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.

What I Like in a City

Originally published in the Northland Reader now the Reader Weekly, March 16, 2000

As a newcomer to Duluth, I’m not quite familiar with all the plans for changes to Duluth, for example Vision 2001, but I appreciate many of the things Duluth offers and hope to see these features improved.

Duluth offers some transportation choices that makes a city great and to human scale.  Namely, if one is so inclined, one can easily choose to go by foot, bus, or car, in that order.

These choices are not easy everywhere in Duluth, but in Chester Park where I live, I have used all three choices to reach UMD, Mt. Royal, Kenwood, the lake, and even downtown.  I much prefer to walk unless time is a factor.

Walking not only provides exercise and fresh air, but it gives me time to observe and experience an area.  Walking by parks, houses, and shops, there is much to see that is only a blur when seen from a vehicle.

Taking the bus is a second choice if time is short or the weather is bad.  Walking downtown is good exercise but only if I want to spend an hour or more doing so.  With a bus, I can be downtown in one-quarter that time.  Taking the bus provides conveniences that many don’t consider.  First of all, I don’t need to worry about parking.  Secondly, even if parking is easily available, a bus may get me closer to the door.

Taking a car is a third choice if time is important, if I have a lot to carry, or if the bus doesn’t go to my destination.  Time can be important in two ways.  It can take longer to do an errand or the buses aren’t running at that time of day.  I often drive downtown for evening events because they might run past the last bus or because I might just miss an hourly bus.  I take a bus to church downtown but my wife has to drive; choir practice starts before the buses do.

I do have a historical bias for this opinion.  I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio (not one of its suburbs).  I walked to school until I was in high school, then I took three buses.  The buses were frequent enough that I never had to worry about how late practice lasted.  Even when I started college I took a bus and a rapid transit train.  We did most of our shopping in walking distance of our home; otherwise we hopped a streetcar to go downtown.

Since then I have lived in Minneapolis, Rome, Stockholm, exurban Philadelphia, and exurban Minneapolis, I have had extended stays in New York, London, Paris, Helsinki, and Basel, and I have visited many other cities from Leningrad to Los Angeles to Osaka.  (What’s “exurban”?  So far out from the center that there are no sidewalks.)  Many of them offered both walking and public transportation opportunities.  In fact, those I enjoyed the most were those that had vibrant centers where people walked, shopped, wined, and dined until late in the evening.  New York, Rome, Paris, Stockholm, Osaka, and Tokyo are full of lights and activity well past a Midwesterner’s bedtime.  Their centers are accessible until midnight or beyond.  But my favorite was Basel, Switzerland.

Most of the time that I was in Basel I worked evenings.  I could either walk or take a streetcar from my hotel to the customer site and back.  Streetcars ran until one in the morning.  If I walked, it was not past monolithic buildings and parking lots but past parks and shops with interesting displays in their windows.  Within walking distance of the hotel were dozens of restaurants, a couple of grocery stores, many, many shops, an outdoor swimming pool, several parks, and the zoo.

I don’t think Basel was designed; too many of the streets intersect at other than a right angle.  I think Swiss efficiency made the best of the situation over the centuries.

Duluth will never be like Basel for a variety of reasons and many of us would not want that.  But in our vision for Duluth, we can adapt some of the elements that made Basel interesting.

First, we should make existing sidewalks more user friendly.  We could encourage homeowners to cut back overhanging branches and keep sidewalks clear of snow and ice.  We could ticket cars that are parked across crosswalks or even in drives but over the sidewalk.

Second, we should have a more aggressive program for sidewalk replacement or repair.  We should also examine funding; is it fair to make a homeowner pay for a sidewalk?

Third, we should keep streets drier by repairing potholes and low spots.  Why should a pedestrian have to run past a puddle, like on Woodland south of Mt. Royal?

Fourth, we should have more frequent buses and more coverage.  Should our only ways to get to the DECC be by driving, walking over a freeway bridge, or walking a long, monochromatic skyway?  We should have shuttle buses from DECC to downtown at event times, including Omnimax.  We have no skyway to Canal Park but bus service is limited to daylight hours.  We should be able to go by bus on a Saturday night to a downtown restaurant or theater.

Fifth, we should plan new development based on how people will get there.  Should people have to walk across a windy, dusty parking lot dodging drivers more concerned about looking for a parking space?  Should buses have to go in and out of parking lots so that passengers need not walk across said parking lots?

Sixth, we should consider more mixed use like that which some people would like to see on Fourth St. E. between Fifth and Sixth Avenues;  that is, shops at street level, residences and professional offices above.

In other words, let’s remember that cars are only a means, not an end.  Let’s design for people, not just one of their means.

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.

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).

Is Donald Trump a black swan?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" in 2007.  Is Donald Trump such a black swan and for whom?  Is he an unexpected creation of the Koch brothers?  Has the intransigence of Congressional Republicans created an opening for the likes of Donald Trump?

Maybe, just maybe, the Democrats can seize this opportunity to increase governance in this country that works for the people, not the corporations or the billionaires. 

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?

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.

GOP, Make up your mind: Is Government too big or not?

Many in the Republican Party constantly complain that government is too big and inefficient.  On the other hand they want to make the military bigger and bigger, they want increased surveillance of just about anybody, and they want to keep far too many state secrets.

Please make up your mind.  Are we going to have a government that is responsive to people and not corporations?  Or are we going to have a secret government that is responsive to large corporations and ignores the people?

Actions speak louder than words, and news story after news story indicates that corporations and secrecy are more important than open government and people.

There is more to the U. S. Constitution than the 2nd Amendment

The NRA and others cite the Second Amendment as giving individuals the right to bear arms.  One justification they give is "the people" need arms to protect themselves against "the government".  However, they neglect Article II, Sec 8, of the Constitution:  Congress has the power "to call out the militia to suppress insurrection".

If you use your guns to "protect you" from the government, then you are involved in an insurrection.  If you are in an insurrection, then the Constitution gives Congress the power to suppress your insurrection.  Suppressing an insurrection includes taking the guns from those in the insurrection.

George Washington was involved in putting down the Whiskey Rebellion, a tax revolt from 1791-1794.  See "Whiskey Rebellion", Wikipedia.  The Whiskey Rebellion was quite a complicated affair, but popular support seemed to be in favor of the suppression of the rebellion.  Another interesting point that some make: it was also a conflict between large distillers who paid less per gallon than small, individual distillers who paid more per gallon.

The last great Republican President put the down the biggest insurrection of all, the Civil War.

See also "Is the N.R.A. Un-American", Stanley Fish, New York Times, 2013-05-13.

The people know best how to spend their own money! Really?

Yes, we know how to spend our money on food, shelter, and entertainment, but do we know how to spend our money on infra-structure, police and fire, military, regulatory agencies, foreign policy, and basic research?

"Know best how to spend our own money" has been a mantra of the anti-tax, anti-government crowd as if government is just a sinkhole giving money away for no purpose.  They completely ignore that taxes pay for our roads, our sewers, and many other physical features of a civil society.  They ignore that without regulatory agencies a power company could change its rates willy-nilly without warning.  They ignore that without a military, there would be nobody to fight the wars that they claim we should get into.  They ignore that without the basic research into atomic energy that we would not have the nuclear energy that taxes have heavily subsidized.  And if they found this page with Google, they should thank the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and NASA for the grant to Stanford University in 1994 that made Google possible.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Science_Foundation and many other pages.

Is Mitt Romney fit to govern?

Mitt Romney seems to be out of touch with so much. His statements include "Not concerned with the very poor" and "Corporations are people". Yeah! Made up of people, but it's the few who speak for the corporation without consultation with the many. Those few are not elected in competitive elections by the many. Then his math is atrocious "I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling." See "Romney fails the empathy test", Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, 2012-02-02.

If 90-95 percent are struggling, why are new car sales up? Why are many brew pubs opening and why are popular restaurants full? Yes, many of that 90-95 percent are struggling (including the 15-20 percent who are considered poor), but many others of that group are not struggling. It could be that this statement is an attack on President Obama; in other words, everything is screwed up because of Obama and I, Mitt Romney, will make it all better. Interestingly, some of the data coming out seem to indicate that Obama "has made" a lot better already. Or maybe more people are thirsty for good beer or more people like the features in newer cars or…

The ultimate lawn or demonstration sign

VOTE

Be the dēmos in democracy

Quote of the day - "single vote that matters"

"Eventually, the corruption in elections will get so bad that change will occur again and election reform will happen. The question is how long? Will it be this decade, the next decade or generations? I can only hope and believe that the government of the people, by the people, for the people will remember and believe it is their single vote that matters and not the money that makes a true democracy."

- John Cashon, "Government of the People, for the People, by the People", Coffee Party USA, 2011-09-05.

Cashon wrote quite a few more quotable paragraphs, for example, Theodore Roosevelt taking on J.P. Morgan.

People power takes on corporate power

"Iceland, a country that wants to punish the bankers responsible for the crisis" is the title of an article published by Pressenza, a press agency based in Chile.

The Icelanders have thrown out one government and led a second government to plan a referendum on whether the Icelandic people should be responsible for the debt incurred by others.

On top of that, it will be individuals elected specifically to rewrite the constitution, not experts and politicians.

I'll let you read the last two paragraphs, which are humdingers on how countries should be governed.

Important ally in the fight against terrorism?

The above phrase is used over and over again in many stories about the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.  But how important were these so-called allies?

The U.S. and other countries aligned themselves with dictators in the fight against Communism.  For many people in these countries the result was often worse than a Communist takeover.  "When will they ever learn" is still a valid question in the "fight against terrorism".  Instead of squelching terrorism, the fight increases terrorism, often state terrorism against the people of the countries who are "important allies in the fight against terrorism."

See "It's Arab and it's personal", Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera English, 2011-04-12.

The "people" are speaking, but a bit late

This morning's Duluth News Tribune published my Local View contribution with the title "The people (some of them, anyway) have spoken".  My own title was "The people have spoken!  Which ones?"

I was considering changing the opening from Egypt to Wisconsin, but I couldn't see how to replace it without rewriting some of the rest of the article.  Also, if I made a change, it might be delay publication.

My change was:

"[T]he people of Wisconsin chose to switch control of the governorship, assembly and senate to Republicans" according to Newt Gingrich on the website Human Events.  Which people, Newt?

Granted, Scott Walker received 52.25 percent of the votes cast, but the turnout was only 49.56 percent.  That means that 50.44 percent of the eligible voters didn't care for any of the candidates, at least care enough to show up.   Scott Walker received the support of 25.9 percent of the eligible voters.  That is a very poor second to none of the above.  Looked at this way, Scott Walker does not have the support of "the people".

From data published online by the Wisconsin Accountability Board.

"The people" are speaking in another way.  I wouldn't say the protesters against Walker's anti-union efforts represent "the people", but many people from around the world are supporting the protesters.

Last night we heard on MPR about Ian's Pizza going from 300-600 pizzas a day to over 1000 pizzas a day, the increase because of orders from around the world to send pizzas to the protesters at the Wisconsin State Capitol.  Even from Egypt, where they know a thing or two about protest.

If you would like to send a pizza to the protesters, order it through Badger Bites.  The top of the page has ordering instructions.

Is the People's Republic of America coming?

For over sixty years when Communists or other dictatorial groups took over a country, they tried to give a veneer that their government was a popular government: for example the People's Republic of China.  But it was not a republic and it relied more on dogma than any definable public will.

Now we hear charges in the U.S. that elected politicians are not listening to the people or that the people are angry or the people are…

But who are "the people"?  It depends on who you talk to.  "The people" are whoever agrees with the speaker, it doesn't matter what portion of the population actually agrees with the speaker.  We have the Tea Party speaking for "the People", we have the Democrats speaking for "the People", and we have the Party of One speaking for "the People".

Lost is the "We the people" of the preamble to the Constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…"

That is, "the People" work together to achieve these things, not form factions that consider all the other factions wrong.

Oh, well!  Before a decade had passed, U.S. politics was descending into charge and counter-charge, extravagant insults were begin hurled about, and much other uncivil discourse had become part of the national landscape.

The more things change, the more they remain the same.