Eyeless in Gaza: The March of Folly II

Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the mill
with slaves ……
O impotence of mind in body strong!
But what is strength
without a double share
Of wisdom…
John Milton, Samson Agonistes, 1671

Like Samson, deliverers in Gaza have little wisdom and no vision. Both Israel and Hamas knew that they would retaliate against one another if attacked or limited in any way. Thus, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert knew that when he stopped all shipments of food and medical supplies into Gaza, Hamas would react violently. Khaled Meshal, leader of Hamas, knew that when he ordered rockets fired into Israel, Gaza would be invaded. Both knew that civilians would be killed.

They also knew that the news media would be flooded with images of bloody corpses and overworked paramedics in underequipped hospitals. Which would be followed by pictures of wailing mourners at funerals and protests outside embassies. Then Israelis shouting "This is total war!" followed by videos of masked militiamen and women shouting "We welcome Jew-invaders to Gaza with death!" Then a UN statement, acknowledging a nation’s right to defend itself, yet condemning both sides for their reckless attacks.

This is followed by Israelis condemning Hamas for its smuggling arms and rockets into Gaza though tunnels whose southern terminus is in Egypt. Which is followed by Palestinians slapping their chests and waving infants’ corpses above their heads like battle flags. Then interviews with Israeli and Arab moderates calling for a cease fire. Then more Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza, then Israeli airstrikes, and finally an Israeli invasion of Gaza.

Followed by other spokespersons for various groups restating the accusations which simply restate the banal words, "They started it." Political leaders acting like kids who tell their parents, "Well he hit me first!"

By now adults would have asked Hamas, "Instead of arms and rockets, why didn’t you smuggle food and medical supplies into Gaza through those tunnels?" They would have asked Israel, "Why didn’t you call on Egypt to block the smuggling of arms from Sinai, which is the southern terminus of the tunnels?"

Adults would have also asked the Bush administration, "If Israel is our major ally in the Middle East, why don’t you obtain permission to send troops into Sinai to close down the tunnel?" They also would have asked, "Why don’t Israel and the US ship food and medicine into Gaza?"

No one, particularly the leaders of Hamas, Israel, and the US, asked these questions because they are politicians who seek power, not the resolution of conflict. The energizer of power is hate, which is easier to achieve than respect. The leaders tell us to hate the enemy, the enemy’s religion and culture. They want us to ignore the enemy’s needs, and ignore the enemy’s accomplishments. We can shoot, stab or bomb our enemy easily, if we know nothing except that the enemy is the enemy. As Orwell put it, "Ignorance is strength."

As a result, Hamas, Israel and the US do not care about food and medicine, because they do not care about the health and welfare of the people in Gaza. They seek control over the land that is a vital strategic interest in the international game of hegemony. Israel and Hamas each want the other to yield to their demands, and the US wants to control the winner of the conflict. Do the Israeli leaders believe that by killing members of Hamas, they will attract the love of the Palestinian people? Do Hamas leaders believe that rocket attacks will force Israel to relent and give Palestinians everything they want? Do Americans believe that they can gain control the Middle East? Yes, they do. And they are all wrong.

Time for more adult questions: Why doesn’t the government of Israel grant all Palestinians full citizenship of Israel with all rights and privileges of other Israelis? The reasons for not doing so are founded on the childish principle: "They hit us first."

Why don’t Israeli and Palestinian businessmen form partnerships and build factories to make products that will bring economic well-being to the region. They won’t because, "They (the other) hit us first."

Will it eliminate the hatred between Jewish and Islamic citizens and turn them into peace-loving citizens ready to live in harmony with their fellow Israelis? Not immediately. But eventually, businessmen learn they need each other to make profits and compete in the world market. Parents learn that watching their children play on the same soccer team is better than training them to be suicide bombers.

We know that Samson did not regain his sight, but we can hope that wisdom among Israelis and Palestinians grows before their blindness pulls down the pillars of life.

E-mail Propaganda

You may have received the following e-mail in recent days. I have received it twice. I have reproduced it in full below. If you have already read it, skip to the end of the italicized text.


How Long Do We Have?

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

'A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.' A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.'

'From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.'

'The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years.' 'During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:

1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. from dependence back into bondage'

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul , Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Number of States won by: Democrats: 19; Republicans: 29
Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million Republicans: 143 million
Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2 Republicans: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: 'In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens of this great country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare...' Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the 'complacency and apathy' phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the 'governmental dependency' phase.

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

If you are in favor of this, then by all means, delete this message. If you are not, then pass this along to help everyone realize just how much is at stake, knowing that apathy is the greatest danger to our freedom.


This message was debunked in 2006 by several people, and you can check their research about Alexander Tyler and Edinburgh University by using your own internet search tools. On Google, the entry "alexander tyler 8 steps" has 652,000 results. There are almost a million other results.

If you check out Alexander Tyler, you will find that he did not write anything resembling the words attributed to him. If you check out Hemline University, you will find that it is really Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Professor Joseph Olson is a member of the Hamline’s Law School faculty, but he denies ever having said the words in the e-mail: He wrote:

DISCLAIMER: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship. I've been trying to kill it since December 2000. For details see: http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/tyler.asp.

This message and its continued voyage through our internet points toward the problem that I discussed in my blog posting, The March of Folly. The writer is a clever propagandist, who knows that many of us accept what we read without question. Particularly anything reputedly written by a professor or philosopher. He, or she, adds a few statistics to look scientific and academically sound and catches those who will repeat them to their like-minded friends.

However, if readers had been careful, they would not have had to double-check the assertions on the internet. There were pleanty of mistakes in the text to make it questionable:

"About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787…"
The thirteen states did not adopt the Constitution in 1787. The Constitutional Convention approved the document to be submitted to the various states’ legislatures for ratification. According to Article Seven of the US Constitution, it would be established and take effect when nine of the thirteen states ratified it. Virginia became the ninth state to approve ratification on June 25, 1788. George Washington was inaugurated President in 1789.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years."
The civilizations of China, Greece, the Inca, the Ottomans, and Rome each lasted far longer than 200 years. We may not admire many aspects of their culture, but they were civilizations that added to the pool of technology, art, science and philosophy that we find ourselves immersed in.

Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000 Republicans: 2,427,000
This may be true, but is an inert fact. Neither party won "square miles of land." The parties won votes. Wyoming (3 electoral votes) is bigger in size than New York, but the population of New York is much greater (33 electoral votes). And does it have to be pointed out that many of the states that voted for Bush comprised the former Confederate States of America?

If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.
The author’s choice of words reminds me of the character Bill Cutting who railed against the Irish immigrants in Martin Scorcese’s’ film, The Gangs of New York. And all the righteous Americans like Father Coughlin who railed against Italians. Poles, and Jews in the twenties and thirties. And in the seventies all the righteous who railed against all the Vietnamese immigrants who were taking all the jobs and all the college scholarships from real Americans. The illegals are not criminal invaders like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, and by now, most of them have already returned to their home countries, because a depression has established itself in the USA. Also, a writer, whose background includes teaching grammar and composition, would have circled in red pencil the author’s use of the possessive case in the word illegal’s, instead of the plural illegals.

Some facts required a quick check at the national archives website:
Number of States won by: Democrats: 19; Republicans: 29
That count is missing 2 states. My count resulted in the following: George Bush and Richard Cheney won 271 electoral votes in 28 states. Albert Gore, Jr. and Joseph Lieberman won 266 electoral votes in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Bush and Cheney won 25 votes in Florida because the Supreme Court of the United States stopped the state’s vote recount, which was indicating that Gore would win. If Gore had received the Florida electoral vote, the count would have been Bush, 246 and Gore, 291.

A notable feature of this e-mail is the lack of authorship. Who wrote this mess?

At the bottom of the e-mail is the following:

To send e-mail faster without improving your typing skills . Get your Hotmail® account.
The writer uses Hotmail.

This communication is for use by the intended recipient and contains information that may be Privileged, confidential or copyrighted under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby formally notified that any use, copying or distribution of this e-mail, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete this e-mail from your system. Unless explicitly and conspicuously designated as "E-Contract Intended", this e-mail does not constitute a contract offer, a contract amendment, or an acceptance of a contract offer. This e-mail does not constitute a consent to the use of sender's contact information for direct marketing purposes or for transfers of data to third parties.
Francais Deutsch Italiano Espanol Portugues Japanese Chinese Korean
http://www.DuPont.com/corp/email_disclaimer.html

The writer may work for DuPont, but nothing in this e-mail is privileged and it is designed to be sent to everyone who will read it and pass it on.

We can’t keep people from sending out this kind of e-mail; nor do we want to. But if the e-mail contains another e-mail that is unsigned, then we should delete it after reading it, and not send it on.

The internet is there for everyone’s views. The next time we receive something like this, I hope we will read it to keep informed of others’ views. But let’s analyze it and add our agreements and disagreements to it before sending it on. Let’s stop circulating this kind of writing, unchallenged.

The March of Folly

Our culture is filled with stupid people, both fictional and actual. In fact, we have made a cult of The Stupid. They are cool because they are stupid and happy that they are. They are even sometimes funny. Homer Simpson is funny, for two reasons. One, we don’t have to live with the consequences of his stupidity. Two, we can empathize with many of the stupid things he has done.

Stupid people doing stupid things is the theme of films by the Coen brothers. Their characters amuse us because we don’t have to live with them, even though we know people just like them. They delude themselves that they will live happily ever after, if they obtain a lot of money by a single illegal act. Unfortunately for them, the single illegal act always turns into three or four. A car dealer steals a tan Sierra from his own dealership to pay kidnappers to snatch his own wife so he can extort a big ransom from his rich father-in-law. A hunter takes a suitcase of money from a dead drug dealer and tries to keep it from a professional killer. A fitness instructor tries to raise money for a fanny implant by extorting money from a former CIA analyst, whose physician wife is having lawyers follow him to get evidence for her secret divorce action. All these people believe in "one crime, just this once, and I’ll be okay." They are never okay, and their choices create disasters for themselves and others around them.

If the Coens hold a mirror up to the stupidity in our culture, television advertisements are its echo chamber. To promote its TV-internet services, AT&T repeatedly shows a stupid man running an abnormally long cable through his apartment window across the street to a sidewalk café. All this, so he can play with his lap top computer and drink coffee at the same time. In another repeated advertisement, the same stupid—now tiresome—man attempts to increase the speed of his internet connection by plugging his computer into a jerry-rigged generator, which burns his hair and drains the electricity from the rest of his apartment building. The man is clearly too dumb to understand the advantages of AT&T’s cable service.

Other companies sell their products by showing stupid people using them. Sonic sandwiches are the favorite of mentally challenged customers whose jokes would not amuse a third-grader. GEICO stupidly repeats commercials featuring the most irrelevant characters in all of American advertising: the cavemen who are tired of being called stupid. Of course no one wants to be considered stupid, even consumers. I wish GEICO would tell simply tell us why we should buy its services. (Full disclosure: My wife and I have automobile insurance with GEICO and are happy with them.)

However, stupidity is not limited to our entertainment; it is a large and dangerous part of our political culture. Political leaders are dangerous, because we choose them and have to live with the consequences of their stupidity. Historian Barbara Tuchman, her book The March of Folly: From Troy to Viet Nam (1984) wrote:

Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.

The following American political leaders showed their particular wooden-headedness and thereby revealed the wooden-headedness of American voters.

Bill Clinton got a blow job in the oval office and then lied about it. Kenneth Starr spent millions of dollars investigating it. Henry Hyde, who had fathered an illegitimate child, led the House of Representatives in a moral crusade to oust the sinner occupying the sacred White House. Trent Lott and his conservative supporters spent millions more trying William Jefferson Clinton. We Americans turned the solemn impeachment process into a silly sex comedy. The prosecutors thought it would help convince Senators to convict Clinton with evidence such as a semen-stained dress. Indeed, Americans slavered over every lurid detail of the sex scandal. So much so, that we ignored the reality behind the charges: William Jefferson Clinton had lied under oath.

He was acquitted, but politically damaged. During the impeachment, the Republican leadership in Congress refused to approve a finding by Clinton’s national security team. The finding revealed the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, but the Republicans claimed that Clinton was trying to distract the country away from the blow-job.. We were stupid because we believed the Republicans. The Republicans were stupid, because their obsession with the blow-job allowed Osama bin Laden to escape and plan the 9/11 attack. In sum, Americans are stupid about sex and politics.

In 2000, the Supreme Court—once the repository of wisdom of law, right and wrong—stupidly ruled that the United States of America would suffer harm if the recount of votes continued in Florida. This meant that George Walker Bush became President as the result of an incomplete count of votes. Immediately after he was inaugurated, the Republican-controlled Congress passed an enormous tax cut which reduced federal revenues and caused the depletion of a surplus that had accumulated during the previous administration.

In 2004, after learning that the Bush administration had lied about weapons of mass destruction, American voters re-elected the man responsible for the war and the increasing federal debt. They stupidly believed the lie that John Kerry had not deserved the Silver Star and Purple Heart awarded by President Richard M. Nixon, another American who stupidly believed that whatever he did as President was legal.

Voters loved President Bush. They didn’t care that he had graduated from Yale and Harvard, and was a member of the most exclusive college fraternity in America. He wore cowboy boots and drove a pickup around his ranch. He was a guy they could have a beer with. He talked regular, and they loved him for his inability to pronounce "nuclear." They loved his swagger on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Americans also believed that Saddam Hussein had helped Al Qaeda attack the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. They ignored Hussein’s highly publicized whiskey swilling, cigar smoking and womanizing, and they forgot all the reports that Al Qaeda, which hated Hussein almost as much as it did America, was an organization that forbade its members to drink alcohol, to smoke, and to be sexually promiscuous. Above all else, they brushed aside the information that Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attackers were Saudi Arabian, not Iraqi.

It is unfortunate, but true, that Americans’ greatest stupidity is their readiness to accept guilt by ethnic group. Americans cannot—or refuse to—differentiate individuals from groups. They should have known that ethnic Arabs were not just Islamic, but were also Christian and Jewish. That Islam was not a monolithic religion, but, like Christianity and Judaism, a conglomeration of denominations, practices, and beliefs. Their culture has been riddled with religious wars, just as ours has. But our stupidity, born from a willful ignorance, made us ready to accept the lies and distortions of the Bush administration.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told us that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that he knew where they were. He told us that our army would be welcomed as liberators. He ignored advice from his Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, about how many soldiers would be needed to invade and occupy Iraq. He fired Secretary of the Army Thomas White because White refused to reprimand or muzzle the Shinseki. His stupidity brought about over 4,200 American deaths (and still counting), not to mention the waste of over $615 billion (and still counting).

Americans will have to pay for that stupidity. Our national debt, which will have to be paid by our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, continues to grow. And the expense of the Iraqi war has not yet been accounted for, because it has yet to be made a part of the national budget.

Some of us are paying for it now. Unemployment is rising, and economists, no longer afraid of the word recession, are even facing the possibility of dusting off depression. We can find plenty of stupid people to blame. Some say that OPEC’s stupidity raised oil prices so high that manufacturers could no longer afford to buy fuel. Which led to lay-offs and high unemployment, which led to the decline in consumer spending, which led to more unemployment, etc.

Then Americans stopped driving their cars to the drugstore two blocks from their home, and put their SUVs in mothballs. As the price of oil and gasoline dropped, OPEC ministers planned to cut oil production. They hold the stupid belief that the price of oil will rise when the supply declines. However, reducing the supply of petroleum will not put the end-user, also known as the American driver, back to work very soon. The end-user will remain unemployed for the foreseeable future, and inventories of oil and gas will likely continue to accumulate.

We can only hope that our pundits are correct in their assessment of President-elect Barak Obama. They tell us he is intelligent, and that his policies will be implemented by intelligent appointees. For myself, I am skeptical. I voted for Obama, but I will wait and see if he changes anything for the better. I hope that he and his appointees read Barbara Tuchman’s book. I hope that they do not join the march of folly. I also hope that we voters don't either.

Job Performance Review of George Walker Bush, President of the United States

When Charles Gibson of ABC News interviewed President George Bush, he said that he would leave office with his head held high. Let us compare his actual job performance with his neoconservative self image.

In 2000, Presidential-candidate George W. Bush paradoxically sought our votes so that he could become a part of the very problem that he ran against. Many of us remember his smirk as he assured us that government was not the solution. "Government," he said, "is the problem."

After his inauguration, he approved a tax cut that benefited the upper one-percent of American income earners. About the tax cut, Vice President Cheney said, "It is our due." The tax cut also reduced government revenues. Since he had to be careful about government expenditures, President Bush virtually eliminated such problems as regulating the stock market, the real estate industry, and American banks. He saw to it that food producers and drug manufacturers were no longer burdened by questions about sanitation and safety.

President Bush thought all government regulation obstructed the free market. So, for the next six years a hands-off government was in partnership with business, and the free market became a profitable bazaar of E-coli-ridden vegetables, ineffective and harmful drugs and vaccines, as well as poisonous baby bottles and tainted baby food. Hucksters in the free market bundled mortgages together and peddled them as securities based on formulae so complex that few mathematicians could decipher them. Free enterprise flourished, and the stock market averages soared to record highs. Corporate executives made huge bonuses. The neoconservative ideology appeared to be working.

But reality kept infringing on his neoconservative ideology. Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans while President Bush was chopping cedar on his ranch. His choice for FEMA director, Michael Brown, had been a lawyer with little or no experience handling emergencies. In spite of three days’ notice about Hurricane Katrina’s severity, Brown ordered no staging areas for relief supplies and manpower, contacted no state or local officials from the endangered area. The total lack of coordination among government agencies led to chaos. City, state and federal officials worked against each other’s best interests. Food and medical supplies were delivered to the wrong locations, if delivered at all. In fact, some supplies were not allowed to enter the disaster zone. Corpses floated in flooded streets or were wrapped in plastic garbage bags with notes pleading the finder to dispose of the remains with tenderness and efficiency. The survivors got neither. The final tally of the dead and missing was over 2,500.

Another reality that infringed on President Bush’s ideology is the Iraq war. Bush, who called himself "The Decider," created his own solution to the attack on the World Trade Center. He decided to make war on Saddam Hussein, a ruthless dictator who had helped the Al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on September 11, 2001. He also decided to destroy Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and free oppressed Iraqis who would welcome Americans as liberators.

However, while President Bush, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Rice were planning the invasion, US government intelligence contradicted not only Hussein’s complicity in 9/11, but also the presence of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But that information wasn’t what President Bush wanted. He wanted an enemy, and the government intelligence services could not show that Hussein was part of the axis of evil.

So, once again, President Bush decided that government was the problem and rejected the intelligence. He then told pliant and dependable political appointees what he needed to make a case for an invasion. They fabricated evidence to support Bush’s desire for war. Secretary of State Powell characterized that evidence as "bullshit," but National Security Advisor Rice told her fellow Americans that she did not want the smoking gun of Hussein’s guilt to be a mushroom-shaped cloud.

To protect themselves from more problems, Bush and his subordinates fired intelligence agents and generals who did not agree with them. Vice President Cheney told his countrymen that if we did not agree with the Bush administration, we did not love our country. So, we invaded with an army lacking body armor, adequate water supplies, and transportation equipment that was vulnerable to improvised explosive devices.

Since then, over 4,200 American troops have died, and almost 31,000 have been wounded. These patriots have been poorly cared for in understaffed, poorly equipped hospitals. Despite their sacrifices, the armed forces have found no weapons of mass destruction. They found no welcoming Iraqis. Despite our capture of Saddam Hussein and his execution by Iraqis, Americans have alienated not only most of the population of Iraq but also most of our allies.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney believe government is the problem, and the law of the land doesn’t apply to neoconservatives.. So they ignored the Geneva Convention, a treaty approved by Congress, which states, "No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind." So they approved the torture of many prisoners of war and innocent civilians. Although President Bush and Vice President claim that they have gained valuable information from tortured prisoners, they are no closer to finding Osama bin Laden than we were in 2001 when his operatives successfully leveled the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Our troops’ presence in Iraq will end in 2010. By that time we will have spent almost a trillion un-budgeted dollars on the conflict, which was supposed to be paid for by the sale of Iraqi oil, much of which went up in smoke as the result of the war and sabotage. Another large part of it disappeared into the thriving black market. We also lost shrink-wrapped bundles of 100-dollar bills worth $12 billion which were shipped to Iraq in C-130 transports. That cash simply vanished with no record of who got it or what it was spent on.

None of the above speaks well for the Harvard Business School that granted President Bush an MBA in 1975. Five years before that, graduates of HBS were taken to task by Robert Townsend in his best-selling book Up the Organization.

Don’t hire Harvard Business School graduates. This worthy enterprise confesses that it trains its students for only three positions—executive vice president, president, and board chairman. The faculty does not blush when HBS is called the West Point of capitalism.

By design, the "B-School" trains a senior officer class, the non-playing Captains of Industry. People, who, upon graduation, are given a whirlwind tour of their chosen company and then an office and a secretary and some work to do while they wait for one of the top three slots to open up.

This elite, in my opinion, is missing some pretty fundamental requirements for success: humility, respect for people on the firing line; deep understanding of the business and the kind of people who can enjoy themselves making it prosper; respect from way down the line; a demonstrated record of guts, industry, loyalty, judgement, fairness, and honesty under pressure.

Townsend’s ideas apply equally to George W. Bush and the citizens of the United States that hired him. To Bush who misses the very requirements for success listed in the last paragraph. To us, his employers who did not look for those requirements in George W. Bush. As a result, Bush may leave office with his head held high, but we will have the task of healing the wounded, sheltering the homeless, feeding the poor, and clothing the naked that his neoconservative delusions left behind.

Of Time, Money, Elections, and the Constitution

When he takes the oath of office, President Obama must deal with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the unfavorable opinion of other countries (including our allies), an unfair federal tax policy, a nearly bankrupt US economy, the decrease in the value of employees’ and retiree’s 401Ks and IRAs, the high cost of credit, low industrial productivity, high unemployment, a deteriorating infrastructure, global warming, broken health care and educational systems, as well as religious, racial and sexual bigots who cover their prejudices with politically correct terminology.

And Obama must do everything in the first 100 days of his administration. Or at least, that’s what the Washington magi say. Undoing eight years of Bush-Cheney cupidity, cruelty, and incompetence in 100 days is like reconstructing the World Trade Center in one year. Yet we persist in this destructive fantasy, because, so we are told, FDR created the model that subsequent Presidents had to follow. See Professor Julian Zelizer’s article at www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/27/zelizer/hundred.

However, I believe our hired help have promoted this 100-day limit so that Senators and Representatives can stop legislating and return to the activity that concerns them more than any single issue. Namely, fund raising for their next election campaign. As I am writing this, Google lists about 1,060,600 listings to answer the question, "How much time does a Congressman spend to raise campaign funds?" The answer: Too much!

Time is money, so to see how much money your Senator and Representative took from corporations, lobbyists, and individuals in the top 1% of wealthy Americans, go to http://www.opensecrets.org/.

Not to express it ironically, the corporate underwriters of our democratic process gave generously to the election campaign funds of both Democratic and Republican Party candidates. The underwriters include Chrysler, which donated $585,159; General Motors, $692,765; AIG, $653, 860; Ford, $724,116; Wachovia, $828,006; ExxonMobil, $1,032,334; Bank of America, $2,046,174; Citigroup, $3,016,303—a total of $9,578,717.

These contributions tell our elected representatives that American corporations and their executives are above the market system. Their profits must not be taxed, and their losses must be reimbursed by our tax money. Billions of dollars of our tax money.

That message will be used in the next presidential, senatorial, and congressional elections, if our laws are not rewritten. However, that is impossible. The Supreme Court ruled that campaign contributions are free speech protected by the First Amendment. So it will take a Constitutional Amendment to keep lobbyists and corporations from unduly influencing national elections.

This amendment must contain wording that eliminates, without loopholes, all private and corporate campaign contributions to those seeking elected office in the US government. Candidates will, instead, be limited to accepting campaign funds, to be determined by legislation, from the US government, for both primary and final elections. All radio and television networks and stations, regardless of size must give, free of charge, a specified amount of prime time, also to be determined by legislation, to the candidates.

The primary campaign season must be limited to three months, during which, say, six regional primaries will be held. Primary elections to nominate party candidates for Congressional seats and for President and Vice President will be held on the same day for those states in a single region. For example:
Region 1: Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania.
Region 2 : West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina.
Region 3: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota.
Region 4: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas.
Region 5: Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho.
Region 6: Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii.

After the primary elections choose the final candidates, the election season must be limited to eight weeks, during which there will be four debates between the Presidential candidates.* Candidates for the Congress and the Senate will debate according to rules developed by each state.

What about commercial stations’ losing money during this process? These stations are licensed to use the airways, which are the property of the citizens of the United States, and giving broadcast time to candidates every few years will not be an unreasonable burden.

The amendment will not prevent citizens from expressing their political opinions, but it will eliminate the enormous advantage that corporations, PACs, and wealthy individuals have to spend their money to spread their influence over the debate. Bumper stickers will blossom on our cars. Campaign buttons and signs will dot our lapels, lawns and billboards. Op-ed pieces in print and broadcast media will continue; Russ Limbaugh, Frank Rich, David Brooks and Mark Shields will continue their commentary.

The amendment must also eliminate the Electoral College, even though it was advocated in The Federalist Papers, Number 68, by Alexander Hamilton. He believed that a small body of men, elected by their fellow citizens, was in a better position to deliberate over the qualifications and personal attributes of candidates for the Presidency. These electors would be more likely than the general mass of voters to possess the necessary information to make such judgements. And since they would meet in their own state to cast their votes, they would be less likely to be subject to "any sinister bias" or "enter in sinister combinations."

Hamilton lived in a time when information traveled by horseback and stagecoach, so farmers in Georgia and merchants in Massachusetts seldom knew what the other was thinking. This is no longer true. In our time, cable television’s 24-hour news cycle, cell phones and e-mails provide us with an unending flow of what people everywhere, at home and abroad, think and do. Despite this ceaseless flood of information (or as a result of it) we are all biased, and it is easy for all of us to enter in combinations, sinister or otherwise, with people in other nations, as well as other states. Members of the Electoral College in the twenty-first century are biased and part and parcel of the combinations that we call the Republican and Democratic Parties.

More important than Hamilton’s concerns about biases and combinations is the power of the individual vote. The Electoral College creates a favored-voter status to citizens in several states. For example, Wyoming has a population of 515,004, and has 3 electors. Each Wyoming elector represents 171,668 citizens. However, New York has a population of 19,306,183 and 31 electors. Each New York elector represents 662,781 citizens. This inequity can be solved by giving each vote for a Presidential candidate equal value, by electing the President by popular vote.

Also, the vote count from the Electoral College often exaggerates the margin of victory in the popular vote. In the recent election Obama received a popular-vote margin of victory of slightly less than 7%. If the electors were to vote today, they would give Obama a margin of 37%.

I hope that Obama takes the popular vote more seriously than the electoral vote. Seven per cent of the voting population can change their views quickly, and and Obama will need all the suport he can get to solve the problems mentioned in the first paragraph. But he won’t be able to do all those things in 100 days. The American electorate must be patient. And they must demand that their elected representatives give up their fund raising and ideological postures and get to work.
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*My proposal for the format of the Presidential debates is found in my blog October 11, 2008

Proposition 8

California voters approved Proposition 8, which changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California, and provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

According to several newspapers and television news teams, evangelical Christian denominations, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the Roman Catholic Church spent money on air and print media advertisements to encourage voters to approve the ballot initiative.

One of the arguments to approve the proposition was the idea that all churches, regardless of their beliefs, would be forced to marry gay and lesbian couples. That is a lie.

Ever since the California Supreme Court approved gay and lesbian marriage, not one clergyman has protested that he was forced to marry a couple against his will and beliefs. Nor have any Roman Catholic priests been forced to marry gay, Jewish, Protestant, or atheist couples. A church, with or without Proposition 8, may keep anyone from holding a wedding ceremony on its premises. It may keep its clergy from holding the ceremony anywhere.

But here is core of the controversy. The state’s interest in a couple seeking a marriage license—and it is a secular interest—is limited to their health and ages. Thus we have in most states the requirement of proof that the participants have reached the age of consent or their parents’ consent. And thus we have blood tests that both participants must undergo to show they have no venereal diseases. However, no state has a legal interest in the religious beliefs of the couple applying for a marriage license. Nor in their sexual orientation.

And consistent with the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, no religious organization has the right to determine whom the government may approve for a marriage license. They may practice their own beliefs as long as their practices do not infringe on the rights of their fellow citizens. The Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and many evangelical Christians denominations spent money to influence a political issue, thus overstepping their role in our secular state and breaking the rules of conduct of not-for-profit charitable institutions.

Proposition 8 infringes on the interests of the State of California to determine its own secular interest in the issuance of marriage licenses. Its presence on the ballot is due to the political organizing and fund-raising of religious organizations who want to see their beliefs become the standard for state government. That is a frightening prospect.

Our secular state must be protected, and Proposition 8 must be repealed, nullified, cancelled. By any legal means necessary.

On Accountability and Bailouts

During George W. Bush’s freebooting capitalist days, he was a flop. As an oil man, and then as the owner of an NFL franchise, he had to be bailed out by his father and friends of the Bush family. As President, he was responsible for no-bid government contracts going to cronies of various neo-con officeholders. He was responsible for the lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. He was responsible for the torture of prisoners of war. He was irresponsible when, with the aid of signing statements, he subverted the intention of almost every legislative act that he signed. George W. Bush did not have to pay for his mistakes as a capitalist. Worse, he probably will never be held accountable for anything he has done as President of the United States.

Now come the presidents of the Big 3 automakers (a stupid nickname for companies whose management has run them into near bankruptcy), asking Uncle Sam to bail them out of their difficulties. They spent the last decade as freebooting capitalists. Their corporations paid almost no taxes as they flooded their markets with gas guzzling SUVs and handed out huge bonuses to their executives and kept their workers’ wages as low as possible. Like George Bush, these executives have never been held accountable for what they have done, and they want the U.S. Government to pay for their mistakes.

The U.S. Government—that is, we U.S. taxpayers—have already committed ourselves to a $700 billion bailout of the financial services and housing industries. It is likely that the Congress and the President will give the auto executives what they want.

Members of Congress will vote for whatever the executives ask for, because almost all members of Congress are obligated to those corporate execs and their PACs for all the money they have contributed, loophole by loophole, to election campaign funds. In Congress, accountability is not to the voters, but to the contributors who are now begging relief from the free-market woes that they brought upon themselves. They want to feed from the public trough that is underwritten by Joe the Plumber, Max the Machinist, Adele the Administrative Assistant, and Nancy the Nurse.

I am ready to support the bailout, but the executives, stock holders, and boards of directors of these companies must be held accountable. Any legislation authorizing the funding of this bailout must insure detailed government oversight of the money spent by the companies. The companies must accept the following rules.

When the U.S. makes the loan to the automakers, none of the money may be spent on directors’ fees, executive compensation and bonuses, or dividends to stockholders. Nor on executive stock options, or any other perquisite that comes with their position. For example, they must give up their chauffeur-driven limousines, their executive dining rooms, their company-owned vacation resorts. Any use of corporate transportation will be limited to business travel, and must be recorded and justified. No family members may use any form of company-owned transportation.

All presidents, chief executive officers, chief operating officers, vice presidents, chief financial officers, comptrollers, chairmen and members of the various executive committees, financial committees, and boards of directors must accept a fifty-per-cent pay cut and forego all bonuses and salary increases for the next five years. All the officers covered by this legislation may not retire or leave the company for five years.

The companies must immediately undertake the development of automobiles that will have a minimum gas mileage of thirty miles per hour in the city and forty miles per hour on the highway. The cars must be available by the fall of 2010. By the fall of 2015, the companies will have to produce autos that use alternative energy, such as ethanol, electricity or water.

If they want our money, they will have to perform. If they fail to meet any deadlines, the executives each must pay a fine of no less than $3 million. If auditors find that they are misusing the money for personal gain, they will be charged with embezzlement.

How do we make Congress accountable to voters instead of to donors to election campaign funds? That’s the subject of my next blog entry.