Month: September 2023

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Andrew Sullivan, who I generally agree with, recently wrote in his blog about immigration. I think he explained the problem fairly well but provided very little in the way of solutions to this complex problem. His whole idea is better policing at the border which helps some but it isn’t really the problem. It may slow the stream. But how this will stop illegal immigration is a mystery.

Immigrants aren’t leaving their countries because it is a lark and they think it will be fun to illegally enter the United States. They are coming because they are poor, hungry and desperate. When a reader pointed this out to him, Sullivan responds, “It is not the job of American taxpayers or the American government to fix all the misgovernment on the planet, end climate change, prevent natural disasters globally … in order to have a stable nation-state with defensible borders.”

Well, then. I guess Sullivan told them. Better policing and support for bureaucracy to handle the policing is the answer. But we all know, it isn’t. These people have walked thousand of miles through jungles and deserts. They have risked their lives, and the lives of their children, in overcrowded ships which often send their passengers tumbling into the seas in the dark of night. These people, knowing that the people they are dealing with might just rip them off and sell them into slavery, are giving them what little money they have any way. These are the people who are going to back down because of more police. Really?

Sullivan rather blithely compares these immigrants to the invading Russian army in the Ukraine, “we have currently spent $75 billion defending another country’s borders; it seems to me we should be fiscally capable of defending our own.” The Russians invaded the Ukraine with bombs, tanks and soldiers trying to force the Ukrainian people to become a part of Russia. They have killed people and bombed cities into rubble. Their aggressiveness is a problem for all free countries and needs to be dealt with just as aggressively.

Immigrants, on the other hand, travel to Western countries because they want to be a part of an economically free country where they can work hard and succeed. They have bought into the Western ideal. These are, by and large, good people who are only looking for a chance. They know the history of the US and how immigrants were a large part of our success. Why wouldn’t immigrants continue to come? Isn’t that part of the American Dream? The statue of Liberty and all that. Instead Sullivan prefers give me your well rested, your well to do, your highly educated and after a highly selective vetting process we will let you in.

There is also the cost. Why spend billions of dollars on better policing? Better policing may be a part of the answer but only a small part and it is totally reactive. Stopping them at the border will cost billions in police, bureaucrats, walls and detention facilities but will do nothing whatsoever to stop what is driving immigration — which is poverty and hopelessness. But, by all means, let’s spend billions of dollars to not solve the problem. It is something we do well. The net result will be a much larger Federal bureaucracy costing a lot more money failing to stop the flow of people into the country. Some people will mistakenly believe that the government is actually doing something. There is that.

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I am a little annoyed after reading Chauncey Devega’s interview of Matthew Levendusky in Salon. They were discussing the importance of a Civic’s education in a democracy. But they weren’t really. They seem to want people to recite answers to random questions — like for example what is the 3rd Amendment to the Constitution?

How often in life will I have to answer that question. So far in my 66 years, no one has ever asked me yet nor have I been cognizant of needing this information. Maybe I unknowingly used the 3rd Amendment to live my life. Which is fine with me. There are more important things to remember say like the emergency number for the police is 911. 911 is important and I might use it, have used it. I am not saying the 3rd Amendment isn’t important. It is important but I may never use it or know that I am using it.

There is a serious misconception about the past. Like people used their civics and history education in making their civic decisions. My grandparents all came from modest circumstances. Working people. My Grandma Schnell never got past the 8th grade as she reminded us incessantly. That these people were debating the advantages and disadvantages of constitutional amendments before they voted seems like a bit of a stretch. They did however vote. What DeVega and Levendusky would like citizens to do and what they are actually doing are two different things.

A more realistic vision might acknowledge that people will do some research if it is required but will probably vote based on party preference and the endorsements of institutions or people who they agree with. They look at their pocketbooks, check with their family and friends, and maybe look at the television. To ask for a process of weighing the pros and cons of each and every candidate on the ballot is insanity. Have they ever seen a California ballot? We vote for the assistant to the assistant Dog Catcher here. I have absolutely no interest in researching everyone on that ballot and California is really good about giving you a lot of lead time to research. For me, it boils down to whether they are Democrats and are pro-choice. If they meet those two criterion, I am done researching.

The idea that better civics classes might make for better citizens made me shudder in horror. Civic’s education has always been bad. In my Catholic high school, it was taught by the lesser athletic coaches who couldn’t get the prime PE job which always went to our champion Football coach. They may have cared about history and civics but their hearts were definitely in their sports team and not the Dred Scott decision. My memory of these classes were of men talking each day about what you needed to memorize to pass the class. This meant that they were irredeemably boring. My most vivid memory of these classes was how difficult it was to stay awake in them. Often I would just surrender to the urge and nap.

And let me tell you I missed nothing. The answers to the test were also in the text book. If you read the text book, you could easily figure out what you needed to know for the test. So I just read the text book. That these two apparently intelligent men are advocating the need for people to learn the three branches of government in order to be responsible citizens is disheartening.

This, of course, is a broader problem with American Education. Memorizing facts passes for education in this country. It isn’t. It can be helpful and it can reduce the time a citizen takes to address a problem but it is unnecessary to know this information to act as a good citizen. Far more relevant, would be to give the students issues or problems and ask them how a citizen might act to resolve these issues. How do they use their vaguely understood freedom and rights to make civic life better and, if, in the course of their research, they learn about the three branches of government then good for them.

By the way, I still don’t know what the 3rd Amendment is. I thought about looking it up but then I thought, it is a bit of an effort, and I would really have to focus, and then I realized I have better things to do. So there.

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Tyler Durden, at Zero Hedge, is passing along a blog written by James Howard Kunstler. You know before you get started that this is going to be edgy because it comes from Tyler Durden, the mythical hero of Fight Club. Durden, if you remember, was opposed to practically everything in modern life and leads a underground group of dissatisfied males who fight each other to prove how manly they are. It is unsurprising then that this blog is full of conspiracy theories.

Even though I went into his blog with the expectations of conspiracy theories, I was astounded by the shear number Durden/Kunstler refers to in one blog. First, there is the Clinton Clan who bought off the Democratic National Committee in order to win the 2016 Democratic nomination for Hillary Clinton. Then there are the neo-Marxist who’s only goal is to make everyone miserable because that is what Marxists do. They quite simply aren’t happy unless they are making someone somewhere miserable. Unbeknownst to me, the leader of the neo-Marxists is none other than Barack Obama who, while president, took over public education so that all white children would learn how perfectly awful the white race is. They also encouraging children, without telling their parents, of course, to change their gender.

Wait there is more.

The Obama Gang (also known as the neo-Marxist gang) doesn’t like the Clinton gang so the Obama Gang used Joe Biden to regain control of the Democratic Party. The neo-Marxist gang also want to strip the Middle Class of any assets in order to weaken any opposition to the eventual neo-Marxist take over of the country. Since Obama is actually in charge of the Biden Administration, he OK’d the destruction of the Middle Class because people were catching on to his bad behavior during his presidency. Since he couldn’t hide his misdeeds anymore, he has to distract the public. Destroying the American Middle Class is Obama’s choice of distraction. This neo-Marxist conspiracy also destroyed the Trump presidency when they released the COVID virus which allowed them to take some unconstitutional and illegal judicial actions rolled out during the the pandemic panic. The COVID crisis also allowed the neo-Marxists to hijack the 2020 election through mail-in voting. To boot, and I am assuming this is just for informational purposes only, a former drug addict says that Obama is actually gay and a junkie. What that has to do with the conspiracy, I don’t know how he does it all but I think it is pretty impressive that a drug addicted man could pull of such a complicated conspiracy.

Got it.

Give me a second here to catch my breath here as the shear volume of conspiracies has left me a little overwhelmed. I mean, for Christ’s sakes, all of these conspiracies going on in plain site and nobody is doing anything to stop them. The American Public is just rolling over while the neo-Marxists take over.

Where do I begin? Oh, Obama being a neo-Marxist is probably as good as any other place. Obama is clearly not a Marxist of any kind. He comes across as a moderate Democrat and a supporter of a regulated capitalist economy. He has done nothing to suggest that he wants to confiscate the middle class’ property or to send them to reeducation camps. He hangs out with billionaires who don’t seem the least bit afraid that he is going to line them up like the Romanovs.

Then the neo-Marxists released COVID on the American public in order to win the 2020 election. I find it difficult to believe because Kunstler/Durden provides absolutely no evidence to support this contention. I guess we are supposed to take it on trust but, I’m sorry Tyler, but with all of these conspiracy theories going around I find it difficult to believe anyone. Who’s to say you aren’t with the Clinton clan or a part of a neo-Marxist sleeper cell?

The evidence I have suggests COVID broke out in China and then Italy and Spain before winding its way to USA. So, if I am understanding this all correctly, the Chinese Communist government intentionally released a deadly disease on it’s own population in order that this deadly disease could eventually infect the American Public. In the impending crisis, governments the world over will institute strict healthcare practices which would allow the American government to institute mail in voting so that Biden could steal the 2020 election.

Since the Democrats are so adept at election shenanigans, or so the conservative press would have us believe, it seems like overkill. I mean they have been stealing elections successfully for years without releasing a deadly disease why would they take such a risk in 2020 in order to stuff the ballot box in Cook County. I get that neo-Marxists are horrible people and will stop at nothing to win an election but why take such drastic steps when letting the dead vote would have worked just as well without the attendant worldwide health panic. Why use an atomic bomb when a couple of well placed hand grenades would work just as well?

Given that conservatives think that Commies couldn’t tie their shoes without the help of good American capitalists, how can these secret cabals be so successful with such intricate and secret plans? I don’t know about you, but if Kunslter/Durden are correct, which clearly they aren’t, but for the sake of argument let’s suppose they are, then I am pretty impressed that these groups could know years in advance that they would need a mail-in ballot to win the 2020 election and to co-ordinate their efforts with the Chinese Communists to release the disease and National Health Services across the globe to end freedom as we know it. This is the biggest international co-ordination of resources since D-Day.

Which brings us to the real problem — the wasted effort to debunk conspiracy theories is taking people away from solving the real problems that COVID exposed. I am willing to listen if you say the medical community overreacted to COVID and we need to take the lessons we learned from this crisis and take different steps at the next pandemic. I am willing to talk and willing to change but if you want to peg this on an international Communist conspiracy, forget about it.

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I have to admit this one brought a little tear to my eye.

Poor little rich people can’t guarantee that their children will get into Harvard so they are forced to game the system by moving their families to Southern states and rural communities. You see people from Southern states and rural communities are underrepresented at Ivy League schools so when the schools get applications from these areas it increases the child’s chances of getting into the Ivy League.

Imagine that. Having the money to spend on a new house, the movers, the flights back and forth and the consultant fee to figure out how to do it all just to get Junior into Harvard. How horrible that rich people have to spend all that extra money to get their kid into the Ivy League. Excuse me for a moment while I clutch my hanky.

This is disgraceful. I would rather pay for a student smoking lounge at the toughest public school in American than allow parents to game the system to increase their kid’s chances of attending Harvard. Besides, they can easily send their children to a perfectly good community college or a state university. Or is that not good enough for them?

This may also explain why rich people think poor people are always gaming the system. I mean if I, a God-fearing good upper middle-class person like myself is forced to do this, imagine what those awful poor people must being doing. It has to be much worse. Right?

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Charlie Kirk, conservative commentator, is suggesting cuts in Social Security because those no good seniors are just playing golf and watching television. They should be doing something constructive like helping people.

WTF. I thought that the whole underlying idea of the conservative movement was freedom. Freedom to do what ever the Hell you wanted to do, whenever the Hell you wanted to do it. Now Kirk wants me to give up my retirement fun in order to help people. Help people, no less, what kind of conservative is he. Oh, yes, a cheap one because he both proposes cutting social security payments and then wants these very same seniors to volunteer at schools and hospitals. That’s right less money and more work. What an asshole.

And, how exactly is that going to happen? If I get less money, I won’t have enough to retire comfortably and all of my free time will have to go to my part-time shift as a Wall Mart greeter. Of course, this is just another advantage to proposal. More cheap labor.

More grating and more dangerous is this frequent misconception that conservatives love to throw around about Social Security. They make it sound like a government handout. It isn’t. It is a government sponsored retirement plan. People pay into it until they retire, then they receive a monthly payment from the government. It is owed to you because you worked for it. You never should feel bad about taking this money. You deserve it.

So, in case Kirk has misunderstood me. Fuck you Charlie Kirk. You can pry my social security check from my cold dead hands.

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David Faris, in Slate, and Josh Marshall, in Talking Points Memo, are telling Democrats who might want another choice other than Biden/Harris to stop making trouble and deal with it. There is no alternate to the two. Why would the Democrats risk losing the White House by changing the line up?The wise men back east have spoken. Now is not the time to buck the conventional thinking. Biden is the only one who can win, so shut up and do what you are told. I neither like the tone nor the content of these instructions.

Biden is a deeply unpopular president. 538, the polling amalgamation site, has his approval rate at 40%. He has been at about 40% for months which suggests that a lot of people have made up their minds about him. Some of these disapprovers will vote for Biden in a Biden Trump match up but why not try to do better than another close election. Now, if Biden was wildly popular or, say, even at 50%, it might be sage advice to let him be. But he isn’t.

I voted for Biden once and will vote for him again if he is the Democrats candidate, however he isn’t my first choice or, for that matter, on my Top 10 ten list. I voted for him because I was scared of Trump not because I liked Biden. This should be concerning. I am liberal Democrat and I voted for Biden grudgingly. I don’t have another option really if Trump is the Republican nominee or, for that matter, any other Republican who might win the nomination.

Other people, however, do. A majority of Americans don’t want either Biden or Trump. Think about that a large portion of the US electorate doesn’t want either candidate. I would suspect that those voters are all highly moveable — an intemperate comment from Trump or a disastrous senior moment from Biden could easily change their vote. I would be concerned to have this many regular people unhappy with their choice. But apparently I just need to get over it and get in line.

Why though? One of the way to test how good a candidate is through the primary system. Isn’t it better to find how strong Biden is during the primaries? This requires challengers to Biden. If he turns out to be a weak candidate, the party had the opportunity to find someone stronger. And, if Biden perform well in the primaries, he will allay people’s fears about him being weak. But to tell Democrats to get in line a good year before the election is irritating. It sounds like they are afraid of what will happen in contested election. They want to keep Biden hidden from public view until the election next November. This isn’t a particularly encouraging strategy.

What do these men really know? The wise men in Washington convinced me Sanders couldn’t win in 2016. They were probably right about that but they also believed that Clinton was the best chance of beating Trump. So I sucked up all my ambivalent feelings about her and voted for Clinton in the primary. Well, we all know how that turned out.

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Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, just gave a master class on why diversity is important. He is hawking his book on the Masters of Rock and Roll — all who happen to be white men. Wenner, also, happens to be a white man and claims that Blacks and women don’t “articulate” at the same level. What this means, I haven’t the foggiest. But I am betting it is that he feels comfortable talking to them, they speak a common vernacular which he easily understands and thus is able to flesh out these ideas better when he writes. He also admits that perhaps he shouldn’t have used the word master because it sounds like he is limiting the illustrious designation of master to white men which wasn’t his intention. But he did, after all, choose the title and he now rightfully is defending the absence of a more diverse group of master musicians.

This is why diversity matters. People’s opinions about the world are influenced by where they live and who surrounds them. Since Blacks and women might articulate in a different way, people, like Jann Wenner, may not be as comfortable with their experience and what they are saying. In order to understand their experience and their influence on music, it might be helpful to sit down and have a chat with them in order to understand the music world. Wenner clearly has no interest in doing this and that is a big problem.

What is more alarming is that nobody tried to persuade him that excluding women and Blacks might be a bad idea. I am wondering who he worked with on this book and am surprised that nobody brought this omission to his attention. How could this book gone all the way to production and distribution without someone bringing this up is shocking to me. Maybe if someone would have brought this to his attention sooner, he might have had a better explanation ready when questioned about it. He is welcome to his opinion, but then so am I. As it is, he sounds like a racist sexist idiot. I hope I articulated that in a way that could be understood.

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The Sandy Hook parents lost their 6 to 7 year olds in one of the worst school shootings in the nations history. Afterwards, in an act that can be only described as heartless, some pro-gun rights advocates pushed the story that Sandy Hook never happened and that their children never died. Television personality, Alex Jones, unapologetically choose to help these assholes spread their vile story. Imagine losing your child and then someone telling you it never happened and that you are lying about it. Some of the Sandy Hook parents went to court and proved that their children were indeed killed in the shooting, and for his part in spreading the lie, Jones was ordered to pay them close to a billion dollars.

Unsurprisingly Jones hasn’t paid the Sandy Hook Parents the money they are owed. I could see that Jones may have trouble gathering a billion dollars. It is a lot of money however it doesn’t help his claim of poverty when he is galavanting around the country spending close to $100,000 in one month. He also supposedly has and additional $14 million in the bank. Why isn’t any of the money going to the Sandy Hook parents? Even if they never get the full amount they are owed, wouldn’t it be better that they got something as opposed to nothing? And let him wrong the rest of his life trying to make up the difference. Moreover, the less money this perfidious asshole has, the less money he has to spread unsubstantiated and hurtful conspiracy theories. Every penny he has should go to the Sandy Hook parents and hopefully at some point he will see the error of his ways.

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Konstadinos Moros helpfully reminds us about the source of gun violence. The real culprit, which, of course, was so obvious I am embarrassed to admit I never saw it, but, any way, the real culprit is, drum roll please, single mothers. He found that there is an eerily high correlation between states with above average percentage of single mothers and above average percentage of gun violence.

Yes, it is those irresponsible gadabouts, single mothers, who mindlessly produce children who then shoot up the streets they live on. Now, I think everyone agrees it would be nice to have active fathers involved with their children, on the other hand, claiming that single mothers and their bastard children running amok in the streets are the single most important cause of gun violence is a bit much. Moros even admits that “correlation is not causation” before launching into his case against single mothers.

Moros fails to mention that there is also high overlaps with states that have high poverty rates, high gun ownership, and limited access to abortion and medical care. That these factors might also impinge on the problem is never explored because Moros has already found the villain — single mothers.

And it get’s worse. Moros believes that the one of the root problems of single motherhood is generous welfare payments. The unspoken message here is that society need do nothing to help out the single mother. Helping single mothers only encourages other women to have babies because those babies provide a generous income, so generous, in fact, that the largest age group living in poverty are children under the age of 5. I guess raising children in poverty is an exciting proposition for some women. Who would have known?

So, let me review the problem here. The offspring of unmarried women are shooting innocent people in the streets. They need a present father who will miraculously stop gun violence. This problem is so serious for Moros that we can’t possibly help these women in any way – no family planning and no government assistance — because some of these women will be encouraged to earn an income by having as many babies as possible. In other words, it is a serious problem that will be solved completely by not sending fathers who have committed drug offenses to prison. Which is all very reassuring. A simple solution to a complex problem and no extra tax money is needed in order to bring it about. A nice big bow on that particular package.

The only problem is that Moros is demonstrably wrong. I looked at the states that are the best place for single parents to raise their children and what I discovered is the states that rank best have very little overlap with states who have high levels of gun violence and single mothers. So, if single mothers are indeed the problem, the best way to solve the problem of bastard children running amok in the streets of America would be to help the single mothers dealing with this situation instead of ignoring them.

But, of course, this would mean an outlay of tax money in order to solve a complicated social problem. No Conservative wants to do that, they want cheap simple solutions. Well, you get what you pay for.

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Mark Tapscott at the Epoch Times reports that, according to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR), Unions spent $25 billion dollars on 2022 election. Which is really kind of remarkable because Federal Elections Commission (FEC) reported that the total amount of money spent on political campaigns was 8.9 billion dollars. You might have spotted a glaring difference between the two organization’s figures. I certainly did.

Why the difference? First, and this is pretty important, the NILRR is anti-union. They want to demonize the union movement so they fiddled with the figures to make the actual 54 million labor spent on 2022 campaigns $25 billion. After this little switcheroo, the relative modest spending becomes outrageously large, especially with the untampered figures from corporations. $25 billion says unions are this powerful behemoth who have an endless supply of money to force their collectivist ways on the poor employers of America.

How did $54 million become $25 billion? NILRR’s much broader interpretation of union political spending can be found here: “the bulk of unreported political power is wielded by government union officials. They’re armed with the monopoly power to negotiate salaries, pensions, and hiring practices for entire swaths of federal, state, and local government workers. This makes monopoly bargaining in the public sector, by its very nature, political.” So, everything a union does is political and, therefore, must be included in political spending. Voila, you now have a rich monster with billions to spend facing those poor corporations who are just trying to run their business.

It’s a blatantly unfair comparison. Why isn’t the same standard applied to corporate spending? In non-union shops, which is close to 90% of all American worker’s experiences, the companies have this same monopoly power to negotiate salaries, pensions and hiring practices. When there are no unions, the worker is on his own and the company has all the power. Does the NILRR consider the money spent on Union Busting as political spending? Technically, I am sure it isn’t but by the NILRR broad definition of political spending, it definitely should be.

I am confident that when you add up all the Corporate Spending on salaries, benefits, HR policies and union busting, there would be a much higher amount of money for corporate political spending. Then we can talk political spending for both Corporations and Labor. Until then I think the FEC’s figures on money spent directly on political campaigns is the only fair way to appraise political spending. It gives a much different story about who is spending more money than Tapscott and NILRR.