Professed non-experts claim to be experts

Many climate-change deniers claim not to be scientists.  If they are not scientists, how can they claim to know with certainty there is no climate change?

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

• Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

In other stories, Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and all the king’s men and all the king’s horses couldn’t put him back together again.

When Trumpty Dumpty falls off the wall, how many of us will he take with him?

I had a dream

My apologies to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for using a variation of the title of one of his major speeches.

My dream early this morning was about a similar nemesis: those whose only interest is ruling with a false idea of conservatism and a misuse of religion.

The false idea of conservatism is holding on to power, irregardless of how it affects the vast majority of the citizens.  This conservatism puts the interests of some large corporations over the interests of large segments of the population.  The misuse of religion is to claim to have the truth even as it acts contrary to the teachings of its greatest prophet.

My dream was that teams of journalists met all over the country to unite against the attacks by false conservatives on the journalists integrity and professionalism.  Interestingly, many of these journalists being attacked are real conservatives, like George Will and Jennifer Rubin.

What is a real conservative?  We can start by naming a few: Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Dwight Eisenhower.  All of these have given warning about the order of men that is not to be trusted.

Adam Smith warned about those who live by profit.  Edmund Burke warned about the folly of not allowing the colonies to govern themselves.  George Washington warned about factions and about foreign entanglements (letting both friends and enemies control our judgment).  Abraham Lincoln stated that we had to think anew with new circumstances.  Dwight Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex.

The best way to counter these false conservatives is to vote in each and every election.  These false conservatives do all they can to dissuade people from voting from gerrymandering to false statements about their opponents.

Until such time as real conservatives appear on the scene, I’ll just have to keep voting for Democrats.  I don’t support many of the issues of the Democrats, but these issues are not so destructive of our country as the issues proclaimed by false conservatives.

Counter to “Republicans” and facts

Comment to Paul Krugman’s “Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias”, New York Times, 201-12-08

I think a counter-attack to these distorters of facts should be repeating over and over again their misinterpretation and misrepresentation of so many ideas.

To them, a free market means corporations are free to do what they please.  But a true free market is:

Many buyers and sellers.
Both buyers and sellers are free to enter or leave the market.
Both buyers and sellers have all the information they need.
There are no externalities (all costs are paid for in the transactions

They cherry-pick “sacred” texts to suit themselves.

Adam Smith in “On the Wealth of Nations” observed the England had laws the prevent the workers from organizing to raise wages but none to prevent the masters from organizing to keep wages down.

Adam Smith warned that those who live by profit are not to be trusted.

“Originalist” judges have changed the Constitution to mean that corporations are people.

Democracy: quote of the day

"Democracy is about majority rule, not majoritarian tyranny."

"Gandhi won't leave India", Gopalkrishna Gandhi, New York Times, 2017-08-14

We do have to be careful even about the phrase “majority rule”.  Does the majority rule about climate change?  If the majority is purple people do they get to rule that all orange people should leave the country?

“Majority rules” should be limited to the majority elects those who govern, not to each and every rule that a government makes.  And in our last election, a minority of those who voted determine who would become president.

Consider also that many corporations want to eliminate many rules that “the majority” made: rules about safety, rules about pollution, rules about…

Trucks, taxes, and benefits

I don’t drive on freeways much anymore, but are there still trucks that have signs on the back that state something like “This truck pays $4,362 per year in taxes.”

Shouldn’t there also be a sign that says the government provides $x,xxx per year in services to this truck”?

What is the pro-rata cost of highways for each truck?  Snow-plowing?  Police investigation of crashes?  Police protection of auto drivers harassed by tailgating truckers?

It seems more that someone benefits from taxes the more they complain about taxes.  Corporations want well-educated employees, but they don’t want to pay the taxes to educate future employees.  They want to sue those they claim have wronged them, but they don’t want to pay the taxes for courts.  They want laws to protect their interests, but don’t want to pay the costs of enforcement.

Corporations and others want a military that costs more than then next two or three next largest militaries, but they don’t want to pay the taxes to support that military.

Corporate efficiency?

Forum Communications (owners of the Duluth News Tribune) implemented a new “improved” version of the Olive Edition.  This is a program that allows readers to toggle between a facsimile of the printed paper and individual articles.  I sent the following to the person who responded to my help message:

"I do find the new version a lot harder to use.  I prefer the way the Star Tribune is set up.  For example, the Strib version has a section icon at the top left.  Much easier than using the arrows to go back or forth page by page.  Also, when I first opened it, it didn’t automatically set the page to my screen size.  It took a bit of fumbling before had the page size adjusted properly.

"Olive still can’t translate the text correctly.  Most of the articles that I looked at still drop the first letter of a story.”

That paragon of efficiency, Netflix, sent me email that my next DVD would be arriving three days ago!!  Which it had!  Maybe their email system went down.  And that system was most likely set up by some corporation.

I downloaded Stitcher because iTunes was just getting too difficult to use.  I was finding it being less responsive to downloading and playing podcasts.  Even Stitcher has lots of hidden things that don’t work easily and clearly. Many of the operations don’t work as described in the help articles. I think I finally have my podcasts organized that I can download new episodes and can play them offline without a problem.

I’ve been at two different groceries this week where the register system did not work properly.  Fortunately, each had it come on line quickly or had a workaround.

Good old Apple!  I’m never sure what it will take to get a hotspot from my phone working.  Sometimes our iPads or laptops will recognize the hotspot immediately.  Sometimes it will take several minutes and multiple times turning the hotspot off and on again.  As somebody in a coffee shop loudly proclaimed months ago about gas prices: “It makes no sense!”

In defense of the oil companies and all the corporate and locally-owned stations, it does make sense.  Gas is an auction commodity.  Demand goes up, the price goes up.  Demand goes down, the price goes down.  Of course, there is also the seasonal switching of blends that decreases supply, causing the price to go up.

And those much maligned government agencies.  Working as planned.

Our social security checks are always posted to our bank on time.  (The bank does mark the payments as available immediately, but may take many hours to post them to our “ledger”)

If we order a book or DVD from the Duluth Public Library (either from the system or from MNLink*), they send us email within an hour or two of items being available at our branch.

*MNLink is a consortium of the local government libraries that make their collections available to other libraries in the system.  Often an item is delivered to the requesting library within two days of its being returned by the previous borrower.

And snowplowing has gotten better.  Our local streets are plowed several times after a storm and getting around may be a hassle for awhile and driveways may be blocked.  One thing that has improved is that a sidewalk plow generally comes around a day or two after a major storm.  It even makes up for those residents who rarely shovel their sidewalks.

Finally, the Duluth Transit Authority buses are fairly close to on-time even when the streets are not in the best condition.  And oh, yes, those friendly and courteous drivers are Teamsters.

Political labels = political misdirection?

I would distrust any political labels, whether applied to fellow travelers or political opposition.

“Liberal” is flung about as if “liberals” were irresponsible.  However, those flinging this epithet without thought are rather liberal with giving power to corporations.

And those who call themselves “conservative” are more conserving power for corporations than being thoughtful about change.  I haven’t studied Edmund Burke, but I wonder if he would approve of the actions of those who call themselves conservative today.

Maybe we should call them CONservatives because so many of them are con-men.  “Con” being short for “confidence”, that is the con-man gains the confidence of his mark as he takes the mark's money (or in too many cases both money and votes)

See “The Betrayal of Fiscal Conservatism”, David Leonhard, New York Times, 2017-01-09.

Quote of the day: corporation interest in strong dollar

"The reason that our government doesn’t intervene to push down the value of the dollar is that powerful U.S. transnational corporations like Wal-Mart prefer a strong dollar because it makes imports and overseas labor cheaper for them.”

“Will Trump outdo Obama in handling US-China: No: Even before taking office, Trump has made a mess”
- Mark Weisbrot, Duluth News Tribune, 2016-01-07

The “other side” is “Yes: His policies will protect our allies, economy, citizens from Chinese bullying”
- Pete Hoekstra

Why does so much writing, politics, and whatever have to be either/or?  There are so many more considerations than “either side” puts forth.

In support of Weisbrot, I’d cite “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”  Also, Republicans have turned the Constitution upside down so many times; in this case they have replaced Congress has the power to regulate commerce among the states to commerce having the power to regulate Congress!!

I wonder if any other democratic nation has as many “pariah” states as the United States: Cuba, North Korea, and Iran.  Yet we support many broken or rigid states far worse than Iran.

Security vs. customer service?

I want to close a Fidelity mutual fund account and put the funds in an Ameritrade account.  In this day and age one would think it would only involve a a few minutes of typing on each company’s website.  It sure would beat having a check mailed (3 days minimum), taking the check to a bank, and writing another check to the other company.

One, Fidelity would not recognize the routing and account numbers of my local bank account.  Although Fidelity would allow a transfer to another brokerage, it wanted a routing number.  I could find no routing number for Ameritrade.  Of course, using Google I found it as I was writing this paragraph.  The Google summary gives the routing number.

Two, Ameritrade wanted me to print out a form and fill it in by hand.  And of course, include a copy of my latest statement.  Given all that paper, I would probably take it to the Post Office to get the correct postage.

Three, I went back to the “horse and buggy days” and asked Fidelity to mail me a check.  When the check arrives, I’ll take it to my bank.  When the check clears than I will send the fund electronically to Ameritrade.

So, I could have saved myself much time and hair pulling if I had gone with plan three instead.

And some people have the gall to complain about government inefficiency.  Many government organizations are far more efficient than many corporations.  The government will get the check to me quite well, thank you.

Fox guarding the EPA chicken coop?

See "Trump names climate change skeptic, oil industry ally to lead EPA  in Duluth News Tribune, 2016-12-08.

This definitely is having the fox guard the chicken coop!

Shouldn't a "populist" be in favor of the people being free to breathe rather than the corporations being free to pollute?

See also "China to become the leader of the free-breathing world".

Misuse of "conservative" and "free market”

Letter to New York Times public editor

I wish writers would more carefully use the terms “conservative” and “free market”.

Those labeled with these terms, by self or others, are too often neither.

Are “conservatives” thoughtful and cautious about change, or are they rigid in whatever their views?  For example, “conservative” religious sects are more often throwing the first stone rather than feeding the poor.  Do “conservatives" really follow the Constitution as it currently exists, or are they “activists” interpreting it to suit their own views?  “Persons” are corporations?  “People” in the Second Amendment are now persons.  “Regulate Commerce” is totally ignored.

As to “free market”, it is too often meant to mean corporations should be free to do what they please without government interference.  Adam Smith must be spinning in his grave as those who live by profit (not to be trusted) buy so many politicians with money or a barrage of misleading statements.

A true free market

Has many buyers and sellers
Both buyers and sellers are free to enter or leave the market
Both buyers and sellers have all the information they need to make a decision
All costs are paid for in the transaction, that is, there are no externalities.

Too many “free marketers” want as few sellers as possible, do their best to lock buyers into the market, find out as much as possible about buyers but hide or provide false information to the buyers, and ignore all the externalities like pollution and bad diets.

See “The Invisible Adam Smith”, http://magree.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-invisible-adam-smith.html

Trump and the rule of personality, not of law

"Donald Trump is the personification of the distortion of a constitution by men who hate the constitution with such passion that they are willing to swear complete fealty as they destroy everything it stands for.” - Montreal Moe in response to Ross Douthat’s “The Trump Afterlife”, New York Times, 2016-10-19.

Douthat, being a true conservative, doesn’t care much for Trump’s anti-constitutional remarks.

To Montreal Moe’s comment I added:

Hear! Hear! I find it ironic that so-called conservatives rant about activist judges. So-called conservative Supreme Court Judges have defined corporations as persons and defined "people" in the Second Amendment to be "persons". Changes like these are certainly not "conservative”.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/opinion/campaign-stops/the-trump-afterlife.html?comments#permid=20183212:20184925.

Louis the XIV famously proclaimed “L’état, c’est moi!”.  "The state, it is me!"  Is Trump planning on being Donald the I?  Hm, in Trump’s case does “I” mean “me” or the first or both?  Trump’s remarks certainly sound monarchical (rule by one) rather than democratic (rule by many).

Corporations are inefficient too

Many so-called conservatives claim that governments are inefficient and corporations are efficient.  There is overwhelming evidence that both forms can be efficient and both forms can be inefficient.

As a prime example of how corporations can be life-threatening see “When You Dial 911 and Wall Street Answers”, New York Times, 2016-06-25, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/business/dealbook/when-you-dial-911-and-wall-street-answers.html.

Some corporations are run for the long term; some are run for the short term.  And both can make big mistakes.

Many of us love and rely on our Apple products.  But Apple can screw up big time and take a long time to correct the problem.  My wife’s iPhone 5C stopped charging and we still have six payments left.  When I checked Apple Support for “iPhone not charging", there were 28,136 results!

Two solutions were offered.  One was to hold the home button and the sleep button at the same time.  This did not work for any of the posters.  The other was to take the phone to an Apple Store.  For us, that is a two-and-a-half hour drive away.

We could mail it back to Consumer Cellular.  We do have AppleCare+ on the phone, but I don’t know how long that is good for.  We don’t know if we will have a new phone in a couple of days or a couple of weeks.

Considering how much smart phones become of people’s live, it is not very efficient or customer-friendly that Apple has not found a permanent solution yet.

But a non-functioning phone is generally a nuisance, not life threatening.  Think of the fatal failures of automobiles.  Takata is constantly in the news because of faulty air bags.  On a less life-threatening level, Volkswagen has been called to task because its emissions are far higher than they claimed.

Also think of all the food recalls there have been over the last few months.  Some are caught by the company and consumers are warned.  Others have to be warned by governments.

Ironically, those who use Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” as a justification for “free enterprise” ignore his “This order of men is not to be trusted…”  This order of men is those who live by profit.

The “bottom line” is really what are the ethics and dedication of the people in government or corporations.  Angels and devils are in both.

Who is the problem: government or corporations?

The airlines causing long lines with all of their baggage fees; more people are using carry-on luggage rather than checked luggage.  Government is often blamed for not solving problems created by corporations; corporations who don't want to pay the taxes for government to operate efficiently.

Ironically, it was a corporate-sponsored Congress that took money from TSA for other purposes, and then forced the resignation of a TSA official.

See http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/opinion/memorial-day-weekend-ranting.html.

I haven’t flown since 2008.  I had had it with small seats, long security lines, and so-so service.

I think the only way the airlines will change is when they lose business.  Unfortunately, more and more people want to fly somewhere for pleasure or business.  Increasing ticket sales and profits just convince the airlines that they are doing the right thing.

Problem of conservative/liberal labeling

We see too much about liberal bias against conservatives and conservative bias against liberals.  But do we even know what a conservative or liberal is?

Are those who think billionaires should be free to run their companies without any government interference liberals or conservatives?  They are certainly "liberal" in their interpretation of the Constitution.  The true conservatives are those who believe the Constitution's power to the Congress to "regulate commerce among the states".

Are those who think the Constitution starts with "We the People" means persons as a collective liberal or conservative?  It seems that so-called conservatives are rather liberal in interpreting the opening clause as "We the Corporations".

Nicholas Kristof wrote a column about liberals and conservatives in academia.  For some of the letters in response see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/sunday/politics-and-academia.html.

If "conservatives" have a problem being accepted into academia it may be because they are not open to change.  A true academic is a liberal-conservative: liberal in open to new views and conservative in evaluating evidence.

Freedom to do what?

Many people and corporations complain that their freedoms are being taken away by this law or that law which restricts certain behavior.  Are these smoke screens or do they have a point? Let’s look at a few cases.

Vermont has passed a law that GMO foods should be labelled as such.  Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association filed suit that this was a violation of their right of free speech.  Is their right of free speech being taken away by requiring a list of ingredients?  If you were on a limited salt diet, wouldn’t you want to compare products for their salt content?  If you had had cancer and should avoid soy lecithin, wouldn’t you want to seek products without soy lecithin?

Admittedly, the First Amendment contains “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the freedom of speech…”; that phrase has no qualifier like “persons” or “people”.  But the Constitution also includes Congress has the power “to regulate Commerce…among the several States…”

I wouldn’t be surprised if these companies also used the “free market” argument.  But “free market” doesn’t mean sellers get to do what they please; it also means that the buyers have all the information they need to make an informed decision.  Jews and Muslims want to know if products contain pork; shouldn’t those who have an aversion to other ingredients also know if products contain those ingredients?

In other words, if food manufacturers are free to deceive us then don’t they take away our freedom to know what we eat?

The First Amendment also contains “people have the right to peaceably assemble”.  Does that give them the right block other people’s right to move about?  I’m sure that meant that people could meet in some hall and discuss whatever was on their minds.  Maybe it also meant that people could assemble at the entrance of a government building, but only if they left room for others to go in and out of the building.  I doubt that the writers of the Bill of Rights considered peaceably assembling as filling the streets for whatever cause.

The gun manufacturers have been working for decades to erode the Second Amendment from the “right of the people to bear arms” (meaning in militias) to the “right of persons to bear arms”.  As late as 1939, a conservative Supreme Court Justice wrote the majority opinion that an individual did not have the right to carry a rifle in a parade, only those in a state-sanctioned militia.

But what is lost in many of the arguments for the individual right to bear arms is where is the argument for the right to not be shot?

Concerning “freedom of religion”, one has to be careful reading some of the stories concerning people’s or corporation’s “freedom of religion”.  Some of these stories have been blown out of proportion; others show that one person’s “freedom of religion” is impinging on another person’s freedom of religion.

If a Christian-owned company required that female Muslim employees not wear head scarves, then does a Muslim-owned company have a right to have all female employees wear head scarves?

In the context of the times of the writing of the Constitution, I think the “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion was more meant if you want to go to a Baptist Church fine, if you want to go to a Methodist Church fine.  I doubt that they would countenance those who believed in virgin sacrifice having free exercise.

If for security reasons banks ask that customers not wear hoods or sunglasses, then should not they ask that women not have their faces covered?  Many a man has escaped from other men by wearing a burqa.  Are the banks violating some customers “freedom of religion” or are they protecting their right not to be robbed?

The Congress that has been so adamant about Second Amendment rights seems equally adamant about walking all over Fourth Amendment rights.  “The right of be people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects…”  What is the “probable cause” of gathering information on who calls whom?  Isn’t a phone call by extension a “paper”?  Thanks, Ron Paul, for your efforts.

Many individuals claim a right to do what pleases them without any consideration on how those actions impinge on other people’s rights.

If there is a right to smoke, isn’t there also a right to breathe clean air?  Although smoking has declined dramatically, there are still too many people that smoke very close to signs “No smoking within 15 feet”.  If someone were to ask them to move away, it is more likely they will get angry rather than apologize and move away.

If there is a right to listen to music, isn’t there also a right to have quiet?  Many people have their car radios turned up so loud that other drivers can barely hear the music on their own radios.  Many people have their earphones turned up so loud that others can’t hear the music on their own earphones.  If you have the right to blast hip-hop up to twenty feet away, do I also have a right to blast Beethoven’s Ninth up to twenty feet away?

I think the thought attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. that “Your right to move your fist ends where my nose begins” is apt for almost all of the above cases.  A manufacturer’s “right” to withhold information ends where people’s health begins.  A person’s right to bear arms ends where other people’s safety begins.  A person’s right to freedom of religion ends where it restricts other people’s freedom of religion.  A person’s freedom of assembly ends where it impedes other people’s freedom of movement.

What is lost in all the talk about freedoms is that the basic freedom is the freedom to govern ourselves and not be governed by some foreign power.  And to govern ourselves we elect people to make rules to make society work.  You do vote in every election, don’t you?

Corporations and governments: can’t have one without the other

Considering some of the shouting, one might think that politics has divided into two camps: government is bad and corporations are for the common good, or corporations are greedy and government is for the common good.

As too often is the case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

First, let’s look at the similarities.

Corporations and governments are organized by people for a large number of reasons.  The people who organize these entities do so to provide goods and services, to make money, to be famous, or to push certain views, both altruistic and selfish.  Neither type of organization is any better than the people who run the organization.  Success depends more on the leadership and the resources available than on the form.  Success also depends on the circumstances of the time.  If a large segment of the population is not interested in an idea, it will take a lot of effort to promote the idea, whether a new product or a new law.  On the other hand, if a very large segment of the population is interested in an idea, somebody in corporations or government will be working overtime to fulfill the population’s wishes.

The big difference is that the corporations are run by the few and governments are run by the many, if the many show up and vote.

As many misinterpret Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”, many misinterpret Milton Friedman’s the only purpose of a corporation is to “increase profits”.

“[t]here is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud."  - Milton Friedman, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970

Many interpret this as the only purpose of a corporation is to increase shareholder value.  Unfortunately, they ignore “rules of the game” and “without deception or fraud”.  But what is shareholder value?  Is it a continued gain in stock price?  Is it a continuous stream of increasing dividends?  Or could it be the long-term provision of a good or service?  For example, do investors want to create a product that could take years to bring to market?  Do investors want to insure that medical services can be provided to a community for decades rather than maximize profits for the short-term and destroy the community long-term?

Many point to the problems of MNSure and ObamaCare as examples of government inefficiency.  But guess who provided the computers and software for these health insurance programs?  Private companies!

And private companies have not been known for efficient, trouble-free rollouts of new products.  How many auto recalls are there every year?  Has every computer program or system you purchased or downloaded been free of bugs?  It seems every time I get a notice of an app update, the description includes “bug fixes”.

In the “bad old days” of mainframes, it was really a major milestone when a computer ran a whole day without a crash.  Now things are much better.  My laptop, which is more powerful than any mainframe I worked on, might go a whole week without some kind of frustrating error, including freezes.

MNSure and Obamacare are massive systems requiring massive co-ordination of many pieces.  As we don’t give up on our computers, we shouldn’t give up on massive projects that don’t work perfectly on the first day.

"I'm as confident of this as I would be that when the first cars didn't work well, it wasn't time to return to horses and buggies; it was time to improve the cars. This is the new technology; there are kinks to it and it's going to take some time to work them out.”
Joel Ario, quoted in “Contractor’s report slams MNsure weaknesses, readiness”, Elizabeth Stawicki, MPRNews, 2014-06-18

Are you collecting Social Security?  Is your check posted to your bank account on the promised day every month?  But it was not always so.  Like getting computers to not crash, the rollout of Social Security was not without glitches or without critics who claimed dire consequences.  Like “nationalization of wheat fields would soon follow” and Americans would be reduced to passive servility.  It would take forty years of tinkering to have ninety percent of Americans covered by Social Security.

See “What about Social Security’s rollout?” Bruce J. Schulman, 2013-10-29, Reuters

An interesting contrast to the call for less regulation and taxes is the call by some of the same people for government subsidy.  How many stadiums for billionaires have been built without government subsidies?  How many companies have chased after the best subsidies and tax breaks to determine the location of a new office or factory?  Are these the same people who say government shouldn’t be picking winners and losers?

Consider the big howl from Congress when Solyndra collapsed.  But nothing was said about the success of Tesla.  Both received start-up subsidies from the Federal government.  Tesla paid its loans back!  Also among those who received subsidies were Compaq, Intel, and Apple.  Now Apple is the largest company in the world in capitalization!  And looking for ways to avoid paying back its benefactor through taxes.

For a lot more on how government has fostered many other successful innovations, see “The Innovative State: Governments Should Make Markets, Not Just Fix Them”, Mariana Mazzucato, Foreign Affairs, January/February 2015.

- Mel wishes a few far-sighted Republicans and Democrats would start a Pragmatic Party.

This was also published in the Duluth Reader, 2015-03-26 at 2015/03/26/5005_corporations_and_governments_cant_have_one_without

Government efficiency

I am working on my taxes and wanted to find the Minnesota state forms online.  The main page had a link for business taxes but not individual taxes.  I sent a message to the help desk and received a response within two hours.

I had a problem with some commercial software about ten days ago.  I received an acknowledgment within two hours, but I have yet to receive anything further.  Sometimes I receive a good response from companies; sometimes I receive inadequate responses; and sometimes I receive no response.  Ditto government offices.

Efficiency does not depend on the form of the organization; it depends on the leadership of the organization.

See also "Excessive Corporate Inefficiency".

People, government, and spending money

“The people know how to spend their money better than the government.”  Really?

A Minnesota politician was quoted last month stating some variation of this Libertarian statement, but I can’t find it in a search of the Duluth News Tribune or the Star Tribune.  This mantra keeps popping up when a Republican doesn’t like a particular program or a given tax.  Funny how they rarely apply it to the bailout of the big banks.  And it never applies to any government activity that they support.

Let’s start with the military budget.  Do the people really know how to spend their money on the military better than the government does?  Those who spout my introductory statement seem to want to throw even more money at the military budget.  Regardless of your attitude toward the military, it is in the Constitution that the government should spend money on the military: “provide for the common defense”.  I don’t think the signers meant for the government to take up a collection to support our numerous wars.  Wars are often strongly supported by those who make the claim about the people knowing best how to spend money.

If your house were burglarized, would you want to be responsible for paying for an investigation, a trial, and a prison term for the culprit?  Would you want to have to buy insurance to ensure the thief was brought to justice?  We buy insurance to cover the loss, but we pay taxes for a criminal justice system.  Who runs the criminal justice system?  The government.  Who runs on platforms of “tough on crime”?  Those who are first to put government down.

If your neighbor’s house catches fire, do you want to pay for your private fire department to ensure the flames don’t reach your house?  Government pays for and organizes fire departments that are a phone call away for taxpayers and tax dodgers alike.  Even when local fire departments are all volunteer, they seek support from local taxes and state and federal grants.

We complain about the condition of our streets and the congestion of our freeways.  If we know best how to spend our money, do we want to be responsible for the condition of the streets in front of our houses?  You pay for a nicely paved street in front of your house, and your neighbor leaves the street a muddy mess.  We need government to co-ordinate this so we don’t get our cars stuck in the mud.

We go to restaurants and buy groceries without giving any thought to the cleanliness or condition of the food.  Most restaurateurs and grocers are scrupulous about what they provide, but they aren’t in control of every step of processing the food or even have the time or means to give a thorough quality check.  Government provides some oversight with food inspections, for example, in meat-packing plants.  Many corporations complain about this government “intrusion”, but without it we would have many more food-borne illnesses.  Think about Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”.  Think about the City of Duluth closing a couple of local restaurants because of numerous health violations.  Would “the people” have all the resources to make these checks?

Corporations complain about the lack of “qualified” employees, but they complain about the taxes to train these “qualified” employees.  Industrialized countries invest heavily in public education supported by taxes.  And they provide a range of subjects that provide skills to learn more about technical subjects and about subjects that make for better informed citizens.  What if education were only supplied by parents, either directly or by paying tuition to schools.  First, few parents know enough about all the subjects to fully education their children.  Second, many parents don’t have the resources to pay tuition for professional teachers.  Think of the literacy rates in countries where parents must pay school fees.  Only the well-off in these countries are sufficiently literate.

Speaking of education, a parallel statement to the one about spending money is that “parents know best what is good education for their children”.  A close example is the sweeping generalization that “Parents know kids don’t need Common Core, so politicians should listen”, Ben Boychuk, republished in Duluth News Tribune, February 1, 2015.

We were involved in helping our children with schoolwork, but we didn’t even pretend to know how to teach them the various subjects they took.  Except for the six years we lived in Europe, we sent them off to the local public schools.  In Europe, we sent them to Anglo-American schools because we expected to be in a given country for only two years.  About the only curriculum shock I had was when our daughter showed us the catalog for American history.  Rather than an overview, she had to select one or two narrower subjects, such as Andrew Jackson.

My own education experiences were more self-directed or teacher-encouraged than parentally involved.  My mother encouraged my brother and me to do well, but I doubt she knew much about what we learned or how we learned it.  For the most part we went to schools in the neighborhood. However, we rarely stayed in the same neighborhood for more than three years.  When we moved after I started high school, I selected an out-of-area high school to be with friends who I had known before.  And as Robert Frost wrote, “that made all the difference”.

It was Mr. Rush, a math teacher who punctuated his remarks with “when you go to Case”.  Six of us in my class went to Case Institute of Technology.  It was Mr. Cameron, the assistant principal who recommended that I apply for a Huntington Fund scholarship, which paid full tuition my first year.

Thank you, government, for spending so much money on me to get to that point.

Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2015-02-05 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/02/05/4777_people_government_and_spending_money.

We the People Lost; They the Corporations Won

The election results are in and I am very disappointed.  Not in who won and who lost, but in how few bothered to even vote.  Those who didn’t vote gave the election away to those who were determined to vote.  And many of those who didn’t vote, if they had voted, might have flipped the results the other way.  This is probably true of both those who normally favor Democrats and of those who normally favor Republicans.

Too many claim they don’t like to choose the lesser of two evils.  Well, guess what?  If you don’t choose the lesser of two evils you might get the “worser” of two evils.

Many in Duluth are proud that they had one of the highest turnouts in the country at a bit less than 60 percent.  I think it is not something to be proud of because a bit more than 40 percent of registered voters didn’t even bother to show up.

Who makes up these no-shows?  Are they people that don’t even care about politics?  Are they people who have other priorities, like Dick Cheney?  Are they people who don’t think their vote counts?  Are they people who don’t think their candidates have a chance?  To those who think their vote doesn’t count – of course it doesn’t, you didn’t cast it.  To those who think their candidates don’t have a chance – of course they don’t have a chance, you didn’t vote for them.

I hope that those who did win have a bit of humility by realizing that most registered voters didn’t support them.  Most registered voters didn’t support them?  Well if 40 percent didn’t show up and a candidate received 60 percent of the vote of those who did, then only 36 percent of the registered voters supported them.  Hey, that’s a lot better than Ronald Reagan’s “landslide” with the support of less than 30 percent of the registered voters.

Let’s look at two races familiar to many in Duluth – 8th District for the U.S. House and 7A for the Minnesota House.

Let’s take the closer race first - 8th District with Stewart Mills, Rick Nolan, and Skip Sandman.  Only 266,081 of the 389,425 registered voters showed up.  Less than four thousand votes separated Mills and Nolan.  Nolan had a plurality of 48.51 percent vs. Mills’ 47.11 percent.  Nolan did not win a majority of the votes cast.  But if we look at the candidates’ support among registered voters, the support is even less.  Nolan received the support of about 33 percent of the registered voters and Mills was close behind with a bit more than 32 percent of the voters.

Next let’s look at the more lop-sided race – District 7A with Becky Hall, Jennifer Schultz, and Kris Osbakken.  Less than 16 thousand of the over 23 thousand registered voters showed up.  Schultz had 62.1 percent vs. Hall’s 33.3 percent.  But Schultz did not have the votes of a majority of registered voters; less than 41 percent of the registered voters cast a vote for her.

You can find the data I used at on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s pages at http://electionresults.sos.state.mn.us/ENR/Home/20.

I didn’t go through all the Minnesota races, but I think you’ll find this lack of majority support in most, if not all races, in Minnesota and throughout the country.  For example, Sen. Al Franken may have had a clear majority of the votes cast, but he received the support of less than a third of the registered voters.

It is easy to blame corporate interests for the big gains by the Republicans across the country, especially when the New York Times has headlines like “Business Leaders Cautiously Expect G.O.P. Win to Open Some Doors” (2014-11-05).  Given the statements by some Republicans, one could expect a floodgate of legislation that favors corporations over the environment and public health.  It is easy to blame the Supreme Court for letting corporations have all the rights of people that led to huge amounts of money spent on attack ads.  It is easy to blame the Koch brothers for manipulating legislation and public opinion to their benefit.

It is hard to remember that this has been going on in politics for over two centuries. 

Newspapers in the early Nineteenth century often were libelous in their attacks on politicians they didn’t favor.  Corporations lobbied for their pet projects.  Remember “Honest Abe” was a railroad lawyer and, as President, even called for doubling the subsidy for building a transcontinental railroad, a corporate give-away if there ever was one.

For over 100 years the turnout of the voting age population has been “dismal” in presidential elections.  The high was 73.2 percent in 1900, the low was 48.9 percent in 1924, and average since 1900 have been 57.0 percent.  Interestingly, Bush I and Bush II had 50.3 percent turnout, Bush II did better in his second election with 55.7 percent turnout.  Then Obama did better and better: 57.1 percent and 59.3 percent turnout.  Hope does increase turnout.

Will the turnout continue to climb in 2016?  It depends on you.

Mel voted and hopes you did, too.

This article was published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-11-13 and can be found at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/11/13/4345_we_the_people_lost_they_the_corporations_won.