Is Insurance Structurally Feral?

It is happening again.

Nobody talked about it the last time, and they are not talking much this time either. All across the country companies are closing their doors. Not because they cannot get customers, though that is a much talked about part of the issue, and not because the banking system is frozen, though that also is a big part of the cause. But there are many companies who could both be customers and have customers, and are not dependent on bank loans to stay in business. These companies are going out of business for lack of any or affordable insurance. Many individuals are also finding themselves in similar straits making themselves poorer customers even if they have a job still.

As long as there is plenty money to be made speculating with other people's money (and even AAA rated obviously carries the risk that it is not) Insurance companies are expansive, writing as much as possible, making unsustainable profits in the use of money, even if the actual insurance gamble is break even at best. Then as always the bubble bursts.

Now suddenly the geniuses who made great incomes when the bubble was growing do not want to see any losses, and there is not so much to be made speculating no matter how much cash is available anyway, so suddenly loss of customers is not a bad thing, especially if you get a lot more profit from the customers you don't lose.

So now that the economy is on its knees the long knives come out to make it worse. Normal business insurance that rarely sees losses may just increase tenfold in cost because the Insurance company needs the extra profit, and more money from fewer people lowers their own exposure. And places like Florida or the Gulf Coast who are very high cash when cash is flowing become suddenly unacceptable risk when raw cash is not as useful, and those who would actually pay claims abandon those areas to ripoff and run operations who will just go bankrupt if there is any major claims.

Each Insurance type will operate slightly differently because the arithmetic is different, but while they will claim secret vetting, and some will do more of what they promise for the money they charge, without some embedded scam there can be no profit. And without a guarantee over time that serious losses will be made up, an actual free market would dump the burdened Insurance company for the one without past promises to keep. In short the Insurance company has to do the job of a government, but is managed as a Pirate Fiefdom, collecting the taxes but avoiding paying the bills, and with little to hold them accountable.

I already wrote about Health Insurance a while back and the Gapminder that showed differences between countries now also shows some information about different states as well. This particular view shows an assortment of states with the accidental deaths per number of vehicles to be fairly constant no matter the size of the state. Those above the diagonal are doing better than those below who have more deaths per vehicle and those moving toward the upper left are improving over time, the red pay higher insurance rates and the blue to green lower rates.
As one can see Texas and Florida have nearly the same numbers but Florida pays much higher rates, similarly with Illinois and New York. The link above goes to similar settings where it is even more dramatic. The live Gapminder there allows you to adjust what you are looking at .

What the Gapminder shows is that risk of deaths is quite unrelated to the price of insurance beyond that there is an increase in price nearly everywhere, even when the number of cars or number of accidents ( and thus the risk) is dropping. (Off the topic a bit is the sudden change in almost all states at Y2K and what might have caused that)

There is much hype in the air about how the Society is in such danger of being Socialized, as if an Unsocialized Society like an Unsocialized Child is a preferable outcome. Much pointing is done at the Soviets as the prime example of a Socialized Society because they claimed that they were one, but they also claimed to be as democratic as socialized as indeed they were neither in equal amounts.

The true Socialized Society is the opposite of feral, such as is found in some failed states, as the Government drowns in a libertarian nightmare of competing militias, and rogue warriors, that destroys all that society can produce. In short the Insurance company does for the most able to pay that which is least needed, and tossing the rest under the bus, and taking a giant piece of the society's productivity with it.

That safety net is what government is supposed to do, whether defending against outside enemies or inside disasters. A more deeply thoughtful system needs to be devised.

Deep Thinking is really needed now

So often the stupidity of one system reaches a point that it collapses and while everyone jumps that way there is very little thought given to what the new thing aught to be. Some things like the Computer or the Internet could hardly have been imagined, but others like cars or public transportation had patterns set hundreds of years ago. (there are many others like Education, Government,Business/trade.. a very long list but I want to look at private/public transportation at the moment). We have built a civilization on sand, and the foundations need rebuilding if it will survive.

The Automobile culture, built of cheap oil, narrow goals of next quarter profits, with designs sold as sexual adequacy rather than transportation cannot survive in its present form, but the alternatives are resisted because they are much less pleasant and turned to only in necessity. While there is a real need to rethink the Automobile culture, to say nothing of years overdue to even rethink what an automobile should be, we have a golden opportunity to rethink from scratch what public transportation aught to be. Right now it is based on an 18th century model that people avoid if they can, and is relegated to poor folk who have no other choices.

To make the leap into something that would all but replace private transportation it would need to be all the good things cars are and all the good things trains are. It must come when you want and go where you want. It must be both able to take hundreds of folks but not run empty when those hundreds do not show up. It must get you quickly to where you want to be but if it stops at all the other places it cannot be quick. You need to go the shortest route but also any route, and of course the advantages of trains of low fuel consumption, no need for parking, and no need to drive.

What I wouldl propose I call Ultralight Rail. Rather than huge trains there would be small very light weight cars that would run on a single rail and get its electric power from the rail. Because the cars would be smaller and lighter the rest of the infrastructure can be smaller lighter and therefore cheaper than would be necessary for train systems and since it would be mostly overhead it would not interfere with existing infrastructure.

Computers are the answer that was not available very few years ago when all the other systems were built. By making the cars small and computer controlled the need to pack everyone into huge trains goes away. With an artery and capillary system vehicles could travel close together at high speed but each car could have different start/stop points either around a corner or to a different city, traveling up to 200mph in stretches of main arteries.

By making the car able to hold small vehicles like power chairs, bicycles, Segways, etc it would make door to door transportation fast and reliable. By each car being separately targeted, it would go the most direct route as fast as possible without stopping along the way. By only coming when called it would hardly ever run empty, but be able to handle large crowds with multiple cars, and of course as it would not sit by waiting it would get constant use and therefore replace many more cars that spend most of their time parked.

There is much more that such deep thinking could produce, what is needed most is a path that such things could be accomplished, not only for this bust so much more, that will be the real measure of this administration.

The Structure of Education is Crazy

Education generally and higher education in particular is deeply suffering from structural binding that is making it much less effective and far more labor intensive for both student and teacher than it needs to be and what is worse has no real path to understand the quality of the result, or even the satisfaction of the need either for the student or Society itself.

A. Graduation/certification is hazing not a measure of knowledge.
Because certification provides entry into a class system that does not neasure actual ability, immense extraneous expenses in time and money are added far beyond the actual information or skills imparted, and to justify this and compete in self perpetuation most of a schools actions and decisions have little or nothing to do with education. This is especially true the more the emphasis is anything other than educating the students.

B Education is lifelong and not always at the same speed
The facts of life, written more in the real structure than rules or common belief, is that education starts with young children until 18-24 tears old and then is cut off to the average person. Differences in ability, or much more often life events that cause one to lose ground can only very rarely be made up at all. And even if the knowledge/skill is acquired by alternative means the certification is not, and the ability to contribute is blocked

C. Technology has Changed.
Senior professors who lectures a class of hundreds with the same speech year after year in order to justify his salary is short changing both themselves and their students. Technology could produce a much more interesting "Lecture" to convey information that is one way, and a secondary system to provide feedback like a FAQ system for common questions and one or two layers of human support for the places where the question is odd or interesting enough to warrant it. BitTorrent and technical support for computer programs etc have necessarily had to deal with these issues and while some bad ideas exist there, there is much that can be applied to all education.

D Government Support and Management is Critical
Of all sources of power to make decisions, and means to spread costs that are not directly transactional only the Government can act in the public good and in support of the Commons, and as an honest broker in the certification of facts.

a. Certify Knowledge Like the old banks that printed their own money, education certification is also money negotiated with dubious and certainly variable value, but unlike the old bank notes each certification carries with it an inseparable human life, causing each of them to be treated in equally unfair variety.

By creating a standard series of tests, perhaps thousands of questions long, that could be taken any number of times, it would create a standard measure of knowledge that could even be graphed blue where knowledge was strong to red where it was weak, that would apply a much stronger certification, without demanding where the knowledge came from.

b.Create an Alternative Path- By providing a Government supplied efficient Internet structure where through great BBC like explanations from the best, the general information is imparted, and then Bittorrent like a tree of seed providers and peers could efficiently impart and spread that information in ways pioneered even by Meetup, and the Obama campaign, the teaching of the most knowledgeable could reach millions instead of hundreds, and not just once but over years.

This would not eliminate books, but would impart more knowledge faster and more deeply than was technologically possible even 20 years ago,

c. Place all critical knowledge and skills back into the Public Commons. This can only be done by financing the production of the product, but by compartmentalizing and privatizing knowledge, not only are those who could contribute prevented from doing so, those with the knowledge can manipulate false outcomes, but two people, each with half of a majior breakthrough might never know, or if they can each discover it than what do they posses that is special.

A few modest suggestions

The whole world awaits, holding its collective breath, not in horror like 9-11, but in Hope, wonderment, amazement, and the expectation that America will amaze everyone and do the best things possible after eight years of doing the worst imaginable and much that was worse yet. The entire world is United as never since 9-11 and the time is now to unite it more by doing the right thing and not disappoint and wreck all that has been gained. Here are ten things that can put us on that track.

#1 Justice

A. Do no harm, or perhaps better put, stop doing harm. There must be a layers committee to seek out all activities that the Bush Administration is doing that violate ethics, the Constitution, the law, human decency, and the Geneva Conventions and call a halt to all of it by proclamation in the body of the Swearing in Speech, backed up by whatever documents are needed. Since most will need to be sorted out, a plan to do that in each case will be needed before day one.

Before that moment they are Bush war crimes at the least. After that moment they instantly become Obama war crimes. Beyond that all shredding of the Constitution and the Magna Carta must be reversed.



B.Pursue Justice As Obama has put it there is a lot out there that looks like crimes and are crimes, but proving that a specific person is the criminal responsible is a much tougher thing. However to allow all that has happened in the past eight years to pass uninvestigated much less prosecuted is to ensure that it will happen again and soon and very much worse, just as Bill Clinton not pursuing the facts of Iran Contra and the S&L bomb gave us Enron, Bush2, and the current economic meltdown.

Fortunately there are people who have been looking at most of the details for several years now. It would not be a problem to sort them out and organize a program that will find wrong doers and have a Special Prosecutor sort out where there is prosecutable crimes, and to sort out where and how all those crimes, and even stupidity that looks like crimes can be locked away that they can never threaten us again. We have drifted very close to a level of proto fascism that I will be satisfied has been shoved back into its box when Obama and the new Congress actually take office. That box really needs to be nailed shut!



#2 Honor

A.The War on Totalitarian Theocracy - There is no war on "terror" terrorism is a technique. The only one open to anyone fighting overlords (like the Founding Fathers)and/or seeking to become them (like the CIA in Iran). It is used because it is effective, and because the military is the worst way to fight it. Every time it kills one the devastation creates many more. That is not "whack a mole" that is "whack a Hydra"!

It is not a war on Muslims. Many would like it to be so. It was so convienent to equate liberal ideas and Russian aggression and thereby create space for an American Totalitarian Theocracy to create and grow its base by being "anticommunist". It overplayed its hand by demanding Sarah Palin as "President in waiting", but it is only wounded and frightened, and we can expect that the danger of terrorist attack from that quarter, that has been covered up but still active, will increase a very great deal.

This is not about fundamentalist religion but eliminationism, Bin Laden or Muthee, they do not want negotiation but conquest. But they cannot be defeated by military but only on the field of ideas. It is only there that they are poorly armed. Attacked they swim in a sea of supporters, defending their policies they are a fish out of water as few would support if they knew the facts.

Unfortunately Israel is also led by Neocons and Theocrats. One cannot support the freedom, safety, and democracy of Israelis and at the same time support those who would use a perpetual war on Muslims, to give and keep themselves in power, and there will be no peace as long as Gaza is a concentration camp.

Israel is not a country of only Jews, but a dozen religions side by side. No matter how many are killed the demographics will make it majority Muslim even within the '67 borders in a very few years. The choice is only Apartheid or Secularity where there can be NO favored religion, the only other choice is the German path of extermination, and final solution, and I don't think even the most theocratic Jew could live with that.

3. Real Socialism- Not Soviet "government owns everything" "Socialism" but Socialized Person / child/ dog Socialism (the Soviets also claimed they were democracies. Why didn't everyone think one was as phony as the other?) Apparently even Barny is unsocialized.

My understanding of Socialism is an agreement to all work for a world where every person can contribute at their highest ability. That a person who has the talent to invent the solution to world energy needs not find themselves on the night shift of a 7-11 because their path was blocked on social or financial grounds. And not just the stars like that but at every level the whole society benefits if each person is as productive as they can be.

1. The National Bureau of Standards - One very great place that the Government can be crucial and reinvigorate the auto industry, as well as create industries as yet undreamed of is to rebuild the National Bureau of Standards to take back Government primarity of standards that corporations work to create their own standards to control and thus limit free trade, often crushing competition.

By taking control of everything from Computer Operating systems to bolt patterns on car parts, so that there was one published standard or a limited group of standards, managed as the GNU software is managed or the way that any hard drive fits in any computer, than any garage mechanic could produce the next generation of Green Car and become the American Honda.

2. The Electronic Commons

a. The Internet Al Gore was right that the government must create and defend a major Internet backbone that no other entity foreign or domestic can rule that Internet. Do that and demand Net Neutrality but allow other backbones as we have both USPS and FedEx will keep all sides honest and competitive.

A national investment in targeted satellite WiFi would also be a major leap that no NGO could do or should control that backed up with a program to make Internet available to every person no matter who or where, and especially backed up with a national education program about which more later, would bring America from 35th in literacy to number one as anyone could have college graduate level knowledge just by spending the time to learn it.

b. The Electromagnetic Spectrum - The electromagnetic spectrum is a limited resource, and more importantly it is one home to the font of information that our society bases it's Democracy. If that is captured Democracy fails, as indeed it would have even now but for the rise of the Internet to provide a surprise alternative.

The ownership of even two television stations, or other media is a restraint of trade as long as there is a responsible person wishing to use one of them. A rotating 5 year license that is open to genuine competition based not on bidding with money but based on what they would do for society, and how well they have behaved in the past, and that to receive one and only one license would bring press freedom back to America and America back to number one where we have fallen far to the back of the pack.

3.Corporate Criminality-Having abandoned Royalty and Baronies in 1776 they have come creeping back and threaten to overwhelm even the concept of National Government, replacing it with an international Gang Of Pirates formerly operating under the umbrella of the United States Government, but about to abandon even that for a world of Third World countries divided up into satraps not of land but of spheres of influence in some vital resource, with the ability to blackmail any country including America.

Not a conspiracy in the Illuminati sense, but the natural result of an ideology that does not believe that government should "interfere" in the doings of Corporations and that all barriers to their free exercise of power should be removed. Eventually they become "Too big to fail" and "Too big to oppose" but no one dares to say "too big to exist".

The first Step must be a special Prosecutorial team to prosecute and jail all persons in charge of corporate conspiracies to sell or cover up fraud and murder from the Vioxx case to the mass environmental disasters. Any decent civil litigation lawyer can point to a hundred grievous cases where massive death and destruction was protected because the corporation was at fault and the people involved felt immune.

The Idea of Corporations was that Investors were immune, not the entire corporation and all the operators. If the founding fathers saw what corporations have become they would be in a tizzy. If any person in a position of authority is not held accountable they will become as unsocialized as any pirate, as our current financial mess can attest.

4. Corporate Governance - There is no such thing as "Free Enterprise" where there are no rules but only Government enforced rules that till now have only been written by those wishing to protect only themselves. As a result it is not a surprise that CEO's who are supposedly only hirelings of the investors are walking off with what is often more income than the entire Corporation managed to net.

It is quite possible to change the rules to disallow default proxy voting, and what I am sure are other arcane rules that keep power in the hands of the CEO and out of the hands of any other stakeholders.

It is also possible to create a path for the emergence of the new Argentine style of Corporation that is owned and operated by all the people who work there in an American style Democracy that all levels of management are elected by those below. When there is a Government bailout of the investors instead of a deal with them to make a deal with the people who do the work and let them pay back the loan.

5. The Science Commons

a Chemicals - There was a time when most research was funded and run by the Government. Folks like the EPA went out and measured what was happening themselves, and HEW did basic research on chemicals to find beneficial and harmful chemicals like penicillin that drug companies competed to produce at the best quality and price.

The Antisocialists howled that the drug companies could do the work and report their results, and save taxpayers all that money. Now we can see how well all that worked out. The research is geared to what is most profitable and barely at all for common good. Testing asks only if a drug works at all, and not how it stacks up to other ways, and as the Vioxx case revealed even surpressed mass murder for the sake of profit.

There needs to be a return to Government research labs to build unbiased data in all fields. It can be easily paid for by charging a tax on all use of Government patents for private profit like the penicillin. Or taxing income from private patents funded by government research. Just collecting what is already owed would go a very long way to paying those bills.

b Biology- like the drugs genetic engineering all exists on the shoulders of research of hundreds of years, and like the Chemical and Drug Industries the Socialized dreams painted of abundant food and health have become unsocialized nightmares as power and profit rule ahead of social good.

Today one only has to patent a gene, even if it is detrimental overall, and have it spread to the entire ecosystem to be able to sue everyone in posession of the gene for patent infringement and control an entire food source. Such is the case with Soybeans, Corn, and many major crops. Instead it must be the patent holder that is responsible for the gene spread, and be the one liable if the gene causes a drop in productivity (as they usually do) of the folk who do not use the patented product. and that if the gene spreads beyond the control of the patent holder the patent cannot be enforced.



6. The Knowledge Commons - Our entire education system is a sixteenth century concept trying to do a twenty first century job, with all the sixteenth century prejudices built in. Our civilization can no longer afford an educated elite running an illiterate masses. We need every brain with the chops to manage the maximum contribution possible lest we all go the way of every previous civilization.

So what is needed is an Internet based National education program that anyone can obtain the knowledge and have a means of certifying that knowledge at the speed they are able without the overburden of regular college and grad school much less earlier grades where home schooling can supplement and advance regular public school rather than replacing earlier grades where socialization is an important part of early schooling.

To open or create the current college system for all people would be cost prohibitive, but a well planned and managed system that organized what the Internet already makes available, and added all the libraries and other forms of commons would leapfrog the entire civilization. Limiting the current copyright and fair use laws back to sanity would also be a necessary step.

7. A Creative Commons Award- built like the SBIR program a process by which inventions and other creative work could be called for and rewarded and put into the creative commons in full or partial amount.

As example an invention might be called for and a $50,000 reward offered and then a standard 1% fee given for every one made in five years, but available in a non exclusive basis to anyone who wished to go there

This would short circuit the labyrinthine patent process and spur creativity. It would also provide an inexpensive program to make it easier to manufacture without expensive litigation over rights.

Musical Chairs, Musical Houses, Musical Dollars

When I was a kid, our kindergarten class played a hateful little game with the Orwellian name of "Musical Chairs". Who knew that the Gang Of Pirates were building recruits even then.

The chairs of course were not musical but ordinary, but the teacher would count to assure herself there were one less than the number of students, and tell the students they had to dance around the circle of chairs until the music stopped, and then everyone would have to take a seat.

It was an innocent enough group of kids, in another place or time there might have been a stabbing or an eye gouged out, but basically the teacher did not care how each child got the seat, only noticing who did not. Anyone who cooperatively shared a seat was told that they were both losers, and sent to sit in the corner and be ignored. Rather like that guy with a sign on the street corner today.

Oh how enlightening this was for the school yard bully , or pre-school Machiavelli, you could do any dirty trick, run any scam, just as long as the authorities (teacher) did not see it, and the only authority around did not look or wish to know or would not have had the game in the first place. After you had out conned, or out threatened all your other classmates, the authority would declare you the great winner, and someone who's leadership skills might make them president one day.

Well the Authorities have stopped the Music again, and all you folk who saw the hand on the needle have taken their dollars to where you can't get at them and many who only had their houses or retirement savings in sunshine promises, and funny money mortgages are out of luck, and those now Post-school Machiavellians are sitting in your house and on your money pointing and laughing and blaming you for the poor decision of letting them play in the first place.

The Good Tax

Once upon a time in the land of Yor were a very peaceful and wealthy people who were mostly not very quarrelsome but for one controversy. The king had placed a tax on the sale of Cows. Anyone who sold a cow had to give the king 90% of the proceeds of the sale. As a result while there was a lot of demand for meat, as hardly anyone sold their cow, and many who were tired of caring and feeding their cow very much resented the tax on selling it.

Now anyone who had a cow could sell the milk, and many who did not actually own a cow usually got paid a percentage that milk, or occasionally they would get a calf. The tax on a calf was high but calves were cheap and abundant so the king's percentage was not a lot in total money, and when cows got old and stopped producing milk, there was nothing for it but to sell it to the butcher and pay the kings price, though the percentage was reduced for very old cattle.

In the end all the cattle ended up with the butcher, just not until they were very old, so meat had a price that allowed the butcher a living, but he felt that if he got all the proceeds, he could live like a king. Now the king had an evil twin that had been banished, and headed up a Gang Of Pirates beyond the Pale, but he made a deal with the butchers, that if they overthrew the old king the twin would eliminate the hated Cow Tax.

So the butchers, with the help of those folk who were tired of caring for their cattle, or resented the percentage of the milk taken by those who did, got together and overthrew the old king. The new king, being evil after all, turned to his Gang Of Pirates to buy the cattle as they had the gold, and the butchers could get their cattle at well under the market price and on credit to the pirates, that was paid off as the meat sold.

At first things looked very good, meat became very abundant and cheap, the butchers were making killings at a tremendous clip, and becoming almost as wealthy as the Pirates, though with the falling price of meat and the Pirates percentages not as well as expected. Those who sold the cattle felt suddenly wealthy and loaned the pirates their money on the promise it would make more than they made from the milk. Only those who had made their living actually caring for the cattle felt left out as the numbers of cattle to care for became far fewer, while their own numbers and needs did not.

As the number of cattle became less there were fewer calvs as well and their price went up dramatically. The Pirates offered an easily solution by loaning the money to buy the calves, and noted that the price would be very much higher if there was still a Cow Tax, but the loans would be very short so the cattle would have to be sold for meat at a very young age when the note came due, and of course the pirates had it written that they got the cow as payment.

Over a bit ot time the excess meat was consumed, and the price went to an all time high, as there were far less cattle about. Milk that was once plentiful and cheap also became much more expensive. Those who cared for the cattle had to do so for far less of a percentage of the milk as there were far more caretakers than cattle now. Between the fewer cattle and the percentages paid to the Pirates who were now the primary cattle owners, the butchers were also not much better if at all than before.

Those formerly caring for cattle began to steal and rob out of desperation, so the evil king blamed them for all the troubles, even as he hired some of their numbers as guards, that were mostly used to come down very harshly on anyone who commented on how much better things were under the old king, holding fake show trials calling these folk the leaders of the criminals.

Eventually the people rose up and threw out the evil king, but the now very wealthy Pirates had moved on to ply their trade to Hither and to Yon, the palace already looted, and the people were left hating the Cow Tax as the cause of their misery, and the land of Yor never again became a place anyone wanted to be like.

Outing Criminals is saving their Country,not attacking,

Once again the "liberal" media runs like frightened children, when the Gang of Pirates accuse a film that outs the GOP crimes as being anti-American instead of confronting either them or the facts, or even attempting to discuss the real issues involved.

I find it amazing that when a Gang Of Pirates commit war crimes (to say nothing of the whole list of other crimes) that anyone would accuse the person noting the war crimes, of hating the folks who were the first victims of those Pirates. Talking about the monsters, is not an attack on the nation or populace they are controlling.

The GOP is not America, just as Saddam was never Iraq, or Hitler Germany. For the criminals (or their apologists) to wrap themselves in the Flag, like a bully who hides behind his mother’s skirts, as a means of deflecting justified outrage, is itself not only another outrage, but so cravenly cowardly as is beyond pathetic.

Americans do NOT torture, but some criminals, be they Mafia, rogue cops, or other sorts of monsters who happen to be Americans do. We cannot always bring such criminals to justice, but the vast majority of Americans wold want it to be so, if they knew about it and were able to do so. As long as such Americans are alive and the criminals also, it is not over.

For anyone to equate outing criminals with attacking America, they hoist themselves on their own petard as they are declaring themselves with the criminals and against anything actually American.

Watch out for other anti Bush types that seem "not right"

As one who very early was involved in the Perot movement when there were equal numbers of folk from across the political spectrum, I got to know well many folk who I would never get to know otherwise and was lead into an "Alice through the looking glass" world of John Birchers, anti-tax, Illuminati conspiracy types and a cottage industry of books, schemes, and scams of a sort and level not seen on the left at all.

I met many who would have been Tim McVeigh, had the circumstances fallen their way, and the loose change folks are a natural there. There are two things that distinguish them in any crowd, both aspects of that looking glass.

One is the Right Wing Authoritarian Pathology with its special Illogic that is well described even if there is some dispute as to its qualities and origins. Even when, like loose change, they support ostensively leftist goals, they carry the RWA nature, that still gives real leftists the hives.

The other is the classic Strong Father view of government laid out so clearly by George Lakoff. Often taken in rebellion against the abusive father in the classic Libertarian fashion, they see themselves like the runaway child, in a brutal world where theft or prostitution are the only paths of survival and raw rage fuels the drive to power by any means, never with good results.

Unable to escape the Abusive Father frame, they see Liberals as the mirror side of their own horror, and cannot imagine the Nurturing Parent model that Lakoff gives as the model of actual Liberal Philosophy.

Rather than accept any point of view it is best to really look at what is said and not accept it just because you would like to agree with the speaker that folk you don't like are the enemy

Opposing the Gang Of Pirates

As noted in the comments on my last post it has been a while since I have added to that last post. It has not been do to inactivity, but rather a quest to keep it relevant and important. If I filled the blog with the chaff about Senator Craig's stalling, or each additional needle of GOP corruption in what has become a planetary body of such needles, the better points I could make would be lost among the lesser ones. And besides, I usually make those comments at the site of the news;-)

But Tom Cat was wondering what happened and perhaps others are too, so what started out as a personal response became enough to make it relevant to anyone who might be wondering, and a good place to plea for help in the Good Fight. So this was the letter:

Hi Tom,
I am driven far more by the need to post information I have discovered etc, than the need to discover something to post, That tends to make my blog a bit more pithy but probably less regular than is ideal. I have added a couple of links to my "Basic reading/listening for literacy" list since I wrote about the Gapminder project, but no great revelations that would not be a rehash of previously covered info.

If you Google "Freedem", or occasionally "Freedemm" you will see quite a splash across the web with most of it me, with quite a bit of rehashing, particularly about the Gapminder project of late, in an effort to make actual reality most folks default reality. While I recognize that anyone can have a POV spin, or emphasis based on personal ego or agenda, I really do think that actual reality that is beyond such ego is the only sane basis for discussion, and the only glue that keeps a civilization from disaster.

On the ego, POV, agenda, front a Googling of "Gang Of Pirates" might produce nearly the same list as "freedem", though I would have hoped that would have become more general by now. Much that has been written has focused on Bush, even when it is not him personally at issue, and will be a major issue if he is there or not. By focusing on the GOP and even separating them as not exactly synonymous with Republicans, a whole group of good things happen.

The first is that there is an accurate and descriptive name of a group of folks and ideology that gets great power from not having a name, as only by naming them can they be opposed. By calling themselves Conservatives they cloak themselves in legitimacy they do not deserve, and as pointed out by Orwell, further destroy the language that can define opposition.

The second point is to steal the Initials. The grand ole party meme was based on the delegitimized Democrats as the party of Southern Bigotry and Treason. As all those folk are now Republicans, it is they who have lost legitimacy. If Gang Of Pirates is used enough (with the "Of" capitalized) and with GOP used after referring to the original "Gang Of Pirates" used earlier, then that can become the default thought for all those cases where only the Initials are used, do it enough and even Faux Noise will find that translation in their head every time they use it.

Thirdly it provides a common focus and target for the entire coalition, even though many members would claim to be different, and indeed in fine detail there are some competing agendas. An Atheist Libertarian may well seem to be opposed to a Dominionist Theocrat, and even claim to be a polar opposite, but when the votes are counted for destroying the Commons and disabling the government from helping actual people, while supporting Corporate Welfare, they are both on the same side of treason and kleptocracy, and thus GOP. (though the Gang has many more members beyond those two: Neocon, Plutocrat, Fascist, Skinhead, etc)

Fourth, it fully describes the common ideology and authoritarian mindset. As noted in Generation of Monsters the RWA pathology grants the father figure authority without accountability (often stemming from child abuse when that was the apparent fact) and the Pirate description, like the drunken child abuser description, removes the childhood feeling that their inadequacy was somehow responsible for the abuse, and places the blame and anger (and hopefully eventually justice) where it truly belongs.

On a parallel path I have been fighting to put Secular back where it belongs, and take it back from those who would destroy it meaning to further their agenda. As you can see noted in several posts around the web Secular is not Atheist, but rather having no connection to any idea of religion.

Rather Secular Government is like a Chess game, everyone gets the same set of pieces with the same rules. Religion may inform your decisions. You might even sacrifice a chicken to victory, if you believe it will help, just not in a time or location to disrupt those without your beliefs. And just because you are arrogant enough to believe you have found absolute truth, and even if they are called Bishops, you cannot give them any extra powers like teleportation, or invincibility, you have to play by the same rules as everyone else. That is sandbox 101.

The SiCKO truth

Click on image for full scale

The hype is on to counteract Michael Moore's devastating new movie. However,in my surfing about I ran across a new Google gadget that graphs UN data sets. It doesn't have every sort of data you can imagine, but it does have an amazing amount of data, and while one would always want more flexibility, it does have a lot of flexibility.

In this graph I was able to arrange measured Life expectancy, and number of doctors on the x and y axis as a measure of the quality and cost of care and the income per capita for the size of the bubble. I also was able to show the trend as to getting better or worse. (you can click on the image to see full size)

The US is standing still and things are not looking good in Estonia, Jamaica, and Uzbekistan. China and Brazil may be reporting issues to show such great change at that moment but all the excommunist countries seem to be showing a drop in the number of doctors as health care becomes less available.

It is worthy of note that almost all the countries to the right and above the US have Government run health care. A few like the UK, Canada, and Japan, have a bit fewer doctors per person, but all those orange dots above and to the right are pretty much the rest of Western Europe, and all doing better than the US in both health and doctors and continuing to improve.

Thanks to the Gang Of Pirates much recent US data is missing, one supposes that it is not good news. If you do not believe you can pick on the title and go play with the data yourself.

On edit, Playing with the program more I was able to create this graph that is even more telling


As you can see I put child mortality and life expectancy in and managed to label almost every dot to a country. In this graph Cuba ends up very close to the US but the number of doctors per person is so high it was off the chart in the one above. The US (and others) has not published the most recent data but I would not be surprised if Cuba is actually ahead now.

Everyone who can, should print a copy and frame it and put it on the wall of their Congressman and Senator. Emailing a copy to your local pundit wouldn't hurt either.
Update 2
A bit more study of the history shows how the us was ahead of much more of the world in the past, and that Government health care provides benefit even in those cases where it started from a much lower point.
I highlighted China so it would be easy to distinguish from Portugal where progress has been double that in the US, starting way behind and passing us by. Of interest also is what happened in China in 1987 and Costa Rica in 1990 when steady progress suddenly went bad. It would be interesting to look up the history of those times. Russia's experiences with privatization are well known but document well here.

A Cult of Freedom

I am constantly struck by how Christian most Western Atheism is. To quote myself "It is not that Atheists have no god that I have a problem with, many religions have no god, but that they have no religion".

Most religions grew up with "belief" in what was "common knowledge" in their time and culture. The God, or gods resided in the most impressive local landmark, and "religion" was seamless with the rest of existence.

As non western societies grew, their religions grew in place, and great thought was spent in the nature of society and the best way to operate within it.

As Rome was a hodgepodge of such groups, and there was a political class that wished to use Religion as a method of creating power for themselves, religion became something separate from location and culture, and took on the need for enforced "belief" in what could be observationally disproved, or illogical, as well as much that seemed unlikely, and self promoting by those in charge.

Some like "Secular Humanists" have attempted to accomplish an Atheistic Religion, but managed the worst of all cases. The most grievous crime perhaps, of attaching the word "Secular" to a religion, and thus giving Fundies cause to demand equal time with such Secular pursuits as Chess, or Cricket. But also in its antitheist dogmatism, becomes a jihad against other religions and invites the same, but still glosses over those ethics concepts that the Fundies have dodged to keep from accusing themselves.

Confucian thinking is intensely Chinese, and based on an anti Democratic, anti freedom, Imperial mode. It does however offer a glimpse of what a religion can be, that demands no fantasy but an ideal that all humans can aspire to, and methods to make life better for all.

Unfortunately like a Cult that combines celebrating free thought and many opinions, with individual freedom, it is a great challenge to accomplish.

"Fair" tax is very UnFair

Recently there has been a rash of "Fair" tax proposals (as if the label "Fair" would make them so), mostly around the idea of an across the board flat tax on sales, and the elimination of the Income tax, and the abandonment of Corporate taxes. This is a position favored by many on the Right, but also Senator Mike Gravel who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

How far we have come when it was proposed that a Corporate taxes could be raised to the point that income and sales taxes could be eliminated! If the resulting wealth caused demand to rise to pay for the extra tax so be it, if not then the Paris Hiltons of the world could afford the difference.

In any case the point needs to be made-ALL Sales taxes are regressive! You can game the system to make them a bit less so by eliminating them on Food, Rent and perhaps a few other things, but a Poor person paying 5% tax on a $100 car is paying exactly the same PERCENT tax as a rich person paying 5% tax on a $100,000 car. What they are not paying is the same PERCENT of their total income, as the $100,000 car is likely to be a very much smaller percent of income than the $100 car, and there will have to be many more $100 cars as they will not last well or hold value as the very expensive case.

Encourage the Poor or even Middle Class to save? They cannot, rising prices and stagnant wages leaves most struggling on the edge of disaster, while debt of all sorts chews away at the bit of edge they have. Any preference to save or invest will go vastly to those who already have no financial problems.

Collecting a sales tax also involves hugely more paperwork, and/or will be hugely more scammed, as it already is where there is a state sales tax, and mostly by the rich who can get winks as the do so.

How to do you do a fair tax? it is very easy! Everybody gets zero tax on the first $10,000, no matter your total, add 1% on each of the next $10,000 so 20k pays $100 ( 0 + 100), 30k pays $300 (0 + 100 + 200), 100k pays $4,500 ( 0 + 100 + 200 ...+900) still a total rate of only 4.5%. Only those people with incomes larger than most countries would pay huge taxes as the taxes on the smaller amounts would be taxed exactly the same for everyone who made it to that place.

Corporations might have slightly different numbers but would also be similarly taxed according to the size of the total corporation, that way the smaller corporation would have a competitive advantage in taxes to offset the disadvantage of the power that scale confers. (if you think that scale is efficiency and not power, think of efficiency of scale as a ten acre hamburger stand, and power of scale as McDonalds)

There is no magic market, Money provides power and power provides money, it is a one way ticket to a feudal system. Only by Government intervention to act as friction where needed at the top and oil where needed at the bottom can a balance of real civilization be found. Money at the top is power and needs only to be restrained, it will still prosper in spite of restraint. At the bottom is pent up energy that can explode in creativity if only it is enabled, it is the only place that really good ideas come from, they will never come from the self satisfied.

The Generation of Monsters

I have suspected for sometime that Dr Bob's RWA's were more than a statistical anomaly, and perhaps also a pathology not a lot different from depression or schizophrenia, containing a wide range of severity and a somewhat nebulous array of symptoms that, taken together, still have clinical meaning.

Missing from this Idea was specific causes and what mechanics might be involved. I suspected trauma as a place to start, as I had seen Religious cults, and groups that behave as cults zero in on PTSD like sharks smelling blood. What I had missed was the possibility that the biggest pool of recruits was abused, and neglected children. Not just those from obviously dysfunctional families, where the parents have issues with drugs or mental disorders of their own, but also and most commonly from families without such excuses, that deliberately abuse and neglect their children (though they would not call it that) for reasons of religion or ideology, often passing on pathology they themselves were poisoned by.

Alice Miller puts a fine point on the problem

.... However brutally these people were brought up, they showed no immediate signs of the harm done to them. On the contrary. Many of them grew up into seemingly well--adjusted young people. But sooner or later, usually one generation later, when the tormented children had themselves become parents, the former victims did the same with their children as had been done to them, with no feelings of guilt. It was the only thing they knew, after they had repressed and denied their own pain.

Studying child abuse confronts us with the astonishing fact that parents will inflict the same punishment or neglect on their children as they experienced themselves in their early lives. But as adults they have no recollection of what they went through. In the case of sexual assault on children, it is quite usual for the perpetrators to have no conscious knowledge of their own early life--history or at the least to be cut off from the attendant feelings aroused by those experiences. It is not until they are in therapy‹always supposing they are given any‹that it transpires that they have been reenacting what they went through as children.

The sole explanation I can advance for this fact is that information on the cruelty suffered in childhood remains stored in the brain in the form of unconscious memories. For a child, conscious experience of such treatment is impossible. If children are not to break down completely under the pain and the fear, they must repress that knowledge. But the unconscious memories drive them to reproduce those repressed scenes over and over again in the attempt (and with the false hope) to liberate themselves of the fears that cruelty and abuse have left with them. The victims create situations in which they can assume the active role in order to master the feeling of helplessness and escape the unconscious anxieties.
...snip...
Why were there people brave enough to risk their lives to save Jews from Nazi Persecution? Much scientific inquiry has been expended on this question.
....snip...
Almost all rescuers interviewed reported that their parents had attempted to discipline them with arguments rather than punishment. They were only rarely subjected to corporal punishment, and if they were it was invariably in connection with some misdemeanor and never because their parents had felt the need to discharge some uncontrollable and inexplicable feeling of rage on them. One man recalled that he had once been spanked for taking smaller children out onto a frozen lake and endangering their lives. Another reported that his father had only ever hit him once and apologized afterwards. Many of the statements might be paraphrased thus: "My mother always tried to explain what was wrong about whatever it was I had done. My father also spent a lot of time talking to me. I was impressed by what he had to say."

What a different picture we get from the reports of the persecutors and hangers--on: "When my father was drunk he took the whip to me. I never knew what I was being beaten for. Often it was for something I had done months before. And when mother was in a temper she tore into anyone who got in her way, including me." ....

So child abuse and neglect produces high RWA's and child protection produces low RWA's, and not surprisingly they translate their ideas born of abuse (or lack of it)into their political philosophy and even religious doctrine.

George Lakoff deals more specifically with these differences and finds it the basis for progressive vs conservative framing.

On the whole, they are defining the conservative position for the current debate about childrearing, as well as for legislation incorporating their approach. Since the ideas in conservative Christian childrearing manuals are fully consistent with the Strict Father model of the family that lies behind conservative politics, it is not at all strange that such fundamentalist groups should be setting the national conservative agenda on family values.

I should say at the outset that virtually all of the mainstream experts on childrearing see the Strict Father model as being destructive to children. A nurturant approach is preferred. And most of the child development literature within the field of developmental psychology points in one direction: childrearing according to the Strict Father model harms children: a Nurturant Parent model is far superior.

In short, conservative family values, which are the basis for conservative morality and political thought, are not supported by either research in child development or the mainstream childrearing experts in the country. That is another reason why the conservative family agenda has been left to fundamentalist Christians.
...snip...
To see more clearly what is at stake in knowing about research on such matters, let us look closely at what some conservative Christian childrearing manuals have to say about how children should be raised. These manuals are clear on many points:

1. Children are inherently sinful and defiant.
2. Only punishment and reward will train children away from defiance and pursuing their sinful desires.
3. The only way a child can be raised properly is for a father to demand absolute obedience to his authority. Any questioning of authority requires swift and painful punishment.
4. Obedience can be taught only through painful corporal punishment-by whipping with belts or beating with switches or paddles.
5. Continued disobedience requires greater beating.
6. Punishment for disobedience is a form of love.
7. Parental authority is a proper model for all authority, and children must learn to obey authority so that they can wield it properly in later life.

Reading the whole link is worthwhile as he details many major Right wing leaders as calling severe damage as good and wholesome support as causing "dangerous dependence"

Many other sources have noted the power wielded even beyond the political boundaries of the far right in recommending these destructive child rearing ideas. Notably this articlewith millions of emails, thousands of newspapers carrying his daily column calling for actions that researchers have shown causes trauma and even brain damage Dobson is paving the way for a new generation of Monsters who will feel nothing as they destroy civilization and murder millions without a thought of concern.

Paul Krugman is late to the party but welcome

While a theocracy has long been a dream of the most extreme religious kooks, actually putting a long term plan into action has been gathering force since the 1970's. Like any real conspiracy, it has inner strife, braggarts, turncoats etc, and while subverting traditional conservative groups is being itself subverted by Moonies, but has still succeeded alarmingly, and is and is much more of a threat than Krugman lets on (or knows?).

Sara Posner has an excellent article on another of the real farm teams that provide the reserves for the Gang Of Pirates to draw from as well as doing great damage in their own right, as does another by her here

Others have spent the effort to see not just how these people are pursuing power, but what they would like to do with it. John Sugg has written in Mother Jones

Gary North, a top Reconstruction theorist, wrote in his 1989 book, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism. “Those who refuse to submit publicly…must be denied citizenship.”
..snip...
The Old Testament—with its 600 or so Mosaic laws—is the inflexible guide for the society DeMar and other Reconstructionists envision. Government posts would be reserved for the righteous, as long as they are male. There would be thousands of executions a year, with stoning a preferred method because it would turn the deaths into “community projects,” as movement theologian North has noted. Sinners in line for the death penalty would include women who commit adultery or lie about their virginity, blasphemers, witches, children who strike their parents, and gay men (lesbians, however, would be spared because no specific reference to them can be found in the Books of Moses). DeMar told me that among Reconstructionists he is considered something of a liberal, because he’d execute gays only if they were caught indulging in sodomy. “I’m happy to just drive them back into the closet,” he said.
...snip...
Besides facilitating evangelism, Reconstructionists believe, government should largely be limited to building and maintaining roads, enforcing land-use contracts, and ensuring just weights and measures. Unions would not exist, and neither would unemployment benefits, Social Security, and environmental protection laws. Public schools would disappear; one of the movement’s great successes has been promoting homeschooling programs and publishing texts used by tens of thousands of homeschooling families.
...snip...
The old left—the Communist Party and its many splinters—used organizing tactics called popular fronts, in which people were recruited through specific causes into a movement tacitly guided by the Party. Reconstruction has married those Leninist tactics to the causes of the right—abortion, evolution, gay marriage, school prayer. Gary North wrote in 1982, in an effort to reach Baptists,“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty…until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” Nowhere at the Restore America rally did anyone hoist a banner for Reconstruction; those attending came to develop a united front supporting such things as displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings. But they were also introduced—and recruited—to the broader program.
...snip...
“All governments are theocracies,” he (ex-judge Roy Moore) said. “We now live in a secular humanist theocracy. I want to change that to a government with God at its head.”

(as if things like roads, or hospitals, even sports, are atheist inspired if not specifically Christian)

Katherine Yurica also weighs in with a detailed report that includes this list:

1. God’s People Are to be Regents Over the Earth: “Almighty God wants us to recapture the dominion man held in the beginning… Remember, at the time of creation man exercised authority, under God’s sovereignty, over everything. He was God’s surrogate, His steward or regent.
   
   
2. Dominion over Others Originates in the Bible: “The genesis account uses two colorful words to describe this. One… we translate ‘dominion. The word means to ‘rule over’ or ‘tread down,’ as with grapes…
   
   
3. Man Was Told to Subdue or ‘Trample the Earth’: “The other word…is translated ‘subdue.’ Man was told to subdue the earth. The root means ‘to trample under foot,’ as one would do when washing dirty clothes. Therefore… we have in part the concept of separating good from evil by force.
   
   
4. God Gave Man the Power to Govern and the Right to Subdue: “With the first word …God gives man the authority to govern all that is willing to be governed. With the second…He grants man authority over the untamed and the rebellious. In both instances, God gave man a sweeping and total mandate of dominion over this planet and everything in it.
   
   
5. God Intended the World to be Governed and Subdued by the Godly: “….God’s intention was that His world be governed and subdued by those who themselves were governed by God.
   
   
6. God Demands His People to Invest Their Capital: “Despite our preconceived attitudes toward social justice, God’s Law of Use controls the ultimate distribution of wealth. We must be willing to take the world as He made it and live in it to the fullest…
   

Very Scary folk

Foresight

Discovered on the web

"You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bon-fire under her deck...
I have no time for such nonsense."
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

That is why the fewer Deciders there are in any system, the more backwards it becomes, compared to what it could be. It doesn't matter what the system is, Communist, Corportist, Feudal, or Theocratic, no leadership can take the time to understand a new concept, and even though it might save their bacon, will pay attention only to what they have predetermined to be important.

Another similar take on my basic concepts

In wandering about the Net looking for something else I ran into Robert W. Fuller, Patient Revolution: Human Rights Past and Future which is an hour long video about his self named "Dignitarian" ideology. His elite background shows, and seems to me to be a major difference I have with him. But by talking from the position of the management, and his academic credentials he does provide a place and perspective that can allow managers to create a more humane and profitable system.

Of particular interest to me is the way he, as I have, actively differentiates what he is talking about from the Communist/Socialist unnecessary monopolies that are not different from the same thing that is "privately" held. He talks about managers treating others with dignity because it is ultimately in the manager's self interest, while my focus is to have a method to make sure that he does so, because few people can see their real self interest. He does make a point that social embarrassment is a mechanism of accountability, but history has often shown it weak and assuming the person can be embarrassed.

In memory of Jeanne Kirkpatrick

The one speech that I remember By Ms Kirkpatrick while she was still a Democrat, was a spirited defense of why our thugs were better than their thugs (she used that term.)

Her contention was that while thugs the world over murdered and tortured their people, all of America’s pet thugs (like Saddam) were basically simple kleptocrats, who just wanted to rape the financial well being of these countries, and as long as you didn’t get between them and power or money, you were pretty much ignored.

She claimed that the only alternative was the “other guy’s” thugs who did the same thing but also insisted in controlling people’s social actions and opinions, thus imposing them selves on peoples daily lives, beyond keeping them in abject poverty. This was why Totalitarians were worse than garden variety authoritarian dictators.

Now it is a standard thing to accuse your enemy of tactics you plan on using, but I wish I had a text of the speech because almost immediately she did just that, it was hypocrisy even then, but has only gotten worse.

I have thanked her for pointing out the difference early, and I have used her talking points ever since. I only wish John Dean would read them.

It is indeed bad enough that the Gang Of Predators have gone on a kleptomaniacal spree, it is worse that they have gutted the Constitution and the Magna Carta, but it is worse yet that they are going completely Totalitarian that opinions and thought crimes are threatened, and in some cases carried out.

Ms Kirkpatrick did indeed call an early warning of what we should really fear, and the spent the rest of her life in support of that very evil.

Focusing On The Reality

It would appear that regardless of any other principals laid out in any part of the law, if there is a democracy, the majority of voters would wish that the majority would prosper. As most of the arguments was not if they would prosper, but how, such would be the wish of nearly all the voters.

It would seem a reasonable guess that few would deliberately decide that they should do worse. Those who have achieved a level of prosperity, and were greedy enough to want to benefit from the impoverishment of the majority however might well work to reduce what the majority had to say about it, and work to convince them of concepts that would cause them to work against their own interests.

Whatever smoke and mirrors, the results are the ultimate judge of reality. That reality is that the power and prosperity of the majority of Americans has been in decline since the '50's with a gain at the top equal in total but divided among very few. Sometimes the pace is slower sometimes faster, but breakneck in the past 6 years. But the result can be seen here.

Thom Hartmann lays it out in great detail in his book and fairly well in his discussion here. As I point out in the basic concepts in the upper corner of this blog, that all group actions need to be seen as the reality it is and how benefits are assigned and how the folk in control are held accountable. It is this accountability that government needs to be the final force, with the elected democracy the final accountability on government.

This is a very different proposal than that the government actually be the unaccountable monopoly, but that there be no unaccountable monopoly of any type. All the Orwellian twisting of this point is no more than fraud and fakery.

A quick thought

Until we reframe how we think about group actions, the Sharpies will continue to rake in the gold and give everyone else with the shaft.

All group actions, Government, global trade, any corporation, etc., have the stakeholders who are affected and shakers who have the operational control of the enterprise. If the stakeholders cannot hold the shakers accountable, they will give themselves more of the benefits and the rest of the stakeholders more of the costs. If they can the shakers will weasel out of what accountability there is. As indeed they have done, till there is hardly any left.

The new Congress has its work cut out for them, I can only hope they will be able to focus on that prize.

The Origins of Tyranny

This is an important documentary shown on BBC in 2004. Needless to say I cannot imagine that any American Media would ever run it.

I would pick on a few points to disagree with, mainly that Liberal thought failed because crime went up. Their own detailing of the Straussian method, would indicate that much of that "failure" was due more to programs being cut off at the knees, and of rules inserted in them to create something to attack. This is exactly what is happening to a school system that has worked well for over 200 years, but is now, suddenly, failing.

They also fail to connect the thought of the Religious Right (Dominionists) as having more than similar interests to the Straussians, when they have such a similar thought process as both Strauss and the Islamists. As well as how the Straussian created fantasy has infected all aspects of Republican politics.

Their point, particularly in the first of the three movies, is that the founding thought of both Islamist, and Straussian,(and Dominionist)is that freedom is corrupting and ultimately lead to Nihilism and Hedonistic animal debasement (obviously understanding animals as badly as humans).

Their very detailed point that should be made stronger is that ALL these groups, Islamist, Neocon,(and Dominionist) truly Hate Freedom and Democracy, and are the real enemy of Humanity and Civilization. They also make well the point that Islamists as a group and AlQueda in particular, are mostly an annoyance at best, and would be rejected even in their strongholds without being pumped up by the Neocons, who need them as much as Bin Laden needs the Neocons.

Just .......WOW

Here indeed is what Ed Murrow would sound like if he were alive today.

Here is what a real honest press would sound like.

It is a pity that only those who have cable or the internet will see such things.

No wonder that there is such a reality divide in this country.

Where did all the money go

Starting with the Kennedy tax cuts money was bled from American business into the CEO class. That is not the investors, who were increasingly as screwed as the workers (as many were the workers, Pension plans etc. ). Small businesses have always struggled, but high taxes forced them to reinvest or pay the taxes. Most reinvested.

The high taxes were not high as long as the money removed was small so the differences in salary from top to bottom was as low as seven fold with the big boss making $35,000 and the janitor making $5,000, and most of the value went into increased production, better quality etc. I recall reading there was a new record breaking wage (after the Kennedy tax cut) of $800k and the race was on.

Since most giant businesses were managed by a tight ole boy network at the top salary was a matter of power, and CEO salaries leap ever skyward, with top management close behind. The stockholders were either in Mutual funds with infinitely diluted control, or if they were investing individually, had neither the clout or the ability to investigate adequately, and in nearly every business the rules were crafted to lessen the power of investors.

As smaller businesses tried to keep up there was a perception that their own leadership was slipping into second class status, and having the power to do so they also began to siphon off needed investment moneys. Never put in such stark terms (mostly), still there was an orgy of "consolidation" where good businesses were mined for their assets (worker pension funds among them) and the husk tossed away.

Many Billionaires were thus created, but it was the wealth of the thief not the hard worker. Many folk owned bonds with AAA rating one day and junk status the next, and as most of those moneys were hidden, so were the losses. Everywhere where folk did not have power, on the job, in a pension, or mutual fund, even many small businesses, they were robbed.

Even in the Government, when Reagan took office, the government was the largest landlord, mostly in public housing with trillions in assets. In one of the most under reported stories of the time, the man in charge had had a fire sale to all his friends at pennies on the dollar, in theft unmatched till the current administration. Then even that was defaulted (with much more theft) as these same friends cratered most American Banks.

With all that theft, how did Americans manage? Savings were eliminated, most American middle class had a lot of savings, today they don't. Real wages were cut in half, where there had been only the father working, now both father and mother had to work to keep the same lifestyle. Benefits like pensions and health care were "HMO'd" "down sized" or eliminated altogether (vacation times and rules included).

Many former or "would have been" workers spent their life savings to "buy themselves a job" and became "small businessmen" but that did not solve the problem and in many cases made it worse, providing intermittent services that used to be full time jobs, and competing on price, did the job ever cheaper, and even if they employed others and made money from them it only spread the pain.
Europe and Japan did not, at first, get this disease. Low top salaries and heavy reinvestment cratered American market share, and high taxes meant that wealth was shared as shorter work hours and longer vacations. I met with a German executive about some shared technical issues that we needed to work out, and he was aghast at what Americans put up with. The very idea that an 8 hour day did not include the lunch hour and a couple of breaks was the ultimate in management chiseling.

If today Europe is sickening from slow business it is not just that workers are well treated (and ever less so) but that in the global economy the kleptocrats at the top are ever less satisfied with salaries first at seven times average, then the next I heard 27 times, now hundreds of times the salaries of the folk on the shop floor. The investors aren't getting the money, stock prices and dividends have risen slowly if at all.

It is kleptocracy that is ruining the world.

Swiftboating nearly everybody

I first noticed the dangerous strain when they "swiftboated" Frank Church. A reletively conservative Democrat who thought that mayhem and murder done in America's name and kept secret only from Americans was a bad thing. (those on the pointy end had the info first hand)

When I was in high school, the partisan conservative (Paleo) admin. had a complete class on propaganda, and subversive techniques, so we could recognize Communist influences. I wish I had better notes, as Techniques like Subversion, & Terrorism can be used in any ideology.

I watched in slow horror as these folk subverted groups from Baptists to Republicans, using the very methods I was taught, and made them all something they never were.

Another technique was to change the definitions of the arguments, that all who oppose you have this wild, straw dog agenda, making liberal a bad word, but also assigning the most extreme case of it in proportion to the awareness of the subversion rather than to any policy beliefs, marginalizing and suppressing embarrassing reality debate in one move.

Pre-accusing others of what you are doing, is another tool, like the pained winger cries of excess partisanship, even though arriving at the opposition 30 years late.

Well the Fascist straw left, like genuine Satanists, is at best only a few odd deluded folk, and if one feels the least extreme among extremists, it is only that these others have been "swiftboated" about their thinking as well.

Actual policy attitudes would be the same progressive libertarian range they always were, if we can ever get back to those happy days of being the major issues.

For now, as we fight for air, self actualization will have to wait.

Hat tip kuffsworld

Libertarian Dream, Human Nightmare

Well they have gone and done it, or rather started to do it and will finish it if not somehow stopped. If there were only one "liberal" thing that a Government aught to be doing, against which the least argument could be made, it would be the building and maintenance of streets roads and highways.

Without which you would not be able to step away from your house without being in a foreign country that could decide everything from taxes to whatever rights (if any) you might have, or even if you could be outside your house at all, or perhaps only on Tuesdays. And then there is the bit of road beyond that.....

And you would have NO say in the matter.

In short if a private person owned the roads YOU needed to travel, they would have more to say about your daily life than any other official government.

But our new world Republicans are busy doing just that! That bridge that was built usually with all or part your taxpayers dollars? Sold to the highest bidder. Not the highest bid in the price of the bridge paid to the formerly legitimate government.... but the highest creative bribe to the folk who vote on the sale. (can I point to the exposure of any particular secret bank account?, no, but like wildly divergent counts between an official election count and exit polls, or number of voters, the fact of a criminal outcome is evidence enough that a crime is committed)

Many of the first sales are apparently already toll roads, and in some cases there are "Commissions" that operate them in the states name, often enriching themselves with legalized (or not) embezzlement by any of the tried and true methods. But at extremus, every citizen has the right and capability to find the facts, and expose and punish such persons.

"Sold" to a private person or Corporation there is no such accountability, if 90 cents out of every dollar of your multidollar toll, goes directly into the CEO's pocket, you have no way of finding out, and no way to hold him accountable if you did. It is all secret and private. And without accountability, you can bet that your pocket needs will not be considered.

Of particular interest is..

Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls.

"They depoliticize the tolling decision," Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.

These are the guys that wail and cry over official government "Taxes", but jump with joy when they are "Profits". When it comes to that sucking sound from your pocket the only thing you might notice is the increase.

Oh, and that nice sounding "depoliticise" that is the sound of YOUR RIGHTS to hold them accountable going up in smoke and mirrors. Before they are finished all you will own is the Debt.

Crunch Time Coming Soon

I haven't published much recently. It has been like watching a car crash that has taken agonizing years, instead of seconds. Bush's first words after the Nov 2000 elections chilled me to the bone, as all that has happened since was painted in the body language, and unstated threat that he was the new king and would never be held accountable for any action.

The Internet was young then, and only those who had gone there to see what was really happening about the impeachment debacle had a clue to how badly we were screwed. Even two years later many senior Democratic leaders did not have a clue about information that was commonplace on the 'Net.

Even now most people don't seem to be able to get their minds around how drastically their world has changed, taking many freedoms for granted because they haven't tested them, or themselves been at the pointy end of the loss. Instead each outrage is not enough in itself to galvanize and organize the opposition, except in a few rare and mostly insufficient cases.

Most Americans are somewhat aware that their lives are not as open as they were, but still have hope that it can be fixed without themselves standing out too far from the crowd and turning a bad situation instantly, personally, horrid. This is the mindset that allowed so many Jews to find themselves in the gas chambers.

Robert Kennedy is one opposition figure that has at least brought open facts in some detail into a focus that is just such a terrifying fact that we are a long way down a road most wish to think that we haven't gotten to yet. In response many "Uncle Tom" Democrats are still trying to treat hemorrhaging Democracy as "barely a flesh wound", fearful that confronting the bullies will only get us all beat up more.

Mark Crispin Miller has deeply researched the problem and stood to defend Kennedy from liberal "Uncle Toms" (specifically Salon and Farhad Manjoo) and in doing so better defines more reality in fewer words than I have seen recently.

Specifically

We also hear that Democrats have been reluctant to speak out about election fraud because they fear that doing so might cut down voter turnout on Election Day. By such logic, we should henceforth utter not a peep about election fraud, so that the Democratic turnout will break records. Then, when the Republicans win yet again, because they've rigged the system, how will all those Democratic voters feel? Maybe those who haven't killed themselves, or fled the country, will recover just enough to vote again. Would it then be prudent for the Democrats to talk about election fraud? Or would it still seem sensible to keep the subject under wraps?

The argument is idiotic, yet the people who have seriously made it -- Bernie Sanders, Markos Moulitsas, Hillary Clinton's and Chuck Schumer's people, among others -- are extremely bright. The argument, as foolish as it is, does not bespeak a low I.Q., but, I would suggest, a subtler kind of incapacity: a refusal and/or inability to face a deeply terrifying truth. The Democrats refuse to talk about election fraud because they cannot, will not, wrap their minds around the implications of what happened in 2004, and what is happening right now, and what will keep on happening until we, as a people, face the issue. In short, whatever clever-sounding rationales they may invoke (no doubt in all sincerity), the Democrats won't talk about election fraud because they're in denial, which is itself based on a lethal combination of inertia, self-interest and, above all -- or below all -- fear.

Such fear is understandable. For the problem here is not simply mechanical or technological, legal or bureaucratic, requiring that we merely tweak the rules and/or build a better mousetrap. Any such expedient will naturally depend on a consensus of "both sides" -- and there's the rub, because in this great clash the "other side" detests American democracy itself. The movement now in power is not conservative but radical, intent on an apocalyptic program that is fundamentally opposed to the ideals of the Enlightenment, on which, lest we forget, this revolutionary secular republic was first founded. The movement frankly disbelieves in reason, and in all the other worldly goods that every rational American still takes for granted: pluralism, checks and balances, "the general welfare," freedom, progress, the pursuit of happiness. For this movement, condom use is worse than death by AIDS, however many millions the disease may kill; the ruination of the planet should be hastened, not prevented, as it means that He will be returning soon; the "war on terror" is a matter not of geopolitics but metaphysics, as our national enemy is "a guy named Satan"; homosexuals should not be citizens, the US having been conceived as a "Christian republic"; and -- most relevant to this debate -- the movement's adversaries, which means all the rest of us, are not human beings with divergent interests but literal "agents of Hell," demonic entities against which any tactic, however criminal or sinful, is permissible, because they are likely to use any tactic, regardless of its sinfulness or criminality, to force their evil program on the Righteous Ones.

Of course, that theocratic bloc does not comprise the whole Bush/Cheney movement, which, at the top, is heavily dominated too by frank neo-imperialists, corporate profiteers, careerist sociopaths and livid paranoids compelled by the intense self-hatred typical of such perennial types as Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover. Revolution tends to work by unifying the energies, or bile, of only roughly complementary interests. This revolution certainly is no pure upsurge of religious fervor, for its plutocratic animus is just as powerful, apparently, as its crusade to "Christianize" the world. However, while it would be very foolish to ignore the movement's secular agenda (i.e., the avarice and power lust of Cheney/Rumsfeld and their corporate cronies), it is just as foolish to imagine that the movement's theocratic program is mere smoke, calculated just to daze the pious masses so that Congress and Wall Street can rob them blind.

This theocratic program is no secret, as the conquest of the GOP has been the top priority of US Christianist extremists since the early Nineties. It was their aim to put George W. Bush in office, and then to keep him there, despite the will of the electorate; and having done so, they have rapidly transformed our government into an instrument of their crusade. "George W. Bush is our agenda!" as the Rev. Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition, boasted candidly to Salon's Michelle Goldberg a few years ago. He had every right to crow. The executive departments and top federal agencies are now in theocratic hands, and this government pursues no policy, foreign or domestic, that has not been devised or vetted by the party's theocratic apparat. The government now generously subsidizes many theocratic groups that proselytize explicitly, pushing both their own creed and the interests of the Bush Republicans. And now that Congress too is full of theocratic militants (who seem to have no strong opponents), the Supreme Court is just one seat away from an entrenched majority as frankly hostile to the church/state separation as it is to voting rights for all Americans.

The power and fury of the US theocratic movement have been amply documented by a range of keen observers, including Esther Kaplan, Paul Craig Roberts, Kevin Phillips, Stephenie Hendricks, Max Blumenthal, Frederick Carlson, Katherine Yurica, Michael Lerner and Salon's Michelle Goldberg, among others, as well as in my own books Cruel and Unusual and Fooled Again. The threat has also sounded strong alarms on solid Christian grounds, in writings by Jim Wallis, John Danforth, Jimmy Carter, Davidson Loehr, Rich Lang and Bruce Prescott. (Of course, the theocratic program is explicit also in the oratory and writings of the theocrats themselves.) It now remains for us to face the crucial fact that this regime's miraculous "re-election" in 2004 depended heavily on the countless block-the-vote activities of theocratic true believers, who did whatever they could do, from coast to coast, to cut the Kerry vote and pad the Bush vote. That effort was essential to the regime's inexplicable political success. Of all the interests collaborating in Bush/Cheney's drive against democracy, the theocrats alone have a grass-roots constituency -- not large enough, by any means, to sway elections honestly, but large enough, and fierce enough, and with sufficient funds and discipline, to help Bush/Cheney disenfranchise the majority. Although the corporations and the neo-cons wield awesome clout, they have no grass-roots muscle. The theocrats alone can claim that necessary asset, and it has given them enormous power.

The Republicans are indeed at a tipping point. If an honest government were to achieve power, sufficient to expose even what is common 'net knowledge, much less what is as yet still secret from everyone, a genuine house cleaning would land them all poor and in jail at best. They will not allow that to happen without violence.

If the propaganda cannot convince most people that what is sure to be surprising Republican victories are legitimately gotten, then the reaction could itself cause more reaction and bring on the worst "Uncle Tom Democrat" fears, and indeed would make some very unhappy times, and what has been a somewhat covert overthrow of the American Democracy overt.

With approval ratings in the 30% range, stealing an election is no less easy, but it would be harder to keep from being obvious to even the thickest dunderhead. And what happens then, be it whimper or boom, will not be at all pretty.

Update: I was wrong, while there was tremendous voter suppression and other dirty tricks, I think that the Democrat expectation of fraud actually reduced it in places like Ohio, and massive voter revulsion at late breaking sex scandals and similar incidents overshot Republican planning. Do the Republicans think that they can weather the next two years and let the massive Gerrymandering return things back? Only the next Congress will tell, it will be very dicey. With so much work and only two years, every action will have to be effective, rather than just feel good. (and there is so much more that would feel great, but might be less effective).

Totalitarians in Libertarian clothing, and how Conservatives became their "Fellow Travellers"

(This was published a year ago but still speaks well.)

It would appear to me that either Libertarians are deliberately framing issues to obscure reality or have not actually thought their obsession through.

Now my understanding of a Straussian is that they have thought it through and decided that it is good to be the King, as long as it is just them as king and a few cronies to keep them in power, and the rest of the World can just KMA. But they also realize the rest of the World considers such people to be pure evil, and even their fellow travelers would prefer each of them be king.

So in order to avoid sharing a cell with Saddam, they invent elaborate propaganda structures, while looking intently how to stab others in the back, and avoiding others doing the same to them. This is pretty much how Saddam operated, as well as the Bush Administration, and all the other more obedient Saddams in all the Tajikistans about the World.

That the Bush Administration has not yet demonstrated all the excesses that Saddam & Sons exercised on their private property they called Iraq, is limited only by their perception of being held accountable for their actions. And therein lies the rub that actual Libertarians have not thought through.

Now it is my understanding that a Libertarian believes in absolute freedom of personal action and property rights, and that the only legitimate activity of Government is to protect such happy folk from losing those things. Now such thoughts are fine if you happen to be Saddam, but the rest of the Iraqis did not find such free exercise of property rights so enjoyable. No matter how much less dramatic you make it, universal freedom and universal property rights cannot coexist. Just the definition owning anything means that someone else cannot mess with your stuff beyond the limits of your freely given permission.

The actual reality is that any action done in concert by two or more people, or the divvying up of the assets of the World are matters of power and those who exercise it. The only real issue is what controls those who are acted upon have on the actors. While it is an old saw that absolute power corrupts absolutely, the less pointed out corollary is that ALL power corrupts to the limits of its accountability to other powers.

Libertarians are quick to point this out of Government De Jure, but totally obsficate the fact that any exercise of power is Government De Facto and is even less immune to such corruption because of its stealth quality. This is how the Republicans hoodwinked the nation by saying they wanted "to get the Government off our backs" when what they really wanted was to fire all the cops. The prisons are full of people with the same complaint, but without the massive funding required to exercise their "Free" Speech.

Now actual Liberals, unlike Straussian straw liberals, believe in the maximum freedom for every individual to decide as much as possible about their own life. They even believe in "private" property and what personal power it gives to have your own stuff to help structure your life. The issue is one of accountability and who is going to stop any person from abusing the power to exploit, injure, or otherwise limit other people from exercising their own freedom.

Now there are many issues that honorable people can differ on, as to who guards the guards, and how much accountability and what kind is appropriate, but there should be agreement that stealing millions of dollars, or horribly killing thousands or millions, should get a lot more accountability than your average street criminal (though he should be stopped as well). That such power is excercised as the choice of serious injury / forking over your wallet, or paying the power bill / living without heat cannot be considered a free will choice, nor so if the facts are hidden/twisted to cause you to make a choice you would not make had you known them.

There was a time when people of Straussian attitude feigned being Liberals, and called themselves Communists, today they are almost all Conservatives, finding their power base in Bigotry, Theocracy, and Corporate Megalomania (often referred to as Fascism or Kleptocracy). All are Totalitarian at their black heart, and all need to be recognized as the pure evil that they are. In the United States all such folk with any power are Republican, and why the World is at greater danger than anytime in the past, with nine months to decide its fate.