It appears that SuperMitt from the Planet of Opulence has now arrived and will lead the Republican Party to heights of success never before attained by mortals. After hearing his speech upon winning in Florida it seems there is nothing Mitt will not be able to do. He will create jobs for all, do away with “Obamacare,” veto the Dream Act, replace America to its former dominance, force the rest of the world to acknowledge American superiority, increase the military, and blah, blah, blah. When he reached the point of leaping tall buildings at a single bound I stopped listening. Does he really believe all this nonsense? I rather doubt it. It just goes along with his willingness to say anything at all to get the nomination. If, strangely, he does believe what he is saying, he will certainly get a rude comeuppance if he ever does get elected to the Presidency. His claims are so outrageously impossible he will make Obama look like the most honest candidate ever.
Romney, in my opinion, suffers from the most appalling ignorance. He’s not a stupid man, and he was a successful businessman, he just is ignorant of what American life is like for anyone other than the unusually wealthy. This might not be quite so bad if he would not pretend otherwise, if he would stop pretending to be someone he is demonstrably not. This can be seen repeatedly in his various statements having to do with our current problems, statements that are so out of touch with reality they display his ignorance. For example, his claim at one point that he, too, is unemployed. Also in his statement that the $375,000 he received in speaking fees in one year was “not much.” Then his infamous claim that corporations are people, he once feared getting pink slips, he likes firing people, and he is familiar with “the streets.” He obviously tries very hard to be “one of us,” a “regular guy,” but is so obviously not it is actually painful to hear. There are also his famous remarks about letting Detroit go bankrupt, letting the foreclosures go forward until the end, and so on. He seems to have no idea of how anyone lives, or even how the country operates, independent of his beliefs about naked capitalism and cutthroat business. He thinks because he was a private capitalist, a successful businessman, he is eminently qualified to run the United States. I suspect the contrary is true, a nation is not a business, is not subject to the same rules, does not exist merely to make a profit, cannot always have a balanced budget, and cannot treat its citizens and public lands as merely commodities. It is true that Romney was also a Governor, but State Governments have very different budgetary systems than the Federal Government, especially when it comes to balanced budgets.
The latest indication of his ignorance came just now when he announced that he was not concerned about the poor, because they have a safety net, and he was not concerned with the wealthy, because they are doing just fine, but, rather, was concerned about the middle class. Aside from the fact that his claims are nothing but obvious lies, as he is proposing things that would take away the safety net (which isn’t much to begin with), and wants to decrease taxes on the already filthy wealthy, I doubt he is even much aware of the middle class and their problems. I think he has heard Obama and others speak about the middle class and that something needs to be done for them, so has concluded that would be a good thing to mention. He is no more concerned with the middle class than he is with the poor, and he is certainly concerned about the wealthy. In any case, Romney changes his positions whenever he feels it is advantageous to do so and, like all Republicans, cannot be trusted.
Grover Norquist, that paragon of treasonous fiscal insanity, has now claimed that if Obama does not allow the ridiculous Bush tax breaks for the wealthy to continue he will be impeached. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he may be saying this merely as an idle threat that he knows has no substance. Certainly it would be the first time in history a President was impeached for disagreeing with a private subject or members of Congress. It appears to me the Republicans are becoming more and more desperate and are now willing to go even further in their disrespect for the President. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that racism is playing a very important part in our politics at the moment. Obama, objectively viewed, has done nothing to bring on the hatred Republicans are now feeling towards him. He has in many ways been a successful first term President, has a string of positive accomplishments, is not even remotely any of the things he is accused of being: socialist, communist, Kenyan, non citizen, weak, incompetent, or whatever. If a White President had accomplished exactly what Obama has do you think he would be so hated? Of course not, but Obama is Black and making a mockery of everything they believe about Black people, and as such is a prime target for their racial hatred.
The hatred you're carrying is a live coal in your heart - far more damaging to yourself than to them.
Lawana Blackwell
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Fascism!
Bubblehead: Of course you are right as usual. It is comforting to know that Big Brother is still around correcting my excesses and mistakes. I am not being sarcastic.
Fascism, according to Mussolini, one of its greatest proponents, is a marriage of government and corporations. According to other definitions there is a strong dictatorial leader and the state takes precedence over the individual. Since our (criminal) Supreme Court, throwing all precedent and pretences away, proclaimed that corporations were persons and could substitute money for speech, a decision rivaled in idiocy only by the famous Dred Scott decision of l857, we are now well on our way to a full-blown Fascist nation.
It is true we do not as yet have a fully established dictatorship, but it is clear that more and more power has been taken over by the Executive Branch, even to the point of taking us to war without the consent of Congress and even worse, the power to arrest and detain individual citizens indefinitely at the whim of the President. In our evolving Fascism the dictator will be chosen by corporations in collusion with each other and will serve as their representative. While we still pretend to have a democratic system whereby the President is elected by the people, the people are only allowed to vote for one of the two candidates chosen by the corporations. As both political parties are part of this same procedure the differences between them have gradually disappeared and does not matter very much.
This new fascist arrangement is working as planned. Those most in control have obviously decided that Willard Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican candidate to run against President Obama. Exercising their right to spend as much money as possible they have outspent Gingrich in South Carolina and now Florida by as much as four or five to one, denying him the nomination. Romney has received more money for his campaign from the powerful banks that all of the rest of the candidates combined, and Obama is not without their support as well. What we are witnessing is truly the buying of an election.
The issues that characterize the campaigns, whatever they are, are not truly issues that matter much. Corporations don’t care who marries who, who has an abortion, what religion is involved, or even what the unemployment rate is, provided it stays within reasonable limits so as not to impair their enormous profits, and high enough to guarantee the cheapest labor possible. Of course they are opposed to higher taxes (on themselves), Social Security, Medicare, and such because those are issues that bear directly on their potential profits in one way or another. They tolerate food stamps and other such poverty programs only because they have not yet figured out what else to do with the growing surplus populations.
Obviously I could be terribly wrong about this, perhaps they do in some sense feel some responsibility for the poor and the unemployed, maybe they would like ordinary citizens to have more to say about their lives, but this seems to me extremely unlikely. If they did feel that way would they fight anything that even faintly resembles socialism? Would they not be in favor of unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, health care for all, Social Security, food stamps, and other things that would make the lives of ordinary people more pleasant? Would they not recognize there is more to life than profit? They would, but they clearly don’t.
It takes only a moment of reflection to realize that our obscenely bloated and misnamed National Defense Budget is only marginally for national defense and far more importantly to generate unending profits for our Industrial/Military/Political Complex. Similarly, it is pretty obvious that our troops located in bases all around the world are not primarily for national defense, but rather, to protect international corporations that are exploiting resources wherever found, especially at the moment, oil, but many other kinds of businesses as well.
There was no doubt that the Bush/Cheney administration, along with Karl Rove, planned to create a one party nation that would endure forever, and it would have consolidated ultimate power in the Executive Branch of our government. This was to me a truly frightening proposition, but what I believe was even more frightening is that they basically would have used America’s superpower status to impose Fascism all over the world, hence the build-up of our military establishment, the addition of more and more private contractors, and the spreading of bases everywhere. They nearly succeeded in establishing Fascism here in the U.S., I fear the prospect still exists here, but it is doubtful that our once superpower status will ever exist again although some seem to think it still exists. They are going to have a rude awakening.
I will not allow yesterday's success to lull me into today's complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.
Og Mandino
Fascism, according to Mussolini, one of its greatest proponents, is a marriage of government and corporations. According to other definitions there is a strong dictatorial leader and the state takes precedence over the individual. Since our (criminal) Supreme Court, throwing all precedent and pretences away, proclaimed that corporations were persons and could substitute money for speech, a decision rivaled in idiocy only by the famous Dred Scott decision of l857, we are now well on our way to a full-blown Fascist nation.
It is true we do not as yet have a fully established dictatorship, but it is clear that more and more power has been taken over by the Executive Branch, even to the point of taking us to war without the consent of Congress and even worse, the power to arrest and detain individual citizens indefinitely at the whim of the President. In our evolving Fascism the dictator will be chosen by corporations in collusion with each other and will serve as their representative. While we still pretend to have a democratic system whereby the President is elected by the people, the people are only allowed to vote for one of the two candidates chosen by the corporations. As both political parties are part of this same procedure the differences between them have gradually disappeared and does not matter very much.
This new fascist arrangement is working as planned. Those most in control have obviously decided that Willard Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican candidate to run against President Obama. Exercising their right to spend as much money as possible they have outspent Gingrich in South Carolina and now Florida by as much as four or five to one, denying him the nomination. Romney has received more money for his campaign from the powerful banks that all of the rest of the candidates combined, and Obama is not without their support as well. What we are witnessing is truly the buying of an election.
The issues that characterize the campaigns, whatever they are, are not truly issues that matter much. Corporations don’t care who marries who, who has an abortion, what religion is involved, or even what the unemployment rate is, provided it stays within reasonable limits so as not to impair their enormous profits, and high enough to guarantee the cheapest labor possible. Of course they are opposed to higher taxes (on themselves), Social Security, Medicare, and such because those are issues that bear directly on their potential profits in one way or another. They tolerate food stamps and other such poverty programs only because they have not yet figured out what else to do with the growing surplus populations.
Obviously I could be terribly wrong about this, perhaps they do in some sense feel some responsibility for the poor and the unemployed, maybe they would like ordinary citizens to have more to say about their lives, but this seems to me extremely unlikely. If they did feel that way would they fight anything that even faintly resembles socialism? Would they not be in favor of unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, health care for all, Social Security, food stamps, and other things that would make the lives of ordinary people more pleasant? Would they not recognize there is more to life than profit? They would, but they clearly don’t.
It takes only a moment of reflection to realize that our obscenely bloated and misnamed National Defense Budget is only marginally for national defense and far more importantly to generate unending profits for our Industrial/Military/Political Complex. Similarly, it is pretty obvious that our troops located in bases all around the world are not primarily for national defense, but rather, to protect international corporations that are exploiting resources wherever found, especially at the moment, oil, but many other kinds of businesses as well.
There was no doubt that the Bush/Cheney administration, along with Karl Rove, planned to create a one party nation that would endure forever, and it would have consolidated ultimate power in the Executive Branch of our government. This was to me a truly frightening proposition, but what I believe was even more frightening is that they basically would have used America’s superpower status to impose Fascism all over the world, hence the build-up of our military establishment, the addition of more and more private contractors, and the spreading of bases everywhere. They nearly succeeded in establishing Fascism here in the U.S., I fear the prospect still exists here, but it is doubtful that our once superpower status will ever exist again although some seem to think it still exists. They are going to have a rude awakening.
I will not allow yesterday's success to lull me into today's complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.
Og Mandino
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Land of Naked People - book
The Land of Naked People, Encounters with Stone Age Islanders, Madhusree Mukerjee (Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003)
This is one of the strangest books I have ever read. I picked it up recently in our wonderful local bookstore, thought it looked interesting, and have only now finished it. Just interpreting from the book itself it is difficult, if not virtually impossible, to know what kind of book it is. It might be merely a travel book written by an Indian woman who traveled to the Andaman Islands, and because of her father’s influence was allowed to travel more than the usual tourist. But it is more than that because it also deals with the history of the Andaman Islanders. However, it is not a history book either. It is certainly not an anthropological work, although it contains some ethnographic information and cites quite a number of anthropologists. There are occasional flowery prose passages here and there throughout the text but it is clearly not literature as we usually think of literature, nor is it a purely journalistic account as it includes far more detail and lacks the precision of a journalistic book. It is certainly not a scientific work. I am left to wonder what she had in mind other than writing a kind of travel/adventure book for a broad audience, certainly the unfortunately titillating title suggests this. In spite of all, I did find it quite interesting, if somewhat depressing, as it does relate how the Andaman Islanders and their culture have, like so many other such peoples, been debased and virtually destroyed by their contact with the “outside world.”
Similarly, from the book itself, you have no idea just who the author is or what her credentials are. The dust jacket merely reports she once served on the board of editors of the Scientific American and that she received a Guggenheim grant to write this book. She must have had a project in mind but you cannot tell what it was (other than perhaps taking a trip and writing a book). By dint of careful reading you also are informed that she once studied physics and had a thesis advisor (for what thesis you cannot know). She also reports having been taught to be a journalist. From Google I finally learned she is considered a scientific journalist and has more recently written a second book, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of Indian During World War II. I trust her experience with her first book will help focus her efforts on the latter.
The book itself is mostly an account of her travels in different areas of the Andaman Islands, the different tribal people she observed, and the incredible bureaucratic difficulties she experienced in trying to do what she wished. Some of the areas were/are off limits to visitors and it was only through the influence of her father that she managed as well as she did. When India became independent they also became responsible for the Andaman Islands, which by then had already been badly decimated, a condition that has continued under the Indian administration so there are now apparently only about 500 of the original inhabitants left. As in other areas of the world exploited shamelessly there are timber poachers and others illegally removing whatever of value they can find. The aboriginal population, one of the few groups of pygmies in the world, who once lived, literally, in a land of plenty, have been reduced to living off government handouts and are slowly dying out. There are a few, even now, the Jarawa, that have not been completely pacified, especially a small group on Northern Sentinel Island, but they, too, are doomed. The natives that were not shot or otherwise killed by the British and the Indians have succumbed to various diseases they did not previously have and of course their aboriginal culture has largely disappeared. Where they unashamedly went naked except for a few decorations and paint, proud of their fine bodies, strong and capable, so fierce ships did not want to stop there, accused (falsely) of being cannibals, they now dress mostly in rags and can no longer live as they previously did. It is much the same story that has repeated itself all around the world and, unfortunately, continues to the present day in some areas. If you have an interest in native people, the Andaman Islands, the deleterious effects of culture contact, and now even the possible effects of global warming, you will find this book of interest.
This is one of the strangest books I have ever read. I picked it up recently in our wonderful local bookstore, thought it looked interesting, and have only now finished it. Just interpreting from the book itself it is difficult, if not virtually impossible, to know what kind of book it is. It might be merely a travel book written by an Indian woman who traveled to the Andaman Islands, and because of her father’s influence was allowed to travel more than the usual tourist. But it is more than that because it also deals with the history of the Andaman Islanders. However, it is not a history book either. It is certainly not an anthropological work, although it contains some ethnographic information and cites quite a number of anthropologists. There are occasional flowery prose passages here and there throughout the text but it is clearly not literature as we usually think of literature, nor is it a purely journalistic account as it includes far more detail and lacks the precision of a journalistic book. It is certainly not a scientific work. I am left to wonder what she had in mind other than writing a kind of travel/adventure book for a broad audience, certainly the unfortunately titillating title suggests this. In spite of all, I did find it quite interesting, if somewhat depressing, as it does relate how the Andaman Islanders and their culture have, like so many other such peoples, been debased and virtually destroyed by their contact with the “outside world.”
Similarly, from the book itself, you have no idea just who the author is or what her credentials are. The dust jacket merely reports she once served on the board of editors of the Scientific American and that she received a Guggenheim grant to write this book. She must have had a project in mind but you cannot tell what it was (other than perhaps taking a trip and writing a book). By dint of careful reading you also are informed that she once studied physics and had a thesis advisor (for what thesis you cannot know). She also reports having been taught to be a journalist. From Google I finally learned she is considered a scientific journalist and has more recently written a second book, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of Indian During World War II. I trust her experience with her first book will help focus her efforts on the latter.
The book itself is mostly an account of her travels in different areas of the Andaman Islands, the different tribal people she observed, and the incredible bureaucratic difficulties she experienced in trying to do what she wished. Some of the areas were/are off limits to visitors and it was only through the influence of her father that she managed as well as she did. When India became independent they also became responsible for the Andaman Islands, which by then had already been badly decimated, a condition that has continued under the Indian administration so there are now apparently only about 500 of the original inhabitants left. As in other areas of the world exploited shamelessly there are timber poachers and others illegally removing whatever of value they can find. The aboriginal population, one of the few groups of pygmies in the world, who once lived, literally, in a land of plenty, have been reduced to living off government handouts and are slowly dying out. There are a few, even now, the Jarawa, that have not been completely pacified, especially a small group on Northern Sentinel Island, but they, too, are doomed. The natives that were not shot or otherwise killed by the British and the Indians have succumbed to various diseases they did not previously have and of course their aboriginal culture has largely disappeared. Where they unashamedly went naked except for a few decorations and paint, proud of their fine bodies, strong and capable, so fierce ships did not want to stop there, accused (falsely) of being cannibals, they now dress mostly in rags and can no longer live as they previously did. It is much the same story that has repeated itself all around the world and, unfortunately, continues to the present day in some areas. If you have an interest in native people, the Andaman Islands, the deleterious effects of culture contact, and now even the possible effects of global warming, you will find this book of interest.
Friday, January 27, 2012
The Fall Guy
It appears the latest Republican “Flavor of the Month,” Newt the Odious, is most probably going sour about as fast as I am typing this. I mean, really, when you are so despicable even members of your own party don’t want you as a candidate, you should gracefully withdraw. It is unlikely Newt will withdraw, of course, as he has his Sugar Daddy billionaire in Las Vegas supporting him. Sheldon Addelson and his wife have together so far donated 10 million to Newt’s campaign. This seems to me to be betting on a long shot, the possibility that if Newt could become President he will look out for Addelson’s financial problems and also move the Israeli capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem (the worst possible thing that could happen in that troubled part of the world). Of course with a billion or more at your disposal betting on long shots is not really much of a risk.
Gingrich has had his moments of glory, three different times he has claimed he will be the Republican candidate, and has also now claimed that at the end of his second term (as President) we will have a permanent space station of the moon and, I guess, have claimed outer space for our own. If people have not figured out by now that Newt is nothing more than a bloated pontificating blowhard I think we should start to worry. Romney seems to have recaptured the polls in Florida and I suspect will win there. I cannot see how Gingrich can possibly resurrect himself once more even with the help of the Addelsons. Billionaires trying to buy elections are not too popular these days.
But Romney, unfortunately, is almost as flawed a candidate as Gingrich, although for different reasons. As a result of the attacks by the other candidates Romney has been damaged even more than he was to begin with. As a Mormon he has already forfeited probably 20% of the vote as Evangelicals will apparently not vote for him under any circumstances, believing Mormonism is a “cult.” But worse than that for Mr. Romney now, is the fact he has been identified as the personification of the 1%, this, at a time when inequality has become perhaps the single most important theme of the campaign. His handling of his taxes has certainly not helped him. What will prove to be even worse, however, is the fact that although he makes $57,000 a day he still wants more of a tax break for himself and his peers. Poor little rich boy, he just doesn’t get it.
All of this leads me to the conclusion that Romney will end up being the “Fall Guy” for the dismal performance of the Republican Party in the past few years, the sacrificial candidate allowing them to mark time for the 2016 election. There is talk of a brokered convention and another candidate such as Pawlenty, Christie, Daniels, or even Jeb Bush, but I cannot see this happening, and even if it did Obama would already have an almost insurmountable head start. Most everyone seems to think it will be a very close election with Obama winning by a slim margin. I’m not convinced. I suspect Romney will be the candidate and Obama will win by a substantial margin. This is because I cannot see a Republican getting the Black vote, the Hispanic vote, the Women’s vote, the elderly vote, the youth vote, the Evangelical vote, or the Muslim vote, leaving at best perhaps the Jewish vote and that of the extreme far rightists. This is what I think should happen, but I confess to being the worst predictor of Presidential elections ever. I think out of the last ten elections I can remember I probably have a batting average of no more than .200. If Newt the Odious should somehow pull off a victory in Florida I would like to say I’d eat my hat, but given my past failures that is too risky even for me.
When compared with Gingrich, Willard Mitt is as pure as the first snowfall of winter. He just happens to be the poster boy for the worst kind of capitalism the world has ever seen. He can’t help being rich, he was born that way, but being oblivious to the realities of life for the not rich, lacking empathy, seeing himself as merely an object of envy, and pretending to be someone he is not is unforgiveable. We have had many wealthy Presidents but none as divorced from reality as Romney would be. He is not only divorced from the 99%, he is also divorced from the rest of the world when it comes to foreign policy and the place of the United States in world affairs. I’m pretty sure we will bite the bullet once again and vote for our current President, as they say, “warts and all.” Think how great he might have been given even a tiny bit of cooperation from Republicans who, having stymied him repeatedly, now want to blame him for the mess they have created.
The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.
Casey Stengel
Gingrich has had his moments of glory, three different times he has claimed he will be the Republican candidate, and has also now claimed that at the end of his second term (as President) we will have a permanent space station of the moon and, I guess, have claimed outer space for our own. If people have not figured out by now that Newt is nothing more than a bloated pontificating blowhard I think we should start to worry. Romney seems to have recaptured the polls in Florida and I suspect will win there. I cannot see how Gingrich can possibly resurrect himself once more even with the help of the Addelsons. Billionaires trying to buy elections are not too popular these days.
But Romney, unfortunately, is almost as flawed a candidate as Gingrich, although for different reasons. As a result of the attacks by the other candidates Romney has been damaged even more than he was to begin with. As a Mormon he has already forfeited probably 20% of the vote as Evangelicals will apparently not vote for him under any circumstances, believing Mormonism is a “cult.” But worse than that for Mr. Romney now, is the fact he has been identified as the personification of the 1%, this, at a time when inequality has become perhaps the single most important theme of the campaign. His handling of his taxes has certainly not helped him. What will prove to be even worse, however, is the fact that although he makes $57,000 a day he still wants more of a tax break for himself and his peers. Poor little rich boy, he just doesn’t get it.
All of this leads me to the conclusion that Romney will end up being the “Fall Guy” for the dismal performance of the Republican Party in the past few years, the sacrificial candidate allowing them to mark time for the 2016 election. There is talk of a brokered convention and another candidate such as Pawlenty, Christie, Daniels, or even Jeb Bush, but I cannot see this happening, and even if it did Obama would already have an almost insurmountable head start. Most everyone seems to think it will be a very close election with Obama winning by a slim margin. I’m not convinced. I suspect Romney will be the candidate and Obama will win by a substantial margin. This is because I cannot see a Republican getting the Black vote, the Hispanic vote, the Women’s vote, the elderly vote, the youth vote, the Evangelical vote, or the Muslim vote, leaving at best perhaps the Jewish vote and that of the extreme far rightists. This is what I think should happen, but I confess to being the worst predictor of Presidential elections ever. I think out of the last ten elections I can remember I probably have a batting average of no more than .200. If Newt the Odious should somehow pull off a victory in Florida I would like to say I’d eat my hat, but given my past failures that is too risky even for me.
When compared with Gingrich, Willard Mitt is as pure as the first snowfall of winter. He just happens to be the poster boy for the worst kind of capitalism the world has ever seen. He can’t help being rich, he was born that way, but being oblivious to the realities of life for the not rich, lacking empathy, seeing himself as merely an object of envy, and pretending to be someone he is not is unforgiveable. We have had many wealthy Presidents but none as divorced from reality as Romney would be. He is not only divorced from the 99%, he is also divorced from the rest of the world when it comes to foreign policy and the place of the United States in world affairs. I’m pretty sure we will bite the bullet once again and vote for our current President, as they say, “warts and all.” Think how great he might have been given even a tiny bit of cooperation from Republicans who, having stymied him repeatedly, now want to blame him for the mess they have created.
The key to being a good manager is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.
Casey Stengel
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Envy, Disgust, Outrage, Hatred
Envy, one of the seven deadly sins, I guess Willard Mitt believes we are all sinners because we envy him his wealth. Somehow I think I can hear echoes of his parents telling him as a child, “If the other kids don’t like you it’s because they are just envious,” a belief that he seems to have internalized and carried forward into adulthood. I wonder if Mr. One Percent has any idea of the lives that most people live. Looking back on my own life, and the hundreds, probably thousands of other people I have known, I cannot think of a single example of anyone who aspired to be wealthy at the level Romney is wealthy. Most ordinary people aspire to become engineers, physicists, chemists, doctors, lawyers, nurses, teachers, firemen, policemen, historians, geologists, botanists, psychologists, sociologists, and whatever. Others, not fortunate enough to attend a University settle for becoming plumbers, electricians, clerks, and so on. Virtually no one I have ever known aspired to become multimillionaires or billionaires. It is possible this is because they knew that would never happen to them so they did not think about it in the first place, but in any case they tried to make the best of their lives doing something they thought possible for them and managed to live reasonably happy and productive lives. In my own case I can assure you I did not wish to become an anthropologist because I believed I would ever become wealthy. I don’t believe Romney has any appreciation of these facts of life. I also believe his candidacy for President is now dead. I do not see how the Republicans could possibly run a candidate labeled Mr. One Percent, who has now proven to be even more wealthy than that, at a moment in history when inequality has become the leading issue in the race.
I think his insistence that anyone who dares to bring up the subject of his wealth or inequality is merely envious is simply disgusting and betrays an enormous ignorance of life in the world of ordinary people. He, and the others in his tax bracket, unless perhaps they have actually personally earned their wealth through invention and hard work, simply live in another world entirely from ordinary people. They live in different neighborhoods, eat in different restaurants, live in more elegant housing, drive better automobiles, go to better schools, and for the most part do not fraternize with lesser souls or peasants. This is precisely why Romney comes across as totally inauthentic when he pretends to be someone he is not.
Having now been informed of the true size of his fortune and the fact that he apparently makes $57,000 a day, more than most people earn in a year, and does nothing to earn it other than possess a fortune, I am outraged. And if he believes he is entitled to accumulate so much money so easily I am even more outraged. The fact that he also is allowed to pay less in taxes than ordinary working people outrages me even more than that. Quite frankly, I believe that anyone who makes more than, say, a million or two a year should be taxed 100 per cent. And no one, under any circumstances, should be allowed to have a billion or more in personal wealth. I don’t know exactly what the limit should be, but once that generous limit is met they should be taxed at 100 per cent. If the limit is established high enough this would not hurt anyone and would greatly benefit everyone. I do not believe anyone should be allowed to make millions year after year simply because they inherited or otherwise accumulated large fortunes which then have no further purpose other than allowing them to make even more money by doing nothing. Let them have plenty to live the high life up to a reasonable extent but no more.
I am not personally much of a hater. I have trouble staying mad at anyone for more than five minutes no matter how they might have offended me. But I can easily understand how envy (if it exists as Romney thinks it does), disgust, and outrage can lead eventually into outright hatred. When a few have so much, and so many have so little, and there is such an enormous disparity, it is not difficult to see potential trouble ahead. This situation can be made much worse when those who have so much resist even giving up a little. Some of them, like Warren Buffet seem to understand this and are willing to at least consider parity in their percentage of taxes. But even here we are talking about a mere five to ten percent increase in the taxes of the absolutely incredibly wealthy. I find this absurd, outrageous, and hateful. A person with billions of dollars could easily pay hundreds of millions in taxes and still not even notice the difference, a five or ten percent increase is little more than a tip for the shoeshine boy. I find it incredible that the American public accepts what is happening with our tax code, and now that it is becoming more public I doubt they will for much longer. In the case of people like Romney this is not a case of rewarding the successful, it is simply rewarding the accident of birth. If for some reason you have money you can easily make more money. If you are poor you are doomed to stay that way. The situation is getting worse. It is not as things should be.
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
Rex Stout
I think his insistence that anyone who dares to bring up the subject of his wealth or inequality is merely envious is simply disgusting and betrays an enormous ignorance of life in the world of ordinary people. He, and the others in his tax bracket, unless perhaps they have actually personally earned their wealth through invention and hard work, simply live in another world entirely from ordinary people. They live in different neighborhoods, eat in different restaurants, live in more elegant housing, drive better automobiles, go to better schools, and for the most part do not fraternize with lesser souls or peasants. This is precisely why Romney comes across as totally inauthentic when he pretends to be someone he is not.
Having now been informed of the true size of his fortune and the fact that he apparently makes $57,000 a day, more than most people earn in a year, and does nothing to earn it other than possess a fortune, I am outraged. And if he believes he is entitled to accumulate so much money so easily I am even more outraged. The fact that he also is allowed to pay less in taxes than ordinary working people outrages me even more than that. Quite frankly, I believe that anyone who makes more than, say, a million or two a year should be taxed 100 per cent. And no one, under any circumstances, should be allowed to have a billion or more in personal wealth. I don’t know exactly what the limit should be, but once that generous limit is met they should be taxed at 100 per cent. If the limit is established high enough this would not hurt anyone and would greatly benefit everyone. I do not believe anyone should be allowed to make millions year after year simply because they inherited or otherwise accumulated large fortunes which then have no further purpose other than allowing them to make even more money by doing nothing. Let them have plenty to live the high life up to a reasonable extent but no more.
I am not personally much of a hater. I have trouble staying mad at anyone for more than five minutes no matter how they might have offended me. But I can easily understand how envy (if it exists as Romney thinks it does), disgust, and outrage can lead eventually into outright hatred. When a few have so much, and so many have so little, and there is such an enormous disparity, it is not difficult to see potential trouble ahead. This situation can be made much worse when those who have so much resist even giving up a little. Some of them, like Warren Buffet seem to understand this and are willing to at least consider parity in their percentage of taxes. But even here we are talking about a mere five to ten percent increase in the taxes of the absolutely incredibly wealthy. I find this absurd, outrageous, and hateful. A person with billions of dollars could easily pay hundreds of millions in taxes and still not even notice the difference, a five or ten percent increase is little more than a tip for the shoeshine boy. I find it incredible that the American public accepts what is happening with our tax code, and now that it is becoming more public I doubt they will for much longer. In the case of people like Romney this is not a case of rewarding the successful, it is simply rewarding the accident of birth. If for some reason you have money you can easily make more money. If you are poor you are doomed to stay that way. The situation is getting worse. It is not as things should be.
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
Rex Stout
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Will It Fly?
The “It” here being perhaps one of the greatest political hoaxes of all time, the question of jobs and the creation and responsibility for them. Republicans, especially Boehner, Cantor, and others keep asking where are the jobs, inferring that President Obama has failed to provide them. Thus they hope to make people believe that Obama is at fault when it comes to jobs. However, the Republicans have advanced no bills to create jobs and have, in fact, opposed every attempt Obama has made to create jobs. This is somewhat analogous to the situation when children kill their parents and then plead forgiveness on the grounds of being orphans. I have no doubt whatsoever that this has been the Republican plan all along, keep Obama from creating jobs or moving the country forward in any way and then blame it on him. As the Democrats rarely if ever seem to counter this with the truth it appears the Republicans may well pull it off, one of the greatest con jobs in political history that might actually fly.
Yes, I watched the State of the Union speech. There was nothing new. President Obama held forth with all kinds of ideas to move the country forward, reduce the debt, create jobs, and preserve our freedoms and so forth. Ever the optimist, he still clings to the idea that Republicans are eventually going to cooperate with him. I think he may be constitutionally unable to understand that any Americans, Republicans or not, would knowingly resist doing the right things by the country. He underestimates their hatred for him and refuses to believe they would sink the Republic rather than see him succeed. What Obama says is basically true, if we all come together there is nothing we can’t accomplish, but we are not going to come together to accomplish anything as long as Mitch McConnell’s single goal is to bring down Obama. Of course the President cannot moan and groan and talk doom and gloom, he has to paint a positive picture no matter what.
If anyone thought otherwise about bipartisanship, Mitch Daniels in his rebuttal speech made it quite clear there is simply no agreement on the part of Republicans for anything Obama suggested. Daniels predictably concentrated on the deficit with the usual doomsday scenario of national bankruptcy. He also spent time talking about jobs, implying that Republicans were going to create jobs, but as they have shown no interest in doing such a thing, it was, I thought, quite a stretch. It was mostly the usual Republican nonsense about too many regulations, too much government, too many taxes, and blah, blah, blah. Some people seem to think he was chosen to give the rebuttal as a kind of tryout for the Presidency. You may recall that he once talked of running but then did not do so. I believe there is a plan on the part of the remaining adults in the Republican Party to somehow install him as the Republican candidate at the last minute. It is obvious that Romney is fading badly and the only alternative to him is Newt Gingrich whom they despise (along with most everyone else in the United States). Santorum and Paul are not considered viable, the former because he is too radical mostly on a single issue, the latter because he is regarded as a “nut case.” Daniels did a credible job with his rebuttal but it was simply the usual Republican line, lower taxes, fewer regulations, smaller government. Republicans don’t seem to get the idea that we’ve tried that and it didn’t work, won’t work, and they should try to come up with a more sensible plan (I don’t think they can as they have now memorized this plan and play it over and over like a broken record).
I can’t really decide what I think Republicans are trying to do. It makes sense to me that they would not be at all happy with either Romney or Gingrich. This means the more responsible Republicans (if there still are any) might well want to put their foot down at the last minute and insist on another candidate, such as Daniels, Christie, or even Jeb Bush. But it is also the case they may believe they cannot beat Obama this year. That may well be the reason they do not already have a better candidate. In this case they might well just allow either Romney or Gingrich to sacrifice themselves for no purpose and wait until 2016. But that risks the possibility of disgracing the party at least in the near future. Of course the past few months of their circus has already done that so perhaps it doesn’t matter.
I cannot fathom why Republicans decided to have so many “debates.” As far as I can see all this has done is emphasize their appalling ignorance and their absurd proposals for running the country over and over again. Now they have degenerated into a personal battle between Romney and Gingrich that can only have the effect of damaging either one or them as a national candidate. You have to give them credit for having lots of money, too bad there is no correlation between money and brains.
I came from a disadvantaged home. They were Republicans.
Paul Tsongas
Yes, I watched the State of the Union speech. There was nothing new. President Obama held forth with all kinds of ideas to move the country forward, reduce the debt, create jobs, and preserve our freedoms and so forth. Ever the optimist, he still clings to the idea that Republicans are eventually going to cooperate with him. I think he may be constitutionally unable to understand that any Americans, Republicans or not, would knowingly resist doing the right things by the country. He underestimates their hatred for him and refuses to believe they would sink the Republic rather than see him succeed. What Obama says is basically true, if we all come together there is nothing we can’t accomplish, but we are not going to come together to accomplish anything as long as Mitch McConnell’s single goal is to bring down Obama. Of course the President cannot moan and groan and talk doom and gloom, he has to paint a positive picture no matter what.
If anyone thought otherwise about bipartisanship, Mitch Daniels in his rebuttal speech made it quite clear there is simply no agreement on the part of Republicans for anything Obama suggested. Daniels predictably concentrated on the deficit with the usual doomsday scenario of national bankruptcy. He also spent time talking about jobs, implying that Republicans were going to create jobs, but as they have shown no interest in doing such a thing, it was, I thought, quite a stretch. It was mostly the usual Republican nonsense about too many regulations, too much government, too many taxes, and blah, blah, blah. Some people seem to think he was chosen to give the rebuttal as a kind of tryout for the Presidency. You may recall that he once talked of running but then did not do so. I believe there is a plan on the part of the remaining adults in the Republican Party to somehow install him as the Republican candidate at the last minute. It is obvious that Romney is fading badly and the only alternative to him is Newt Gingrich whom they despise (along with most everyone else in the United States). Santorum and Paul are not considered viable, the former because he is too radical mostly on a single issue, the latter because he is regarded as a “nut case.” Daniels did a credible job with his rebuttal but it was simply the usual Republican line, lower taxes, fewer regulations, smaller government. Republicans don’t seem to get the idea that we’ve tried that and it didn’t work, won’t work, and they should try to come up with a more sensible plan (I don’t think they can as they have now memorized this plan and play it over and over like a broken record).
I can’t really decide what I think Republicans are trying to do. It makes sense to me that they would not be at all happy with either Romney or Gingrich. This means the more responsible Republicans (if there still are any) might well want to put their foot down at the last minute and insist on another candidate, such as Daniels, Christie, or even Jeb Bush. But it is also the case they may believe they cannot beat Obama this year. That may well be the reason they do not already have a better candidate. In this case they might well just allow either Romney or Gingrich to sacrifice themselves for no purpose and wait until 2016. But that risks the possibility of disgracing the party at least in the near future. Of course the past few months of their circus has already done that so perhaps it doesn’t matter.
I cannot fathom why Republicans decided to have so many “debates.” As far as I can see all this has done is emphasize their appalling ignorance and their absurd proposals for running the country over and over again. Now they have degenerated into a personal battle between Romney and Gingrich that can only have the effect of damaging either one or them as a national candidate. You have to give them credit for having lots of money, too bad there is no correlation between money and brains.
I came from a disadvantaged home. They were Republicans.
Paul Tsongas
Sunday, January 22, 2012
First Contact - book
First Contact New Guinea’s Highlanders Encounter the Outside World, Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson (Penguin Books, 1987)
When I first acquired this book in 1987 I was working on a project so that I only read the first few chapters that had to do with that specific topic. I have only just now returned to it and found it even more fascinating than before. It is quite an unusual book in several ways.
Although Europeans and others had been in New Guinea from quite an early time, Germans, English, Dutch, Indonesians, and probably others, it was commonly believed until 1930 that the rugged mountain interior was uninhabited. In 1930 an Australian prospector, Michael Leahy, led a party into the Easternmost part of the Highlands and found, much to everyone’s surprise, that not only was there a series of fertile valleys, they were heavily populated, nearly a million people gardening and living where there were supposed to be none. Although Leahy was a prospector and lusted for gold, he also regarded himself as an explorer. He took thousands of photographs of the first contact with the various Highland peoples he encountered, and he also kept detailed diaries of his movements and experiences, thus providing a wealth of information about the incredible adventure of first contact with, as it was reported, “People living in the Stone Age,” and sometimes “The Land that Time Forgot.” The Highlanders were using stone axes and stone, bone, and wooden tools, but they were not truly living in the stone age; had they been they would have been able to protect themselves more adequately against the steel weapons, guns and axes, they suddenly encountered. What is all the more fascinating is that the authors were able to locate and interview many of the Highlanders who had experienced these shocking first encounters, providing a unique perspective virtually unprecedented in such histories, as well as incredible interpretations of just who these White people were, where they must have come from, and why they were there.
Although they were shamelessly exploited in many ways for years (and even now in some ways), they were extremely fortunate to have escaped the real horrors of colonialism that had occurred so widely in the rest of the world. By the 1930’s Australia was mandated to care for them and try to help them eventually become more “civilized.” This did not prevent them from exploiting their cheap labor, indenturing them for work on the coastal plantations and other areas. Although there was talk of maintaining the Highlands, with the fertile soil and marvelous climate as another Kenya, to be reserved for Whites, this movement was quickly stopped after only a relatively small amount of land had been alienated for coffee plantations. As Australia itself had a small population to develop their continent they were slow in providing aid to the New Guineans, but eventually government schools were constructed (there had been a few mission schools that mostly sought to make converts), some of the Highlanders began to learn trades and read and write, and finally in 1975 New Guinea achieved independence (although they were not really ready for it).
First Contact, in addition to being such an unusual account of an incredible discovery, follows Michael Leahy, his brothers, and others as they moved across the high valleys in search of gold, which they found, but not in the large quantities they had dreamed about. As you might surmise, they did not always find peaceful natives and they were sometimes forced to resort to killing. In his diaries Leahy confesses to some 31 or more, but it is obvious there were many more (one estimate put the number of native deaths before pacification at probably one thousand). All of these killings were technically against the law, but as there was only one Patrol Officer for the entire area, he supported Leahy on the grounds of self-defense. And although the administration attempted to keep prospectors and others from entering the as yet unpacified highlands, the lure of gold was too strong and the government was too weak to prevent them from doing so.
The Highlanders certainly benefitted from their late discovery by Europeans, but the tale is still one of the typical colonial pattern, the natives regarded as totally inferior, the arrogance of Europeans who felt no qualms whatsoever about invading their territory and removing their gold and, basically whatever else they wanted, having casual sexual relations with their women when it pleased them to do so. Although Michael Leahy took thousands of photographs of their rituals, and hired hundreds of native workers, he had no interest in their culture or beliefs, and always maintained the proper distance between “mastas” and “boys.” His brother Dan eventually settled in the Highlands, had two native wives and several children, but Michael, true to the colonial spirit to the end, opposed their independence and refused even to acknowledge the half caste sons he had fathered, even when face to face with them, afraid of what his Australian wife and others might think of him.
The book is about a dynamic personality (who was a true man of his time), a fantastic discovery, a marvelous adventure, one of the last examples of (a rather benign) colonialism, and the discovery by isolated, ignorant, but intelligent people, of the outside world. It is well worth reading.
When I first acquired this book in 1987 I was working on a project so that I only read the first few chapters that had to do with that specific topic. I have only just now returned to it and found it even more fascinating than before. It is quite an unusual book in several ways.
Although Europeans and others had been in New Guinea from quite an early time, Germans, English, Dutch, Indonesians, and probably others, it was commonly believed until 1930 that the rugged mountain interior was uninhabited. In 1930 an Australian prospector, Michael Leahy, led a party into the Easternmost part of the Highlands and found, much to everyone’s surprise, that not only was there a series of fertile valleys, they were heavily populated, nearly a million people gardening and living where there were supposed to be none. Although Leahy was a prospector and lusted for gold, he also regarded himself as an explorer. He took thousands of photographs of the first contact with the various Highland peoples he encountered, and he also kept detailed diaries of his movements and experiences, thus providing a wealth of information about the incredible adventure of first contact with, as it was reported, “People living in the Stone Age,” and sometimes “The Land that Time Forgot.” The Highlanders were using stone axes and stone, bone, and wooden tools, but they were not truly living in the stone age; had they been they would have been able to protect themselves more adequately against the steel weapons, guns and axes, they suddenly encountered. What is all the more fascinating is that the authors were able to locate and interview many of the Highlanders who had experienced these shocking first encounters, providing a unique perspective virtually unprecedented in such histories, as well as incredible interpretations of just who these White people were, where they must have come from, and why they were there.
Although they were shamelessly exploited in many ways for years (and even now in some ways), they were extremely fortunate to have escaped the real horrors of colonialism that had occurred so widely in the rest of the world. By the 1930’s Australia was mandated to care for them and try to help them eventually become more “civilized.” This did not prevent them from exploiting their cheap labor, indenturing them for work on the coastal plantations and other areas. Although there was talk of maintaining the Highlands, with the fertile soil and marvelous climate as another Kenya, to be reserved for Whites, this movement was quickly stopped after only a relatively small amount of land had been alienated for coffee plantations. As Australia itself had a small population to develop their continent they were slow in providing aid to the New Guineans, but eventually government schools were constructed (there had been a few mission schools that mostly sought to make converts), some of the Highlanders began to learn trades and read and write, and finally in 1975 New Guinea achieved independence (although they were not really ready for it).
First Contact, in addition to being such an unusual account of an incredible discovery, follows Michael Leahy, his brothers, and others as they moved across the high valleys in search of gold, which they found, but not in the large quantities they had dreamed about. As you might surmise, they did not always find peaceful natives and they were sometimes forced to resort to killing. In his diaries Leahy confesses to some 31 or more, but it is obvious there were many more (one estimate put the number of native deaths before pacification at probably one thousand). All of these killings were technically against the law, but as there was only one Patrol Officer for the entire area, he supported Leahy on the grounds of self-defense. And although the administration attempted to keep prospectors and others from entering the as yet unpacified highlands, the lure of gold was too strong and the government was too weak to prevent them from doing so.
The Highlanders certainly benefitted from their late discovery by Europeans, but the tale is still one of the typical colonial pattern, the natives regarded as totally inferior, the arrogance of Europeans who felt no qualms whatsoever about invading their territory and removing their gold and, basically whatever else they wanted, having casual sexual relations with their women when it pleased them to do so. Although Michael Leahy took thousands of photographs of their rituals, and hired hundreds of native workers, he had no interest in their culture or beliefs, and always maintained the proper distance between “mastas” and “boys.” His brother Dan eventually settled in the Highlands, had two native wives and several children, but Michael, true to the colonial spirit to the end, opposed their independence and refused even to acknowledge the half caste sons he had fathered, even when face to face with them, afraid of what his Australian wife and others might think of him.
The book is about a dynamic personality (who was a true man of his time), a fantastic discovery, a marvelous adventure, one of the last examples of (a rather benign) colonialism, and the discovery by isolated, ignorant, but intelligent people, of the outside world. It is well worth reading.
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