science Channel great back on the air! More Desmond Morris! More James Burke! Bring back Paleoworld!

I'm so sick of ghost-hunting, chopper-building, architectural, dirty-job, cash-taxicabbed, Stargated, cooking-show, deadly-catch, baby-bringing, truck-driving, Bear Grylls-pretending-he's-an-outdoorsman, pitch-men BULLSHIT on my television!

This American Life! Honestly! Craptacular on a cuestick!

If it wasn't for Mythbusters, I'd say raze the whole thing and start over!

Oh, wait, there's Brewmasters. I forgot. And some new show coming called Curiosity, which sounds good. There's hope yet!

Okay, I'm done ranting. Sorry about that.

So what else is going on? Well, in the midst of the pro-democracy Egyptian protests, while Muslims in Cairo prayed, they enjoyed the protection of a Christian-Coptic-Jewish bodyguard. And while Christians held mass, and Jews held synagogue, the Muslims, in turn, protected them. Prayer in the square! Egypt is so ready for democracy!

Now, if religion could only be like that all of the time. It would be a much happier world, wouldn't it?

Bill O'Reilly? Jeezus, he gave more respect to Jon Stewart than he gave to our president. Why is the non-serious guy taken seriously, while the serious guy is not taken seriously in O'Reilly's world? It could only be because he's the partisan-blinded fool we always knew him to be. And now, he's stepped in it.

During the WONDERFUL Superbowl victory, I got into it a little bit with some fool at the bar. Remember the KIA commercial? No, me neither. But it sparked this particular asshole giving a rant about foreign cars.

"Hang on," I said, "there's somebody in Kentucky who has a job building those cars,"

"Yeah," he yelled back, "But they sell us cars, and they refuse to buy any of our goods!"

I started to say that I wasn't too sure about that, but he interrupted me. "No! When Mr. Asshole went over there to do his treaty with South Korea, he gave away the store! They keep all the profits for themselves!"

I backed off, saying I hadn't researched it. "First I do the research, then I argue," I told him.

But what grated me was the "Mr. Asshole." part.

Look, when George W. was president, I hated his ass. Still do. But I respected him, and the Presidential office. Why? Because he was FUCKING PRESIDENT, that's why! Now it's the conservative's turn to give the respect absolutely due the office, and our president isn't being given the respect due a first-year state congressman.

Know what? FUCK that! I'm willing to call it the black-man-hating racist bullshit it is. It's time to call a spade-hater a spade-hater.

Take that, O'Reilly.

By the way, the guy was dead wrong. South Korea is one of our top buyers of grain and beef. Only China and the E.U. buy more. So they sell us the cars they pay American workers to build, while we sell them food. I like this deal.

Okay, speaking of cars, notice that a government commission found that nothing was wrong with Toyota after all? So what was the deal with all those Toyota cars going haywire with their accelerators?

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I find it an odd coincidence that this Toyota crisis just happened to take place just in time to save GM's ass, and that GM's ass got saved just in time to save the government's investment. Maybe I'm crazy, but there might be a connection, here. Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it might be worth looking into.

That's it for now. I'm done!

Eric

The criminal truth

2011-02-03T02:56:00.000-08:00

Gun Control and Revolution

2011-02-02T17:43:00.000-08:00

In other news, America's favorite groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil (yes, I spelled it right, look it up!) has been frozen in his hole in Pennsylvania. His extraction, encased within a block of ice, means that his usual winter prediction will not happen until zookeepers manage to thaw him out in front of a space-heater...

Okay, seriously, that's a slight exaggeration. But it's nice to not have to deal with the usual Groundhog Day nonsense, at least for another 24 hours.

Anyway, it seems that Mubarek has taken to some dirty tricks to put down the growing revolution in his country, sicking plain-clothes thugs on his own people, while at the same time, the debate about gun control continues to go on as Gabrielle Giffords recovers. As usual, I see things a little bit differently on both issues, and find that the two are actually interlinked.

First, the whole point of having a 2nd amendment in our Constitution was to make sure that occasional revolutions would take place. The blood of revolutionaries was to be the natural manure of freedom's growth, according to Jefferson. And if the government got too big, it was time for the people to revolt. Hence, every household should have a gun.

Reality check: In today's world, we have harrier and tomcat jets, black hawk and apache helicopters, napalm, night vision, satellite surveillance, cruise missile frigates, aircraft carriers, wire-tapping and, of course, nuclear warheads. If our government were faced with a revolt, it could easily put it down within minutes.

Unless the military were either cooperative or ambivalent to the revolt. In which case, we'd have a situation similar to that in Egypt. And in Egypt, were there to be any shots fired by the people, it would only be political fodder internationally for world leaders to oppose the movement.

In short, the age for revolts with guns are O-VER! Jefferson himself would agree. Deal with it.

So do we therefore enact gun laws because we're all screwed anyway? Well, no. I refuse to side with the liberals on the agenda of outlawing ammo clips, as if six shots fired at a Congressperson were somehow better than sixteen shots. The very idea itself is ludicrous. No, I am very much in favor of every citizen owning defensive weaponry. That means that a state which allows handguns and disallows tasers is a hypocritical, upside-down, Micky-Mouse-level insane administration which needs to reverse such nonsense immediately.

No, instead of outlawing guns, I say -- LICENSE their asses!

Think that's too harsh? The NRA would certainly think so. But think about it: Requiring a license is not an "impingement" upon keeping or bearing arms. It is an extra hoop to jump through, yes, but one can do it. And our crackpot, Loughner, would not have even been able to buy his glock, much less a clip for it, were he to have been required to have a license first. Had he applied for a license, his obvious insanity would have barred him. And if someone goes crazy afterward, and allows the license to expire (because those who don't take regular medications seldom do other things that require regular maintenance), then there is an information network which allows authorities to take the guns out of the hands of the insane! Any person without a license to purchase and carry a gun would not be able to do so. Drug lords would have a significantly more difficult time arming themselves (which helps enhance the silly drug war against cannabis, but that's another subject). Sure, the odd sociopath would still get a gun, but that's always been the case. At least obvious nutballs, like Loughner, wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of arming themselves with HVP's.

Here's the cycle we must break: Some insane idiot goes and gets a gun. He shoots someone. There's outrage, and laws try to get passed. The NRA and its cronies block it. The law fails. Then, another insane idiot goes and gets a gun. He shoots someone... etc. etc.

Does anyone else think this is a bit fucked up?

Okay, we want citizens to be armed in order to defend themselves, and us, against assailants who violate the law with guns. I'm down with that! But let's have those law-abiding citizens carry a license to, well, carry. Is a criminal holding up a convenience store really going to be less surprised by a citizen who is licensed to buy, and then carry, a concealed weapon vs. one who isn't?

If you really think this is extremist or far-fetched on my part, let me offer the following list of comparisons. You see, we need licenses for damned near everything else! Yet for buying or using a gun, we require no licenses whatsoever. Bullshit! It's perfectly reasonable to expect a license to buy or carry a gun, given all the other shit we need licenses for. Here's my list, and pay attention, there will be a quiz later:

You need a license to drive. So to propel 2,000 pounds of metal at 60 MPH, you need a license, but to propel .60 ounces of metal at 2,000 MPH, you don't.

You need a license to hunt or fish. So to shoot an animal, you need a license. To buy the gun you shoot the animal with, you don't. Or to shoot a human being, you don't.

You need a license to build a building. So to build the store that sells a gun, or the range you can shoot the gun, you need a license. But not to get and fire the gun itself.

You need a license to get married. So you need a license to lead someone to the altar, but not to fire lead into the altar.

You need a license to sell liquor. You need a license to own a bar. You need a license to be a bartender. In some states, you need a license to drink. So you need licenses to sell or buy Jack Daniels, and you might need a license to do a shot of Jack Daniels, but you don't need a license to shoot a man named Jack Daniels.

You need a license to sell cigarettes. You also need a driver's license to buy them. So you need a license to smoke, essentially. But you don't need a license to smoke someone.

Get this: You need a medical license to practice being a doctor or a nurse. So you need a license to take a bullet out of someone's body. You don't need a license to put one into someone's body in the first place!

You need a license to practice dentistry. In other words, you need licensing to put a cap in someone's tooth. You don't need a license to put a cap in someone's ass!

And finally, my favorite: You need a driver's license, or some other form of I.D. to vote (or you will in Wisconsin, when the Republicans eventually get their way). So you'd need a licence to vote for a Congresswoman. You don't need a license to shoot her!

We need licenses for gun ownership. Enough is enough! And I'm NOT an extremist for saying so!

They can take my gun license when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!

Go, Egypt!

Eric

P.S., Shame we can't also require licenses for people before they get pregnant so that insane or stupid people can't breed. But that's a subject for a later blog.

A Global-Warming Blizzard?

2011-02-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

It's the middle of a winter snowstorm right now, and the flakes are really coming down.

No, I don't mean snowflakes. I mean the flakes who deny global warming. They're saying that as we, in Wisconsin are getting dumped upon by more than a foot of snow, that it's the same as getting dumped on by a mountain of evidence that global warming is a hoax.

Could someone PLEASE tell me why global warming is only a hoax during a winter snowstorm!? How quickly we forget the record high summer temperatures we were all sweltering under this past year. How quickly we forget how early Spring arrived after "Snowpocalypse." How quickly we even forget how relatively warm our early November was.

Shit, we have a short memory.

In a nutshell, warm air temperatures in the upper Atlantic sea basin are forcing the Arctic air masses right down on top of us. Those cold, Arctic air pockets can't cross Eastward over the North Atlantic the way they used to, so they have nowhere to go but back, where they make higher pressures over Nova Scotia, and drive low-pressure centers down the only direction they have left -- SOUTH. Relatively high temperatures are being felt RIGHT NOW in Iceland (tomorrow's forecast, 30F, -2C), Edinburough, Scotland (40F, 8C), London (38F, 6C), Paris (41F, 9C), Berlin (37F, 5C), and Oslo, Norway (32F, 0C).

Meanwhile, relatively high temperatures over Seattle, Vancouver, and the entire Pacific Northwest are contributing massive amounts of moisture up into Canada, where it can collide with those south-headed cold air masses coming down toward us, and dump us with more snow that we can handle for a second straight year. Current temperatures RIGHT NOW in Seattle are 35 degrees.

Here's what really frosts me (pun intended). RIGHT NOW in Anchorage, Alaska, where Sarah Palin should be able to see better, the temperature at this very moment (1:20 a.m., Central Standard Time, February 3, 2011), is a very comfortable 32 degrees, and partly cloudy.

So, to all you global warming deniers, on behalf of the residents of the Pacific Northwest, Iceland, the UK and EU, please...

Go fuck yourselves!

Eric

Is Egypt Ready For Democracy?

2011-02-01T02:57:00.000-08:00

The ongoing unrest in Egypt is hell bent on blossoming into full-fledged revolution. Egyptians are hungry, out of work, and pissed off. Hosni Mubarek must go, and nothing else will make them happy. Mubarek firing his entire cabinet and hiring a new government is nothing short of a joke to them. You can put new flesh on an old skeleton, but the disease is in the marrow.

This all creates a very disturbing situation. If a new Egyptian government comes about, will it honor its prior treaties with the United States, Great Britain, and Israel? Will the Muslim Brotherhood come to power in that nation, and declare war upon Israel, possibly touching off what could only be described as world war three?

You can hear the Bible prophecy people now, saying that this harbors the end times. Funny how none of them saw it coming from Egypt. They all thought the former Soviet Union, Iraq, or Iran would be the flashpoint.

Ah, hell. The psychics didn't see 9/11 coming, either.

One thing's for sure: The Egyptians want democracy. Bully for them! But suppose they get it? What if Egypt, the world's largest Arab nation, succumbs to democracy. What then? Would the people elect politicians who are nothing but Islamic extremists? Would they put Hamas or Al Quaida in power?

Is the Arab world even ready for democracy?

I think it helps to remember that we here in America weren't ready for democracy either. No sooner did we have a government run by the people, free from any religious dictatorship, than several states tried violating secularism by enacting an official State religion. (They all failed, of course. Separation of church and state is just plain fair. But it's important to remember that religious bastards did try their level-best to wreck everything from the get-go.) The Danbury Baptists, oppressed by the Episcopalians in Virginia, pleaded to Thomas Jefferson for help, who reminded them, and indeed all of us, that the first amendment creates a "wall of separation between church and state," which is where the phrase comes from. Hell, Massachusetts had only just recently gotten over hanging people for witchcraft at that time, and John Nelson Darby had planted the seeds of what would become today's evangelical fundamentalist whack-jobs. Our constitution lacked provision to grant freedom for slaves, guaranteeing suffering for an entire segment of the population, and planting the seeds of a future civil war. It lacked the recognition of rights to aboriginal Americans, and the newly minted United States wasted no time in systematically annexing all Indian land it could, by rook or by crook, and killing off any redskins who got in their way.

Yet in spite of ourselves, we overcame, and built a (mostly) free society, king of the world's economies, and bastion of freedom to the world. We weren't ready, but we did it. How dare we say that Egypt, a civilization far older than ours, isn't ready?

Yes, there is a very real threat that the Muslim Brotherhood, or some other Islamic-based nonsense, will attempt to take over. But I don't think that will happen. I think there's one overriding factor in that region: tourism! Egypt's tourism is its lifeblood. Everyone there knows it. And they won't dare enact any Sharia reforms that offend the infidels who want to come to their country and spend lots of money seeing the pyramids of Giza, the temples of Luxor, or the city of Karnak. The economy of Egypt depends upon cooler heads prevailing, and so they shall. They will hold their Islamic extremism at bay, at least just enough so that lots of blasphemous men and (to their eyes) naked women will come there and spend money to keep their nation thriving. And with it, will thrive their democracy. As their tolerance grows, so will their secularism. As the most populous Arab nation becomes more Westernized than ever, it will spread the taste of freedom throughout the Muslim world.

And freedom, my friends, is the most addicting drug there is.

Eric

Atlas Shrugged - A Book Review

2011-01-24T21:45:00.000-08:00

After many weeks, I've finally finished the Audiobook version of Ayn Rand's classic novel, Atlas Shrugged. And it's a good thing that I did decide to tackle this project by audio, because it's one whale of a book! Eight segments of eight hours apiece! Jeez, Ayn Rand was one wordy-assed bitch! Christopher Hitchens, at a conference I attended in Madison, WI, back in 2008, described Ayn Rand's books as "unreadable." Now I know why.

I could easily attack her book on that particular point. I mean, five pages describing the look in Hank Reardon's eyes is ridiculous. Fifteen pages of a monologue given by (of all people) a tramp, taken in by Dagne Taggert, on the evils of the 20th Century Motor company for adopting Marx's ideal of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," was outright ludicrous. Any of us would have tossed the bum back out into the cold again for refusing to shut the fuck up! Over a hundred pages of a three-hour radio broadcast given by John Galt on the evils of regulating the producers of the goods people depend upon is weighty beyond endurance. Oh, there's some good quotables in various places of Rand's book, to be sure. But any of us would have been able to say in five words what she said in five paragraphs!

That having been said, we don't even need to attack her polemic on its sheer unnecessary bulk alone. Her points can be attacked on their own merit, or rather, the lack thereof. The primary thrust of her argument is that the producers have earned their wealth by means of providing that which the people most need in a national economy: Goods, services, the means to get them from point A to point B, and the millions of jobs these things create. Those who are too incompetent to be able to produce such things are depicted as "looters." They are people who cannot work for hire or make their own way in the world, so they turn to the government to prey upon those with the strength to earn their own living, sucking upon their lifeblood like swarms of bloodthirsty insects, on the seemingly moral principle that those of strength have a duty to those in need. The symbol of this condition is the Greek myth of Atlas: The wealth and strength of the producer is, like Atlas, holding the weight of the entire world upon his shoulders. But the world keeps making Atas' burden bigger and bigger, heavier and heavier, demanding more and more of his mighty shoulders. Finally, nearly crushed by the burden of the demanding masses, sweat pouring from his body and blood streaming down his chest, he decides to shrug off his burden, and let the world collapse! In Rand's novel, this means that, instead of the workers of a union going on strike, the producers and business owners form their own union and go on strike! One by one the business owners disappear, leaving the world to its own fate. Having turned the tables around on the entire world, the striking producers watch as the entire nation, indeed the entire world, lost and confused without the strength of those businessmen who deserved to succeed in the first place, sinks into destruction, drowning in a pool of chaos and incompetence. Then, they emerge out of hiding to establish a new order, with the first tenet of the new constitution being: "Congress shall make no law impeding the freedom of trade."

It's a passionate argument, and it reminds us of the importance of realizing that economics is a two-way street, relying on producers and consumers both. But upon closer scrutiny, it utterly fails. First off, in Rand's world, there are no corporations, only sole proprietorships. Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, and the empires of McDonald's, Coka Cola, Exxon, and Verizon had yet to fully emerge. Only some faint hints of what was to come existed, such as Ford, Firestone, and TWA. Those who own the businesses in Rand's novel do so because their own natural competence makes them worthy of it, almost as if they are born to their destiny -- destined for greatness just like Superman, or any other ultra-human hero. Even Rand herself admitted that the primary criticism she received regarding this was that such men don't exist. She argued back that her husband was such a man. Touching, but her husband was hardly a titan in business, and in reality, we find that the true titans of business are more lucky than good. Howard Hughes was a complete crackpot. Donald Trump was/is narcissist whose agent is ten times more competent than he is. Ted Turner is an incompetent nincompoop who built a cable network on debt and sheer luck. And littered in their shadow are a hundred thousand people with the intelligence of Rand's heroes: people like Fancisco D'Anconia, Henry Reardon, or Calvin Atwood, whose businesses were crushed by the winds of strange fortune, while less competent people reaped the success of being in the right place at the right time.

And her ultimate hero, the woman Dagne Taggert, who basically runs Taggert Transcontinental Railways, commands the respect of the entire company, while her incompetent brother, James Taggert, while technically in charge of the company, blunders his way through life riding his sister's skirt-tail. This is utterly surreal! In Rand's world, the glass ceiling for women in the workplace simply does not exist, and this is a gargantuan oversight on her part, especially in America of the 1950's! Rand makes this error largely because she was an anomaly during her lifetime, having a circle of loyal followers who made her into a cult of personality while she was alive. It simply never crossed her mind that a woman might have a very hard time being similar to her in that way! She'd been on a pedestal for so long that she'd forgotten what it looked like from down below. In real life, Dagne's incompetent brother would have taken all the credit, garnered all the respect, basked in all the glory and paid her next to nothing! Rand's was a fool's paradise.

Her depiction of academia and politics is equally as colored. While rightly criticizing the post-modernist view that there are no absolutes, it seems that everyone who criticizes industry, from college professors to politicians, are nothing but incompetent buffoons, incapable of putting a coherent argument together, or think their way out of a wet paper bag. Rand does not acknowledge the existence of the mistaken genius (whose existence is confirmed all around us every day!). The exaggeratedness of this contrast between protagonist and antagonist in Rand's work really does strain her credulity well past the breaking point. The opponents of industry are so unbelievably daft, that they attempt to make the rebel industrialist, John Galt, into a dictator just to save the economy. And when he refuses, they actually attempt to force him into becoming a dictator by subjecting him to torture! Even then, the imbeciles who engage in this cracked scheme end up failing when the electrical torture device they are using breaks down, and they are unable to fix it. John Galt, laughing on his torture bed, instructs them how to fix the machine they are too stupid to repair!

Yet Rand did have some remarkable insights. At the time she wrote her novel, the welfare state had yet to emerge in the way we know it today. There were welfare programs, yes, but people weren't dependent upon them. The New Deal was still new. Whole populations of inner-city slums weren't living on food stamps and welfare checks the way they do today. People regarded welfare as dishonorable, even filthy, and many would rather have starved than accept it. Today, people accept their welfare checks without batting an eyelash, and many deliberately have more babies out of wedlock just to garner themselves more funds. Rand herself died in 1982, and she must have laughed in her elder years, saying to whomever would listen to her, "I told you so!"

But we cannot forgive the utter callousness of her writing simply because she pointed out the tendency towards dependency within human nature. In Rand's world, those who suffer and die do so because their own incompetency brought their fate down upon their own heads. Unless the victim is an industrialist who suffers at the hand of well-meaning Marxism, there simply are no innocent victims. A train disaster on the Taggert line kills nearly two dozen civilians and several railroad workers, because an overbearing politician forces a stalled train into a petroleum-fumed tunnel using a coal-burning locomotive, suffocating the entire compliment of crew and passengers before the fumes ignite and destroy the tunnel. Rand then goes on to list the entire train's manifest (for seven goddamned pages!), noting how each and every one of them was an anti-industrialist with views bent on helping government looters stifle deserving businessmen of their just due. In sort, they all died, which was tragic, but it's not so bad, they all had it coming, because they were damned liberals.

What arrogance! What hubris! What utter myopia! Did Rand really think she could get away with such an unrealistic piece of fictional shit as that?! On the entire train, there was not one, single person with similar views to hers who died as an innocent?!

Nor does the surreal or unjust end there. As the industrialists vanish, and the world descends into economic chaos, New York loses electrical power, the transcontinental railroads are severed at the Mississippi, people die by the thousands, and those who survive return to horse-drawn covered wagon trains just to escape. And all these poor bastards who die in the collapse? Are they all guilty? According to Rand, yes! They were all complicit in the efforts to pick the pockets of those who had rightfully earned the money. For this, they were all rightly sentenced to die, hanged by a noose of their own making.

It's hard to overstate just how evil such a depiction can be. Not since the story of Noah's flood has their been written such a royal depiction of utter injustice, and people been so blind as to its obvious moral implications. But Rand is so blind to the moral implications of her own work that one of her heroes is one Ragnar Daniskiold, a pirate who attacks any ships loaded with cargo gotten by the government!

Yet the impact of Rand's work is undeniable. It played an important role in the development of the Chicago school of economics, whose mantra of free trade, while not without some merit, has the same level of callousness as Rand herself. The modern ultra-conservative tea-party movement, and its heartless rhetoric, can trace its roots back to her, and the evil that flowed from her typewriter.

Finally, decades later, an insane college-dropout named Jared Loughner would take something similar to her harsh execution of fictional characters and decide to execute people in real life, bringing home how tragic Rand's viewpoint is, when made tangible. (Loughner repeatedly stated how paper money, rather than gold or silver, was illegal and unjust - something Rand explicitly wrote about in her book.)

So why on earth, with the glaring deficiencies of Rand's writings, do people continue to buy into the viewpoint itself? How can people not see how the deserving Francisco D'Anconias of the world, and the even more deserving Dagne Taggerts of the world, go without, while the Jim Taggerts prosper, and still conclude that Rand was right? How can people still believe that all the rich are all deserving, while all the poor are broke entirely due to their own actions?

Who the hell knows? Or, as Rand would say, "Who is John Galt?"

Eric

Gun Rights, Gun Wrongs

2011-01-10T18:23:00.000-08:00

Everybody's weighing in on the horrific shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner, and why not? Nothing this horrific has happened since... well, since the school board shooting in Panama City, Florida just last month. Of course, no pretty female politician was killed in that act, committed by a black man, so you probably didn't hear about it. Acts of atrocity are really not that uncommon, if only one looks at the ruthless gang violence being deliberately fueled by our stubborn prohibition of cannabis. But I digress.

Some on the left are claiming weak gun laws. Those on the right are trying desperately to assure everyone that their harsh, militant rhetoric doesn't result in harsh militant actions. As usual, both sides are wrong.

And me? I've repeatedly said that I support a citizen's right to own and use defensive weapons. This incident allows me to put that to the test.

Loughner used a 10mm glock pistol. This is a weapon I would clearly put in the defensive weapon category, even with the extensive clips which store extra ammo, and which have been illegal in the past. At least one Wal-Mart was smart enough not to sell this crazy bastard ammo, but even the craziest of shitheads can act sane enough to walk into a store and buy a weapon without drawing too much suspicion. This doesn't rule out someone losing their sanity long after they've bought a weapon. So I can't attack accessibility. But I do have a point to make.

Loughner was described as a loner with radical ideas. He had a few friends, who lost contact with him for weeks at a time. This is a kid who was ostracized, outcast, and probably picked on in school. He found an outlet in radical violence because his crazy ideas were allowed to fester and grow. He didn't have a close circle of friends around him who helped hone his ideas. These friends weren't there to tell him his thinking was starting to go way out of line. They weren't there to make sure he was healthy enough to think better.

We humans are social creatures. While it's important to think for oneself, we also need friends, just as we need oxygen. People like Loughner are suffocating from this lack, and when they finally come up for air, wielding a pistol and shooting indiscriminately, we wonder what went wrong. What went wrong was that people let too much anti-social attitude grow in a corner of society, and it became a weed which choked the lives of many innocent people.

We seem to think being a loner is something of a virtue for some. The quiet kid is often thought to be pensive, harmless. But all too often such a kid takes his thoughts off into a dark place, and no one discovers it. We need to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen. We need to strengthen our social bonds at every level of society.

I have a homework assignment for everyone: Find where, in your lives, the anti-social person may be festering, and go make a friend. Strike up a conversation. Be a positive influence. Who knows? That person may decide to sell his glock instead of use it.

We don't need tougher gun laws. We need closer ties to our fellow humans. Evil needs privacy. Don't let it hide in the corner!

Eric

Okay, YOU Balance The Budget!

2011-01-05T02:07:00.000-08:00

Taking it easy over the last two weeks, I seem to have missed a lot. Our Trophy President seemed to be accomplishing everything over the lame duck session except making it stop snowing over the East Coast, and it seemed like I could pay attention to other things for awhile.

Not so, for now our newly elected Republicans, all but wearing red capes and spandex, are out to put a lid on government spending -- by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. And if the debt ceiling doesn't get raised? The government shuts down. Medicare and Medicaid? On hold. Retired and expecting a Social Security check? You're screwed! Interest owed to foreign nations who were so nice to lend to us? Fuck 'em! Strategic purchases of oil from Saudi Arabia? Nah, fuck the Saudis, too! In fact, fuck everybody unless we slash spending.

What heroism! What high moral standards! What tactical insanity! What utter disregard for the integrity of the dollar!

Look, it might sound like a great idea to say that the government needs to curtail spending, but when it comes to specifics, nobody in the GOP is saying WHAT, exactly, is going to get cut! And herein lies the sub-moronic-level stupidity of the posturing. A SPECIFIC budgetary plan must be offered BEFORE lines in the sand like this can be drawn. But for whatever reason, this young and naive electorate has adopted a "ready, fire, aim" approach to budget balancing.

That's a good way to shoot yourself in the foot.

So, to illustrate how silly this whole thing is, I'm challenging my readers (all four of them) to do what the GOP says it will do, but refuses to get specific about: balance the Budget! Do you support the Republicans? Great! Try to balance the budget yourself. I've got some numbers to give you.

Now, I haven't ordinarily been too pleased or proud to be an accountant by trade. It's boring work, and the term "bean-counter" is well-earned. But it does enable me to look over financial documents and more or less make sense of them. So I can break things down for you, the reader, to understand easily. Here, based on the official Summary Tables of the U.S. Federal Budget for 2011 are the revenues Uncle Sam will be making, and the items he'll be spending on. YOU decide how to cut spending, or increase revenues!

Projected federal receipts: $2.567 trillion.

Projected federal outlays: $3.834 trillion.

Projected 2011 deficit: $1.267 trillion.

So, to balance the budget, you'll need to slash about $1.267 trillion, or about 49% of our nation's tax revenue! If we hit the debt ceiling, and are unable to raise it, that's exactly what will need to be done. Actually, it's probably more like $1.29 trillion, because the official budgetary summary tables project that the Obama-era health care reform act will save $23 billion. (That's right, the non-partisan projections project savings, not increased spending!) So, in fairness, since Republicans want that repealed, we'd better add that $23 billion back into our projected deficit. Hence, the $1.29 trillion total. We'll round it up to $1.3 trillion.

Now, if you'd let the Bush-era tax cuts for the upper 2% of income earners expire, you'd have brought in an additional $700 billion (according to CBS news.com, Dec. 2, 2010), and you'd only be facing a deficit problem of $0.6 trillion, or $600 billion. Oh, well! Missed that opportunity, didn't ya? Too bad. Well, back to the problem at hand...

Here are the non-discretionary items (that is, stuff you CAN'T cut, either because it's an entitlement, or else cutting the spending would actually cost more due to fiscal or non-fiscal backlash). In other words, mandatory items:

Social Security $730 billion

Medicaire $492 billion

Medicaid $271 billion

Other Mandatory Programs: $596 billion

TARP: $11 billion

Interest on the debt: $250 billion

Disaster relief fund: $3 billion

These projections already include the new mandatory retirement age of 65, so we've cut about all we can from Social Security. Health care reform will mean less reliance upon Medicare and Medicaid, so these projected numbers are lower than they would be if health care reform were repealed, but we'll leave them at their current levels for now, just to make it easier.

Here are the discretionary (cuttable) items:

Security: $846 billion

Non-Security: $530 billion

Security is, of course, the military. It's so huge because we're fighting two wars (er, conflicts) in Iraq and Afghanistan. Non-discretionary is everything else. That means all federal employees, all research programs, all commissions to find ways of keeping Asian Carp out of Lake Michigan, all NASA programs, aid for public schools, etc.

Now, these numbers are rounded, so they don't add up to $3.834 (they add up to $3.728), but they give us a good percentage approximation to work with.

So what would YOU cut?

If we cut ALL discretionary spending, and that means recalling all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, that would save 1.37 trillion. Of course, it would cost money to recall our troops, put them on fuel-powered ships and planes to bring them home, and then cover their G.I. bills and medical costs, so it's impossible to cut all military troop spending. It would cost money to decommission and mothball all our navy ships and fighter planes. It would cost even more money to close and either lock-down or sell off all our military bases. Hell, shutting down our military might cost more than the military presently!

In the words of the banner that once hung behind Dubya, "Mission Accomplished?"

Well, no, obviously not. Even if we wanted to slash the military budget, nobody wants to leave Iraq and Afghanistan stranded. We could save a significant amount of money by scaling way back in both these countries, which we can do, but nobody wants to dismantle our entire military. We'll need to cut somewhere else.

How about other discretionary programs? John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House, insists that the new Republican Congress will only make cuts here. He says there will be no military cuts. Ah, but even if he cut everything from NASA to the U.S. Highway fund, he would only bring the deficit down by 530 billion. That's not even half of what we need to do to keep from getting a concussion when we hit the debt ceiling! We'd be $770 billion short. And with $846 billion locked up in military spending, we'll never reach that goal just by recalling all troops.

So, there we have it. It seems that the ONLY way to eliminate our deficit is to raise taxes. We simply have no choice. If the debt ceiling is hit, then in order to prevent the dollar from going insolvent, we may be forced, Republican and Democrat alike, to enact an emergency, retroactive tax hike. Think it won't happen? You're probably right, because threats to not vote for an increase in the debt ceiling are likely empty threats made by politicians playing a game of chicken. But if not, well, then, the shit hits the fan.

Now we know why, according to Accounting Today (Nov. 23), 45 millionaires signed a petition saying that the Bush-era tax cuts should expire for themselves. Now we know why Alan Greenspan said that the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire. Now we know why Steve Jobs and Bill Gates each endorsed an end to the Bush-era tax cuts for their own income brackets.

How would I balance the budget? Well, I'd try to strike a new compromise, and have Bush-era tax cuts be effective for 99% instead of 98%. (I know it's technically too late, but hope springs eternal.) That would both create jobs, and generate about $600 billion (the additional revenue doesn't decrease significantly because small businesses would not have a tax increase - see my previous posts - and most of the money comes from the uppermost portion of the upper 1% anyway). Next (I have to repeat this), I would legalize and tax cannabis. This would save 48 billion spent in a useless drug war, save additional billions in the federal prison system, and generate at least 200+ billion in new revenue. Call it a swing of $250 billion, at least. Next, I would reassess Iraq and Afghanistan. We know, from analysis, that we need at least 10,000 troops in Iraq, because the Shi'ite dominated Iraqi government, might turn to help from Iran if the U.S. has insufficient forces to protect the Iraq government from the Sunni rebels.

Oh, if only we hadn't put that ass-head Paul Bremer in charge! If only we hadn't hired Blackwater to shoot at civilians! If we hadn't needlessly pissed off the Sunnis, and made them feel like an important part of the New Iraq, or even a Federated Iraq. Then we could have saved BILLIONS! Oh, well. Missed that opportunity, didn't we?

Still, we have about 40 or 50 thousand troops in Iraq right now. We can dial that down, and still secure Iraq for the future.

How about Afghanistan? We're at about 94,000 troops there, including the additional 30,000 from Obama's troop surge. Clearly, Bin Laden isn't there. He's in northern Pakistan (if he's even alive, which I doubt). So how do we deal with this? We're starting to see the Karzai administration resulting in changes throughout Pakistan. Women are running for political office (much to the Taliban's ire), and we don't want to let that fall. So, I'd say at least 10,000 troops there as well. And a heavy reliance upon air power and technology.

Then there's Pakistan. How do we deal with Pakistan and the fact that Bin Laden might be there? Well, the Pakistanis are sovereign. We need them to cooperate with us in order for us to get Osama's ass out of there. We can achieve this by giving them more foreign aid.

Yes, spending more seems less than ideal, but we don't have to spend much more. If the Pakistani government succeeds in capturing Bin Laden and turning him over to us, there will be a tremendous backlash among the Islamic fundamentalists among their own country. The ruling powers of Pakistan will need assurances that they can remain in power in the midst of such backlash if they are to cooperate with us. We can give them that, in the form of money.

Right now, we spend about only 1 billion on Pakistan in terms of foreign aid. According to international political analyst, Bruce Bueno De Mesquita, we can assure Pakistan's cooperation if we raise that to 5 billion. Yes, there will be corruption, and there will be some wasteful spending, just as there has been wasteful spending of the $1 billion per year we've been paying them now. (For example, some of that money went to buy anti-aircraft guns. It's pretty clear that the Taliban have no aircraft! The AA weapons were meant for India!) Still, if that's what it takes to secure Pakistan's cooperation, and finally get Bin Laden, it's worth the money.

Frankly, I think Bin Laden is dead. It's entirely possible that Pakistan may pretend that he's still alive just to secure the receipt of more U.S. funds. But if they deliver Bin Laden's head, so much the better. Years later, as Pakistan stabilizes, we can always say Osama is dead, and cut funds. (Or, better, yet, threaten to cut funds if they don't deliver his head!) Besides, $5 billion is small change when compared with the cost of invading northern Pakistan. We can't win positive relations with its people by dropping food on them only during natural disasters such as flooding or earthquakes.

So here's where I'm going with this: Increasing foreign aid to Pakistan while dropping (but not eliminating) our troop strength in Iraq and Afghanistan, together with military cuts elsewhere, such as weapons development, redundant military bases, and retirement and non-retention of existing personnel, could easily drop our military budget by $450 billion at least, still leaving the Pentagon with a whopping $400 billion to play with in the future. (They really ought to be happy with that!) With the increase of $4 billion in aid to Pakistan, that's a $446 billion dollar spending cut for Uncle Sam.

Sum totals: $600 billion in tax receipts from the upper 1%, plus $250 billion in new revenues from ending prohibition on cannabis, plus $446 billion in military budget cuts, gives us 1.296 trillion income-vs.-expenditure difference in the national budget, which is now balanced.

Whew! What a job!

You know, I'm forced to retract a claim I made in earlier blog posts. Looking at our nation's books, it's clear that legalizing and taxing cannabis would generate a lot of revenue, but not enough to eliminate the deficit, begin paying the national debt, AND pay for health care. Someday, when all our troops are gone from Asia Minor, and our military budget is even lower, it will be. But not right now. Eliminating the national debt would free up another $250 million to pay for health care as well.

Oh, shit! We still have to pay down the $10.498 trillion dollar national debt, don't we? Ah, but that's a subject for a later blog post!

Eric

For Christmas: Pretty Maids All In A Row

2010-12-25T04:23:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Christmas, and I'm going to post something that has nothing to do with Christmas. Not because I'm anti-holiday or anything, I'm just maxed out on the Hallmark-ization of it all. So, I'm posting something totally not serious. It's my list of the hottest women.

Okay, we all hate these type of articles in Maxim. Then we all read them. Go figure.

There are more than ten – I refuse to be bottled up by some asinine round-number top-ten kind of limitation. The qualifications for this list were as follows: 1.) Each woman is a celebrity, defined as being someone who you would at least remotely have heard of. 2.) Each woman, in her prime (loosely defined as 20-to-30 something), was/is one who is physically the most attractive to me. And yes, that means brains played an important role. Certain women I’ve met would, could, and do privately make the list, such as my girlfriend, obviously, but you people out there don’t know who my girlfriend is, anyway. (And I’m keeping it that way. She’s mine, you vultures!) Besides, this is pretty much a celebrity-only thing.

1. Christina Hendricks Known better as Saffron on Joss Whedon’s short-lived series, Firefly, and also as Joan Holloway on the AMC series Mad Men, this babe is unbelievable! Perfect, perfect, perfect!

2. Audrey Hepburn Sorry, but perfection is perfection. A beauty both inside and out, she made her fortune being irresistible, then poured her energies into helping those less fortunate. I wouldn’t Wait Until Dark to take this Fair Lady out for a Roman Holiday.

3. Lala Ward She’s Romana from the Dr. Who series during the Tom Bakker era, and she’s amazing! Currently, she’s married to a hero of mine, Richard Dawkins. Lucky guy!

4. Nina Hartley My favorite porn-queen! Brains and beauty! Best ass ever, and her mind is every bit as amazing as her body. I’d do her today in a heartbeat, but she easily makes the list in my Wayback machine.

5. Kirsten Dunst She once played a child vampire, then grew up to become a killer in other ways. Oh, that Irish face!

6. Susan Sarandon And the prize for best ass outside of porn goes to… Yes, her! Is there any doubt? Admit it, you still want her, too!

7. Jennifer Connelly Need I say more?

8. Erin McKean I’ll bet you’ve never heard of her. She’s a lexicographer – someone whose job it is to catalog words in language. She emerged on the public scene at the TED conference in 2008, and I just fell in love with her. She’s so damned cute!

9. Pat Benatar File this one under ‘D’ for “Duh!”

10. Miwa Yoshida She is only the second pop singer to make the list. It’s difficult to impress me with a diva. But Japanese rock-band Dreams Come True is one of the biggest hits of Nippon, largely due to the talents of this young lady. Although barely known in the States, she has an infectiousness which cannot be denied, and a voice that sounds like Ella Fitzgerald!

11. Nicole De Boer She’s Ezri Dax from Deep Space Nine, and the girl who should never have gotten killed in the movie Cube.

12. Anneke Rudegeair Better known as Soccergirl, of the podcast, Soccergirl, Inc. She’s my favorite skeptic-chick. Smart, fun, and a totally uninhibited sexual exhibitionist, she’s exactly my type! She’d score way, way higher on this list except 1.) she’s married, and 2.) she dumped one of my favorite musicians.

13. Rebecca Watson Also an awesome skeptic-chic, and equally hot, though not the proud sex queen that Soggergirl is. She continues to podcast for the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, even though she lives with her (sigh!) husband in England.

14. Kavi Ladnier What, never heard of her? Oh, yes you have! She played Mira, the luckless girlfriend of Mohinder Suresh in the TV hit, Heroes.

15. Scarlett Johansen She is way, way hotter as a brunette! What a lumbar curve on her!

Wayside entries (women who used to be on this list but got bumped):

Natalie Portman – Star Wars I killed the magic.

Sandra Bullock – She’s Miss Congeneality.

Jill Hennessy – I miss her days on Law & Order.

Jeri Ryan – Seven of Nine just doesn’t do it for me at Boston Public.

Halle Berry – She once took me by Storm, but she’s no Bond-woman.

Angelina Jolie – I’m just burned out on all the hype.

Jennifer Lopez – Her nice ass got her on the list. Her ‘bitchy’ got her kicked off.

Kristin Davis – Tied with Cynthia Nixon. In fact, most of the side-women and all the leads from the cast of Sex In The City are women I’d love to be with, but the movies are just plain wrecking the chemistry.

Gillian Anderson – Love Scully. But damn that punk-ass Mulder!

Callista Flockhart – She got taken off the market by Harrison Ford, so she dropped off the chart.

Rachel Weisz - That incident with the Scorpion King was too much.

Eric

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

2010-12-19T23:36:00.000-08:00

So, it appears that the policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, will be repealed from the military. I have only a couple of brief thoughts about that:

First, let me say something that should be obvious: If someone's wearing the uniform of the United States military, and is thereby willing to potentially die to defend America, freedom, and democracy, then that person has EARNED the right to have consensual sex with whomever he or she wishes! This should be blindingly clear, especially to military veterans! Hell, soldiers could fuck a sheep for all I care, if they so wish, and I would endorse the idea if I weren't convinced that animals can't give consent any more than teenagers can. (To hell with P.E.T.A.)

Second, this now makes it official that Obama has now succeeded everywhere, and in every field, that Clinton failed in. Not perfectly, but he has. This, in spite of having more irrational hatred and intolerant non-cooperation than any other president in history. So to all who walk the razor's edge of racism in opposing him, all I can say is, ya done failed! And you'll go on failing, so long as what drives you is fear and hatred.

This nation may just yet turn out to be the Land of the Free.

Eric

A Frank Talk About Taxes

2010-12-14T23:07:00.000-08:00

Let's be blunt about taxes, and the arguments about taxation in politics today.

The argument in favor of cutting taxes when we have a huge budget deficit may seem absurd, but there is a certain logic behind it. The general idea is that lower taxes result in greater economic growth and job creation, which in turn leads to more tax revenue coming into the government, not less. It's akin to the strategy of a store lowering prices in order to generate more revenue in sales. It may seem suicidal to lower prices at first, but the increased sales more than makes up for the loss afterward. In the case of government, lower taxes result in more growth, more jobs, and that translates to greater tax revenues in a healthier economy.

But there needs to be a delicate balance, here. After all, if a store cuts prices too low, it cannot make a profit off sales, no matter how great the sales volume, because the cost of goods and of overhead becomes greater than the amount made upon resale. The store must sell more than it buys for in order to survive. Thus, a store wants to keep prices low, but not too low, in order to maximize profit.

In like manner, a government wants to set its tax rate at an optimal level. It wants to keep tax rates for the working classes low, and high only upon those individuals who are so wealthy that they no longer contribute to job creation. But if it sets this rate too low, particularly on the very wealthiest, it runs the risk of not being able to sustain entitlements (that is, tax-spending that politicians can't cut).

It's an optimization problem: At what tax rate does a government maximize its own revenues?

Now, if by now, you're expecting me to argue that the upper 2% should get smacked down to pre-Bush II era levels, you would be wrong. Surprised? You shouldn't be. The upper 2% basically comprises people who make more than $250,000 per year. There are a large number of small and medium-sized businesses which are sole proprietorships making between $250,000 and $500,000 per year, and which employ anywhere between 30 and 1000 people at a crack, or more. Small firms, law practices, start-ups, top-notch surgeons and contracting companies live here. These are more or less in the lower-half of the upper 2%: the ones who make more than 98% of the people out there, but not more than those who make more than 99% of the people.

In that uppermost 1% lie an entirely different category of wealthy people. Very few small or medium business owners reside here, and if they do own a business, it's a mega-business. Maybe an executive boardmember of a multi-national, but more likely someone who makes the majority of his money via capital gains. In short, someone who, if given a tax cut, will pocket it rather than make new jobs. Here, you might find aquisition sharks, trust-fund babies, CEO's of credit card companies, and so forth. You also find people who are what I refer to as "special salaries," such as actors, major-league sports athletes, authors, certain artists, film and television producers/directors, and others who normally don't make shit, except for a very elite few who are lucky enough to be famous doing it.

Bottom line is this: If one keeps the taxes low on the lower half of the upper 2%, one does create economic growth. Republicans actually have a legitimate gripe, here! But guess how many jobs are created by cutting the taxes for the top 1% of income earners?

The answer is, damned near none!

A much more acceptable compromise for our Trophy President would have been to have agreed to making the Bush tax cuts permanent for 99% rather than 98% of all Americans, but holding the line on taxes for those rich enough to rest on their laurels and/or who create no jobs. I would very much have liked to see that. Unfortunately, we have a tax compromise that does not do this, but at least does not hammer the upper-tier of the small businessman. It's a tough compromise, but liberal activists who are urging me to contact my congressmen and senators to urge them to vote against this deal will get no response from me. The lesser of two evils is to let this compromise stand!

This will be a key issue in 2012, and if Obama wins, this compromise, for all the bitching liberals do about it, will be why. But I suggest the Dems change their focus. Instead of saying no to the richest 2%, how about saying no to the richest 1% instead? Maybe even the richest 0.5%?

Nah, that would make too much sense!

Eric

Better Leaders, Or Better Aides?

2010-12-08T22:23:00.000-08:00

We've had some interesting leaders here in the U.S. recently. And throughout history, some interesting leaders outside of the U.S. have come and gone. Sometimes, we get a brilliant leader who is surrounded by idiots and other times we get a complete idiot surrounded by brilliant aides. I wonder, which is better?

Certainly, it seems that an idiot in the White House can do well with highly competent aides surrounding him. On the other hand, a highly intelligent President really can't do much when surrounded by morons. President Obama, perhaps the brightest president we've had since Eisenhower, is proving that. On the other hand, Bush II showed that one can be a highly effective moron when surrounded by intelligent people. By implication, electing another brilliant person after 2016, such as Hillary Clinton, might not be such a good idea. Or, flip side, voting for Sarah Palin in 2012 might not be such a distaster.

Or would it?

On second thought, nah. Bush was effective, but effective at rising up ten trillion of the 14 trillion in debt we're currently saddled with. Threw out the Constitution with Guantanomo Bay. Started two wars, botched them, then stayed firmly committed to his mistake. By contrast, Obama has, in spite of everything, accomplished everything Clinton failed to do in his first two years, albeit imperfectly. Churchill was a brilliant man who saved Britain while surrounded by dunderheads, while simultaneously Hitler, while surrounded by near geniuses, drove Germany into the ground with silly wartime tactics.

No, I'll stick with voting for brilliant presidents. Presidents who are, oddly, attacked as "elitist" for their brilliance (as if we wanted any other kind of leader).

Eric