Muslims do speak out!

Too often someone writes or says that Muslims should speak out against the violence committed in the name of Islam.

Are these complainers in a cocoon?  Muslims do speak out about the violence.  The complainers probably don’t read what is even in local dailies.

Maybe they spend too much time on Fox News.  Someone put on the Coffee Party site a snippet from Fox News of an interview with Reza Aslan, author of “Zealot: Jesus of Nazareth”.  The interviewer kept repeating “How can a Muslim write about Jesus?”  In another era, many would ask, “How can a black women be an interviewer on TV?”  Or today, “How can a non-Muslim write about Islam?”  or “How can a non-Muslim even ask questions about Islam?”

As to speaking out, many Muslims do.  A group of Muslim scholars in Britain condemned the violence and the cartoons both but counseled patience and restraint.

One writer who stands out from several that I have read recently is Ahmed Tharwat, a broadcaster and writer in the Twin Cities.  He wrote “I am Ahmed – non-terrorist”.  He wrote for many Muslims that he is tired of being held responsible for the actions of a few out of over a billion Muslims.

Obnoxious ad for a good cause

I clicked on an article in Facebook and overlaid on the article was an ad for TheDayWeFightBack  that would not go away.

I went to TheDayWeFightBack web page, found the contact button, and sent the following email:

I clicked on a Coffee Party article in facebook.  When the article opened your ad was overlaid on top of it.  There was no little X to close the ad, no "Skip this ad", nada!  It appears that the only way I can get rid of the ad is to phone or send email to my legislator.  Well, I'm fighting back against you by doing neither, by posting this on facebook, and by posting this on my blog.

There is little original thought on the Internet

This blog is a good example of much of what is available on the Internet is derivative of somebody else's ideas.

My previous entry was "Fox News sells book on Jesus by a Muslim".

I got to that by an entry by the Coffee Party on Facebook.  It led me to an entry by Egberto Willies on his web site.  That led me to an interview on Fox News with an author of a book on Jesus.  The author answering questions about his book could still be considered derivative.  That led me to look up more info about his book. Finding the Huffington Post excerpt finally got me to the author's original thoughts.  Regardless of what you think about Reza Aslan's thoughts about Jesus, you must say that they are closer to unique thinking about a subject than all the other steps that got me to that excerpt.

Fox News sells book on Jesus by a Muslim

Well, it didn't intend to sell "Zealot: The Life And Times Of Jesus Of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan, but the inept interview of him by Lauren Green led lot of people to be interested in the book.   I could not finish watching the interview; it was unduly combative on Green's part.  Apparently this interview has gone viral and you can find it many places.  The commenters to the Egbertowillies page were mostly in favor the author.

A better contrary commentary on the book is "A (Somewhat) Muslim Perspective: Why Is Reza Aslan's Jesus So Small?" by Rob Asghar, Huffington Post, 2013-07-29.

You can judge for yourself by reading an excerpt from "Zealot" at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/zealot-reza-aslan-_n_3605667.html.

Muslims do speak out; anyone listening?

See "An Interviewer Asked A Muslim Leader About The Murder Of A British Soldier.  Here's How He Answered".  Imam Ajmal Masroor gave a heartfelt condemnation of people who want to injure or kill others in the name of religion.

The comments on Facebook are all over – from support to blind, sweeping opposition.  One I like best is from Rafi Uddin Ahmed:

"I agree 100%.
The Muslim leadership in US has been condemning these terrorist acts for years and can not get any media coverage. We work closely with FBI, TSA and Homeland security in safeguarding our country. Majority of foiled terrorist attacks were a result of tips from muslim community."

See also "Violent militants are not Muslims", Fouza Saeed, Star Tribune, 2013-05-28.

She didn't write this phrase, but I think the best term for those she describes is "pseudo-Muslim criminals.

See also "Qur'an burning - Questions for Muslim protesters"

Cartoon of the day: elections and ID

See "Clarifying Recent Changes to Our Electoral System", Matt Wuerker, Politico, May 2012, reposted by The Coffee Party on Facebook, 2013-03-16.  Wuerker points out the inconsistencies for photo ID on voting in an election and buying an election.

Quote of the day: entitlements

"Indeed we do have an entitlement problem; some feel so entitled to power & wealth that they're willing to undermine our economy and our democracy."
- Annabel Park, founder of the Coffee Party

Click here for original.

Let's see!  Is the CEO of U.S. Bancorp entitled to $9,311,164 for 2012 compensation?  Or did he earn it?  Who decided this?  Did the shareholders or the self-selected board of U.S. Bancorp?  If Richard Davis earned it, did he do it with his own "hard work" or did thousands of employees contribute to the success of U.S. Bancorp and earned far less than one-hundredth of what he received.  If the latter, did they receive a bonus for their hard work?  Now these are the people who are entitled to better pay.

See "CEO pay watch: U.S. Bancorp's Richard Davis", Patrick Kennedy, Star Tribune, 2013-03-13

Quote of the day - Corporate political contributions

"All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law."
- Theodore Roosevelt

Posted on Facebook by the Coffee Party.

For more, see the Wikipedia article "Tillman Act of 1907".

The Coffee Party, civility, and harassment

I received an email from the Coffee Party that I send an invoice to Karl Rove and his Crossroads GPS for the electoral votes he attempted "to buy".  See
http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/content/time-send-message-and-invoice-karl-rove-and-his-super-pac

I replied to the email with

"Isn't this harassment?  Would you like it if the Coffee Party received 50,000 letters from the Tea Party?

"I think many of the SuperPACs got their comeuppance in this latest election.  And, of course, they aren't making us vote their way.  I sure didn't.  Have you so little faith in the intelligence of the American people?"

I find this "harassment" way out of character of the Coffee Party.  The Coffee Party asks members to sign the Civility Pledge:

"As a member or supporter of the Coffee Party, I pledge to conduct myself in a way that is civil, honest, and respectful toward people with whom I disagree.  I value people from different cultures, I value people with different ideas, and I value and cherish the democratic process."

Republicans are not republicans

The current Republican party is in no way republican.  The word "republican" comes from the Latin "res publica" meaning public thing.  In the Eighteenth Century Anglo-American world, it meant considering the public good over private gain.  In the Twenty-First Century United States too many Republicans consider the private good of large corporations over the public good of a well-governed nation.

So many Republicans do the bidding of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and take big bags of campaign donations from the member companies to promote these companies' private gain, I wonder if the Republicans shouldn't be called ALEC's Bag-Time Band.

Fortunately, we do still have a republic with a democratic foundation.  Some of the people are getting fed up with a narrow-minded party that many movements have begun to get us back to some semblance of civility and interest in the public good.

There is the Coffee Party that calls for "civility and reason".  Although many of its stances might be considered on the left, it is more for people rather than corporations.

It has a "community" called Coffee Party Conservatives: The Conservative Side of the Coffee Party USA, but it is a aggregator of news that generally finds fault with the current Republican Party, though Obama and the Democratic Party do get a bit of criticism.

One of the interesting articles referenced is "A Phoenix Rising: Common-Good Conservatism" by Michael Stafford and D.R. Tucker, Truthout, 2012-04-27.  Stafford and Tucker are or were Republicans.

Even a member of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, Norman Ornstein, along with Thomas E. Mann has written a critique of the current Republicans: "It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How The American Constitutional System Collided With The New Politics Of Extremism"
by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein.  You can listen to an interview of them on NPR and read a summary of the interview at "Extremism In Congress: 'Even Worse Than It Looks'?", 2012-04-30.

Which is better, civil disobedience or voting?

I posted the following response to a Coffee Party article on civil disobedience and voting.  A commentator claimed that corruption was preventing people from voting.

Corruption is not excluding people from voting, individual voters are excluding themselves. When we have turnouts of less than 50% in 2010 the no shows have only themselves to blame. I often wonder how many who protested in Madison had voted. How many of those who signed the repeal petition in Wisconsin will actually show up for the recall election? Turnout in 2012 was low because too many stayed away because President Obama wasn't "perfect". If you're going to wait for the "perfect" candidate, you are going to let other people vote in some very imperfect people.

Rules of democracy - 1) show up to vote; 2) vote for who you believe in, even if you have to write some body in; 3) show up to vote; 4) the only vote thrown away is the vote not cast; 5) show up to vote!

Also make your voice known to the media; not just in the letters section. If a reporter claims, for instance, that Gingrich "won" in Georgia, email the reporter that only 6% of the eligible voters cast their vote for Gingrich in the Republican primary. If a reporter claims that someone won in a "landslide", email him or her that that someone received the vote of only 1/3 of the eligible voters. If we get more accurate reporting that show how thin the support of the "winners" is, maybe we'll get more people saying, "OMG, if I had only voted!"

Be your own little get-out-the-vote campaigner. On election day or the day before, drop off a home-made flyer at every house on your block. Be non-partisan. Make up a few catchy slogans like "Democracy counts on your vote to work".

Finally, be sure to show up to vote!

After I wrote the above I thought about how representative civil disobedience and voting are compared to each other.  If 1,000 people show up for a demonstration in a town of 200,000, how representative are they of the other 199,000?  If 60,000 people vote on election day, aren't they more representative of the 200,000 than the 1,000?  Talk about the 1%, the 1,000 are only a half percent!

Beginning of the end of finance as we've come to hate it?

Today, Greg Smith is resigning as Executive Director of Goldman Sachs.  He wrote "Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs" for the New York Times.

The Coffee Party Facebook page provided a link to this.  I'm sorry that I can't give you a URL for it.   What struck me about many of the comments was that many seemed to equate finance and capitalism; they are not the same.  Finance is a tool of capitalism, but to mix metaphors, it has become the tail wagging the dog.  See my blog entry "Finance is not capitalism", 2012-12-07.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall put a lot of muscle into the tail, and at the time only a few saw this coming.  Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) warned about this in a Senate speech in 1999.  See "Byron Dorgan's Prophetic Words", Moyers & Company, Lauren Feeney, 2012-01-27.  I recommend watching the full show: "How Big Banks are Rewriting the Rules of our Economy".

For more of the gory details of the collapse of finance, see "All the Devils are Here", by Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.  See also my quote from the book about the plea from Wall St. for more regulation!

The Coffee Party, demand, and civility

I've been a member of the Coffee Party for some time, and I follow them on Facebook.  Now and then I add a comment to one article or another.

I have a Coffee Party bumper sticker that I haven't used yet that states "Incite Civility and Reason".  The Coffee Party often suggests that members write this politician or that government office to demand something or other.  But is demanding some outcome "civility and reason"?

"Demand" is something done by ideologues, not by somebody trying to be civil and reasonable.

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton promises to veto ALEC-sponsored bills

The Coffee Party Facebook is all abuzz about Gov. Dayton's promised veto action. See http://news.coffeepartyusa.com/p/1247743475/minnesota-gov-calls-out-corporate-front-group-alec-vetoes-its-bills.

I sent Gov. Dayton a thank you at http://mn.gov/governor/contact-us/form/.

Thanks for vetoing ALEC's bills.

Those who cite Adam Smith's "invisible hand" often ignore the rest of his cogent observations, including:

"It is by this superior knowledge of [the merchants and manufacturers] own interest that they have frequently imposed upon [the country gentleman's, often a member of Parliament] generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public."

From "Political manipulation - begging the question"
--------

I posted the above on Facebook as well as the next: Cookbooks in German are Kochbücher. Does this mean that legislators who enact ALEC drafts are Koching by the book?

The once and probably not future Republicans

The Coffee Party posted the following on Facebook:

"We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth." - Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States of America

I added the comment, "Give me that old-time Republican!!"

I might add that "public good" is used 25 times in the Federalist Papers, many times more than "profit" or "corporation", both of which have multiple meanings.

Wall Street's sham value

Mike Massey wrote an interesting article for the Coffee Party "'We are Wall Street' - Let the Fee-Takers Become Value Creators" He properly labels Wall Street as "rent-seekers".

"Rent-seeking, on the other hand, is a way to expand an individual’s share of the economy, without actually producing anything new – without producing much new value. Rent-seeking is not necessarily a bad thing; I don’t begrudge an innkeeper or a landlord the fee for a bed to sleep in and a roof over my head. Nor, indeed, do I begrudge a broker her commission, or the mutual fund company their expense ratio. All of these activities can enable value creation, and  everybody’s got to make a living. Rent-seeking just doesn’t really grow the economy that much, in comparison to value creation."

I left the comment:

"I remember hearing sometime in the early 80s on the morning news that 54,000,000 shares had been traded on the NYSE the day before. Friday 1.8 trillion shares were traded on the NYSE at an average price over $50. Has the economy really grown over 30,000 times in 30 years? These are not investors exchanging this many shares, probably not even live day traders, but most likely computers. Gosh, what a cash machine!"

Another good quote: Education

"Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant." - John Adams, Thoughts on Government, Apr. 1776 Papers 4:86-93

I wonder if those who think they know the intent of the writers of the Constitution only from reading the Constitution would agree with this. "Extravagant", "fiscal responsibility" and complaints about "greedy teacher unions" don't seem to go together.

I found this link on the Coffee Party's Facebook page. I don't know how long this Coffee Party article will be available; I hope the page on constitution.org will be available for years and even decades.

As for constitution.org, I don't know what to make of it. Although it has links to the Federalist Papers and the anti-Federalist papers, it seems to be mostly strictly constructionist about the Constitution itself, that is, how they interpret the Constitution is how everybody else should interpret the Constitution.

Quote of the day: Fair share from wealthy

"[T]here's no reason to punish the wealthy, just to expect them to shoulder their fair share of the tax burden. And expecting proportional sacrifice from those very well off is not 'punishing success,' as some would have it. It's as simple as expecting the strongest campers to carry the heaviest canoe. It just makes sense." - Comment by Will Rice in the comments to his article "Coming Out of the Money Closet".

This and other blogs by Will Rice can be found at http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/category/categories/will-rice. How does he get all of his money? By going to the mailbox to get his dividend checks from inherited stock. See "The Rich Don't Need a Free Ride".

BTW, we aren't in the one percent, but since we both stopped working, we get all of our money at the mailbox or by direct deposit.

Follow the money follow-up

Rather than just blather here about issues, I did act on campaign contributions. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is up for re-election next year, and so I sent following to her campaign.

"I am seriously considering not voting for any candidate who accepts money from organizations and people who accept campaign contributions from those who have no right to vote for that candidate. The situation for Cravaack is pretty bad, see Coffee Party's call-in "Who's your Daddy?" The FEC does not provide as much details for Senators, but I'm disappointed with both of our Senators from Minnesota. See Follow the money - Minnesota's Democratic U. S. Senators."

Follow the money - Minnesota's Democratic U. S. Senators

On 9 November I wrote an analysis of Rep. Chip Cravaacks' contributions, "Coffee Party's call-in 'Who's your Daddy?'". I wrote that I didn't check on Minnesota's Democratic Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken. As I'm not too pleased with the contributions to any candidates, I finally found a round tuit to look at Klobuchar's and Franken's contributions.

It's not as easy as looking at Cravaack's. The Senate does not provide the nice summary that the House of Representatives does. Essentially, the only detail is in the scanned copies of the reports that the Senators have to provide. And Open Secrets http://www.opensecrets.org doesn't provide as much detail for the Senate as the FEC does for the House of Representatives. I limited my review to the top 20 contributions from industries.

For Klobuchar this is at http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00027500&type=I.

The top industry was lawyers and law firms. Both PACs and individuals gave $754,054 of her $4,056542 contributions from the top 20 industries, or 18.59%. Labor unions are broken down into five types; the total of all five types was $399,549 or 9.85%. Next was "retired" with only individual contributions of $317,000 or 7.82%. Lobbyists were fourth with $229,455 or 5.65%. The remaining groups were five percent or less. My thought is to let her have the votes of these contributors in 2012, if they can vote, and to carefully consider the alternatives to the major parties, including voting for Wright In.

For Franken this data is at http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/industries.php?cycle=2012&cid=N00029016&type=I.

The top industry is again lawyers and law firms, and it is probably followed by unions and retired. I've been searching and writing on this long enough for today. I will jump back to Franken's top contributors. The top four are Time Warner, General Electric, University of Minnesota and Moveon.org. It is kind of hard to know what this means as these are mostly individual contributions; the contribution of a web designer at Time Warner would be considered in this total. Is that web designer in New York or Minneapolis. From the data available on OpenSecrets, I wouldn't know.

What I was looking for is how much Franken may be getting from the medical device industry, given that he has proposed legislation to speed up approval of devices. The first directly health-related company was United Health ranked 37 with $18,150 from individual contributors. However, my thought is the same as for Klobuchar, let him have the votes of these contributors in 2014, if they can vote.