Joe the Plumber, aka Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacker, paid a visit to St. George yesterday. He addressed a small audience at a local college and I attended. Dress was casual. Joe says exactly what he thinks and he asked for our support for politicians who do the same. I applaud his words.
It was interesting to hear his side of his encounter with Barack during the campaign. Barack was in Joe's neighborhood and Joe was curious to see what was happening. Joe had recently discussed with his boss the purchase of the small business where Joe worked. That was on his mind when he encountered Barack. Barack made the now famous statement that he wanted to spread the wealth around. I think that Barack wanted to say that he favored a more equitable distribution of the nation's income.
Joe talked at length about everyone taking responsibility for the results of our politics. I agree wholeheartedly with his ideas although I disagree with other positions he endorses. I believe that to make democracy work requires three steps: vote, express your opinions frequently, and donate/time money to a cause of your choice. Joe talked about the second item and I believe that he would support all three if questioned, which I did not do.
Joe also complained about the taxes a small business must pay. I might or might not agree with him if I knew more about how small businesses are classified, either as business or individual taxpayers. After WW2, individuals provided 65% of federal revenue while businesses paid 35%. Gradually over time with the advent of more and more loopholes, businesses now pay 10% of federal taxes while individuals pay 90%. Businesses should pay their fair share. If big businesses can pay their top officers millions or tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per year, they are not paying enough in taxes.
Kingston says today he's "vehemently" opposed to "The plan offered by Speaker Pelosi", yet he'd like Congress to buy him a C-37 so he can jet around GA-01 in style.
Details here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/11/7/15219/4797
In England in Charles Dickens's day, people who could not pay their bills went to prison. They stayed until they raised the money to get out, either by selling property, inheritance or through the efforts of friends and relatives. Prison furnished very little and prisoners were required to pay for any extras like clothing, more food or a better cell location.
Now we don't use debtors prisons; our debtors are allowed to roam the country so that they can work to repay their debt. As an experiment, I suggest that you add up all the interest that you pay per month including mortgage interest. You'll be surprised at the total; I was. Mortgage interest is deductible on your income tax, a subsidy to the home buyer, but also to the lender who can thus charge more, Lenders don't really provide much of a service for the exorbitant amounts they charge, If too big to fail, the risk is minimal. And it is our money they are lending, not theirs. For more on this I suggest a nearly century old classic, Other People's Money by Louis Brandeis. A slender book as true now as it was when it was written.
In Dickens's day before TV, people used to visit debtors prisons and insane asylums for entertainment. Now we can be entertained without leaving home by watching home videos of people falling down. A small improvement. Instead of finding other's problems entertaining, we should be doing all that we can to help solve their problems. With the debt problem, that means insisting on lower bank fees and interest rates.
Young people are killing young people in Chicago. Would second amendment supporters suggest arming everyone for self defense? When the smoke cleared, the streets would be littered with the dead. As an alternative, should the police shoot to kill? That might reduce the violence temporarily, but is not the solution.
I grew up in Chicago but it is many years since I have been back. When I lived there, Chicago was one of the most segregated cities in the country. I doubt that much has changed. I am now in Utah and Chicago is still many miles away in Illinois, but from here I think I know what the problems are. I cannot offer specific solutions but I do know that a piecemeal approach will not work. The problems that face our youth must be approached simultaneously if there is to be any hope of success.
The problems are: drugs, gangs, broken families, poor schools, guns in the wrong hands, unemployment and lack of opportunity. Why spend the effort to educate yourself if you are denied a chance to advance? Good , rewarding lives as productive members of society require good, well-paying jobs. Political and social leaders must set moral examples. Jails are overcrowded and the courts are too. Justice delayed is justice denied.
With criticism from the leftAnd criticism from the rightBarack steers a middle course ofModeration you say.The critics charge extremism.The moderate label they decry.Barack a moderate?Both sides would disagree.To the impartial,Few may they numberSteering between two perilsIs a skill they value.Like Scylla and CharybdisLeft and Right in America Imperil the ship of state.
Some start life as conservatives and remain so.
Some start life as liberals and remain so.
Some start life as conservatives and change opinions as they grow older.
Some start life as liberals and change opinions as they grow older.
I am not going to insert my opinion here as who is right and who is not. All I am going to say is that education and self examination are signs of growth. Someone who will not consider other viewpoints is someone who is not able to grow and is calcified in this life. 2400 years ago, Socrates said that an unexamined life is not worth living.
The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock, 177 pages, is subtitled Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity. The author is a British citizen and scientist who believes that the most logical source of power to run our civilization in the near term is nuclear. He makes a case that our reluctance to more fully use nuclear power is related to our fears of cancer and of nuclear bombs. The fear of cancer is groundless since the data show no increase in cancer rates from nuclear radiation. Most cancers in humans are caused by the oxidation of food in our body by atmospheric oxygen and by smoking. The smoking we can control with healthful practices but breathing oxygen for life is a process we cannot alter. Other forms of energy generation, such as wind, are unreliable or cannot generate the tremendous amounts of energy that are necessary. In addition, generating power from carbon based sources will add to the amount of greenhouse gasses in the sea and the atmosphere and those gasses must be decreased, rather than increased. They contribute to global warming in the atmosphere and alter the sea’s chemistry affecting the food chain all of us depend on to sustain life. The Gaia hypothesis regards the earth as a closed system where changes in one area potentially can affect many others. Before we take any large scale actions, we must understand how those actions will affect the earth, Gaia, on which all life depends. “…Gaia theory* is provisional and likely to be displaced by a larger and more complete view of the Earth. But for now I see it as the seed from which an instinctive environmentalism can grow; one that would instantly reveal planetary health or disease and help sustain a healthy world.” Possibly the most important paragraph in the book is in the glossary. It reads as follows:
“Algae are photosynthetic organisms that use sunlight to make organic matter and oxygen. The ocean plants are almost all algae; some are single cells, others, like kelp, can exist as huge assemblies of cells as long as sixty metres. The first algae on Earth appeared soon after life started over three billion years ago. Their form was bacterial and these microscopic organisms are still abundant: they are found either in living organisms or, importantly, as inclusions within the more complex cells of plants, called chloroplasts. Algae are unusually influential in the Earth’s climate: they remove carbon dioxide from the air, and they are the source of the gas dimethyl sulphide (DMS) which oxidizes in the air to become the tiny nuclei that seed the droplets of clouds. Their growth in the surface waters of the sea is sensitively dependent upon its temperature, and if this is above 10 to 12 degrees C the physical properties of the ocean prevent them from receiving nutrients and they do not flourish. Fossilized algae are the source of petroleum.”
*Gaia theory
“A view of the Earth that sees it as a self-regulating system made up from the totality of organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean and the atmosphere tightly coupled as an evolving system. The theory see the system as having a goal-the regulation of surface conditions so as always to be favorable as possible for contemporary life. It is based on observations and theoretical models; it is fruitful and has made ten successful predictions.”
The problem, as I see it, is healthcare reform and its opponents are confused by the linking of two systems that are at cross purposes, loggerheads if you will. The purpose of healthcare is a healthy population. The purpose of healthcare insurance if done by a free market, profit making company is to make as much profit as possible. In healthcare, salaries are largely determined by education level. In healthcare insurance, salaries are determined by how much one contributes to the bottom line, net profit. And the CEO is rewarded outlandishly if profits are high and increasing.
Solving this set of cross purposes requires breaking the link between the two systems. In my opinion, a public option leading eventually to Medicare for all is the solution.
The Democrats are the party of hope. The Republicans are the party of fear. If you have watched any of the Republican members of Congress on TV lately, you have heard them speak about all the things American now fear: higher taxes, the deficit, health care reform, socialism etc. It is easier to make political points using the emotion of fear than it is education on issues to produce hope.
Barack is our educator-in-chief but he cannot do everything or be everywhere no matter this past Sunday. I have a suggestion. Each Obama support group should organize a portion of the membership into truth squads. Each member of the squad can monitor a local newspaper or TV station or program and look for distortions or untruths. A prompt response may prevent further distortions. None of us can do it all against such an organized Republican campaign, which I'll bet is financed by just a few very wealthy individuals. We cannot permit the 2008 election to be nullified by a few wealthy people. Millions of us worked hard to elect Barack and we cast ballots to elect him. Now the opposition is mounting and using fear to defeat his and our agenda.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself and a big money campaign by those out to destroy the Obama presidency.
On this Labor Day morning I sent this feedback through whitehouse.gov:
I campaigned for you, like many others. We elected you and majorities of Democrats bigger than Newt Gingrich ever saw to get the job done: end the war, close gitmo, end warrantless wiretapping, implement universal health care, and the other things you said you would do.I'm sure it's hard once you get there, but gitmo is still open and there's a lot of talk that you're thinking of abandoning the public option on health care. A public option is already a compromise. The real solution, as you yourself once said, is single-payer. Medicare for everyone!You can't please everyone. You really can't please Republicans in Congress, because they're not bargaining in good faith: their only goal is to defeat you by defeating health care and anything else you propose. Trying to do it in a bipartisan way was laudable. It didn't work. You held out your hand and they bit it. Time to get the job done.FDR didn't pass the New Deal by asking Republicans to approve every detail. He accepted opposition and actively campaigned to defeat it and to defeat those Congress members in the next election. His biographer Jean Edward Smith said recently:“This fixation on securing bipartisan support for healthcare reform suggests that the Democratic Party has forgotten how to govern and the White House has forgotten how to lead.”LBJ didn't pass Medicare by giving away the store to the Republicans. He said what he wanted and he twisted arms until he got it. If your Blue Dogs are standing in your way tell them to get in line if they want your support for their next bill or at the next election.You're losing us, your progressive base. We are the great majority of people in this country who want real health care reform, not some compromise with the profit-gouging insurers. Nobody else should have to die so a CEO can get a bonus.It's time to lead, Mr. President. It's time for you and the Democrats in Congress to do the job you said you would do; the job we elected you to do.
No, I am not referring to sewage; I am referring to the contractor for military mercenaries formerly known as Blackwater, now known as Xe. Xe(Blackwater) should be abolished for a number of reasons, most importantly it is a private army that could be used by the unscrupulous to stage a coup here in the US. By assuming some of the duties of the armed forces at tremendous cost, it allows us to field more fighting troops with a smaller army. If we want more fighting troops, let's expand the armed forces by law, not by subterfuge.
Another strike against Xe(Blackwater) is that its employees in the field are governed by neither civilian nor military law. They become a lawless force of their own. Additionally, Xe funnels lots of money to its top people who already have more than they need. This only increases their power and influence.
