Both the AM and FM stations on my radio this week were broadcasting opinions about bills that address what is and isn’t allowed during an abortion.  New York and a few other states have recently considered bills that spell out the details of what the law requires and what it allows during an abortion.  AM stations are saying that these rules amount to legalizing infanticide.  AM broadcasters that I’ve listened to seem to think that there are only perfect babies waiting to be born in abundance to perfect mothers (which is to ignore babies that have genetic defects and other physical problems or mothers with significant health challenges or poverty).  FM stations are saying that the details of these legal specifications will affect few real life instances and therefore don’t matter so much in a wider scheme of consideration.  How polarizing!  The polarity of these views accomplishes nothing that I care about.

Why does our state or federal government have to write any more legislation about abortion?  Why is this topic everyone’s business instead of the business of persons who are facing this decision?  Why can’t people in the legislature and in broadcasting leave this topic alone?  Aren’t they discussing this topic just to get people riled up?  This is a topic where different people will differ in their opinions, probably forever.  And that brings us to the nation-state system where disagreements are commonplace.

The founding of the nation-state system happened under the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.  Its plan was inspired by Italian city-state trading communities. The nation-state system was set up to allow regions to operate under their own local laws where they could differ from other regions.  War and diplomacy were recognized as political tools to negotiate disagreements.  Because the nation-state system respects differences, those differences persist.

The nation-state system is the same system that operates now somewhat in opposition to globalization.  Today’s globalization operates under the free flow of capital which we call financialization under the ideology of neoliberalism.  Currently there isn’t a legal system that consistently regulates neoliberal trade or warfare.  Some nation states respect natural rights and some don’t but neoliberalism does not respect the natural rights of people but instead tries to forge global and local agreements to protect the resource acquisitions of corporations.  Going back to an important time in history, three years after the birth of the nation-state system, Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan in 1651.  The word Leviathan refers to government which is an artificial entity somewhat like a machine that people create in order to govern society for the sake of “peace and common defense” (p. 132).

Hobbes was interested in issues of happiness, peace and freedom within the nation-state system.  Hobbes thought that governments are created to help people to be happy but also he noticed that there isn’t a perfect set of things that a government can do to make everyone happy because different people want different things.  In considering freedom, Hobbes wrote “What it is to be free…A FREEMAN, is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to do what he has a will to do.” (p. 159) and “LIBERTY or FREEDOM, signifieth, properly, the absence of opposition”.

Hobbes goes on to say that “there is no common-wealth in the world, wherein there be rules enough set down, for the regulating of all the actions, and words of men; as being a thing impossible: it follows necessarily that in all kinds of actions by the laws praetermitted, men have the liberty, of doing what their own reasons shall suggest” (pp. 160-61).  If Hobbes were with us, he might say that in trying to regulate all the intimate details of people’s lives and choices, Congress or the state government is making only mistakes.

When Hobbes wrote Leviathan, he gave a lot of power in his discussion to the sovereign, but he also wrote about what people want and what kinds of limitations there are that governments can’t escape.  In returning to considerations about laws regulating abortions, it is helpful to recognise what no one can escape.

Every baby that is born needs a healthy and safe environment which not every mother can provide.  Some women are sick or poor.  Giving birth risks a woman’s life and although society can’t exist without the generosity of women willing to give birth, not every woman should or can give birth.  Women who give birth can be the best person to accomplish the dedicated care that babies need and in most circumstances they do it with the help of a father.  Of course other caring people can also raise a baby.  But this world isn’t perfect at all and people aren’t perfect either.  Foster care and adoption aren’t perfectly safe for babies.  If a new technology could supply an artificial uterus to grow a baby, would it change the argument?  Would people stop trying to make pregnant women carry a baby to term and then raise that child in adverse circumstances?  How would society protect babies born without mothers?  Fortunately we don’t have a machine uterus and mothers choose in our culture to either give birth or not.

When I consider the radio broadcasters of this week’s abortion bill discussions, I’m glad to rely on mothers to choose for themselves.  I turn to tolerance when it comes to the exercise of a uterus.  Let each woman decide what she can do according to her own will, ability and conscience.  The government doesn’t need to write more laws about it.  The Congress and state governments have other duties to attend to that aren’t about regulating everyone’s choices.

If you want to be reminded about the accomplishments of Western Civilization and informed about American history and our three political ideologies over American history, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries, at Amazon.com.

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, edited by Michael Oakeshott with an introduction by Richard S. Peters, Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, original copyright, 1651, this copyright 1962.

For the last few years, I’ve had more time to read. Coincidentally, two of my readings from last week were about how humans need 360 degree opportunities to move around.  These two readings set up a spectrum of freedom that makes it simpler to understand the state of being free.  This spectrum of freedom sets aside political considerations and economic considerations and simplifies freedom by locating it in space and locomotion.

These readings include two books.  The first book is Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.  In this book I read the story by Ala Hlehel called “Bloated Time and the Death of Meaning.” The second book is titled, The World Ending Fire: the Essential Wendell Berry, Selected and with an Introduction by Paul Kingsnorth. In this book I’ve read “A Native Hill,” and “The Making of a Marginal Farm.”

I read books to help me to understand what’s beyond my own experience. I bought Kingdom of Olives and Ash to help me to understand a part of the Middle East better.  It can help me to answer the question: “What is it like to live in Israel?” One of the editors, Michael Chabon has shown me that he is sensitive to people’s emotional life.  He’s won a Pulitzer Prize because he is good at writing down a story that can reach diverse people and enrich their understanding of and empathy for characters in his fiction. The Middle East, always at war is full of suffering.  Trying to better understand that suffering is a small something that I can do perhaps by reading this book.  In the case of The World Ending Fire, as a person who has studied biology, I’m still in love with the living world.  I bought The World Ending Fire to enjoy whatever Wendell Berry has to tell me about his experiences in Kentucky, where I have never been.  What Wendell Berry and I share is a desire to protect and understand the natural world. And I always learn from him to see the world with a deeper understanding whenever I spend time reading him.

Wendell Berry wrote about how he values the freedom to roam about the countryside at will.  He enjoyed doing this especially when he was growing up in Kentucky.  He had both assigned duties, where he worked with his family and he had free time.  When he was free, he could go all over the waterways, fields, forests and hillsides and observe animals and plants.  He could think his own thoughts without being imposed upon by anything else.  It was valuable to his growth as a person and it helped him to formulate his own sense of self.  Part of his sense of self grew to include a desire to protect and understand his place and his surroundings.  By contrast, Ala Hlehel’s story is about life as a Palestinian in a restricted environment where persons from a Palestinian community could not roam at will across the countryside.  Instead, their community had restricted access and restricted exits and Palestinians were required to submit to inspections and questions.  Some Palestinian places were destroyed by heavy machinery to make way for “improvements” that would benefit others.  The Palestinians couldn’t defend their land. The restriction of movement and choice continually festers in the minds of Palestinians and makes their lives bitter.

According to these two authors, freedom is simple.  It’s the opportunity to move about freely and to understand and affect one’s environment positively. It’s the chance to love the place that surrounds you.  And without freedom to explore and appreciate your own surroundings and to have a positive effect on your surroundings, even to protect your surroundings, a person becomes unhappy.

If you’d like to understand changes in political ideologies over the history of the United States, including ideas that have shaped changes that have already happened including those of the present day, read Political Catsup with Economy Fries, available at Amazon.com.

(1) Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, eds, Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, “Bloated Time and the Death of Meaning,” Ala Hlehel, Harper Perennial, New York, copyright 2017, 19-27.

(2) Wendell Berry, The World Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry, Selected and with an Introduction by Paul Kingsnorth, Counterpoint, Berkeley, CA, copyright 2017, 3-47.

As I sit at my computer on the 22nd of January, winter is right outside my window and yet I know that spring will come.  But when will springtime return to American prosperity?  Where are new opportunities–where is the boom instead of the bounce from periodic recessions?  Where is growth?  Where is American bank security with solvent and regulated banking?  Where is having healthy infrastructure of well-kept roads and bridges?  Where is an end to wars and overseas military bases?  Where are good jobs that can pay off a mortgage and make healthcare affordable?  Where are markets that are driven by people making exchanges that are mutually beneficial?  What has happened to the American prosperity that once was so famous?

Looking back in time to 1771, Benjamin Franklin toured Ireland.  I keep in mind what he had to say during that tour because he was able to contrast the fortunes of Americans with those of the Irish.  This is what he said about economic disparity in Ireland:

“The people in that unhappy country, are in a most wretched situation. Ireland is itself a poor country, and Dublin a magnificent city; but the appearances of general extreme poverty among the lower people are amazing. They live in wretched hovels of mud and straw, are clothed in rags, and subsist chiefly on potatoes. Our New England farmers, of the poorest sort, in regard to the enjoyment of all the comforts of life, are princes when compared to them. Perhaps three-fourths of the Inhabitants are in this situation.”  (1)

What policies led to Irish suffering?  The Irish were under the thumb of the English and it would be many years before they were free from the political and economic oppression that the English brought to Ireland.  They were heavily taxed and had few economic opportunities.  By contrast, Americans were free to hunt for game and forage for food and they could farm and keep some of what they produced, selling only the surplus they didn’t need. They could start businesses and sell what they produced for a nascent American market in goods.  There was no income tax and property taxes were low.

Is American ingenuity and productivity somehow going to waste now because of bad policies that come from Congress?  Why are we seeing income disparities like those that were part of the Irish past?  Have high frequency trading and computer technology become an oppressive force that steals away prosperity from most Americans?  Are most Americans overtaxed?  With little earnable interest on bank savings and constant underreported inflation, small capital holders with money in the bank watch their money erode away and isn’t that a kind of tax and a kind of oppression?  Does the government’s overspending that creates inflation and does Federal Reserve banking serve the interests of most people?

I bring to mind a couple of commercials asking Americans in one example to save money for their retirement, I suppose in the stock market, and in another example to donate to food shelters.

In the first case, there’s an e-trade commercial that shows people who are clearly older, well past what was once normal retirement, who must keep a job and it makes fun of them by showing a wildly dressed old lady D.J. and old fireman.  The fireman clearly can’t control a firehose as he tries to put out a fire.  The announcer says that one-third of Americans have no retirement money saved away.  I suppose I’m meant to blame these old people for not planning but I don’t blame them.

We’ve had zero interest on savings in the United States for long enough that people who have saved money and put it into the bank have actually lost a lot of money.  Of course, one of the motivations for employing ZIRP policy was to drive people into the stock market.  But the stock market had already been changed for the worse by high frequency trading.  Our stock market changed into something beyond what people can trust.  People who try to keep their money in the stock market see volatility and market manipulation that they have no control over.  It isn’t a matter of picking a growing company the way that it once was.  There’s little growth except on paper of companies that sell technology or gather statistics about their internet users but these companies don’t offer investment security.  And they don’t employ many Americans.

The e-trade commercial failed to acknowledge that older people can’t always do work or find work.  According to a recent court ruling, Kleber v. Care Fusion Corporation (2019), protections against age discrimination in the workplace apply only to employees and not to job applicants (2).  I doubt that there are real old lady D.J.’s or old firemen like the commercial showed.  If you go to an interest rate calculator and calculate the amount of earnings from interest that retired people can no longer earn, it seems pointless to blame them.  As well as ZIRP, market volatility is also being caused by the Federal Reserve’s invention of derivatives and its financialization policies—policies that undermine a production based economy where many Americans once found work.  Driving more people to buy stock market offerings by using ZIRP won’t likely give them more money for retirement.  The market has been artificially pumped up well beyond a reality based value.  We now see it falling down from earlier highs.  And as people withdraw stock market funds at retirement, they can’t earn interest on this money.

The second commercial about people who don’t have enough resources to buy food probably has to do with unemployment.  According to government statisticians, unemployment is very low—record-breaking low.  These statisticians say that unemployment is low but they only can say that by ignoring people who have been unemployed long-term.  They don’t report the many unemployed among us who can’t find a job and have stopped looking for one.  The economy under financialization isn’t growing and isn’t providing a job for everyone.  When the commercial calls for ordinary Americans to support their local food bank, it may be time to realize that eleven years after the Great Recession a lot of ordinary people working or not working are aging into the exact group of people who were in the first commercial.  And if they can’t find work that pays well enough, they can’t change their fate and also can’t donate to food banks.  It’s silly to continue the policies that brought us to the Great Recession, but I see that they continue.  Banks are still deregulated, financialization continues and the economy isn’t prospering.  Financialization only serves the interests of large capital holders.

After years of mergers and acquisitions destroyed a lot of American companies I have asked myself if Congress wanted to destroy the old economy in favor of a new one.  Did Congress imagine that their policies would create an entirely new economy?  If that was the plan, I have to say that it hasn’t worked so far.  Economic springtime may depend upon Congress changing its policies by regulating banks, reinstating Glass Steagall’s separation between commercial and investment banking. And Congress should be acting more responsibly about problems that it has caused with bad policies.  Congress should reconsider its legislation.  Disruption caused by new technologies or by a stubborn Congress isn’t a form of evolution that works to create prosperity.  Washington D.C. is wrapped up in its own dramas but meanwhile, there’s suffering out here waiting for a turn toward better policies that will create better outcomes.

If you’d like to learn more about how we got to our current political and economic reality, what policies brought us here and what ideas led us here, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries at Amazon.com.  You can also learn about financialization, political ideologies over us history, who the winners and losers have been and what policies brought them into greater or lesser prosperity.

(1) History of Ireland, https://stairnaheireann.net/2016/09/05/1771-benjamin-franklin-commences-a-visit-to-ireland-where-he-would-later-report-he-had-a-good-deal-of-conversation-with-the-patriots-they-are-all-on-the-american-side-of-the-questi/, accessed 22 January 2019.

(2) Jerri-Lynn Scofield, Naked Capitalism, “7th Circuit Rules Age Discrimination Law Does Not Include Job Applicants”, https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/01/7th-circuit-rules-age-discrimination-law-does-not-include-job-applicants.html, accessed 28th Jan 2019.

As we approach New Year’s day, I hope you will take stock of whatever you have as part of your celebration.  I don’t mean your belongings in terms of property.  I mean you.  You have you.  You are special and uniquely you.  You may have a great family.  You may have friends that you care about and who care about you.  In the United States, you have natural rights that are protected.  And you have some sort of talent and skill that comes from your effort to learn it.  You may be ready to learn more new things or teach old things or try out something altogether different.  If you take an inventory of what your mind is capable of perhaps you should take a moment to appreciate your sanity.  According to Psychology: In Search of the Human Mind (1), “the term sanity is a legal term for describing behavior, not a psychological one.”  In order to evaluate a person’s sanity, you look at what they do.

Let’s appreciate the important distinction between sanity and insanity.  The M’Naghten Rule is a definition of insanity that was written from an English court case in 1843: “to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reasoning, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he [or she] was doing, or if he [or she] was doing what was wrong” (2).

When you are sane, you know the difference between right and wrong.  And you can also notice the difference between fantasy and reality because you can check your beliefs with what is real around you.  Whenever you hear anyone in Congress suggesting that we need government universal healthcare, each of us can check the reality of nations that have adopted that program and see what it does to harm them and to benefit them.  If you check into it, you will hear about long waits for surgery or sometimes a refusal to treat certain doom-laden diagnoses like cancer.  Universal healthcare programs cost so much money and they all ration care to cut costs.  They can only afford practical measures that cost a smaller amount of money.  Universal government healthcare has been implemented where it exists when people can’t afford to pay for their own needs, in a bad economy.  But universal healthcare further harms a bad economy.

Some say that if the government oversees costs, they can cut the high cost of healthcare.  When they believe this they clearly ignore the fact that Obamacare was written mostly by insurance companies and the cost of healthcare radically increased under Obamacare.  Functioning marketplaces, but not government, really can control costs through supply and demand and not by government fiat.  The real clients of the Obama Administration era Congress who voted for Obamacare were the very corporations who have been overcharging us.  There’s still a lot of monopoly power in healthcare and we all still live in the same politically neoliberal system that gave us a bad healthcare bill in Obamacare.  I doubt a new universal healthcare bill would be any better.  In fact, it could be much worse.

When Congress suggests that there’s a budget for a new program of any kind you should be skeptical.  You should realize that our nation has a large debt.  Congress wants to spend money that our nation doesn’t have.  And you should realize that a political person such as a Congress member always wants more influence and to them a new program means more political influence.  This is a defect of reasoning.  Congress members like influence more than anything else.  But not all new programs actually provide Congress with greater influence.  As Congress has gained more power to influence the economy, they have clearly lost the ability to judge what will work well for the people of the United States.  This has hurt their influence with ordinary Americans.  Many bad policies are currently in effect and we can already see that Congress may choose to do what is exactly the wrong thing for the nation.  As Walter Lippmann said, more power doesn’t mean greater wisdom.

Some persist and say again that the nation should have universal healthcare.  Universal healthcare would be such a large program we should check the treasury and the current deficit to see how much money we have to fund such a program.  The current federal debt is $21,861,315,992,472.00 (3).  When we look into the treasury for gold or treasure what we find instead is IOU’s.  That means there’s no money to fund universal healthcare and also that we already owe a huge amount of money as a nation to people who hold our debt.  Out of control levels of ever-increasing debt have been harmful.

When people claim that the government’s debt can grow infinitely large without causing harms, we should look around and realize that harms are all around us from undisciplined government spending and bad economic policies.  And our monetary system isn’t supporting a healthy economy and hasn’t since 2008.  Any new programs whether they are a government war effort or a government healthcare effort are beyond what we can afford because of years of overspending.  The outcome of more spending right now is just more economic failure for most Americans.

Obamacare was recently found to be unconstitutional.  The legal ground for finding it constitutional in the first place was fallacious, but the Supreme Court made a bad ruling and found that because it was a tax and spend program, it was within Congress’s power to pass it.  After the public mandate was repealed by Congress and the program could no longer be called a tax and spend program, it was declared to be unconstitutional.  But it was already a failure in a practical sense because the lifespan of Americans decreased during its implementation.  It was a tax on life and a biopolitical expansion of the government’s power over the American people that proved to be functionally toxic to people’s health.  And it was unconstitutional because it interfered with people’s natural right to buy or not buy and to make their own healtcare choices.

Some want universal healthcare because they don’t want to pay for their healthcare.  Economic insecurity is widespread right now and that’s scary.  Some people have been through several job losses due to corporate buy-outs that cost them their jobs.  Not everyone has been able to find another job.  Meanwhile, inflation in healthcare has continued for a long time.  But universal healthcare will increase economic insecurity and it will interfere with your healthcare choices.  Natural rights can be easily abused under universal government healthcare.  Mandated prescriptions, mandated mental healthcare or non-healthcare, mandated surgery or non-surgery, declarations of fitness or non-fitness, compliance or non-compliance.  People should be able to make their own healthcare choices.

Some want universal healthcare so that immigrants can get free care.  But that also hurts the economy where many people already don’t have a job and there’s a large federal, state and municipal debt in most communities.  Universal healthcare conflicts with our U.S. constitutional right to protect our own body and to own it for ourself.  The ACA has already proven a betrayal of good sense that doomed us all to a worsened healthcare system.  To consider having universal healthcare again in the United States is to embrace insanity.  If you’d like to learn more about American political ideologies over the span of U.S. history, buy a copy at Amazon.com of Political Catsup with Economy Fries for a dose of reality that finally makes sense.

(1) Robert J. Sternberg,  Psychology: In Search of the Human Mind, 3rd edition, copyright 2001, 1998, 1995, Harcourt College Publishers, also digital media copyright 2001, Digital: Convergence Corporation, Ft Worth TX, 540.

(2) Robert J. Sternberg,  Psychology: In Search of the Human Mind, 3rd edition, copyright 2001, 1998, 1995, Harcourt College Publishers, also digital media copyright 2001, Digital: Convergence Corporation, Ft Worth TX, (this reference from Stedman’s Medical Dictionary, 25th edition, 1990, p1374), 540.

(3)  Treasury Direct, https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current, accessed 12-28-2018.

 

 

When President Obama was in office, I waited to see what he would do.  And I thought about what would come of it.  When I look back, one of the obvious things to see that came out of his presidency has been a growth of intolerance that has taken root in our nation and a new hunger by some people to control other people’s choices by government fiat.  There are those among us now who want to end free speech, end the right to own firearms, end the right to privacy from government spying, monitor where people go and what they say and who want to control people’s health choices.  It may be that social media has caused a kind of intolerance and hysteria or was it politics?  Did President Obama’s policies make people hunger to control other people’s lives more?  In any case, I oppose this attitude and I think that it is un-American.

Looking at specific failures of the Obama Administration, I would include non-prosecution of bankers that failed in their fiduciary duty to inform their clients that a specific investment that they were recommending would likely become worthless, even when the bank selling it knew that it would.  Some would likewise include President Bush’s Administration because he also didn’t indict bankers for fiduciary failings at the very end of his presidency in the fall of 2008.  This non-prosecution allowed banks to defraud a lot of people during the Great Recession without any penalty.  And then banks were bailed out and not meaningfully reformed and it was like a subsidy had been given to them for doing the wrong thing that hurt a lot of Americans.

The Obama Administration failed to prosecute torturers that killed people during interrogations.  Eric Holder as the Attorney General did a big investigation.  A report detailing these tortures was presented to Congress during the Obama Administration, and it noted the deaths and suffering of several people.  Attorney General Eric Holder didn’t arrest or charge the perpetrators of torture and murder.  Little was said about the torturers or their specific crimes.  A deep shadow fell and remained across our justice system.  It remains today.  The Obama Administration also used drone assassination against selected enemies in the Middle East.  Innocent people were killed.  But the strategy was supposed to save money and some praised it.  There was almost no press controversy.

These specific failings and these kinds of failures hurt our society by ignoring wrongs that caused great harm to individuals and to us all indirectly.  These crimes and the subsequent failure to prosecute them break with rule of law habits that have kept America safe and well across time since the 1789 Constitution was written.  The United States was set up to protect Americans at all levels of power, at all levels of society, not just the most powerful people.  And because of the U.S. Constitution, Americans are protected.  The most powerful people aren’t supposed to determine the fate of everyone else here or abroad.  Here’s a quote from Justice Robert H. Jackson of the Supreme Court, written in 1943:

“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.  One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.” (1)

Natural rights are the most important thing that separates a free nation from a totalitarian one.  They are socially worth more than power to a few because they diffuse power and security to every part of us and allow us to stand together respecting every person.  Natural rights should be appreciated by everyone and protected by our government, and the rule of law enforced.  Government office holders are required to swear their allegiance to our Constitution.  It’s apalling to hear some officials deny the importance of this duty or the importance of our Constitution.  Americans aren’t better off by giving fiat power to our government.  Whether social media has enhanced political hysteria or whether it was the policies of neoliberalism or of President Obama, tolerance and respect for natural rights under a limited government is better than more government power.

If you’d like to learn how the United States moved from classical liberalism to modern liberalism to neoliberalism and incrementally away from our traditions of respecting natural rights, get a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries at Amazon.com.  This book is full of worthy topics for your consideration including our banking problems under fiat money.  Make sure and get a copy today.

(1) Justice Robert Jackson, http://www.libertytree.ca/quotes/ Robert.Jackson.Quote.30C4, accessed 11 Dec 2018.

 

 

I watched the solemn funeral for President George Herbert Walker Bush on national television.  It was on all the major networks.  The National Cathedral was a beautiful location for the funeral and I heard the bell toll 45 times.  I didn’t tune in for all of it but I heard Senator Alan Simpson’s eulogy which was marvelously delivered in a heartfelt way that both elevated and humanized the ceremonies.  The eulogy was personal and offered insights into the President’s private circle of friends.  I observed respectful attitudes among funeral attendees.  Afterward, I listened to commentary that claimed that President G. H. W. Bush lived during a more gracious time in our history–a time that we may now long for.

I have to disagree with that assessment.  I remember the struggles of that president and of all the presidents that have served our nation over my lifespan.  Since I became a voter in 1982, our political decisions have never been a success.  I remember conversations I heard about the Kennedy assassination.  I remember the catastrophic Vietnam era.  I remember the Nixon disappointments.  American Presidents have never sailed by on the winds of change with grace and fortitude, secure in the belief that their efforts would win a better day for our America.  In fact, although President George Herbert Walker Bush achieved personal victories, he failed to achieve progress for our nation.  We now languish in doubt about what to do during the age of neoliberal bickering and strife.  It is an age that has failed to deliver the prosperity it once hoped for.

As I looked in the faces of President Carter, President G.W. Bush, President Clinton, President Obama and President Trump, I felt them all under siege in a politically failing United States.  Why failing?  Because neoliberalism is collectivism and collectivism encourages corruption that undermines each person’s ability to achieve.  However great each person’s effort, neoliberalism undermines long-term achievement and shrinks it down to almost nothing.  Much struggle, little accomplishment.  As America marches from Democrat to Republican to Democrat to Republican Administrations, each undermines the next but continues on in failing neoliberal programs.  Neoliberalism comes with financialization and globalization and we find these systems are all three failing us.  They fail to create a secure future.  They waste the talents of individuals.  Corruption undermines our success and capital eclipses wealth.  Too bad.  It’s time to change and turn towards what might work better for the nation.  It’s time to turn away from corruption that elevates capital and undermines accomplishment.

As much reverence as we’ve heard about President George Herbert Walker Bush, I have to say that his worthy military service may have taught him to be a follower of systems instead of a leader that innovates a system.  I’m glad that President Trump isn’t just a follower.  If he were, I don’t think he would have been elected.  But President Trump can’t change everything all at once.  President Trump is trying to rebalance trade.  If Americans knew more about economic history they would know to value this.  President George Herbert Walker Bush studied economics, but he didn’t try to innovate the nation’s economy.  Rebalancing trade may help us to recover some economic health.    But even if President Trump succeeds at rebalancing trade, he would make better progress if neoliberalism ended.  That is, if state sponsored corporatism ended.

Also, banks should be regulated and bank deregulation should end.  That would end the financial harms of hot money and borderless banking.  Banks should be smaller so that their failure doesn’t menace the nation.  Glass Steagall could be restored to separate commercial and investment banking.  Monetary and fiscal policy could acquire greater discipline.  Clinton era strategies to stymie regulation and regulatory agencies could end.  Corrupt Washington could reform.  Anti-trust legislation could be enforced.  We have seen alarm in Washington D.C. at President Trump’s election because it has endangered corrupt opportunities and might end non-prosecution for crimes committed against our nation.  I hope that crony protections against political crimes ends soon.

The nuclear age scared us into a neoliberal system and it hasn’t worked out.  We were trying to protect the world from a nuclear holocaust and even if we did that from 1945 until the present-day, it isn’t enough.  Neoliberalism can’t work for America because it is un-American.  It also can’t deliver the world into peace and prosperity even though that was the goal.  If you want to learn more about the history of ideological change during our nation’s evolution, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries on sale at Amazon.com.

 

I have heard so much blame today being handed to our current President but it isn’t his fault if the nation is suffering right now.  It’s Congress’s fault.

Congress is the sovereign body of government in the United States.  Congress calls into being American politics by writing our legislation.  And Congress has abandoned the  goal of writing good legislation.  When Congress allows lengthy bills a thousand pages long that are full of pork to pass through the legislature it hurts the nation and it’s Congress’s fault.  When they allow think tanks to draft legislation, when they fail to even read it, and then when it hurts America, it’s Congress’s fault.  When Congress interferes with the American economy by subsidizing some industries and not others it’s Congress’s fault that we have zombie companies taking up economic space that could be better occupied.  When so many small business have gone out of business forever during and after the Great Recession, it was Congress’s fault because they harmed our economy when they deregulated banking and welcomed derivatives as an innovation that has now cost trillions of dollars and millions of jobs, not to mention damaging our real estate market.  All of that has happened without apology.  That was already bad.  But now Congress is behaving worse.

Many members of Congress have supported the Mueller investigation which isn’t a proper investigation but rather a tool to harass our President and undermine our recent 2016 election.  I hear that some members of Congress want to harass President Donald Trump even more.  When members of Congress call for more harassment they cause social strife.  When they tell people that they should harass Trump’s cabinet members or his spokespersons in public, they ratchet up violence and hysteria and it’s their fault.  We should blame them.  It’s their fault because they have failed to meet their responsibility to safeguard the nation against strife.

Congress’s job isn’t to make deals, it’s to make just laws that help everyone to have security and prosperity.  Congress has abandoned those goals as a body when they allow some members to seek strife and discord and disruption.  Where is Congressional decorum?  Where is concern for what might happen if public civility is abandoned and civil limits and boundaries aren’t respected?  We’ve already seen members of the legislature shot.  Congress members calling for discord have continued to call for even more discord and violence.  I don’t blame President Trump, I blame Congress.  Shame on Congress.  Isn’t it long past time for Congress to censure these bad actors?

When Congress members disrespect American political leaders that differ with them, it hurts America.  When they waste money on investigations that never end even without finding any fault, they hurt America.  When Congress seeks chaos instead of order, when they distract themselves from projects worthy of their attention by encouraging civil discord, they hurt America.  So much blame goes to the President but it is undeserved.  The President has only a portion of power and his portion is the smaller one.

Donald Trump has been unfairly accused and persecuted.  If any one of us was treated that way would we behave with as much patience?  You may be sure that President Trump can be rude.  He has behaved rudely because of his resistance to a lockstep press committed to politically limited discourse while the nation is already in trouble.  With our nation in trouble, we need to talk about solving problems instead of creating new phoney problems.

What about the cultural phenomenon of “virtue signaling” that has forbidden so many topics that need discussion?  What about members of the press that have acted as a chorus and an instrument of the social justice movement to shut down discourse and to distort information?  Pretending to be in favor of what might be a good thing isn’t the same thing as accomplishing something good.  Virtue signallers are a bunch of mouthy narcisists that undermine American discussions about real issues.  Turning away from honest discussions about our problems has made those problems worse.

I have listened to an unrepentant call for carbon taxes when carbon dioxide doesn’t cause global warming and global warming is a tax seeking fallacy based on computer rounding errors and false temperature readings.  I have heard demands for unlimited immigration even though that would not help our economically displaced non-participating laborers or our nation’s debt or our crime problems.  I have listened to people demanding more gun restrictions.  But there’s a failure to enforce current gun regulations, for example you may recall failures to prosecute during the Fast and Furious scandal and also the failure to prosecute felons who try to buy a gun illegally.  Notice the problem of psychotropic drug prescriptions that we find in use among mass shooters, but no public alarm or restriction of those drugs which may be to blame.  Some political groups want even more gun restrictions until they undermine the Second Amendment.  And that may be their true goal.  There’s little point in federal or state legislatures writing new legislation when there’s a failure to enforce already existing gun restrictions.  Shame on these destructive efforts that are tearing our nation apart.  So many problems are Congress’s fault because members take sides instead of reaching an accord.  Congress shouldn’t indulge in fantasy based discourse and fantasy based legislation.  It’s long past time for them to choose better leadership than the terrible and destructive kind that we see today.  Shame on Congress.

Discord has happened because political people in our nation have too much power over the American economy.  That improper power politicizes every economic opportunity and short-circuits government oversight which causes corruption and bickering between factions.  That has happened because we live in the neoliberal era which is now failing to be politically or economically healthy for America.  Do you think that rampant corruption in Congress might be helped with Congressional term limits?  What if Congress members were limited to 2 terms in the House of Representatives and 1 term in the Senate?  According to the Supreme Court it will take a Constitutional Amendment to limit Congressional terms.  Maybe the struggle to do that would help Congress get back to basics instead of trying to make deals.

If you want to understand our historically important transition from healthy to sick that has been caused by engaging in bad politics you can find out all about it in Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com.

 

We live in the neoliberal period.  The neoliberal period is one where most of us ignore history and focus on short-term concerns.  The time we most often consider is the immediate present.  That’s unfortunate because history is important in its gifts.  They are many.

History can matter to us because it can provide a larger context to help us to understand the present day.  And it can provide lessons about what human societies tried in the past that either worked to the benefit of society or failed to work.  History can give us an appreciation of human culture and the beauty that has been produced by human beings over the generations in art, literature, science, architecture and music.  History gives us old accomplishments to admire and that gives whatever is new today a context for us to see and appreciate what we have now.  Accomplishments from people who lived before us are testified to us by artifacts that are a rich available resource of inspiration to all of us living today.

If you look at the human genome and consider that each of us holds only a part of the human potential in our own genes, history provides testimony about many different kinds of people who lived in the past.  Human beings can grasp only a part of the human heritage in the expression of each person’s talents but we can learn from the past to appreciate a greater whole.  As each of us struggles to achieve our own potential it can be comforting to imagine our small part in contributing to a greater historical whole.

As we try to understand what will help us all to achieve greater prosperity and security, there are many lessons and many comforts to be found in the history of the human past.  History is full of ideas that changed everything that had been before.  Ideas still have that transformative potential.  Political and economic history has much to recommend it.  The intricate dance between politics and economics has brought new opportunities into being.  History shows how cultures tried to overcome unavoidable setbacks.  Some of these setbacks were material and others were caused by human limitations.  People tried to outsmart their human limitations in a variety of ways.  We have tried religion, we’ve tried rationalism, we’ve tried humanism, we’ve tried computer technologies.  Hard times shaped by wars, disease and suffering have also shaped human outcomes.  Whatever happens, when we are at our best we try to overcome our foibles and celebrate each other’s opportunities which help human society to prosper.  We can’t really escape the influence of history even when we don’t understand it very well.

If you want to understand more about the history of political ideologies over U.S. history, if you want to understand why there is political discord in the present, if you want to see how we tried to prevent problems that have surfaced in the present and if you want to understand the role of government in solving problems and preventing corruption, Political Catsup with Economy Fries, available at Amazon.com is just the book that you need.

Today is election day, Nov 6th, 2018.  If you compare the issues being discussed with those from the 2016 elections, some truth-telling is happening that couldn’t have happened without the Trump presidency.  Here’s an example.

I listened to a debate between Washington State’s Senator incumbent Maria Cantwell and challenger Susan Hutchison about climate change.  These two women gave us a chance to listen to candidates getting down to facts instead of fantasy.  Hutchison and Cantwell were sparring away.   Their points of debate revealed that they didn’t buy into the fantasy that climate change threatens us directly by altering our survivability.  Hutchison said that a carbon tax strategy wouldn’t make any difference to climate conditions which is true on the one hand, and Cantwell said on the other hand that carbon taxes might create new markets and new jobs.  So at last at least for a moment, two candidates were speaking about facts instead of fantasy.  Carbon taxes won’t fix the climate and would cost Americans a bundle.  Finally, two people from different parties said it.  President Trump did his best to end the global warming climate change fantasy, and we can already see dividends in getting down to issues that evade fantasy based determinism.

I keep hearing that the American economy is getting better.  I suppose that might be true but I would observe that any improvement is small.  The Trump Tax strategy will take a long time to alter the opportunities of Americans.  I would like to mention that a similar strategy was advocated but similar changes were never accomplished in the Obama Administration.  President Trump succeeded where President Obama failed.  At least this new tax structure stops some of the tax breaks that economic outsourcers have enjoyed in the past.  The subsidized outsourcing bonfire that burned up American jobs is a fire that has now been put out.  Now we wait to see if jobs will return.

In the meantime, I would like for the labor department to go back to a more honest assessment of employment in our nation.  Pretending that non-participating labor is voluntarily unemployed has led to amazing falsehoods about the health of our labor market.  If we acknowledge how many Americans lost their opportunity to work because of mergers and acquisitions, we might be encouraged to quickly end the easy money policies that led to the destruction of so many American jobs through buy-outs and closures.  This is one area where I think President Trump is wrong in advocating the Federal Reserve continue with low-interest rates in order to stimulate the economy.  Easy money has been destructive to most American job opportunities and it’s time let interest rates return to a more normal rate.  By the way, that’s about 5% if you check American history.  Ending low-interest rates will also curb malinvestments that have destroyed useful capital.

The stock market has been artificially stimulated by Federal Reserve policies and what goes up artificially must certainly come down naturally.  And probably soon.  But a phoney stock market doesn’t mean anything useful to most Americans.  What matters is economic opportunity, not stock valuations.  Real markets are more dynamic than a pretend market can ever be.  Real markets respond to what people need and to what they can afford.  A government stimulated phoney market can’t do that.

In addition, regulating banks more stringently could protect their solvency.  Banks should be smaller and they should have to keep more capital to back their investments.  Borrowing for risky investing should end.  Right now and until banks are properly regulated, Americans will suffer even more greatly than they did during the Great Recession if there’s a collapse of banking due to a shortage of liquidity.  The great era of gambling with derivatives should finally come to an end.

We’ve all watched the Mueller investigation wasting tax dollars.  It has also continually and unfairly threatened our good President who has been proceding lawfully according to his presidential power.  Any such investigation shouldn’t proceed without a crime to investigate.  Trump didn’t commit any such crime.  The Trump Presidency unexpectedly undermined corrupt people who benefitted from the Obama Administration.   Their crimes should be prosecuted instead of wasting money on a fake “Russia investigation” which was always just a smokescreen.  Trump’s election surprised the FBI and Hillary Clinton’s State Department.  It’s time to recognize that their corrupt power to evade prosecution should end.  It is time for Mueller to end his sham investigation of our President.  Mueller showed us all how corrupt Washington D.C. politics are.  Now we know.

Not all that long ago, candidate Trump called for an end of Empire military projects and for an enhanced military readiness at home.  We’ve seen little progress on this goal to reduce foreign based military operations which have been so lucrative for military insiders.  Vested interests in the Military Industrial Complex see hundreds of military bases as advantageous to making money on conflict even when that conflict is sometimes a fabrication.  There’s still a chance to reduce our global military presence and gradually close many of our military bases around the world.  The military industrial complex is motivated by profits more than by an opportunity to maintain global order.  President Trump is mostly right when he suggests that Europe can take care of their own borders without help from the U.S. military.  Perhaps a global space initiative would now be a better alliance among nations especially in view of progress in fusion technology.

In the coming days, let’s remember that we can improve.  However the elections turn out, Americans can do a better job at understanding what needs to happen to bring back prosperity.  When we look at where we have gone wrong we can make an effort to improve by changing and improving policies that don’t work.  There’s still a terrible waste happening in America.  What we are wasting is American know how and American talents and American jobs.  Capital doesn’t equal know how or talent or jobs.  Jobs are encouraged with financial stability in stable markets that are healthy and that make sense based on what people need and what they can afford.  Economic interventionism by Congress should taper off.  The economy can be better when politicians stay out of it.

This is the neoliberal era and if you want to understand how we got here, you can buy a copy of my book, Political Catsup with Economy Fries at Amazon.com.

People remembering neoliberalism will surely remark that the drive to centralize led to social failures.  Obamacare was a huge effort to centralize healthcare, for example.  Americans were told lies to get the public’s support.  Those lies included first, the idea of free care.  Under a lackluster economy many Americans found healthcare unaffordable and some were willing to believe that they could avoid high costs under a public program.   But an economy is a whole thing.  Costs can’t be shifted outside of itself.  When a public program will pay any price, inflation adds to the public’s debt and healthcare expenses go beyond affordability.   The idea that insurance premiums wouldn’t increase was a fallacy.  So was the idea that people could keep their favorite doctors.  Many doctors weren’t included under Obamacare and others were driven out of healthcare.  Dentists were excluded altogether and some dental practices failed after the Great Recession.  Obamacare failed to provide better care and its cost drove Americans away.  It caused lifespans to diminish.  Allowing insurance companies to write Obamacare legislation led to bad laws and eventually to more fraud in healthcare.  Giving pharmaceutical companies free rein to sell opiates and psychotropic drugs also injured people and caused deaths.  Anti-monopoly laws and anti-trust laws weren’t enforced in healthcare.

Another tragic centralization was initiated by banking deregulation coupled with easy money policy (low-interest rates for loans).  That led to fewer larger banks that could borrow money to risk it in markets.  American banks under the Greenspan Put expected American taxes to backstop their losses during the Great Recession.  Banks lost sight of the importance of solvency because the Federal Reserve promised to save them.  It was like the Federal Reserve giving a subsidy for failing.  Zero interest rate policy took money from savers who couldn’t earn any interest and that hurt old people who needed that interest money to pad out their expenses after they retired.  Mergers and acquisitions led to the failure of American businesses as their assets were diverted into investor’s pockets and their employees lost out.  Short-term job security undermined markets that required long-term investments like the American education system and American real estate marketplace.  With job insecurity it became too scary to buy a house or get an education.  Inflation in real estate and at the university also drove people away.

Under a centralized economy, neoliberals had less successful innovation.  Many stories circulated about revolutionary innovations in healthcare and in energy technologies.  Stories about stem cell treatments that promised to alleviate the suffering of elderly people with damaged organs or tissues or bones never seemed to amount to anything real.  Curative stem cell treatments failed to take the place of older treatments that would never cure illness.  Neoliberals wanted sick people to stay sick so that they could buy more healthcare.  Likewise, fusion energy innovation seemed to always be slower than needed in an economy suffering under high energy costs.  Low energy nuclear reactions seemed to promise room temperature superconductivity and limitless energy but never came to market in the U.S.  Vested interests in established markets worked to slow progress rather than to speed it.  Meanwhile algorithms were substituted for human judgement and whenever a problem came up from using an algorithm, no one was blamed.  Bad algorithms led to teacher shortages when teachers were unfairly evaluated.  Bad market algorithms led to inappropriate risk and caused the Great Recession, leading to losses in real estate values and millions of foreclosures.  Algorithms inaccurately predicted catastrophic global warming that was a fantasy of inappropriate computer rounding and inaccurate temperature monitoring.  Neoliberals wanted carbon taxes to pad their budgets.

Neoliberals also lost the ability and the opportunity to change course in response to policy failures.  Bickering among competitors for economic and political power was rampant.  This bickering undermined coherency in attaining society’s goals and even undermined a coherent narrative about goals worth pursuing.  Fraud and dishonesty became the hallmark of neoliberal press.   Organizations–think tanks– that were protected from taxation and that were supposed to find and promote good policies failed to do so.  Their focus became too short-term for long-term success.  Think tank failures and corruption led the public to distrust the three branches of government.  The Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches failed to perform their primary functions.  The legislature failed to write good laws.  See Obamacare laws and banking deregulation under the Clinton Administration, for example.  The Executive failed to enforce existing law.  The Bush Administration and the Obama Administration, for example failed to enforce laws in banking.  Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, failed to prosecute illegal CIA torture that led to suffering and death. Some judges failed to interpret law based on the historical past.  They opposed constitutionalism.  Congress continued to interfere in the American economy by picking winners and losers and the Executive tried to manipulate global politics in order to manipulate markets.  The Judicial Branch in the Supreme Court found a way to make Obamacare seem constitutional when it wasn’t.  Instead of prudent government, it was a time of making deals.

After a while neoliberalism died.  It killed the economy and created political strife that it couldn’t survive.  People are still amazed at its longevity considering its failures.  To understand more about our evolution of political ideologies in the United States, buy a copy of Political Catsup with Economy Fries available at Amazon.com.