There are many views about how to move the US out of our current economic recession. At their interesting Presidential Nominating Convention, held in Tampa last week,  the GOP restated its confidence in the natural business cycle - a nineteenth century idea which suggested that the normal economic cycle of boom and bust could be best controlled by reducing taxes which would allow more money to be spent in production and industry, thus increasing the money in circulation and causing business to flourish and more jobs to be created. A noble thought - and one which had some credence during the era of growth and development of manufacturing. Unfortunately, the US no longer leads the world in basic manufacturing. Our leadership is in advanced technology and finance - neither of which has very heavy short term employment fluctuation. 

As a result of this change in our economy, there is more emphasis placed on the growth of small business - which mostly provides for direct consumer needs and is very sensitive to economic fluctuation. this part of the economy FOLLOWS the business cycle and is very difficult to stimulate directly; tax increase and decrease has little or no direct effect. If you want to stimulate small business, you have to somehow provide more of a demand for their services and products. If these small businesses are booming, they hire more employees - because they need them - because there is increased demand for their services and products.

How do you increase the need for small business needs and products?  By direct input of money into the system so that more people can afford the products. How do you do that? By targeted government action - investing in the infrastructure; both physical (roads and bridges, etc) and cultural (teachers, police, firefighters, etc) with moderate increased taxation; or sadly, by developing a wartime economy - with very high taxes (in the name of necessity for survival) Of course this can be accomplished without increased taxation -just borrow the money (Sound familiar?)

That's what the last several Republican administrations have done - now they want us to let them do it again, promising us that somehow the increasing deficit and debt will go away if they just lower taxes for everybody.

I'm still doing my part to keep Xanga from becoming too frivolous or degenerating into a flame pit, but maybe not often enough.

I'm bothered by the current political arguments which seem to ignore some basic historic facts.

In the 1930's, FDR and his New Deal worked very hard to pull the US out of the great depression. The New Deal depended on several factors: Business was encouraged by the RFC,  workers inspired by the WPA and CCC, the infrastructure was rebuilt and upgraded by the PWA, and the whole grand plan was based on the NRA  (get out your HS history book to look up all those acronyms, if you're interested). Banks were re-regulated, retirees were given the first safety net in US history and the whole program was widely and loudly publicized. Most citizens were encouraged and things were looking up when the very conservative Supreme Court began to overturn the basic elements - most notably the National Recovery Act. 

This led to a considerable slowing in recovery from the depression. In the late thirties, jobs were still hard to find and industrial output was slowing - then along came World War II and the economic buildup, to, through, and after the war led to the US economy taking off to unbelievable heights.

The point is, that even though the government - far the largest single employer and consumer in any developed economy - is limited in its ability to influence growth. It can and must, however, be the leader in economic growth encouragement. In the late 1930's the New Dealers decided  or were forced to cut back on government spending and the economy slowed its recovery rate.

Currently, the role of government spending has been drastically curtailed - the excuse being the public debt - and recovery has been slower than it should have been. Cutting government expenditures has actually increased the unemployment rate as government workers have been laid off. we can expect this to continue as the Afghan War winds down and military expenditures are reduced. Obama's administration has done remarkably well despite these constraints, but is given little credit.

One obvious solution is to increase government domestic spending in a manner which will stimulate the rest of the economy. Rebuilding the infrastructure is an example where one dollar of government money is magnified several times as it circulates through the rest of the system. Higher taxes have consistently shown returns far in excess of their original amount. That government "Rathole" leads directly into the middle class pocket.

A balanced budget will slowly reduce the amount of debt service (interest on borrowed money) and such a budget should be based on a sensible amount of tax money - don't depend on pie-in-the-sky promises that lower taxes will lead to an increased growth rate - that has never happened yet and is partly how we got in this mess in the first place.

 Socrates_cafe has asked the question : 

What is the real difference between the views of the  present candidates in the upcoming U.S. presidential election?

Much has been said - mostly by Republican candidates for political office - that the US should definitely NOT dare to raise taxes on "Job Creators"- that is- on small (or large) businessmen. We are not talking corporate taxes here, rather individual income taxes. How this is supposed to relate to the willingness of businessmen to increase their business activity is never explained - for a good reason.

The personal income tax has  no  negative relationship or impact on business activity, except that too low taxes mean less government spending and less money in circulation and thus an economic slowdown with lower business activity.  Indeed, the US's greatest growth spurt in modern times - the '50s - came at a time when the upper income tax rates were more than twice as high as they would be if the proposed rates are adopted.

Jobs are created by Businesses when there is increased demand for the business's products and services, independently from the tax rate the business owners must pay. Indeed, if their profits are reduced by higher taxes, they have great incentive to increase their business activity - not decrease it.

I wish the Democrats would start calling our current economic problems what they are: A Recession caused and maintained by one political party.

During the first few years of this century a combination of decisions by the Republican Party leaders, including the presidency of G W Bush, which included the decisions to deregulate much of Wall street and even encourage risky investment behavior, reduce government income, and engage in two very expensive wars, led to a general collapse of the investment banking infrastructure and rise in the US public debt and yearly budget deficit which snowballed into a world-wide economic collapse.

This led to the decision to use the US government's faith and credit to bail out Wall Street and the election of Barak Obama and a Democratic Congress. Obama suggested two major reforms during his first year in office: A major Health Reform Bill, and an immediate stimulus designed to add more jobs.

The Republican congressional minority managed to control and thwart much of the original idea behind Health Reform, that of removing major health financing from the private insurance industry - as had been done with Medicare - and thus easing the insurance load from industry; and at the same time insuring the continuing domination of health care by the insurance industry.

At the same time, a Republican House majority beginning in 2011, managed to continue to thwart Democratic attempts to use government stimulus to re-start the economy. A unified Republican Senate minority whose openly stated major goal was to defeat Obama's efforts to end the recession had resulted in thwarting many of his programs.

Philosophically, it could be argued that government (taxpayer) stimulus was the best way to do this, or that private competitive business was the way to go, but the practical result of the Republican obstruction is that little has been tried or accomplished. Those acts Obama has managed to get through congress have had a modest positive effect but Republican demands for government spending reduction at national and state levels  has led to the loss of many public sector jobs - mostly teachers, police and firefighters. These public sector job losses have an immediate and obvious impact on local economies: those public salaries are not going back into the private economy - a sure case of penny -wise and pound foolish political decision making.

The only obvious quick solution to our present economic mess is election of a Democratic veto-proof congress as well as the re-election of Barak Obama. 

Well, we've finally arrived up here for the Summer/fall. The drive was mostly over the weekend and was faster and easier than usual.

Our cottage is pretty remote and hard driving (We have a Ford Explorer with 4-wheel drive) but was all set up and ready for us- our caretakers are the best!

We are on the shore of a large lake and noticed new inhabitants the next morning - a family of Canada Geese (ma, pa, and four half-grown goslings).

They apparently like our nice easy-access rocks out from the shore. Our resident loons serenade us all night and so far we've seen one fawn.

I'll write more about DownEast after we get settled.

I seems to me that the political arena is a natural for bullies, and the current political season seems to be ample confirmation.

A look at the recent Republican Presidential Primaries shows a lot of what I would call bullying: Vicious ad hominim TV attacks on other candidates - browbeating and ridiculing during debates (If you could call them debates), and widespread use of PAC ads - which are encouraged by the candidates.

Historically there is some evidence that the presumed Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, was a bully in school and his direction of Bain Capital seems to indicate continued tendencies. I don't know his record as governor of Mass. - does anyone here?

Do we want to elect a bully as President of the U.S.?

I have been reading about sociopathic/psychopathic personalities and was surprised to find that it is estimated that almost 40% of major company CEOs probably are - or at least exhibit sociopathic/
psychopathic personality traits. I am wondering about politicians.
How many politicians - past and current - exhibit these traits? Names?

Here is a list of ways to identify a sociopath. This list is from "Profile of a Sociopath." Is is a pretty good list of sociopathic indicators.
•Glibness/superficial charm
•Manipulative and conning
•Grandiose sense of self
•Pathological lying
•Lack of remorse, shame or guilt
•Shallow emotions
•Incapacity for love
•Need for stimulation
•Callousness/lack of empathy
•Poor behavioral controls/impulsive nature
•Early behavior problems/juvenile delinquency
•Irresponsibility/unreliability
•Promiscuous sexual behavior/infidelity
•Lack of realistic life plan/parasitic lifestyle
•Criminal or entrepreneurial versatility
•Contemptuous of those who seek to understand them
•Does not perceive that anything is wrong with them
•Authoritarian
•Secretive
•Paranoid
•Only rarely in difficulty with the law, but seeks out situations where their tyrannical behavior will be tolerated, condoned, or admired
•Conventional appearance
•Goal of enslavement of their victim(s)
•Exercises despotic control over every aspect of the victim's life
•Has an emotional need to justify their crimes and therefore needs their victim's affirmation (respect, gratitude and love)
•Ultimate goal is the creation of a willing victim
•Incapable of real human attachment to another
•Unable to feel remorse or guilt
•Narcissism, grandiosity (self-importance not based on achievements)
•May state readily that their goal is to rule the world
(These are from Dr. Robert Hare's list of psychopathic personality traits - he's the one who suggested the high number of socio/psychopaths in big business)

(Obviously, in order to be a sociopath a person doesn't have to exhibit anything like all the above. Usually, the lack of a conscience, the manipulation of others, dishonesty and the inability to love and/or have lasting and profound personal relations and cruelty are key symptoms and often much more revealing than having been in trouble with the courts.)

Well, so far the alligator hasn't eaten any of the children. The next-door neighbor not only feeds the alligator - he also wades around in the lake while fixing his dock.
This part of North Florida has only the one large town - Tallahassee (The state capital). The town is, as you might expect, kept very well landscaped and has lots of green spaces and what are called canopy roads - these are roads the live oaks meet over - they can't be widened which irritates commuters - but they are beautiful to drive down.
Tallahassee is about 20 miles from the Gulf of Mexico and this part of the Gulf Coast is known as the "Forgotten Coast" because there are no large - or even medium sized - towns and very attractive barrier islands. St. George Island is quite well known - sits about six miles off the mainland. Of its twenty-mile length, a full half is state park.
It's just off-shore from Apalachicola - which has one traffic light.
This part of Florida reminds me of the Florida I grew up in - a long time ago.

My nephew and his new wife recently bought a cottage on a cypress lake here in North Florida. It has all the resident wildlife you would imagine, including a rather large resident bull alligator (8-10 foot range) who lets them know when he is hungry or horny with very loud bellows. He generally stays over on the other side of the arm of the lake they live on, but lately their neighbor has taken to feeding him and he has become quite friendly (?).
The problem is, they have grandchildren coming to visit - and they like the grandkids.
Any suggestions?

Last week's Supreme court discussions seemed to point out the questionable constitutionality of attempting universal healthcare by requiring citizens to purchase commercial health insurance and fining them if they don't.
As the justices seemed to indicate, this might open the door to government assuming unlimited power over the private economic life of citizens - i.e. requiring citizens to economically interact with other private citizens - and telling them how they should do it.
There is, however, no doubt that the government has the power to tax. That power is controlled by Congress and it's limits are strictly political. Congress could, if it chooses, make health care available to all citizens and tax them to pay for it; this is how universal health are is handled in most developed countries.
Opponents of this have grumbled about how if government controlled our health care, then bureaucrats could ration it out and individual citizens' doctor-patient relationships would be somehow damaged. These critics seem to ignore the present situation.
Most citizens already have their healthcare bureaucratically controlled - but most of those bureaucrats work for private for-profit insurance companies. Those senior citizens on Medicare (the existing single-payer, government-controlled healthcare system) are generally better served and happier than those of us still in the private system - a system which goes much further than government would ever dare in rationing care. The citizen on Medicare may select his doctors without much limitation. Few private programs are as flexible. The present Medicare system is paid for partly through direct deduction from Social Security payments and partly through FICA tax withholding. Presumably a universal single-payer system would simply be a rise in FICA/IRS tax payments with a corresponding drastic drop in the cost of health insurance to the individuals and their employers - who could them give their workers a considerable raise.
The US presently leads the world in only one segment of citizen's healthcare. It is twice as expensive for the individual citizen as the next most expensive nation. In all other segments, other nations do a better healthcare job than the US.

The other day I decided that no matter how I adjusted the sound, the actors on TV were not going to speak more clearly and that perhaps the problem was not their poor diction - especially the inhabitants of Downton Abby and other Brit imports; but rather closer to home. Maybe my ears or thereabouts
I let my fingers do the walking and made an appointment with the first real person who answered (about the third call I made). Turned out that they were the local agents for a Danish hearing aid developer - Oticon.
I went through the rather comprehensive hearing evaluation - the local Au D and her visiting boss- apparently the US representative for Oticon, or one of them anyway. She was also a "Doctor of Audiology" were most thorough. A sound-proof room, various earphone and bone induction devises, computers,etc. The whole test procedure took almost an hour.
The tests determined that I have 40% unaided discrimination in my right ear, 76% in the left with pretty complete loss of higher tones in both. They explained that the high tones were what determined understanding of most conversation and that they had just the thing (s).
They plugged one of these tiny little gadgets in each ear - hooked up to a computer and proceeded to set them while we talked and listened to music. They said they came in three levels of complexity and suggested I wear a pair of the mid-level aids - set to my requirements - home for a week or so before committing myself to the rather steep purchase price.
I've worn them for several days now and I find them rather remarkable.
Each has a tiny speaker which fits deep in your ear connected to a very small ovoid which fits behind each ear. They are almost unnoticeable - much more so than the behind the ear hearing aids I've seen on others. There is no noticeable increase in sound - they don't amplify - but suddenly everything is much brighter and people have stopped mumbling.
I can use earphones and the telephone just as always.
So far, I'm sold.
A few years ago I had cataracts removed and new plastic lenses implanted in my eyes and last year got new fancy metal knees. I guess at this rate, when I die, instead of being buried, I'll be recycled.

All cultures exist in an ever-changing environment with new problems and situations arising which the culture must confront and deal with. This is done through the application of the culture's basic values to the situation. An example of this might be how the American culture deals with the problem of immigration.

The American Basic Value system is generally based on the following values:
Liberty/Freedom
Justice
Individual worth
Industry
Rationality
Honesty
Friendliness
Bravery
Cleanliness
Equality
Respect for others

It is how these values are applied to everyday life and situations, generally within the framework of one or more of the Social Institutional Frameworks (Family, Education, Religion, Economics, or Government) each of which has its particular responsibilities within the culture, that determines how well the culture copes with its problems.

Because a culture's problems must be confronted using the current basic value interpretations, cultures may become stressed when the interpretations offer solutions that no longer fit the situation, or when current value interpretations conflict - as is the case with the present American illegal immigration problem.

This problem is a fairly long-standing one. For most of American History, immigrants were welcomed, but beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the early twentieth, immigration patterns changed and American basic values, which had been accepting of individuals - mostly because they were from similar north european cultures - had trouble changing their interpretation to include individuals from very different middle and eastern europe - these immigrants had great difficulty in being accepted by the resident population. Black slaves and ex-slaves had never been accepted as individuals worthy of respect and there was widespread prejudice against them. The Blacks were,however, already here and attempts to return them the Africa were never very widespread. Orientals, who had been encouraged to immigrate as workers were deemed ineligible for citizenship and their native-born descendants faced the same discrimination as other groups judged to be "Not like us" thus unworthy of acceptance. American Indians likewise faced this discrimination.

It was decided during the 1920s that future immigration would be severely restricted with quotas for those of different areas - mostly from northern europe, but not very many from anywhere. Casual illegal immigration from Mexico was overlooked for many years as western farm owners needed cheap labor and gradually a large resident Latino population of mixed illegals" and their US-born and thus legal descendants. As this population grew larger and more politically active, and as the American interpretation of the values of Individual worth and Equality changed so as to begin acceptance of non-european groups, there has been considerable argument and conflict over just how far the values should be reinterpreted .

The differences and problems over value reinterpretation and how well the problems are solved is called culture lag. Every culture experiences this culture lag and value reinterpretation is pretty much constant but occasionally the lag becomes so pronounced that fundimental culture change results. This, for example, happened in the US during the 1960s - a period of pretty fundimental change in our basic interpretations of the Equality, Respect for Others, Freedom, and individual worth basic values. Riots, assignations, and political upheaval were some of the results during that unhappy decade.

The current political situation shows a good example of the culture lag-change in action. Those candidates representing those opposed to culture change generally present conservative and reactionary views while those supporting change obviously are progressive. Since the change is real, there is no hope that those opposed can do much to avoid it and can only slow the process. How values are interpreted very much depends on how we choose to do it and our choices are always within the framework of our existing basic value system. The speed of interpretation is determined by necessity and general consensus - which is reached fairly slowly. If no consensus is reached, the culture lag grows larger and larger and the culture may actually collapse or change so drastically that it becomes unrecognizable and a new culture rises from the ashes of the old.

I notice the US school system problems - both perceived and real - once again being raised in the current political debates. Since education was my life's work, I think I can comment on some of the issues with a little expertise.

Much has been said about how federal intervention in local schools is a bad thing. It's my experience that such intervention has mostly been monetary. I, for example, got to attend a couple of NDEA summer institutes which were most helpful in my teaching. they were not "How to teach this" time wasters, but rather loaded with info from real experts - face to face - in their subjects (The two I attended were on the position of the US in World Affairs and US relations with the Non-Western World) As I was teaching those subjects, it was nice to have the opportunity to meet and hear from world-class experts in interesting environments (World Bank, UN, various embassies, etc).

Of course, when the feds contribute, they want the school systems to meet at least minimum standards. the same is true of state aid to local school districts. In modern times, most states have tried to assure at least minimum standards and most have taken over the basic financing of local systems. In every case,however, the local school boards set policies and deal with teacher contracts. All states have minimum teacher certification requirements.

The most pressing problem with US education seems to be the outcome. We are not satisfied with the educational results - our graduates don't seem to be as well educated as we expect - or at least some of them are not. There are a number of solutions to this problem. We might hire more and better teachers - but this will cost a good deal more. For most of US history, education was subsidized by bright women who had few other employment opportunities, but this is no longer the case - now you get what you pay for. there are not many of us so dedicated to teaching that we are willing to sacrifice better financial opportunities.

Another suggestion is that we should focus on teaching those willing and able to be taught. the idea of "No child left behind"is a noble one, but all children are certainly not equally able or willing to learn as much or at the same rate.
Teaching each child effectively at an individualized rate is both expensive and difficult and so far we have shown little willingness to spend anywhere near the needed amount. The rise of interactive media may be a solution to this, but so far computer-focused education is used by only a very small fraction of educational systems, and at its present level of development, it has a great many problems in implementation.

Teachers' Unions are a favorite whipping boy. Somehow we have decided that those who have dedicated their lives to teaching our kids are not interested in whether the kids learn, but in keeping their jobs. The idea that some protection from the vagaries of political domination might allow the teacher to do what he/she does best is seldom expressed. That, after all, is what tenure is all about - protecting the teachers so they can teach. Teaching is not an industrial occupation where you can measure effectiveness by the number of widgets produced. It is after all, a profession requiring advanced education and some skill. If you have sub-standard teaching, it's probably your fault for hiring the nitwit in the first place - but then at the salary offered, maybe that's all that you could get. All local systems I know of have a one to three year trial period where incompetent teachers can be weeded out. If there is a problem, it's more likely with the "weeders" than with the classroom teachers.

Other solutions offered include home-schooling and charter schools. Both of these alternatives have their own problems and neither has shown any particular advantage over more traditional schooling. Their main attraction seems to be that they are different - and thus must be better. Religious education and schooling varies widely and has the problem of being somewhat divisive in its outcome. Since one goal of education is (and should be) social integration, any system that does not include this aspect is questionable - but of course some of us like this idea.

I'm appalled at the current state of politics within the Republican Party.
There seems to be no practical choice of a qualified candidate for President. The top runners include a very rich and successful capitalist who seems completely out of touch with the country's economic problems; a megalomaniac so unable to cooperate that he was thrown out of his powerful political position by members of his own party - and convicted of unethical conduct at the same time; an unsuccessful political hack who seems willing to do or say anything to attract votes; and a libertarian who apparently does not believe in modern economic realities.
They all seem to have the same one stated goal - to defeat the current President. They offer no solution to the present economic woes of the country except to remove all controls and reduce the government's power to guide and stimulate the economy despite past clear demonstrations that this is not a successful solution - as evidenced by the problems such policies have caused in the immediate past.
The present state of our political and economic affairs would seem to offer a perfect opening for a candidate willing to work for the good of all Americans by cooperating with the Democrats and doing whatever it takes to get the country back on track, but what the Republicans offer instead is more political strife supporting that part of the population which certainly doesn't need it.
One curious measure of the attitude of the various candidates is their insistence on being called by descriptive titles referring to positions they once held: Speaker, Governor, Senator, even though they no longer hold these positions.

Recently my local paper featured a comment by Raymond Chambers commenting on Devoe Moore's "My View"article blaming the current pessimism over the future of the American dream in which he essentially blames too much government intervention causing private entrepreneurs to stop investing in the growth of the US economy.
Here's Chambers' answer to that view in its entirety:

Businesses shouldn’t be running America


Re: “The American dream is in peril” (My View, Dec. 26).

Absolutely astonish­ing! DeVoe Moore’s My View was eloquently correct on two points: (1) the dream is in peril and (2) we’ve got to stop operating as usual. On everything else, his argu­ments were false.

First, he credits pri­vate entrepreneurs for investing to make Amer­ica great. Completely wrong. From exploration and opening the West, to the railroads, to the land grants and universities, to the highways, to safe drugs, to safe flying, to safe cars, to computers and more, it was the gov­ernment either forcing, encouraging or outright financing what private “entrepreneurs” or com­panies were unwilling or unable to do. Even then, as President Obama has dis­covered, business may not use the incentive money, instead choosing to hoard the stimulus cash.

Second, he implies that business has selfless­ly improved the coun­try throughout the years. Again wrong. From at least the Robber Barons to the meat packing scan­dals, from shooting union organizers to the “unsafe at any speed” cars, from Richard Nixon’s dead­ly New Drug Application process to today’s Wall Street thieves, American business has been doing what it does best: killing people.

Let’s get back to basics: Business exists to make money. If it makes money helping people, fine. If it makes money killing peo­ple, also fine.

The purpose of govern­ment is to prevent busi­ness from killing us and maybe even to help us get to the American dream.

Here Mr. Moore is cor­rect. We have to stop doing business as usu­al. We have to stop what Dwight Eisenhower nar­rowly defined as the mil­itary- industrial complex from continuing to ruin this country. How?

Well, Mr. Moore blames regulations. He is both correct and wrong here.

First, regulations were (and are) written by his business friends to pro­tect their monopolies.

The issue is not that there are too many regulations but rather that there are the wrong regulations.

Unfortunately, the debate has focused on adding or removing regulations rather than righting them. I remember seat belts (I’m that old). The Ameri­can automobile industry fought installing them because they’d increase the cost of the car (true) and people wouldn’t like them (not so true). Now, thanks to government forcing industry to do what it should have been doing, the highway traffic fatality rate is continually declining. Without govern­ment safety requirements, how many cars would the car companies sell to dead people?

Mr. Moore also blames free trade for the demise of manufacturing. Again, right and wrong.

Obviously, American business took advantage of moving to “cheaper” countries. Wait! American business took advantage of free trade. It wasn’t the agreement that caused so much grief as (as usual) what American business did.

So, how do we change “business as usual”? Well, it isn’t the military-indus­trial complex that has con­trolled government (elect­ed or regulatory) since at least 1800. No, it is Ameri­can business. Is, as the Supreme Court mistak­enly decided, a business a human being just because it has “corp” in corpora­tion? No, it is not. Busi­ness people are exactly the wrong people to serve in elective office.

Maybe if we could get rid of their self-serving presence, we could get people in regulatory posi­tions with enough intes­tinal fortitude to, finally, write the proper regula­tions to get this country running again and give all of us a chance at the American dream.

Incidentally, I, like Mr.

Moore, have worked in the private sector: Gen­eral Motors, Peoples Drug stores, and Wal-Mart. So, I know of what I speak. 

Raymond Chambers 

My View 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Raymond L. Chambers, Ph.D., lives in Bainbridge, Ga. Con­tact him at raychmbrs@hot­mail.

com.

Dr. chambers seems to me to have a firm grasp of political and historic reality.
I also was a history teacher back in my youth

I am amazed at the current direction the Republican voters seem to be taking. To be sure, their selection of the right candidate to face Barak Obama in the 2012 presidential election has been dominated by a mostly not-very-serious group, but the sudden upsurge in support for Newt Gingrich is startling to say the least.
Gingrich is a fairly corrupt politician - formally censored by the Congress itself for ethical reasons a few years ago - who is noted for his cynical and rather nasty attitude toward voters [He apparently regards them much like Bismarck did, as sheep to be led wherever he chose].
He has lied about his current lobbying efforts and certainly has no feeling for the plight of the currently unemployed - though he did suggest letting schoolchildren become "janitors helpers".

I don't get much response from political blogs. I wonder why?
Here in Florida we have a college football scandal brewing with fall-out probably exceeding that of Penn State.
This however concerns FAMU's famous Marching 100 band. A high-stepping, highly coordinated, fast tempo band that has been famous for a long time. Unfortunately, as with some other elite groups, a not-so-nice hazing tradition has developed over a long period of time. All the members seem to have been involved, as apparently is the 40-year-veteran band director - himself a band alumnus. Even though he had suspended thirty members a few months ago - apparently for excessive hazing, when one of the up-and-coming drum majors suddenly collapsed and died,apparently as a result of hazing; the college president suspended the band activities and fired the director -who has sued to get his job back.
This incident apparently exceeds the usual fraternity hazing.

I was a college fraternity member back in the 50's but any hazing I got was fairly light. How about you?
Have you ever been subject to hazing/bullying? what was the outcome?
Do you thing hazing of "new members"of an elite group is a good idea?

Lie One: Higher Taxes and More Regulation will retard small business growth.
If this were true, small (and large) U.S. businesses would not have experienced their greatest growth spurts of the past century during the time when there was the most government regulation and highest individual and corporate tax rates (1940-70).

Lie Two: The U.S. has the best medical system in the world.
If this were true, the U.S. would not rank behind Australia, Canada,France,Germany,Japan,Norway, Sweden, and the UK in Life Expectancy and Infant Mortality and General Population Health. The US does spend over twice as much per capita on health care as most of these other nations.

Lie Three: The solution to the U.S. economic problem will be to reduce government regulation.
If this were true, the U.S., which is rated currently as one of the most business-friendly nations in the world (ranking fourth behind singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand) with its 15% increase in GDP in the past five years would not lag so far behind China ()160% GDP growth), Argentina (102% GDP growth), Russia (94% GDP growth), Brazil (135% GDP growth), Indonesia (147% GDP growth), and India (100% GDP growth). These countries are ranked as the hardest places to do business and deal with government regulations ( in ascending order with India as the most difficult) according to the IMF and World Bank.

Lie Four: The "American Dream" is still alive and well.

#Zeal4living has #xanga tagged me with the challenge to share seven random facts about myself.
Make of them what you will:
I saw four torpedoed ships burning off the coast of Miami Beach.
I lived without power or running water in the Maine woods for twelve summers.
I was almost washed overboard in the middle of the North Atlantic.
I climbed Boroburdur, thus gaining merit.
I was once lied to (face to face) by both President L.B.Johnson and his Sec. of State, Dean Rusk.
Through no fault of my own, I am a member of TNS.
I was born in 1930.

NB: Improbable as they sound, these are all true statements.

After a sometimes beautiful and sometimes stressful trip down, we are back here for the Winter. The Eastern mountains were at their peak fall colors all the way to GA (where we ran out of mountains, of course).
I'm concerned about some of the directions the US political system is taking. There is far too much unidentified money involved in the process and at least in the case of the GOP, the tail very much seems to be wagging the dog. It's over a year until the next presidential election but it seems nothing of substance will or can be done to solve our serious problems until after the next congress and new [ or re-elected] president takes office.
World and national economic, political, and social problems will be much worse if we wait that long - perhaps those Wall Street occupiers are on to something - at least they are pretty loud in their objection to the status quo.
I find it hard to understand the hatred of Obama that is being expressed in Republican circles. He certainly is no wild-eyed socialist radical - actually quite a moderate in his positions - perhaps too moderate. His life's work has after all, been the struggle to develop consensus between differing groups. Apparently he did not expect the degree of open hatred among those who do not accept him - or his kind - as part of the democratic process. So much for equality in America.

Soc and I'll be traveling this week. It looks as if our first day - across Maine and down through the White Mountains of New Hampshire will be spectacular. This is leaf-peeping season - maybe I'll post some photos.
Wednesday will be down across MA, NY, PA, MD, WV, to Virginia. Thursday will be mostly driving the length of VA - down the Shenandoah Vally to NC, Friday will be the length of Georgia and into Florida. It looks like we will be driving through rain - that's better than a few years ago when the trip through PA was through a blinding snowstorm.
The weather here in ME is currently been really nice but I think it will deteriorate rapidly. It's time for us "summer Complaint" types to go south.

Steve Jobs died on Wednesday after a long illness. This was not unexpected, but most of us did hope that this driven genius would be around for the decades he hoped for just last year.
Jobs and his friend Steve Wozniak famously started building their first computer in Jobs' parent's garage in the mid seventies. Woz was the geek - able to write code in his head. He was working at HP and got permission from them to use a motherboard design that HP had no interest in developing. Jobs was the entrepreneur of the company they eventually founded. He was literally the driving force behind Apple and did not suffer fools gladly - or even at all. This eventually lost him his position in Apple which went under the control of bean counters for a few years. When Jobs regained control of the company, he introduced the iMac and the rest, as they say, is history.
I learned to program in BASIC using a text which assumed I would be using a teletypewriter keyboard linked to a mainframe mini-computer [Minis in those days were computers that could fit in a closet, like a PDP-11]. My sister-in-law was my teacher and she had an early Apple II, which I used, so I finally bought one in 1982.
This began my love affair with Apples:
Apple ii+ 1982
Apple II E 1984
Apple II GS 1987 [I stuck with Woz's Apple II design for some years after introduction of the MAC - I liked the open design of the II and contrary to common belief, it also had a graphic interface which used a good deal less memory and was in color, which the early Macs were not. The early Macs were not easy to add to or tinker with - and I liked to do both.
I bought my first Mac - a Color Classic in 1993, but became frustrated by the small screen and a couple of years later bought my first Mac Desktop.
Power Mac 7500 - 1995 This was the first really open Mac and for several years I happily added bells and whistles, up-graded the memory and GPU until I bought my first Laptop in 1999.
Mac PowerBook G3/333 - 1999 I added a superdisk, a Nikon CoolScan and a couple of HDs.
Mac PowerBook G4 - 2002 I still use this for games like Myst - but it has a broken hinge and has to be handled carefully
MacBook Pro 17 - 2007 This was the first of the Mac line with the intel chip
MacBook Pro 17 - 2010 This, my newest Mac has a much faster chip and handles web access much faster. I'm writing this on it accessing the internet over a Verizon G3 wireless modem from out here in the [currently very chilly] Maine woods.
I'm a happy Apple addict - the kind of person Steve Jobs developed the Apple line for - someone who wanted a top-of-the-line super dependable computer that didn't require a lot of tinkering - unless you wanted to.

Most Americans don't like to think or talk about our class system - when we do we tend to think of ourselves as "Middle Class", whatever that means. Actually our social class system is pretty well defined and fits generally into a four-six step structure:
Real Upper Class - The multi-generational Super Rich. This group - about one or two percent of the population - controls almost half the personal wealth of the nation.
Semi-upper, Upper Middle Class - The professional and business leaders. This group of those with advanced university degrees and solid job security make up about 20% of the population.
Middle Class - Upper working class - This group - many of whom have college training - make up middle management and skilled workers. This group was probably the largest social class group and has been hit hardest by the economic changes of the past decade, seeing its real income either stagnant or decreasing.
Working Class - Semi-skilled and industrial workers - Many members of this large group has seen their comfortable "middle-class" lifestyle disappear as the US has moved from an industrial to a technological world economy. Members of this group are mostly HS grads. Those who have individual skills or technical training in those areas of the economy that are growing (personal services, medical services, etc) are generally doing OK but have seen their real income decrease in recent years.
Lower Class - the seldom - or chronically unemployed. This class - many of whom are minorities- have been hit hardest by the current "Great Recession" Many of them have taken two hits - no jobs and receding unemployment benefits.

This description of the existing American class structure is over-simplified and many sociologists have recently come up with their own alternative groupings, but all, or most of them, seem to be based on real family income, educational attainment, and group attitudes.

Historically, the rise of a large American middle Class seems to be tied to the New Deal politics which prevailed after the Great Depression of 1929- 47. This deliberate attempt to use government-financed programs to lift the Working Class and fading agricultural Classes into a more affluent Middle Class included the introduction of Social Security, federally financed mortgages [FHA], the National Labor Relations Act, The National Recovery Act, and ultimately the GI Bill educational benefits for veterans.

All of these programs made real class mobility possible, and despite the rather high income tax rates that accompanied them, led to an exceptional rise in real income for all social classes - including most notably the Upper Class. As a result of those government-led programs, the US became the most powerful nation on Earth; helped of course by the destruction of Europe during World War II. Curiously enough, US efforts to revive the world economies by distributing American tax monies (The Marshall Plan) to rebuild the world's economies further increased the US GNP and led to even greater prosperity.

The decline of the American "Middle Class "apparently began with the political shift away from government led economic programs starting with the "Reagan Revolution"in the 1980s. The idea that government was "…the problem not the solution…" in an age of increasing world economic pressures and competition was a popular one - if somewhat misguided. The collapse of the US middle class majority can be linked to that shift in government policy. Even though this concept has been prevalent for over thirty years, this has not stopped the government from increasing the federal deficit several fold - mostly by lowering the income tax rates and thus reducing government income while at the same time greatly increasing government military spending. Payments on the debt this caused has further decreased the limited amount available for social programs

Attempts to lower this deficit recently have led to further cutting of those federal benefits which many of the lower middle class depend upon and increasing the pressure on state and local governments.

The housing/financial bubble collapse of 2008 led to a general world-wide financial collapse with the resulting economic ruin to the lives and hopes of many Americans in the "Middle Class". The upper classes generally benefitted from this downturn. Their investments were soon either guaranteed by the government [the famous "Wall Street Bailout"or they were able to move financially into areas which were positively affected.

The rich got richer and the poor got poorer - pretty quickly.

A general return to higher tax rates - especially for the upper income groups [That, after all, is where the money is] could allow the federal Government once again to lead the US into economic prosperity by enabling the federal Government to develop and encourage those policies which enabled US economic growth in the past. At the most basic level these policies should include massive investment in education, retraining, and infrastructure. These investments will inevitably lead to over-all economic growth . The increased taxed on the "Super-rich"will be a very good investment for them. Historically, in every case increased taxes have led to income increases for them far in excess to any taxes they paid.

The Onion has a very interesting revisit of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 here

It seems to me that in most respects, Osama Bin Laden won what he desired - up to and including martyrdom.
His goal was to make the US even more disliked among Arabs and other Moslems, and in a single stroke, he accomplished his goal beyond his wildest dreams - including throwing terror into the minds of at least enough Americans to cause them to react in a way guaranteed to disrupt their lives.

I don't remember the immediate reaction as being particularly panicked, at least among those who viewed the attack with me. We were in a MD's waiting room watching the usual boring TV when the news flashed on - we saw the second plane hit. It was not until days later when the media and government began to spread the panic that many of us began to worry.

The strange decision to attack Iraq - which had no connection with or even sympathy with al qaeda, must have delighted Osama - even more Moslems would learn to hate us. As we became mired in Arab/Mid Eastern politics and poured more lives and treasure into that bottomless rat-hole; and as we changed our daily lives to accommodate the new levels of terror, he must have been delighted. His disregard for the lives and comfort of his followers probably made every drone strike and "collateral damage" impact music to his ears. Hopefully during his final moments, he realized that somewhere things had gone wrong, but somehow I doubt it.

I think the time has come to disengage ourselves from arab politics, as we have done to some extent in Libya. It's time to begin to treat terrorism as a police and intelligence matter, as we should have done in the first place. We did manage to overthrow the Taliban with less than 400 special forces and CIA agents.
We should remove our occupying troops and let the Arabs sort themselves out.

Well, Irene has come and is about gone. Here in Downeast Maine we missed the worst of the storm. An inch or two of rain, gusts to maybe 45-50 knots all last night. Today is bright, sunny, windy and cool. We lost power from late afternoon yesterday until late morning today and had a few tree limbs blown down but no significant damage.
Our area - the eastern tip of Maine - didn't get the flooding western ME, NH and VT did - our lake is up about a foot but the dams seem to be holding. Our neighbor showed up this morning with hot coffee - rooted us out of bed -we are very grateful - he was a lifesaver. He went off to Acadia NP to check out the waves. I don't thing the park rangers will let him, or anyone, onto the shore road - a couple of years ago a rogue wave swept several wave watchers - 50 feet up from the shore line - were swept off - one was killed - a whole family was severely injured. Hopefully no one around here will be this time.

OK, Here are a few photos of our place in Maine - mostly looking out over the lake. This is a glacial lake with native land-locked salmon. It's over 180 feet deep at one point - Our camp is at the entrance to a cove.

Our camp from the shore

looking across the lake and at island owned by our neighbor

Our yard

Typical foggy morning

View out our front windows

Our sailboat and rocks

After a month here DownEast, we are more convinced than ever that Maine is the place to spend your Summer - and Fall, if you can. The cool nights demand a blanket - even if the days sometimes get up into the eighties during late July and August.
Our camp is on the shore of a fairly large lake - on of the few in ME with a resident eagle population, must to the distress of the annual loon nesters - who are convinced that their babies are at risk of being eagle-snatched - even though the eagles clearly prefer the abundant fish. One of the Maine State Inland fisheries biologists gave a talk to our group the other evening. In response to a question he said on a scale of 1-10 our lake rated 11 as fish & wildlife habitat and for recreation. Surprisingly here on a beautiful sunday morning, I can see only a couple of fishing boats and one seadoo.
This on a lake over two miles wide and seven miles long. A lake that is so pure that it is the site of a National Salmon Hatchery at its lower end.

Political Economics differs from real economics in a number of ways - primarily in the nature of cause and effect. For example, Politics may demand that a party oppose any rise in taxation while encouraging government spending if its major supporters tend to profit by that spending, as seems to be the case with the present-day Republican Party.

In order to gain popular support for this position, party leaders and candidates loudly proclaim that "Now is not the time to raise taxes - we need job creation and higher taxes will mean fewer jobs" with absolutely no factual or historic support for that statement. In fact historically,higher tax revenue income to the government has meant more government spending with quite a dramatic rise in employment and the general economy.

In fact, since only net income tax raises are proposed, more business activity is the case, since that results in more net income to the business owners. It would seem to me that those whose taxes are raised would want to generate more income and probably hire more workers to do that, thus reducing unemployment.

The curious belief here is that higher taxes will retard business activity. It seems to me that the uncertainty caused by repeated refusal to balance our Federal budget and pay down our national debt is more of a drag on our economy.

historically, when faced with a budget and debt crisis, all political parties have recognized the need for more revenue and have joined to convince voters of that fact. Nowadays, the Republican Party seems to have lost its sense of responsibility and is demanding the shutdown of economically and socially beneficial programs in order to protect the absurdly low tax rates for its major millionaire and corporate supporters, assuming that they can once again convince voters that "What's good for millionaires and major corporations is what's good for America"

Presently, millionaires and major corporations pay at the lowest tax rate since 1942. During the dramatic surge of the US economy which made them so wealthy in the second half of the twentieth century, they paid at much higher rates - as did we all. Most of our present deficit and debt has come about since the "Bush tax cuts"of the past decade.