Why had the prophets missed this,
the long moment of the great awakening?
Almost too late, the phenomenon of selflessness
replaced the dominance of avarice and greed.
It was the suffering that did it,
and the unexpected winter of the great die-off.
Now we know immortality is a shared experience,
the thread that runs from generation to generation.
In these happy lands rockets and submarines
lie buried at the bottom of the ocean.
Cathedrals, temples and mosques have been dismantled
to make homes for the weary.
Mecca and places like it are archeological curiosities
scattered beneath the desert sands.
The Vatican is preserved.
We have made it a museum for false gods.
The labyrinths of Mars have revealed
the tenacity and fragility of life.
The internet has brought all people together.
Notions of class have been erased.
Evenings, when work is done,
poets read their works to tell how things are.
Musicians arrive, unpack their instruments
and everyone dances.
©September, 2012
Monday, September 3, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
NONSENSE AND SENSE (in that order)
As it is sometimes said, “maybe it’s the season.” It does seem, doesn’t it, that in an election year, judging from some statements, the general level of intelligence is not what we had hoped it is. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare” is a gem. Another, from a highly placed figure is “Corporations are people” (yeah, and bankruptcies are abortions). Then there is “Islam is not a religion.” And for posterity, I’m sure, is the comment plaintively uttered to a reporter by a woman who must have married up beyond her wildest dreams. The reporter was checking out the wealthy occupants of fine automobiles that were lined up for a recent Romney gala fund raiser: “The little people. They just don’t understand.”
Since my particular field is rocketry and anything associated with it, my pet peeve centers on comments that followed published commentaries on NASA’s Curiosity mission, to the effect that all that money ($2.6 billion) ought to have been spent here, on this planet, for more sensible things. It is as if they believe Martians are now happily tearing off check stubs. Admittedly, it can’t be argued that disparaging comments about space exploration has anything to do with the election year. They have been around for some time, and never seem to cease.
Actually, the rover that now sits on Mars is dirt cheap. The raw materials in the 2,000 pound Rover cost three dollars a pound, give or take a few quarters. The same goes for the 75,000 pounds or so of material in the rockets that got the rover to Mars. On further thought, the material is not worth anything, as the value I quoted amounts to what it took to mine, refine and process the materials from which the rover and rockets were built. Labor and businesses benefited.
Need an example? That $30,000 Mustang you have your eye on costs ten dollars a pound. About three dollars a pound is in material. The rest is labor and benefits paid to workers by Ford and its parts suppliers, overhead, profit to Ford, shipping, processing by the dealer, dealer overhead and profit.
So what happened to the 2.82 billion dollars spent so far on the Curiosity mission? It stayed here, distributed almost entirely in paychecks to the scientists, engineers, technicians and skilled fabricators who designed, built and implemented the Curiosity venture. That money wasn’t squirreled away in the Cayman Islands. It was mostly spent. A substantial chunk went back to the government. The remainder found its way to builders, the local mechanic, the hair dresser and barber, the local bookstore, and countless other places, maybe even ballet lessons. You get the idea.Those people prospered too, and also sent money back to Washington. And you can bet that some who worked on the project already have underway spinoff ventures that take advantage of some of the technology that was developed in the program. It’s win-win from every aspect, with the bonus of ultimately learning more about our origins through space exploration.
There are various ways in which the government can stimulate the economy, but for payoff, there is nothing that can match investments in technology. If you doubt this, think about the multi-hundred billion dollar business that has grown from NASA and Department of Defense early communications satellites.
Since my particular field is rocketry and anything associated with it, my pet peeve centers on comments that followed published commentaries on NASA’s Curiosity mission, to the effect that all that money ($2.6 billion) ought to have been spent here, on this planet, for more sensible things. It is as if they believe Martians are now happily tearing off check stubs. Admittedly, it can’t be argued that disparaging comments about space exploration has anything to do with the election year. They have been around for some time, and never seem to cease.
Actually, the rover that now sits on Mars is dirt cheap. The raw materials in the 2,000 pound Rover cost three dollars a pound, give or take a few quarters. The same goes for the 75,000 pounds or so of material in the rockets that got the rover to Mars. On further thought, the material is not worth anything, as the value I quoted amounts to what it took to mine, refine and process the materials from which the rover and rockets were built. Labor and businesses benefited.
Need an example? That $30,000 Mustang you have your eye on costs ten dollars a pound. About three dollars a pound is in material. The rest is labor and benefits paid to workers by Ford and its parts suppliers, overhead, profit to Ford, shipping, processing by the dealer, dealer overhead and profit.
So what happened to the 2.82 billion dollars spent so far on the Curiosity mission? It stayed here, distributed almost entirely in paychecks to the scientists, engineers, technicians and skilled fabricators who designed, built and implemented the Curiosity venture. That money wasn’t squirreled away in the Cayman Islands. It was mostly spent. A substantial chunk went back to the government. The remainder found its way to builders, the local mechanic, the hair dresser and barber, the local bookstore, and countless other places, maybe even ballet lessons. You get the idea.Those people prospered too, and also sent money back to Washington. And you can bet that some who worked on the project already have underway spinoff ventures that take advantage of some of the technology that was developed in the program. It’s win-win from every aspect, with the bonus of ultimately learning more about our origins through space exploration.
There are various ways in which the government can stimulate the economy, but for payoff, there is nothing that can match investments in technology. If you doubt this, think about the multi-hundred billion dollar business that has grown from NASA and Department of Defense early communications satellites.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
VOTER FRAUD FRAUD
When something is statistically acceptable and legislators use their positions to mess with it, something else must be afoot. That seems to be the case with voter fraud legislation. Compellingly suspicious is that the origin of legislation is entirely the work of one political party. Absolutely revealing is the crowing on the part of a senior Republican in Pennsylvania that the passage of voter fraud legislation will win that state for Governor Romney.
Never mind that studies of voter fraud have all revealed that it is extremely rare. And for good reason. A single vote on the part of an individual can hardly affect an election and the risk is five years in prison and $10,000 fine. How much easier and safer it would be to get a member of the opposition drunk so that person’s vote doesn’t get recorded. Enough studies have been made to put this subject to bed, yet it has become a major, troubling issue in this campaign year. A representative paper by the Brennan Center of Justice can be found on:
www.brennancenterofjustice.org/content/resource/policy-brief-on-the-truth-about-voter-fraud
The object, of course by the perpetrators (one cannot honestly say legislators) is to cut out of the voting population a segment that can normally be counted on to vote for the opposition. The method is to require all voters to furnish state issued photo i.d. at the voting sites. Of course a driver’s license will do. So there are troglodytes among us who say “What’s the big deal? Everyone has a driver’s license.” Not so. There are millions who don’t, and requiring those voters to provide a photo i.d. is implicitly illegal in that it costs money to get an i.d. as well as imposing an unnecessary hardship; money for transportation and money for the i.d. That by any definition is a targeted poll tax.
Many schemes are in play to affect voter outcome. A notorious one, for which voting administrators ought to be prosecuted, is supplying insufficient voting machines in areas that have high opposition voting populations. Discouraging voting by making people wait in lines for hours is patently a form of voter fraud practiced by some in state governments.
But the most shameful is voter fraud fraud that is practiced by legislators.They know that voter fraud is virtually non-existent. They cannot back their bills with data. Their intent is transparent. They know the laws will ultimately be declared illegal, but they are doing it anyway, and the Republican governors of those states where bills have been passed, to their eternal disgrace, are signing on.
Much of the mischief is arguably traceable to Senator Mitch McConnell’s statement on the Senate floor at the onset of this administration that the main goal of the Republicans is to ensure that Barack Obama doesn’t get another term. The record of minority performance in the Senate ensuing months and years, and in the House since Republicans gained the majority shows that he surely meant it, what with kneecapping the president at every turn with endless filibusters, and outright blocking of needed legislation, such as the Jobs Bill. But that was only one facet of the “War against Obama.” Voter fraud, the astonishing birther claims that never go away, the hypnotizing House obsession with women’s rights, are all facets of McConnell’s astonishingly provocative vow, put into practice.
Never mind that studies of voter fraud have all revealed that it is extremely rare. And for good reason. A single vote on the part of an individual can hardly affect an election and the risk is five years in prison and $10,000 fine. How much easier and safer it would be to get a member of the opposition drunk so that person’s vote doesn’t get recorded. Enough studies have been made to put this subject to bed, yet it has become a major, troubling issue in this campaign year. A representative paper by the Brennan Center of Justice can be found on:
www.brennancenterofjustice.org/content/resource/policy-brief-on-the-truth-about-voter-fraud
The object, of course by the perpetrators (one cannot honestly say legislators) is to cut out of the voting population a segment that can normally be counted on to vote for the opposition. The method is to require all voters to furnish state issued photo i.d. at the voting sites. Of course a driver’s license will do. So there are troglodytes among us who say “What’s the big deal? Everyone has a driver’s license.” Not so. There are millions who don’t, and requiring those voters to provide a photo i.d. is implicitly illegal in that it costs money to get an i.d. as well as imposing an unnecessary hardship; money for transportation and money for the i.d. That by any definition is a targeted poll tax.
Many schemes are in play to affect voter outcome. A notorious one, for which voting administrators ought to be prosecuted, is supplying insufficient voting machines in areas that have high opposition voting populations. Discouraging voting by making people wait in lines for hours is patently a form of voter fraud practiced by some in state governments.
But the most shameful is voter fraud fraud that is practiced by legislators.They know that voter fraud is virtually non-existent. They cannot back their bills with data. Their intent is transparent. They know the laws will ultimately be declared illegal, but they are doing it anyway, and the Republican governors of those states where bills have been passed, to their eternal disgrace, are signing on.
Much of the mischief is arguably traceable to Senator Mitch McConnell’s statement on the Senate floor at the onset of this administration that the main goal of the Republicans is to ensure that Barack Obama doesn’t get another term. The record of minority performance in the Senate ensuing months and years, and in the House since Republicans gained the majority shows that he surely meant it, what with kneecapping the president at every turn with endless filibusters, and outright blocking of needed legislation, such as the Jobs Bill. But that was only one facet of the “War against Obama.” Voter fraud, the astonishing birther claims that never go away, the hypnotizing House obsession with women’s rights, are all facets of McConnell’s astonishingly provocative vow, put into practice.
Friday, August 3, 2012
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE CHALLENGE FOR HUMANS
Chalk up a big one for NASA and the Space Exploration Program. The discovery and confirmation that Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, has a high methane component, even lakes of it, is a strong indicator that methane had a high presence in the formation of the rest of the solar system and probably was heavily involved in Earth’s evolution. A theory yet to be proven, but it is plausible that methane occurs not only as a component of biomass as represented by coal and oil, but also as a direct deposit from the original, dense primordial soup that enveloped Earth long before life appeared. It also contained carbon dioxide, water vapor, ammonia, elemental hydrogen and nitrogen in massive quantity and other gasses in smaller amounts.
As yet, there were no oceans. That came later as temperatures moderated, water vapor condensed, and energy from sunlight and lightning spurred the formation of more complex molecules ....some eventually to become self replicating and characterized by the phenomenon we call life. Thus began an incredible and prodigious global biochemical reaction that converted most of the carbon into biomass, thinned and modified the atmosphere to its present content of mostly 80% nitrogen and 20 percent oxygen, and helped to form the oceans.
If one takes into account the estimated water in the world, about 2 exp.21 pounds, an easy calculation shows that terrestrial pressure of the early gaseous envelope was in the hundreds of atmospheres. As the earth cooled and a crust formed and cooled, fissures and voids appeared, which would have immediately been filled with “soup.” Further earth movement sealed it in for the ages. That much of it is still there is evident in volcanic eruptions where carbon dioxide content may be as high as 40 %, accompanied by other gasses. A second clue is appearance of methane in places where its presence can’t be explained by biomass processes, since there is no biomass in the vicinity. For instance, methane appears dissolved in hot brine in high concentrations. Some efforts are already underway for recovery in places where it is not too difficult to gain access. An added benefit is application of the hot brine to geothermal energy extraction. In the late seventies, remembered for the oil crisis during the Carter administration, there appeared an article in the Oil and Gas Journal describing the discovery of an enormous hot brine deposit miles under Texas and Louisiana that is saturated with methane. The author estimated that there is enough methane in that single deposit to serve the nation’s energy needs for the next 2500 years. Quick conclusion: methane is everywhere, in quantities that would serve Earth’s energy needs for thousands of years. That is, if there were not a down side.
In an upcoming book, UC Berkeley physicist Richard Muller, a confirmed climate change denier for many years, has reversed himself after conducting a detailed study of all the data, assisted by dozens of scientists, funded by a grant from the Koch brothers. He concludes now that climate change is real, human caused, and there is an urgent need to make corrective changes in the energy generation industry. His immediate recommendation is to convert rapidly from coal to methane to generate electricity, reducing emissions by about two thirds. Earth’s natural absorption systems can handle about 50% of current carbon dioxide emissions. But if a conversion to methane, along with introduction of other “green” renewables, doesn’t abate the other 50%, climate warming will continue, only at a slower rate.
Another recently published book by Ozzie Zehmer, also of UC Berkeley, titled “Green Illusions,” does not take issue with the subject of global warming, but dwells instead on the various methods of generating energy claiming to be renewable, with the object of revealing whether they are beneficial, have a negative effect, or are simply cosmetic. It turns out that some, like production of ethanol from corn, are strongly negative (In a recent posting here, titled “Coal Burning Electric Cars,” I also wrote about the dubious benefit of electric cars on which batteries are charged from coal burning power plants).
At best, the suggestions made by Richard Muller would buy time, given the rate at which energy consumption is growing globally. The final solutions, restoring Earth’s “breathing” to the situation in which natural absorption processes maintain an equillibrium, will require innovation on many fronts, including gains in efficiency, conservation, and containing urban sprawl to reduce transportation needs.
While nuclear power is looked upon unfavorably by many people, it may be a significant part of the final answer. The United States has more nuclear power plants in operation than any other nation.... around one hundred twenty. They generate nearly 20 % of our electrical energy. France generates 80 % of its electrical energy in nuclear plants; the remainder mostly “green.”
Still, the existing plants, while technologically formidable achievements, must be considered first generation technology. Most are over forty years old. Some are operating beyond their scheduled lifetimes.The last one to be built in the United States came on-line in the nineties. Historically, though, there have been no fatalities in the United States. Disasters at Chernobyl and more recently in Japan after the tsunami have been attributed to operator error and aging equipment. Industry is capable of producing a next generation power plant.... more efficient and safer, by employing advanced designs, using materials not previously available in the original builds, and welding advancements. Operator error can be largely eliminated with a high level of automation, including the quadruple redundancey that is commonly employed in spacecraft design. Away down the road there is the possibility of continuous fusion power if the technology can be mastered. Perhaps sooner if pulse fusion is discovered to be easier to achieve.
So interesting.... discover something useful on a moon a gazillion miles away and realize that the same events that got it there also placed it everywhere you walk, deep underground but nevertheless accessible. Of itself, it might not solve our emerging, serious problem, but it could go a long ways as a stopgap while permanent solutions are found and implemented. This also reaffirms that space exploration is incredibly important. What it can teach us can be quite surprising, and could return every penny ever spent.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
In an Op-ed in the July 9 issue of Space News former astronaut Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7) claimed that "realists" are making progress in debunking scientific findings that Earth's climate is changing as a result of human activity.
UPDATE: The letter was published in the July 16 issue of Space News.
To the Editor, SPACE NEWS
Upon reading Walter Cunningham's article (Space News, July 9, 2012), my observation is that he comes across as a skeptic, not a realist. As a purported realist, it would be helpful to know what kind of realist: naive? direct? representative? critical? epistemological? objective? hyper-transcendental? Platonic? scientific? There are so many kinds of realists. I observe also that a letter to the NASA Administrator from fifty former NASA employees ought not to carry any more weight than fifty letters from farmers, builders or clam diggers, though it seems to be intended to carry extra weight. So hard to get across is that large scale release of sequestered carbon is a major event, and major events always have major consequences. Were Cunningham on the beach facing a tsunami, he would probably run like hell. A slow tsunami? Well hold on now. Maybe it's not a real tsunami. As someone who had the extreme privilege of observing this fragile planet from space, it is puzzling that Walter Cunningham has sided with those who choose to remain both uninformed and unconvinced.
Sincerely,
Ed Hujsak
UPDATE: The letter was published in the July 16 issue of Space News.
To the Editor, SPACE NEWS
Upon reading Walter Cunningham's article (Space News, July 9, 2012), my observation is that he comes across as a skeptic, not a realist. As a purported realist, it would be helpful to know what kind of realist: naive? direct? representative? critical? epistemological? objective? hyper-transcendental? Platonic? scientific? There are so many kinds of realists. I observe also that a letter to the NASA Administrator from fifty former NASA employees ought not to carry any more weight than fifty letters from farmers, builders or clam diggers, though it seems to be intended to carry extra weight. So hard to get across is that large scale release of sequestered carbon is a major event, and major events always have major consequences. Were Cunningham on the beach facing a tsunami, he would probably run like hell. A slow tsunami? Well hold on now. Maybe it's not a real tsunami. As someone who had the extreme privilege of observing this fragile planet from space, it is puzzling that Walter Cunningham has sided with those who choose to remain both uninformed and unconvinced.
Sincerely,
Ed Hujsak
Monday, July 9, 2012
PROMOTING THE PRESIDENCY
If you have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get people to
buy your product, it stands to reason that there must be something
wrong with the product.
In an election year the promotion business spikes. In normal times we are subjected to video and audio programs that are fifty percent product promotion, and newspapers, magazines and junk mail that all depend on advertising for income and profit. In election years a special kind of product appears from political parties in the form of candidates for Federal, State and local offices, and promotion is heavy and varied. A candidate fits the description as a product because promotion is handled in much the same way as promotion of a car, a new suit or a trip to Hawaii. Election strategies are centered on packaging, just as commercial items are packaged to attract buyers.
We should distinguish between two kinds of promotion: one is elevation in position such as moving from professor to department chair, captain to major, engineer to chief engineer, vice president to CEO, head waiter to maitre d’, governor of a state to the presidency. Some promotions, like the first and last examples take place by elections. Others (the large majority) may be the decision of one or two people in upper management.
The second form of promotion is advertising, where publicizing the merits of a product is necessary to capture customers. Needless to say, the production of advertising is both a lucrative and highly competitive business. Advertising expense depends on the product, but in every case it is an investment on which a positive return is expected or hoped for. In some cases no amount of advertising will rescue a product that somehow got off to a bad start.
The Apple I-phone is an example of a product on which there was a huge return on minimal, but smart promotion. The public stood in lines to purchase when it came on the market.
` Solar panels are a good product, but the benefits are long range. Return on investment is not so good, so advertising is cautious. People lean to products where the reward is immediate.
The ill-conceived Ford Edsel is an example of a product where no amount of promotion would make it a success, as it’s debut was met with public scorn at not living up to prior hype.
Governor Romney is the Republican party’s product as candidate for the presidency of the United States. In many ways he is considered a marginal product, even at the highest levels of the party. This year’s election will be a test of whether it is true that no amount of money will convince people to buy a marginal product as we witness the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to pedal a single item. The simple fact of having to spend so much underscores the obvious: The product doesn’t measure up.
So. Will the American voter be romanced into voting for the Republicans’ Edsel? Or will the more prudent side of judgement decide that the GM Chevy, barely broken in, a few paint scratches and a dent or two but operating reliably on all six, is the better bet for the next four years?
This commentary was originally posted on www.speakwithoutinterruption.com.
In an election year the promotion business spikes. In normal times we are subjected to video and audio programs that are fifty percent product promotion, and newspapers, magazines and junk mail that all depend on advertising for income and profit. In election years a special kind of product appears from political parties in the form of candidates for Federal, State and local offices, and promotion is heavy and varied. A candidate fits the description as a product because promotion is handled in much the same way as promotion of a car, a new suit or a trip to Hawaii. Election strategies are centered on packaging, just as commercial items are packaged to attract buyers.
We should distinguish between two kinds of promotion: one is elevation in position such as moving from professor to department chair, captain to major, engineer to chief engineer, vice president to CEO, head waiter to maitre d’, governor of a state to the presidency. Some promotions, like the first and last examples take place by elections. Others (the large majority) may be the decision of one or two people in upper management.
The second form of promotion is advertising, where publicizing the merits of a product is necessary to capture customers. Needless to say, the production of advertising is both a lucrative and highly competitive business. Advertising expense depends on the product, but in every case it is an investment on which a positive return is expected or hoped for. In some cases no amount of advertising will rescue a product that somehow got off to a bad start.
The Apple I-phone is an example of a product on which there was a huge return on minimal, but smart promotion. The public stood in lines to purchase when it came on the market.
` Solar panels are a good product, but the benefits are long range. Return on investment is not so good, so advertising is cautious. People lean to products where the reward is immediate.
The ill-conceived Ford Edsel is an example of a product where no amount of promotion would make it a success, as it’s debut was met with public scorn at not living up to prior hype.
Governor Romney is the Republican party’s product as candidate for the presidency of the United States. In many ways he is considered a marginal product, even at the highest levels of the party. This year’s election will be a test of whether it is true that no amount of money will convince people to buy a marginal product as we witness the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to pedal a single item. The simple fact of having to spend so much underscores the obvious: The product doesn’t measure up.
So. Will the American voter be romanced into voting for the Republicans’ Edsel? Or will the more prudent side of judgement decide that the GM Chevy, barely broken in, a few paint scratches and a dent or two but operating reliably on all six, is the better bet for the next four years?
This commentary was originally posted on www.speakwithoutinterruption.com.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
WHILE WE ARE WATCHING
There are occasions when I get fired up. I don’t do this often, as what comes with it is willingness to be on the receiving end of invective, brickbats and worse. Admittedly, this time it was pol-speak by Governor Romney that set off my fireworks, when in his Fourth of July speech in Wolfboro, NH, he called for return to a nation where the people are sovereign and the government the servant. The audience cheered wildly and I wondered whether they had any idea what this abysmally conceived statement really means. So far as I know, sovereignty applies only to states and nations. But the opposition has a good sense of the power of psycho-babble and when you combine it with rivers of money you can win elections hands down. You can place unqualified people in legislatures by the hundreds. You can buy their total allegiance.
Insofar as “government is a servant” is concerned, Governor Romney, as a participant in the corporate world, is as aware as any billionaire or corporation of the horde of lobbyists who are engaged in styling government service to serve their own interests. They pay them. They can even persuade the government to take the nation into war. Dead soldiers mean little to them. It’s simply part of the cost of doing business, and not even their cost. The Government already serves the people in myriad ways, and that is as it should be. But Governor Romney has quite different ideas of the government’s role as a servant than he spouts on the campaign trail.
The massive, non-traceable spending by private individuals and corporations during this election year as a result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision leads inevitably to the conclusion that the buying of politicians ensures a future payoff to those same entities. Their money funds highly developed propaganda machines operated by professionals like Karl Rove and Dick Armey wherein the principals remain out of the limelight but feed uncounted millions into the Political Action Committees that discover and nurture subvertible candidates and finance them to election.
Of course, this is not new in politics. But the presently employed methods are brilliant, overt and blatant. French philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau, born 300 years ago, shaper of national destinies, wrote: “Most social order is a fraud perpetrated by the rich on the poor to preserve their privileges.”
With great wealth comes the irresistible urge to wield power. There is an egocentricity accompanying accumulation of wealth that breeds the notion that the wealthy know better and government should stay out of the way. The United States, with its 400 plus multi-billionaires playing conductor, has found itself fast tracking back to the glory days when the oligarchs owned everything, including the government, and the people, rendered powerless, lived week to week on slim earnings.
The working man’s opinion about the wealthy, heard many a time, is “more power to them” (be careful what you wish for), “I can take care of myself. Get Government off my back, etc.” Unaware that he is helping them along, to his own disadvantage. An example might help. Much is made of rising productivity by the American worker. In the first quarter of 2012 productivity rose by 5.9 %. Labor costs went down by 4.2 %. Who got a raise? Nobody. Wages remained flatlined and even went downhill a bit. All the benefit of improved productivity was manifested in profit which went to owners and shareholders. What happened to fairness? Why don't workers benefit from improved productivity?
The argument goes that eventually all wealth finds its way into philanthropy and charity. For example the hundred billion dollar inheritance of the four Sam Walton (founder of Walmart) offspring will eventually fund charitable foundations if the example set by the mother, Helen, is followed.
But philanthropy and charity are selective. They are needed, and they are part of the fabric of the grand experiment which is democracy. But there is zero possibility that the complete job could be done in that manner. So anyone who believes that the nation should revert to the time of the oligarchs is badly misinformed. Government is needed for fairness..... Government performed by legislators who are free of obeisance to the wealthy few that sincerely believe that in their hands everything will run better.
“Return the nation to where the people are sovereign and the government is servant.” The opposition is counting on pliable, detached voters to put them fully in charge this November. Hundreds of millions of dollars in glitzy advertising, slogans that sound good but mean nothing, disregard for the truth whenever convenient. Some lies are breathlessly outrageous. Joe Walsh, a Tea Party congressman from Illinois, brays that the sixteen trillion dollar debt corresponds to a million dollars for every American, when it is really $50,000. In the aggregate, trickery will do the job.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the year to wise up. The year the people finally tell the oligarchs “We’re on to you”....... the year the government is once again “of the people, by the people and for.the people.” Candidly though, there are good reasons to believe it won’t happen.
A previous article, archived here, “How We Got Here and Where We Are Headed.” Sept. 2, 2011, dwells on the same subject, addressing the return of the oligarchy. A year later, it appears they are right on track.
Insofar as “government is a servant” is concerned, Governor Romney, as a participant in the corporate world, is as aware as any billionaire or corporation of the horde of lobbyists who are engaged in styling government service to serve their own interests. They pay them. They can even persuade the government to take the nation into war. Dead soldiers mean little to them. It’s simply part of the cost of doing business, and not even their cost. The Government already serves the people in myriad ways, and that is as it should be. But Governor Romney has quite different ideas of the government’s role as a servant than he spouts on the campaign trail.
The massive, non-traceable spending by private individuals and corporations during this election year as a result of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision leads inevitably to the conclusion that the buying of politicians ensures a future payoff to those same entities. Their money funds highly developed propaganda machines operated by professionals like Karl Rove and Dick Armey wherein the principals remain out of the limelight but feed uncounted millions into the Political Action Committees that discover and nurture subvertible candidates and finance them to election.
Of course, this is not new in politics. But the presently employed methods are brilliant, overt and blatant. French philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau, born 300 years ago, shaper of national destinies, wrote: “Most social order is a fraud perpetrated by the rich on the poor to preserve their privileges.”
With great wealth comes the irresistible urge to wield power. There is an egocentricity accompanying accumulation of wealth that breeds the notion that the wealthy know better and government should stay out of the way. The United States, with its 400 plus multi-billionaires playing conductor, has found itself fast tracking back to the glory days when the oligarchs owned everything, including the government, and the people, rendered powerless, lived week to week on slim earnings.
The working man’s opinion about the wealthy, heard many a time, is “more power to them” (be careful what you wish for), “I can take care of myself. Get Government off my back, etc.” Unaware that he is helping them along, to his own disadvantage. An example might help. Much is made of rising productivity by the American worker. In the first quarter of 2012 productivity rose by 5.9 %. Labor costs went down by 4.2 %. Who got a raise? Nobody. Wages remained flatlined and even went downhill a bit. All the benefit of improved productivity was manifested in profit which went to owners and shareholders. What happened to fairness? Why don't workers benefit from improved productivity?
The argument goes that eventually all wealth finds its way into philanthropy and charity. For example the hundred billion dollar inheritance of the four Sam Walton (founder of Walmart) offspring will eventually fund charitable foundations if the example set by the mother, Helen, is followed.
But philanthropy and charity are selective. They are needed, and they are part of the fabric of the grand experiment which is democracy. But there is zero possibility that the complete job could be done in that manner. So anyone who believes that the nation should revert to the time of the oligarchs is badly misinformed. Government is needed for fairness..... Government performed by legislators who are free of obeisance to the wealthy few that sincerely believe that in their hands everything will run better.
“Return the nation to where the people are sovereign and the government is servant.” The opposition is counting on pliable, detached voters to put them fully in charge this November. Hundreds of millions of dollars in glitzy advertising, slogans that sound good but mean nothing, disregard for the truth whenever convenient. Some lies are breathlessly outrageous. Joe Walsh, a Tea Party congressman from Illinois, brays that the sixteen trillion dollar debt corresponds to a million dollars for every American, when it is really $50,000. In the aggregate, trickery will do the job.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the year to wise up. The year the people finally tell the oligarchs “We’re on to you”....... the year the government is once again “of the people, by the people and for.the people.” Candidly though, there are good reasons to believe it won’t happen.
A previous article, archived here, “How We Got Here and Where We Are Headed.” Sept. 2, 2011, dwells on the same subject, addressing the return of the oligarchy. A year later, it appears they are right on track.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)