Eugene V. Debs, Socialist

Another Ohio Blogger suggested we google "Eugene V. Debs + Canton" for the irony in Obama's final plea to Ohioans to send him to the White House. So I looked through a Deb's speech from 90 years ago, 1918. It does have a certain flow, a ring, a familiarity, doesn't it? Except Debs was a bit more humble than Obama.

Ah! Tovarishch [Товарищ], it makes my heart sing as I march to the machine-tractor station for the motherland with the other kolkhoznitza [колхозница] and Obama's mellifluous tones in my ears.

"Socialism is a growing idea; an expanding philosophy. It is spreading over the entire face of the earth: It is as vain to resist it as it would be to arrest the sunrise on the morrow. It is coming, coming, coming all along the line. Can you not see it? If not, I advise you to consult an oculist. There is certainly something the matter with your vision. It is the mightiest movement in the history of mankind. What a privilege to serve it! I have regretted a thousand times that I can do so little for the movement that has done so much for me. The little that I am, the little that I am hoping to be, I owe to the Socialist movement. It has given me my ideas and ideals; my principles and convictions, and I would not exchange one of them for all of Rockefeller’s bloodstained dollars. It has taught me how to serve—a lesson to me of priceless value. It has taught me the ecstasy in the handclasp of a comrade. It has enabled me to hold high communion with you, and made it possible for me to take my place side by side with you in the great struggle for the better day; to multiply myself over and over again, to thrill with a fresh-born manhood; to feel life truly worthwhile; to open new avenues of vision; to spread out glorious vistas; to know that I am kin to all that throbs; to be class-conscious, and to realize that, regardless of nationality, race, creed, color or sex, every man, every woman who toils, who renders useful service, every member of the working class without an exception, is my comrade, my brother and sister—and that to serve them and their cause is the highest duty of my life."

Sarah Palin's Wardrobe

Far be it from me to say the media are going down the low road on this one--I complain about women's clothing all the time. I see women in public dressed in pajamas, sweat suits, cowboy boots, fringy-droopy 70s retro thingies, and low-cut porno outfits--and those are just the ones I see at church--you should see the ones headed for work! Both Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin have thankfully put a little class back into women's public face and rear end. (Real ladies don't say butt.) I truly hope it catches on.

Before Palin's Dayton, Ohio love fest back in late August, (view here, beginning about minute 10) I'd only seen her in casual clothes--I think she was either pregnant, or someone had turned down the heat and given her a sweater. So a black pencil skirt just a bit below the knees and short jacket fastened up to her neck looked pretty darn good, if a little schoolmarmish, and was pleasure after months and years of Hillary's pants suits and blazers and San Fran Nan busting out all over in her open front business suits below her cheery botoxed face. Sometimes she wears a red jacket, sometime pink. But she always looks good.

But I'm a woman blogger. Why shouldn't I comment on women's clothes? Why would the main stream media care what Sarah spends if they don't care what Obama or Biden spend on their tailor made suits? At home, she admits she buys at the consignment shop and about half of what the Republicans bought went back to the store either because it didn't fit or wasn't her style. I'm sure she always looks nice, but if you've got to change clothes several times a day and look good on TV (remember Nixon lost because he didn't want to wear make-up for the TV debates). I assume she's nursing Trig, and if you've ever done that, it can get messy and up the dry cleaning bills. Then there's the spit up, the diaper changing, etc. I would guess that to keep up the campaign pace she would need 8-10 outfits minimum. Then there's shoes, undergarments, jewelry, etc.

But there's always a double standard where Democrats are concerned, and the press is so deep into the dirty clothes hamper with Obama, they're getting smelly. I'm betting Nancy's pearls cost more than some of Sarah's outfits, but who's counting--certain not journalism jockeys who were so afraid Palin might have some ideas worth reporting that could get them in trouble with their editors that they decided to switch topics and go for the safe, soft news. The cost of her clothes.

The widening gap

You can't turn on the radio, TV or open a newspaper without someone talking about a gap*--and I don't mean the store where teen-agers shop. There's a poverty gap, a gender gap, a technology gap, a health care gap, yada, yada. Three and a half years ago I wrote down my reasons for the widening gap between the rich and the poor (this is actually a fabrication because people are retiring and by plan and choice reducing their household income, but let's imagine there is a gap). Let's call it The Easy Gap.

1. Easy credit cards: We got our first credit card in the late 60s--I think it was a "Shopper’s Charge." We now have one department store credit card and one bank card--we’ve never carried a balance. Since the late 80s and into the 90s, many new households have never known what it was to live on their earned income. 2. Easy divorce: Christians now have the same divorce rate as anyone else in the culture. When we married 48 years ago, regular religious observance offered families some protection. No fault divorce particularly hurt women and children, pushing them economically into competition with two income families. 3. Easy sex: Casual one-night stands were glorified in the movies of the 70s and 80s. Although adultery and fornication had long been a theme in literature, drama and movies, casual sex and living together before marriage became the gold standard of relationships by the 80s, even though it’s been proven that it increases the divorce rate. Then easy sex came into the living rooms via TV so that even young children think who’s spending the night is no more important than what toothpaste mom buys. Women having and raising babies alone is the biggest cause of growing poverty and the gap that liberals worry about. 4. Easy birth control and abortion: The millions of Americans that might have sprung from the loins of some of our best and brightest have been denied life itself, and thus their slots in the pie chart has been taken by poor, uneducated immigrants. Obviously this creates a huge gap between the middle class and the poor, who instead of having a solid footing as those aborted citizens might have had, flood across our borders or arrive as refugees with nothing. 5. Easy technology and gadgets: Time wasted on I-pods and text messaging and vegging out in front of bad movies on DVDs has certainly absorbed billions of hours that could have been invested in networking, education or advancing up the career ladder. Cable and cell phone monthly costs easily equal what we spent on a mortgage 30 years ago. 6. Easy bankruptcy: Load up the credit cards with consumer spending, mortgage your future, then make the rest of us pay it off for you. It might have been Plan B 20 years ago, but is now Plan A. Interest only mortgages, leases for larger and more expensive vehicles, second mortgages--for a generation who thinks the future will be paid for by someone else, it’s a recipe for a growing gap. 7. Easy leisure: Thirty eight years ago (1970) few middle class families took vacations--if Dad had a week off (and most companies didn’t offer it) he spent it fixing the house. Sure it’s a huge industry and employs a lot of people, but we’re looking at the gap aren’t we? We’d probably been married 10 years before we took a family vacation (my parents never had one), and then it was at my mother’s farm for a week. Our daughter and her husband had been to Key West, Arruba and took a Mexican cruise in the first 5 years of their marriage. 8. Easy entertainment: This is related to leisure and technology, but today’s young families have difficulty being alone or quiet, it would seem. Even 30 years olds seem unable to walk around without head phones. They are spending their children’s future at movies, sporting events and theme parks. A visit to the library is most likely to pick up a movie, not a book. 9. Easy college loans: Instead of attending a state school, working during the summer or attending closer to home, many young people begin their real working lives with huge debt, a debt that takes years to pay off, assuming they don’t default. Loans were so easy in the 80s, that parents who could well afford to pay tuition had their children at the public trough. 10. Easy shopping: You can be a couch potato or a computer novice and never leave home to shop. Addiction is easy. Just call in with the credit card. See? And I haven’t even said a word about how much health care costs, or how the women’s movement changed our culture, public transportation or taxes. And while the government is tangentially involved in these areas, mostly it boils down to perfectly legal choices, choices which when they become ingrained in our way of life lead to poverty or slippage down by a quintile for the next generation.

According to a google search: health care gap = 15,700; gender gap = 842,000; technology gap = 166,000; obesity gap = 417; poverty gap = 113,000.

Money to help the poor

That's probably the justification for the outrageous campaign expenditures of the Obama campaign. " Guesstimates from inside the broadcast television industry are that Barack Obam will spend $1.5 million per network -- CBS, ABC and Fox -- for Wednesday night's national 30 minute informercial. Now that's $50,000 per minute per network -- $8,333 per second per network. Altogether, $4.5 million in 30 minutes. Illinois Review"

The Democrats' idea of helping the poor is to take as much from you in the form of taxes--income, excise, death, phone, gasoline, sales, pass through (in over under around and through), VAT, etc. then pass it back to you in grants to your states, your educational institutions, your non-profits, your interstates, your transportation bailouts and subsidies, even your churches, all with handsome salaries along the way. Technically, it's a form of job creation with no product. The government doesn't create wealth, it consumes it, and sometimes uses the very people it steals from to do it. Like you. Watching the ads (never fear, Obama will make back the costs of his infomercial tomorrow night). Marking the ballot. Sitting back and waiting for the exchange and transfer of funds.

Note: I can't get the article at tv by the numbers site, but I'll keep trying. Maybe it's been pulled.

Looking for the vigilant liberals

especially librarians who were all over Bush's case for tracking down foreign terrorists by violating their privacy and freedom to bomb us. Both the state of Ohio and Ohio State have been unable to keep hackers out of our personal information (I think mine has been lost, strayed or stolen three times either on purpose or staff ineptitude--and those are the cases about which I was notified). But all that stuff about Joe the Plumber who questioned Obama's "spread the wealth" threats promises that mysteriously appeared in all the media the day after McCain mentioned him during a debate? You know, damaging information like his "real name." Well, that wasn't hacked, that was pulled by a hack and redistributed to the waiting media.

"Ohio's inspector general is investigating why a state agency director approved checking the state child-support computer system for information on "Joe the Plumber."

Helen Jones-Kelly, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, confirmed today that she OK'd the check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher following the Oct. 15 presidential debate.

She said there were no political reasons for the check on the sudden presidential campaign fixture though the Support Enforcement Tracking System.

Amid questions from the media and others about "Joe the Plumber," Jones-Kelley said she approved a check to determine if he was current on any ordered child-support payments.

Such information was not and cannot be publicly shared, she said. It is unclear if Wurzelbacher is involved in a child-support case. Reports state that he lives alone with a 13-year-old son.

"Our practice is when someone is thrust quickly into the public spotlight, we often take a look" at them, Jones-Kelley said, citing a case where a lottery winner was found to owe past-due child support. "Our practice is to basically look at what is coming our way." " Columbus Dispatch

Now Governor Strickland, a Democrat and big time Obama supporter, yes that Ted who said he didn't give a damn about Obama's relationship with Ayers, says he is satisfied that there hasn't been any political mischief. Just like there wasn't any racism in the campaign to defeat his black Republican opponent two years ago. And there wasn't any malice intended by the 13 honor scholars from the east coast and abroad who came to Ohio to register Ohioans too dumb to figure it out by themselves. Democrats. They are so transparent it is pathetic. Was I that way when I was a Democrat all those years?

According to Open Secrets dot org, Jones-Kelley contributed $2,500 to Barack Obama in July 2008. Wow. What a surprise.

Obama behind your back

Oh sure, you're close and cozy now. Best buds. He wants your vote. By the time you realize what's going on, it will be too late. He'll have your wallet, your freedom, and your future.

Some schools succeed

Ninety eight percent graduation rate. That's impressive. Maybe it's the uniforms. My Catholic friends tell me there aren't many nuns in the classroom anymore. This letter was in today's Wall Street Journal.

Your editorial "Charter Success in L.A" (Oct. 14) overlooks the contributions of at least 40 Archdiocesan Catholic schools located within that same area. These Catholic schools serve the same population as the public schools and charter schools, yet they are achieving graduation rates of 98% and doing so at one-third the cost on a per student basis. Over 95% of these graduates are going on to two and four year colleges. For over 150 years, Catholic schools have been educating students in L.A. who go on to become leaders of integrity and competence. This is done without taxpayer funding.

Catholic schools deserve recognition for their past and continued contributions in educating civic, business and church leaders, teachers and many other professions that serve the Los Angeles community.

Kathleen Anderson
Executive Director
Catholic Education Foundation
Los Angeles

How they destroyed our economy

Remember how we all chuckled at the "community organizer" jokes at the Republican Convention? Oh, how little we knew. Now, some did, because they'd been writing, and speaking and sounding the alarm for years, but we didn't listen. The media didn't notice, they were all ga-ga over o-ba-ma and neither did the talk shows. Just a few conservative and libertarian publications and think tanks.

Remember when we thought the community organization gig was ACORN and just some voter fraud--hadn't we seen that in both parties? Gosh, in Illinois, it doesn't matter if you vote at all "down state"--Chicago will take care of it and they have enough dead people and dogs to vote in your place. JFK might have lived a long life as a Massachusetts senator if his party hadn't stolen the Illinois vote in 1960 from Richard Nixon.

Turns out it was a much bigger cancer behind the subprime loans. Here's an article from 1995, describing guerilla warfare by the community groups which eventually brought down the wealthiest country and most powerful government in the world--without firing a shot.

After a raucous Senate Banking Committee hearing exploring Fleet Financial Group's record on lending to minority communities, the Federal Reserve Board governors agreed to consider taking action against the New England banking giant. Among the community activists present at that February 1993 meeting with the governors was Bruce Marks, Director of the Boston-based Union Neighborhood Assistance Corporation (UNAC) known for waging guerrilla warfare against banks that fail to meet fair lending standards. When Marks and company returned six weeks later, only to be informed that the governors had decided not to act on the matter, the group took action of their own by rushing the front steps of the Reserve and blocking the entrance.

As the group of roughly 60 stood at the front door, a limousine pulled up, and out stepped a man resembling Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The protesters naturally seized upon the opportunity to make their case with the head of the Fed. They ran over and surrounded the car, overwhelming the secret service agents and the Greenspan look-alike. The man turned out to be not Greenspan but Italy's minister of finance. Although the group would have preferred a face-to-face meeting with Greenspan, mistakenly accosting the Italian finance minister was only a minor embarrassment for Marks, who regularly uses high-pressure tactics in his crusade against redlining banks.

Marks had attended the Senate Banking Committee hearing with 400 angry residents from various states, many armed with tales of injustice wrought by Fleet. The protesters, who included gospel singers and Baptist ministers, sang and chanted as they paraded in wearing bright yellow T-shirts depicting a loan shark.

"It was like a gospel revival meeting," Marks said. "I don't know if ever there's been a committee meeting where 400 people just took it over." National Housing Institute

And then skip ahead to the Winter 2000 issue of City Journal, probably written in late 1999.

There is no more important player in the CRA-inspired mortgage industry than the Boston-based Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America. Chief executive Bruce Marks has set out to become the Wal-Mart of home mortgages for lower-income households. Using churches and radio advertising to reach borrowers, he has made NACA a brand name nationwide, with offices in 21 states, and he plans to double that number within a year. With "delegated underwriting authority" from the banks, NACA itself—not the banks—determines whether a mortgage applicant is qualified, and it closes sales right in its own offices. It expects to close 5,000 mortgages next year, earning a $2,000 origination fee on each. Its annual budget exceeds $10 million.

Marks, a Scarsdale native, NYU MBA, and former Federal Reserve employee, unabashedly calls himself a "bank terrorist"—his public relations spokesman laughingly refers to him as "the shark, the predator," and the NACA newspaper is named the Avenger. They're not kidding: bankers so fear the tactically brilliant Marks for his ability to disrupt annual meetings and even target bank executives' homes that they often call him to make deals before they announce any plans that will put them in CRA's crosshairs. A $3 billion loan commitment by Nationsbank, for instance, well in advance of its announced merger with Bank of America, "was a preventive strike," says one NACA spokesman.

And here's Marks putting himself in a positive light at a "world citizenship, global humanist" blog. I wonder Mr. Marks, where are those poor and low income people you put in houses today? Do they have jobs? Do they have pensions? Where are the multitudes of employees sopping up government grants to the non-profits for paper pushers and fee takers, and hastily hammered together housing corporations to rebuild communities? Do you even care, or were they always just your route to destroy the United States economy?

Marks’ role as an aggressive crusader for reform of the powerful banking and lending industry has its representatives up in arms. On May 5, 1999 from the Senate floor, Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), head of the Senate Banking Committee, attempted to portray banks as victims of Bruce Marks. Gramm described Marks as, “… someone who graduates from college, goes to graduate school, and goes to work for the Federal Reserve in acquisitions and mergers, quits and goes into business, spends four years harassing banks and bank presidents, and finally the bank (Fleet Bank) caves and gives them $1.4 million, gives them $200,000 to set up their organization; they now have twenty offices, lending $3.5 billion…” Senator Gramm continued, “There is a CRA protester who calls himself an “urban terrorist” who used those charges against a bank, harassed them for four years, went to a speech of the president of the bank (Fleet Bank CEO Terrence Murray) at Harvard University, disrupted the speech, made this man’s life miserable for four long years.” Bruce Marks wears this personal attack as a badge of honor.

Under Marks’ leadership, NACA has garnered commitments of over $6.7 Billion for the best mortgage product in America. NACA now has 31 offices throughout the country and will double in size within the next 12 to 18 months. NACA has become the largest housing services organization in the United States.

Community Reinvestment Act Harmful legacy

For a lefty hissy fit on the conservatives waking up to the CRA's mistakes, see here, so don't say I don't provide an alternative view, which the left never does.

Backatcha!

Instead of addressing the fraud among their volunteers, Obama's campaign has chosen to investigate the investigators who uncovered the problem. See story at Maggie Thurber. Move over Joe

Rather than address the fact that some people supportive of Obama have registered and voted incorrectly, these Obama campaign workers want to demonize the individuals who've exposed them

And then there's the on-going saga of Joe the Plumber and what a terrible threat a simple question was to the Obama Campaign after Obama told Joe he wanted to spread the wealth (something he's said many times, but not recently, and not on the campaign trail). So much so that someone thought the means justified the end, and hacked Joe's personal information.

Personal information on "Joe the Plumber" was sought through the state's child-support computer in a check run from the main offices of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

Ohio Inspector General Thomas P. Charles confirmed today that he is investigating the incident. He declined to provide details.

The inquiry on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher was run through the Support Enforcement Tracking System from the state department's offices in downtown Columbus. Columbus Dispatch

Elizabeth Hasselbeck introduces Governor Palin

This takes 11 minutes but is well worth watching. The writer at the LA Times just couldn't stop editorializing with alarm quotation marks and snarky remarks either about Hasselbeck or Palin.

"The View" co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck was incredibly "honored" to introduce Gov. Sarah Palin on Sunday at a Republican rally in Florida.

But she was even more excited about being able to "talk for a full five minutes without being interrupted."

She talked about Palin's women's rights views: equal pay for equal work, putting an end to honor killings, aiding women exploited in the sex trade and stopping the sanctioning of the abortion of unborn daughters in other countries. [this is a misquote: she said of a country's unborn daughters]

She decried the fact that "they" [clarification, the main stream media reporters] are "fixated on her wardrobe," calling it a double standard and deliberately sexist. But then she turned to Palin and remarked admiringly that the governor "sure is a woman who knows how to dress," which got some rather sexist whoops, hollers and whistles from the audience.

Hasselbeck added: "I’m most impressed by her accessories, you know, like the flag pin she wears in honor of her son and our military — men and women — fighting abroad. And they fight for our every [very] right to be here today." ["They didn't list this because they know it's priceless" Hasselbeck said--to which the crowd went wild with USA chants.]

Elisabeth was certainly coming on strong for Palin, sounding much like a lipstick-wearing pit bull/hockey mom herself.

There wasn't a thing threatening or pit-bullish in the entire 11 minutes. Get a grip--it was a campaign speech introduction. Would you rather she get shouted down as her View sisters do? I watched it twice, including the part about McCain paying the women on his staff the same as men, and Obama paying 83 cents on the dollar. LAT Blogger Dishrag forgot to remember that part. Oh, and the writer was just soooo concerned that baby Trig was on stage--now, abortion of a disabled child she would support, because that's a woman's right, but putting him on stage with his mom, dad and sister? Ooooo, now that's cruel says Elizabeth Snead. If you don't kill them, you should at least hide them, I suppose.

A Charter of Negative Liberties--Our Constitution

Redistribution through the courts--"I'm not optimistic." You can craft a rationale bringing economic change through the courts--the 3 of us sitting here could do it.

Warren Court wasn't radical--didn't break free from constraints of the Founding Fathers. The court didn't say what the federal government must do for you on your behalf. [paraphrased based on listening while scratching my head in disbelief]



People who have attended law school in the last 15-20 years probably will not find anything strange in this radio address, just like people listening to Jeremiah Wright for years didn't notice anything--just sounds normal and patriotic to them. This type of unAmerican, radical thinking is so common among certain classes, they are baffled when Conservatives find it alarming.

America's favorite Terrorist has new book

Bill Ayers, Barack's mentor and Chicago backer has a new book. I'm sure I'll have no problem finding it--given its track record my public library will flood the shelves with copies. Here's what Charming Billy bakes in his pie laced with hate for our culture and government (i.e. white Americans--a group of which he is a member, a descendant of generations of the oppressor class).

"Bill Ayers 'gets it.'* Here's what he understands: One strategy to undermine culture is to discredit its values and history. Of course, reducing American history to a simplistic notion of 'white supremacy' is absurd, but that’s the point. The point is to slowly undermine the confidence of people about the values and history of their own culture so they'll be less willing to defend and protect it. Along the way, you've also created a structure of 'them' (so-called 'white' people, meaning, in this context, people from western and northern Europe) and 'us' (everyone else). This creates internal conflict based on simple, easy to understand qualities like skin color.

"Eventually, the culture becomes so disillusioned and split apart that an organized cadre of leaders can take control and establish a new kind of society – like the Bolsheviks did in 1917, or the National Socialists in 1933, or the followers of Mao in 1949," the forum participant wrote.

More on the book at "Ayers, Dohrn: 'White supremacy' responsible for America's troubles"

*I wonder if this is what Michelle Obama meant in Bexley last week when she said, "Barack gets it." The crowd whooped and cheered.

Clear evidence of fraud

Check out Maggie Thurber's blog for more information

So we've got clear evidence of individuals who have come to Ohio on a temporary basis, have no intention of staying in the state past the election and its certification, who have homes and families in other states, who have registered and who have cast a ballot. Today, the boards of elections start separating the ballot envelope from the identification envelope, which means that after separated, these individuals can still be prosecuted for voting illegally, but there is no way to separate out their vote and not have it count. Thurber's Thoughts

The sale of National City, pt.2

I'm still looking for my last dividend check--the one for thirty two cents. The top three executives will get golden parachutes with a combined value of $40 million following the sale (adjusting I assume for the current value of the stock which must not be too terrific); Peter Raskind, Daniel J. Frate, John L. Garney.

Ohio's progressives, socialists and marxists will scream about greed and the failure of capitalism, but I won't. I owned a few shares for about 30 years and did nothing except open the envelope four times a year, endorse the dividend check, and take it to the bank. It was never huge--probably not more than $30-$50 a year, but it was more than the cost of gasoline to drive to the bank, which the most recent one wasn't.

Meanwhile, they were being paid big bucks to figure out how to manage demands that they live up to the crazy expectations of the law and regulations to loan easy money to people who may not be able to pay it back. A law, the Community Reinvestment Act, which started small and quietly during the 1970s, with good intentions. People whose homes may never appreciate, but may depreciate, to fund builders and city services which also jumped into "the American dream" bubble. Easy money--that's what government tampering with the banks and credit did for us. Even churches got into the act, although I don't think they did the political advocacy of the left wing, ACORN type organizations. They too set up corporations, hired people, fixed up homes, "stabilizing neighborhoods," "strengthening community," to help the poor, everyone from Mennonites, to Catholics to Lutherans. But they did it with government money so they'd qualify for loans.

"The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation's banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their own striving, is the key to their well-being." "The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities," City Journal, Winter 2000

So yes, they were greedy, but when you try to strangle a business, any business, with regulations while also demanding that it perform as a sugar daddy social worker for the poor and low income, you just might find them looking for loop holes to outsmart those guys who float in and out of the beltway, who lobby, and populate endless think tanks.

It's Congress that I'd like to drop from a plane without a parachute, golden or otherwise. It was a stupid affirmative action scheme even back during the Clinton years, but there was time to remedy it. (Bruce Marks , primary culprit--story from 2004) Bush couldn't pull his people together when he had a Republican Congress, and the Democrat Congress blocked any effort, even those late ones, to fix the problem. If Gore had won in 2000, we'd be in exactly the same spot. Had you thought of that? We'd probably gone to war since the whole WMD meme started in the 90s with the Democrats, but even if we hadn't, the economic system still would have failed because the same policies chasing the same easy credit would have been there.

Now we're in a recession, and about to do the Hoover-Roosevelt two step all over again, only this time it will be Bush-Obama. Let's hope it won't take a decade of more tampering and 25% unemployment this time.

Eating pumpkin ice cream reading obesity research

After a lunch of lightly grilled, prepackaged organic vegetables (broccoli, carrots, red cabbage), I had a dish of pumpkin ice cream with some peanut butter on top. While eating the dessert I was reading "Transforming Research Strategies for Understanding and Preventing Obesity" by Huang and Glass in JAMA, Oct 15, p. 1881. Before I go into detail, let me ask you a few questions, and please don't argue or go off topic, just answer about you and you only; no one else:

• Has the federal government made you fat?
  
• Has your state or local government made you fat?
  
• Did your educational institutions--high school, college, grad school--make you fat?
  
• Has your income, whether high or low, made you fat?
  
• Has your peer group made you fat?
  
• Did your mother's diet before you were born make you fat?
  
• Has the location of your super market or grocery store made you fat?
  
• Has the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables where you shop made you fat?
  
• Has the lack of a farmer's market in your neighborhood made you fat?
  
• Has lack of exercise opportunities made you fat?
  
• Has the zoning where you live made you fat?
  
• Did the farm, town or city where your great, great grandparents lived and worked make you fat?
  
• Have USDA policies affecting land use made you fat?
  
• Has building design of your home or work place made you fat?
  
• Has the elevator in your building or the parking lot for your car made you fat?
  
• Has food labeling or lack of it on restaurant menus made you fat?

I've been up the scale and down the scale, and no one but me can determine whether I'll be obese or not. But there's a whole bunch of government money out there just waiting to call me a liar.

Using the tobacco taxes as an example of how top down punishment by the federal government can stem the obesity tide of the predicted $860 billion in health care costs, the writers of this article (both NIH employees), are pointing the way for Uncle Sam to join you at the dinner table, the restaurant, the grocery store, the snack bar and the tailgate party before the OSU football game. And he won't be a fun or an invited guest.

Clearly, education about personal responsibility for health and weight has failed, the authors report. We have evolved, but not enough. Our bodies are not equipped for an obesogenic environment. After working their way through maternal feeding patterns, lack of P.E. in schools, public snack machines and sedentary behavior, the authors pounce on the real problem. You'll be glad to find out it's not your genes, your taste buds, your cravings, or your lack of will power. It's the government--all levels from cradle to grave, from bike path to freeway, from safety to quantity.

At the governmental level, policies regarding food, agriculture, education, transportation, urban design, marketing, and trade all play a role in increasing the accessibility and availability of high-fat and high-sugar foods vs fresh fruits and vegetables and in decreasing opportunities for physical activity. The lack of access to preventive care is also a major concern. Historical U.S. policies that led to social inequality and segregation have, in turn, resulted in inequalities in the built environment, leading to disproportionate rates of obesity among the poor and minorities.

"Trust me, I'm from the government." These are the same guys from the government who don't require country of origin on your canned goods, and have no way to check the quality or adulteration of foodstuffs imported from Mexico and China, the most recent culprits that sent people to the hospital. But we're supposed to hand them billions in government grants for "cross-disciplinary hypotheses to research on upstream (trendy word = bad capitalists) policy interventions and their downstream effects on food and physical activity behaviors, investment in capacity building and rigorous training of a new generation of multilevel scientists, and global perspective on obesity research." What does cross disiplinary look like?

medical geography
epigenetics
psychoneuroendocrinology
advanced neuroimaging tools
socioenvironmental factors
spatial data
expression of genes
population patterns
food marketing
taxes on unhealthy food
public transportation
crime free neighborhoods
behavorial economics

and of course
the United Nations World Health Organization

Please note you free market and capitalist morons, your government knows best: "Neoclassical economic theory promised that allowing individuals to pursue their individual passions and desires with a minimum of constraint would lead to aggregate prosperity. However, this theory may be flawed in the case of food and activity preferences. If humans have built-in biological propensities at odds with their environment, top-down approaches may be needed to achieve population obesity prevention goals."

And here comes Obama rama dom dom.

Reformation Sunday

We both forgot to wear red; looking around the 8:15 service I see many others did too. In the Cornerstone this week Pastor Eric Waters writes

"Because we were the first of the Protestant churches, many of our fellow Protestants look on us with suspicion as being "too Catholic." They point to our practice of infant baptism, belief that the bread and wine of Communion really is the Body and Blood of Jesus, and the recitation of the Creed as proof that we're still stuck in the superstition of the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the Roman Catholic church looks on our longer sermons, various liturgies, and disagreement with the Pope as proof that we went too far. In short, most of our fellow Christians look on us as neither fish nor fowl: too Catholic for some, too Protestant for others."

My husband was baptized as an infant (Presbyterian), and I was about 12 (Church of the Brethren). If you ever want to see a Lutheran pastor go pale in your adult confirmation/transfer class, just ask to be re baptized. On the other hand, there are Protestant churches that would want to do mine over, because they wouldn't trust the minister or denomination who presided at mine. Lutherans and Catholics see infant baptism as done by God, not by man, so Lutheran pastors don't do that. I think Luther himself gave a good explanation, because he really had more problems with the reformers (in my opinion) who came after him (he called them dolts and blockheads) than the Catholics and Humanists. To the argument that you don't remember your baptism, he replies

Were I to reject everything which I have not seen or heard, I would indeed not have much left, either of faith or love, either of spiritual or of temporal things

He asks the anabaptists. . . How do you know who your parents are. . .you don't remember your birth, so why should you honor your parents? Why should you obey the government if you haven't seen the leader. How do you know the apostles preached. If you can't believe anything you haven't seen, felt or experienced, says Luther, you're in the devil's pocket.

To the argument that you need to believe before baptism, Luther really works up steam

For if they follow this principle they cannot venture to baptize before they are certain that the one to be baptized believes. How and when can they ever know that for certain? Have they now become gods so that they can discern the hearts of men and know whether or not they believe? . . . You say that he confesses that he believes. Dear sir, confession is neither here nor there. The text does not say, "He who confesses," but "He who believes."

And how many times would you be rebaptized asks Luther. Each time you have a fresh sense of your faith, or after each doubt is put down.

So when next day the devil comes, his heart is filled with scruples and he says, Ah, now for the first time I feel I have the right faith, yesterday I don't think I truly believed. So I need to be baptized a third time, the second baptism not being of any avail. You think the devil can't do such things? You had better get to know him better. He can do worse than that, dear friend. He can go on and cast doubt on the third, and the fourth and so on incessantly. . . the end result? Baptizing without end. All this is nonsense. Neither the baptizer nor the baptized can base baptism on a certain faith. . .

Since our baptizing has been thus from the beginning of Christianity and the custom as been to baptize children, and since no one can prove with good reasons that they do not have faith, we should not make changes and build on such weak arguments. . .

When they say, "Children cannot believe," how can they be sure of that? Where is the Scripture by which they would prove it and on which would they build? They imagine this, I suppose, because children do not speak or have understanding. [goes on to tell the story of John and Jesus in their mothers wombs as an example that children can know and understand and believe]. . .What if all children in baptism not only were able to believe but believed as well as John in his mother's womb?

He gives another example from a betrothal and wedding where a girl marries reluctantly and without love then after 2 years, she loves her husband.

Would then a second engagement be required, a second wedding be celebrated as if she had not previously been a wife, so that the earlier betrothal and wedding were in vain?. . .

Rebaptism is relying on works, says Luther. God's Word is unchanging even if the person doing the baptism does not have faith.

The unchanging Word of God, once spoken in the first baptism, ever remains standing, so that afterwards they can come to faith in it, if they will, and the water with which they were baptized they can afterwards receive in faith, if they will. Even if they contradict the Word a hundred times, it still remains the Word spoken in the first baptism. Its power does not derive from the fact that it is repeated many times or is spoken anew, but from the fact that it was commanded once to be spoken.

You can read Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings ed. by Timothy Lull on-line.

Worth repeating

Someone came to my blog today looking for an Oreo Cowkies photo (belted Galloways) and ended up at "Where I part company with Conservatives" essay. They must have been archived on the same page. I reread it and decided it was worth posting again with a few additions.

Politics

• I'm against the death penalty. Don't let the evil scumbags turn you into a killer.
  
• I believe marijuana can be a controlled substance for medical treatment, just like other mind altering legal drugs.
  
• I believe drug sentencing is too punitive and counter-productive--at least in Ohio. 60% of our prison population is drug related (I've heard, haven't researched it). Prisons are schools for crime, and we should stop sending so many novices there, because they will graduate and return to us.
  
• I think Creationists need to stay clear of the public schools. We haven't even convinced our own folks, so why go after non-believers? No one ever got to heaven because of believing in creation, nor was sent to hell because of evolution. Plus, you're not being truthful about your motives and that hurts your witness for Jesus.
  
• Schools need to allow students the freedom to be Creationists or write or speak on the topic without fear of punishment or grade reduction.
  
• I don't believe in the current political race for the brass ring called global warming, but I also believe that many conservatives don't take the precautions and care they should with the environment. Clean air and clean water is good for our health and for capitalism.

Religion

• I'm not a dispensationalist Christian. Not that all conservatives are, but many that are cherry pick their way through the Bible finding end-times principles to apply to politics that aren't there.
  
• Most Biblical admonitions about sexual behavior and morality are addressed to men lusting after women, not to gay men. Pay attention to your own plank before looking for the splinter.
  
• The Biblical record is clear that Jesus intended women to have an equal role in the church.
  
• I'm fine with infant baptism and don't believe in rebaptizing, although I appreciate my anabaptist heritage. Watching an infant baptism is a wonderful reminder of our need to rely totally on God.
  
• If you've got a well written liturgy, faithfully followed, it makes up for poor sermons and unsingable hymns.
  
• Conservative Christians need to pay attention to Matthew 25. Peace and justice Christians need to realize they won't find government grants and taxes there to fund their favorite programs (and salaries). It is very clear to all who you are meeting when you feed the hungry and visit the sick.

Others

• I don't believe pets are "just like family," but once you take one into your home, you have obligations and responsibilities for training, veterinary care, love and affection.
  
• I believe homeschooling is good and educationally sound, especially for the parents who will have more actual learning and support than if the children attended public or private schools, but it isn't always better for the children. There's nothing wrong with doing it for mom or dad if they become better parents.
  
• Our children come into this world as unique beings, with everything in place to be successful and happy. If they don't get there, it may not be your fault, and it definitely is not the government's. Take the blame where you deserve it, and dump the guilt if you don't.
  
• I believe that Eat less, move more is the best health plan, and that probably isn't in the Bible or hawked on your favorite talk show.
  
• I know from experience that all bubbles burst, whether it's love, finances, dreams, careers, or political candidates.

Working for the candidates

Yesterday I volunteered at a printing facility for the McCain-Palin ticket. I met some interesting people and got a little taste of how "boots on the ground" works during campaigns. You can have tons of money for the TV ads, billboards and appearances on Letterman and SNL, but if you don't have the loyal, organized volunteers, you probably won't get elected--at any level.

Until the carpetbaggers came to Ohio (about a dozen Obama staffers have now cancelled their registration and ballots--they must have cut a deal to avoid felony charges), I thought the involvement of some of my Democrat friends 24/7 was admirable, even though I disagreed with their politics. It takes a lot of gumption, guts and glorification to pick up and move to another state even for a week or two. I don't see it that way anymore.

Not that my friends of 50 years would register and vote multiple times or encourage anyone else to, but they've helped with the plan--whether setting up the headquarters, filling in for the locals, making the coffee or hosting an event. The 20-30 year olds they admire so much do not have our grounding in ethics and morality. They are of the ends justifies the means crowd. They're schooled in Obamanomics. As Michelle said this week in Bexley, "Barack gets it" (and I think she means your money).

Seeing the vans pull up to voter sites (during golden week in Ohio you could register and vote the same day and our Secretary of State and Courts have said it is legal even though she can't verify them) and disgorge the homeless from God knows where with ACORN drivers and counselors telling them how to vote makes me see political volunteering outside your own city and state in a whole new light.

The houseful of 13 out of towners who came here were taking time out of their busy schedules in Europe and elite Ivy League schools as honor scholars with wealthy parents to fund their fun to tell us poor schmucks how we should vote. Good riddance, and I hope they can't find another sandbox to litter and just go back to studying peace, justice and marxism until they grow up.

The International Herald Tribune regrets

Not that I expected it to print my comments--I never give out all that detail (phone, address, eye color, handedness, all identity stuff) that you need, and still your comments will never appear--your identify just goes into a database. I just wanted to let them know that the comments of Joe Biden My Time promising Barack's election would cause an international crisis appeared in their paper a few days before our local journalists thought to mention it. At another international on-line news service (Pakistan) I think I noticed the phrase "Islamic terrorists", whereas the USAToday had called them "insurgents" when they burned down a building storing cooking oil intended for families with daughters enrolled in school.

At the bottom of the Tribune's nice "thanks but no thanks" response I saw this warning.

-
In order to preserve the environment, please do not print this message unless it is necessary.

This e-mail message, including any attachments, is destined solely for the recipients detailed above and may not therefore be divulged or communicated to any other persons. Any modification, publication, use or dissemination is prohibited if not authorized by the International Herald Tribune.

So you are seeing an unauthorized response to my e-mail complimenting them on their coverage of a very alarming incident that happened twice in one day in the U.S. on the Biden by-hook-or-by-crook march to the White House.

A voting record Left of Everybody

New York Times Endorses Obama for President

Oct. 24, a Reuters headline. Now that's a big surprise, right?

"S&P Lowers NYT Rating to 'Junk'" also a headline on October 24, Crain's New York Business.

The company reported a 51.4% decline in third-quarter profit but still beat Wall Street estimates as the newspaper industry continues to suffer from advertising reductions accelerated by a worsening economy.

For years the New York Times
has published only its opines
of how much America declines
while George Bush it always slimes.

Read it daily if you will
I can't take the snooty swill.
A 50+ decline but still
Team Obama is their drill.

The National Run Around

We can expect FDR type programs from BHO, for in your face, God Almighty inspired government regulations, and jack boots on the necks of non-compliant plumbers. But with better looking graphics and logos, given that his campaign man is a media guru. The National Recovery Association was called the National Run Around because of the hundreds of codes that impeded business, and the WPA, Works Progress Administration, was called the We Piddle Around.



"The economic impact of the NRA was immediate and powerful. In the five months leading up to the act’s passage, signs of recovery were evident: factory employment and payrolls had increased by 23 and 35 percent, respectively. Then came the NRA, shortening hours of work, raising wages arbitrarily, and imposing other new costs on enterprise. In the six months after the law took effect, industrial production dropped 25 percent. Benjamin M. Anderson writes, "NRA was not a revival measure. It was an antirevival measure . . . . Through the whole of the NRA period industrial production did not rise as high as it had been in July 1933, before NRA came in.

To run NRA, FDR chose "General Hugh "Iron Pants" Johnson, a profane, red-faced bully and professed admirer of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Thundered Johnson, "May Almighty God have mercy on anyone who attempts to interfere with the Blue Eagle" (the official symbol of the NRA, which one senator derisively referred to as the "Soviet duck"). Those who refused to comply with the NRA Johnson personally threatened with public boycotts and "a punch in the nose."

Roosevelt next signed into law steep income tax increases on the higher brackets and introduced a five-percent withholding tax on corporate dividends. He secured another tax increase in 1934. In fact, tax hikes became a favorite policy of Roosevelt for the next ten years, culminating in a top income tax rate of 90 percent.
Read Reed.

Calling Team Obama

While they were out investigating Joe the Plumber's taxes, look what was going on in New York with a Kennedy man.

Gov. David Paterson's embattled top aide resigned Friday, after a week of escalating criticism over his failure to pay $300,000 in taxes on time and a questionable excuse for the lapse.

Mr. O'Byrne, who has ties to the Kennedy family, has said clinical depression kept him from paying taxes between 2001 and 2005, before he took the job as secretary to the governor. He's a former Jesuit priest who officiated at the wedding of John F. Kennedy Jr. and counseled the Kennedy family three years later after he died in a plane crash. He was the top aide to Mr. Paterson. He was responsible for mapping out policy and politics as Mr. Paterson rose from the near powerless Democratic minority in the Senate to lieutenant governor and then governor after Democrat Eliot Spitzer resigned in March amid a prostitution scandal. Crains

Dear President Gee

You probably don't remember me, but we met during your first round as OSU's president when I went to a public meeting to "meet the new guy on campus" and boldly asked what you intended to do about the leaky roof over my library which was putting our books and computers at risk. Ah, the good old days, when one could ask questions face to face. That building's gone now, replaced by the one I helped plan, and you are back at Ohio State.

I'm writing to tell you I met one of your wonderful students today. Not only am I impressed with the quality of our young people, but I feel safer too--he's in the National Guard. We had a delightful time volunteering together on a political campaign project for McCain-Palin.

However, as Glenn Beck would say, I need to wrap duct tape around my head to keep it from exploding over what I learned about the abusive behavior of your faculty at Ohio State. It was shocking and alarming, and as a tax payer, I recommend an investigation. I was aware of the brainwashing going on in the 80s and 90s, but I don't think it was anything like today. I think OSU's faculty of 20 years ago had more integrity, and weren't so monolithic in their views and politics.

He told me that he has seen every one of Michael Moore's movies in his college classes! It was required. One was a biology course, one was a political science course, and I've forgotten the other two. For one class final in a Latin American history course the only question was to write an essay on the seven best things Fidel Castro had done for Cuba. In another course where the students needed to write a persuasive paper, he chose "Why the U.S. needs to drill in ANWR." His instructor, an honest but not particularly ethical woman, told him at the outset he'd need to choose another topic. She'd have to flunk him because he'd never be able to persuade her, no matter how good his argument or bibliography, she said. He says the ridiculing and trashing of the Bush administration has been relentless in all his classes.

He also told me he doesn't know why we hear so much about unemployment--he has three jobs! After volunteering, he was going to go play golf with his dad, retired military, who was in town visiting.

Dr. Gee. Tell me. What is going on at Ohio State? Whatever happened to a liberal education where students were taught and encouraged to think on their own? Why are you asking for money for buildings and landscaping if all you're producing there is a graveyard for young minds?

The sale of National City

National City Corp., Ohio's biggest bank, acquired Buckeye Federal Savings and Loan of Columbus in 1991 which had a small branch in the Tremont Shopping Center close to our home. This week it agreed to be bought by PNC Financial Services Group for more than $5 billion. I had opened a savings account at Buckeye Federal because it was convenient (within walking distance). When depositors were allowed to buy stock, I did--maybe 10 shares. I think until it was bought by National City, I used my dividends to buy more stock. This was my first adventure into investing, and I know exactly where the money came from and the sad, sad story of where it has gone (subprime mortgages). My last dividend check was thirty-two cents, less than the stamp to mail it.

When my grandmother's estate was finally settled (it took years--apparently the fine state of Illinois thought my grandmother had given her three children her farms in Iowa and Illinois as a death-tax dodge). My mother, a very mild mannered woman with a wry sense of humor, said this was clearly ridiculous, noting that Grandmother a somewhat stubborn and strong willed woman had no intention of dying--ever. Grandma died in 1963 at 87, and I don't recall exactly when everything was settled, but it went on a long time. Sometime in the early to mid-1970s my mother gave me $5,000 from Grandma's estate. This was more money than I'd ever seen, so I took it to the Buckeye Federal branch, and in turn, opened college accounts for my two young children using their SS# (don't ever do that), and put the balance in my account.

I wanted to be very careful with this money because I knew the story of its journey. My grandmother's father was born in 1828 in Adams County, Pennsylvania. He was a hard worker, ambitious, and when news of the Gold Rush in California got to southeastern Pennsylvania, it looked like a lot more fun and money than driving a team to Baltimore and back for his father. So he and a friend were on their way. We have no record of what happened, but we assume the friend died during the trip, and Grandfather David settled in Rockford, Illinois where he worked as a carpenter making furniture and household things. He saved his money, and eventually bought acreage in Lee County very cheap because it was marsh land that needed to be tiled. He returned to Pennsylvania, found a bride, and they set up house near Ashton, Illinois.

Wedding photos, 1855
Fast forward through the Civil War, coming of the railroad and boom and bust years of the 19th century. When he died in 1912 his estate was worth about $250,000, which was a lot of money in those days--probably millions in today's dollars. My grandmother was the youngest of four, with a college education, husband and 2 young sons. The other three siblings had all died rather tragically as adults--Willy, diphtheria, Martha, child birth and Ira, blood poisoning. So she inherited a third of his estate along with her nieces and nephews, children of her deceased siblings. She and grandpa, who didn't like farming and wanted to be a business man, settled down on the farm--although neither were suited or prepared for this life. Fast forward through the ups and downs of WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, and old age, with grandma doing all she could to hang on to the land.

So that's how the money came down to me to deposit in Buckeye Federal, which was absorbed into National City (I'm guessing because of the S&L scandal of the 80s, but haven't really documented that), which this week met its own end. National City was most likely brought down by bad investments in subprime mortgages.

And it all started about 160 years ago with a young man heading for California on an adventure.

-----------

Note: As I re-read this a month later, I see I used both "City National" and "National City", probably because when you leave a saved post in blogger to go out to the internet, it sometimes returns you to a previous unsaved post, and thus, you think a correction you made is there, and it isn't, you then resave, losing the first save. Get it? Well, since these mistakes never get erased, if you got here or didn't get here because of a mistake, I apologize. I really did try to correct them early on.

The health care gap and the poor

My years in a medical library have left me with a bias and love for medical literature. I'm pretty much down to reading JAMA regularly (love the poetry, essays, editorials and book reviews), but I also visit a lot of web pages and have bcome dependent on googling the terms that confuse me (many). I have a growing concern alarm about the amount of money circulating to support research on research (i.e. the value and distribution of information) and/or research on social/political issues or conditions. When you look at the huge dollar amounts from NIH, corporations, pharmaceuticals or foundations or even various philanthropic runs or walks for the disease of the week, you see that so much of it never finds its way into the lab or the clinic. It never touches the virus, bug or neoplasm. It gets sifted and sorted and distributed to various versions of the medical community organizer--ACORN in a lab coat--for lack of a better term.

For example, let's just look at this simple phrase in a review of Metabolic syndrome and psychiatic illness by Scott D. Mendelson (2008) which appeared in JAMA, Oct. 15, p. 1824.

Patients with chronic mental illnesses may not have access to regular medical care and may lead unhealthy lifestyles, and their physical conditions are often not diagnosed or treated in a timely fashion.

I can guarantee you there will be millions and millions of grant dollars heading out the door to chase "access" and "timely fashion," and not enough toward diagnosis and treatment. Further, there will be more millions wasted on "unhealthy lifestyles," primarily in the form of education, information, and hand wringing with endless lectures by the nearest relative--especially the mother! At the risk of sounding like a cold hearted wingnut as some of my readers call me (not realizing I'm a reformed humanist), I call that "peace and justice medicine." Science isn't advanced, people aren't healed, but liberals get a warm glow, a sense of doing something and a good salary.

Before you buy into peace and justice medicine, just look around at your own family or friends. Especially someone with very serious health concerns. You probably won't find lack of access or timely treatment (unless you're on a government plan, but that's another topic). You'll see that person's genes and jeans. What they inherited from the generations who came before them, and what they are doing with it now: eating too much, exercising too little, driving too fast, chasing too many rainbows, drinking too much, smoking or chewing tobacco, sleeping around, shooting up or sniffing, and hanging out with bad people. That about covers it.

There may be an insurance gap, gender gap or access gap for the mentally ill, but that isn't what made them ill. There may be some people who need cholesterol or high blood pressure medicine and don't get it because they bought groceries instead, but that's not what caused their high cholesterol. There may be men going to bath houses who don't know there is a drug out there for the disease they are about to plant inside the anus or mouth of another man, but it isn't ignorance or poverty that is causing their behavior.

More later. Time for the coffee shop and reading more book reviews in this excellent issue. I'm going to write P. Murali Doraiswamy, MD and tell him/her that was really an excellent review.

You've read or seen "I am Joe"

Don't miss "I am Bill" for equal time, to be fair to the other side, to spread the wealth and fun around.

In his 2001 screed, Fugitive Days, Ayers recounts his life as a Sixties radical, his tenure as a Weatherman lieutenant, his terrorist campaign across America, and his enduring hatred for the United States. "What a country," Ayers said in 2001. "It makes me want to puke." Discover the networks

How the New Deal hurt the poor

Poor people were principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has been developed by dozens of economists. . .

"New Deal programs were financed by tripling federal taxes from $1.6 billion in 1933 to $5.3 billion in 1940. Excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, holding company taxes and so-called "excess profits" taxes all went up. . ." excise taxes on alcohol, chewing gum, candy, playing cards, movie tickets--hitting mostly the poor and middle class.

"New Deal taxes were major job destroyers during the 1930s, prolonging unemployment that averaged 17%. Higher business taxes meant that employers had less money for growth and jobs. Social Security excise taxes on payrolls made it more expensive for employers to hire people, which discouraged hiring."

Other New Deal programs destroyed jobs, too. For example, the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people - blacks alone were estimated to have lost some 500,000 jobs because of the National Industrial Recovery Act. . . "

"For defenders of the New Deal, perhaps the most embarrassing revelation about New Deal spending programs is they channeled money AWAY from the South, the poorest region in the United States. The largest share of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political "swing" states in the West and East - where incomes were at least 60% higher than in the South. As an incumbent, FDR didn't see any point giving much money to the South where voters were already overwhelmingly on his side.

For the whole article.

Interesting thought. FDR channeling money away from the people supporting him to influence votes in another region.

Campaign volunteer story a hoax

Young female McCain volunteer who claimed she'd been attacked at an ATM has admitted she lied. Needed some attention, I guess. But this one isn't a hoax. At a place of business in Columbus, employees caught removing McCain bumper stickers from customers' or other employees' automobiles have been warned they will be fired. Nor is this one. There are yards in Upper Arlington with both Obama-Biden signs and McCain-Palin signs. Should make for some interesting dinner table conversation. . . or sleeping arrangements. We've wondered if the folks who live in these half-million dollar homes sprouting Obama signs can't get their calculators to work, or if they are just patriotic, as Joe Biden My Time claims.

I saw the cutest Obama logo/badge at another location that had been photoshopped with CNN on it. I won't show it because Obama's puppeteer is a media guru and it's probably copyright. But you can probably google it.

If your property for public benefit, why not your investments?

"Eminent domain is the power governments have to confiscate, or take, private property as long as it is for a legitimate “public use” and property owners receive “just compensation.” Whereas eminent domain was initially intended to ensure that public services, such as roads and highways, were available to the public, local and state governments often use eminent domain for any project that is considered economically beneficial. Public use, as a practical matter, has morphed into a more ambiguous “public benefit.”

An estimated 10,000 cases between 1998 and 2002 involved projects where private parties benefit substantially from government seizures of property under the banner of economic development or urban redevelopment." Eminent domain, private property and redevelopment

Yes, those of us who invested in 401-ks, IRAs, Roths and other vehicles (with or without our employers) got a tax break--and we fueled the powerful economy we've enjoyed the last 25 years. We, the investors, aren't the ones who brought it all down. Hands off, Congress. Hands off, Barney and Barack. You've done enough damage.

Finally someone bold enough to use the S word. No wonder Obama's hiding in Hawaii. I imagine he went there to cover for his Kenyan birth certificate and now has just decided he'd better lie low, or, just lie.

This comment at the USNews blog was good: "I'm encouraged that Obama will make our senior citizens earn their paychecks. Michelle spoke at length that people will be made to work and there will be no shortages of volunteering opportunities. Let's clean up our streets, get seniors out raking leaves, picking up trash, cleaning up dog droppings in our parks, mowing city property, mentoring children in the schools and serving other useful functions. Every government dollar provided should be met with enthusiastic joy and reciprocity by the receiving citizen. An idle citizen is an unappreciated citizen."

How the government takes care of retirees

1) Don't reform Social Security.

2) Destroy the value of your 401-k and 403-b and any other investments you have through a subprime mortgage meltdown they could have stopped (or never started). Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Barack Obama made sure no one would stop their pet projects and kick-backs from the GSEs.

3) Steal the value of the 401-k that's left.

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation’s $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive. Workforce

Share the wealth, folks. Share the pain. You're next.

Dear Samuel Swann

I'm a big fan of free-circ serials and newspapers, and today I saw CityNewsUSA (serving Cleveland, Akron and Columbus) for the first time. I'm a retired librarian, and at one time I'd planned to write an article about the role of free-circs in the information food chain, lamenting that they aren't indexed (at least they weren't in 1999). They are an excellent source of news, advertising, and a good market for writers, but without being indexed, they are a hard to find segment. I gave up that project before I retired in 2000. By then I had collected about 40 that served our metropolitan area--pets, recreation, sports, leisure, politics, religion, fashion, home decor, cooking, parenting, book reviews, etc. Perhaps the internet advertising has solved the print indexing problem.

I was very impressed by your article "Making the Grade; gaps still exist between urban and suburban grad rates," on p. 8 of the Oct-23-29, Columbus edition. I just blogged on that topic two days ago, referencing a Columbus school teacher, the Wall Street Journal, and a current book review. Columbus and Cleveland were in the bottom five of 50 major cities. The WSJ article used the study you cited commissioned by America's Promise Alliance.

I am a big booster of marriage and parental involvement as the #1 best reducer of poverty and poor academic performance by children, and was glad to see that you included it as

The biggest reason we have so many drop outs in Cleveland is lack of parental involvement and the failure of the middle schools to continue the grammar school educational process."

I know your paper is a heavy supporter of Obama-Biden, however, I don't see this as a resource or funding problem as you also suggested. The Ohio parent who sued a few years ago was in a district that had much higher graduation rates with lower per-pupil state funding. For instance, Obama wants universal day care beginning in infancy, when we're already spending $11 billion on child care for at risk children, and it hasn't made any difference. How can children of poor single mothers compete with children from in tact homes with biological, married parents? (I'm speaking statistically--this is not to say individual single parents can't or won't do a good job.)

Keep up the good work of reminding parents that children need their involvement to succeed--and I would add a reminder that Uncle Sam is a poor step-father.

More wrong headlines

Greenspan admits errors
Now maybe the Democrats can take the stand and admit their errors? Don't hold your breath. The most breathtaking statement in this article by Kara Scannel in WSJ (Kara, don't you realize your job too is going down the tubes?)

"Greenspan dodged and weaved."

The finest weavers in the country first tied us in knots and now sit unraveling our economy in Congress. Barney Frank. Chris Dodd. Barack Obama. John Kerry. Ted Kennedy. The fraternity of fixers.

Forecasting, Kara, is not the problem. There clearly was time 18 months ago to stop this blood bath. Many Republicans tried to save the sinking ship, including John McCain and George Bush, and they were blocked by accusations of racism and defeating the dreams of the poor. And you guys who write that puerile, journalism school 101 nonsense as the "news" for WSJ, NYT, WaPo and USAToday just went along, and along and along. You never dug deep, never ask questions, but if the truth did peep through, you buried it somewhere beyond paragraph 15.

For edification, Kara, please read, "Would the last honest reporter please turn out the lights"

If there were no Fox News, I might be 2 or 3 points higher in the polls

Barack Obama told liberal journalist Matt Bai. Every major news source grovels before this man reporting or distorting every thought, word, and move. If there's one that doesn't, he whines about that alternative, the one that provided him with a long interview on O'Reilly, putting him at length in front of an audience who might otherwise tune him out because of the mainstream bias. The broadcast and cable media which has provided us with a steady frame-up of Republican Sarah Palin on ABC, NBC and CNN. This man's fragile ego is amazing! Palin has smiled through all the muck and yuk, and he's a cry baby. He and Team Obama cry "racist" at the most non-racial terms, like "that one," and "socialist." Which backbone is made of steel, is more prepared for the crisis Joe Biden is threatening?

It's hard to pin him down on legislation, however, he does write letters, and it's excruciatingly clear in this one to the FCC about a year ago (Oct. 22, 2007) about how he plans to further restrict our freedoms. Note certain themes, then remember "community organizer" and "ACORN," the oak tree harvest of Saul Alinsky. In your face, swamp the opposition, storm the meetings, community input. Words matter. History matters.

U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) today sent the following letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin J. Martin, calling on him to launch an independent review panel to develop proposals to further promote media ownership diversity. According to press accounts, following an insufficient 30-day review, the FCC intends to modify existing ownership rules by allowing greater media market consolidation. This would allow large media outlets to become larger, potentially cutting out small business, women and minority-owned firms. Minority owned and operated newspapers and radio stations play an important role in the African American and Latino communities and help bring minority issues to the forefront of our national dialogue.

However, the Commission has failed to recognize the vital role these outlets play in our democracy and has not done enough to further the goals of diversity in the media. In the letter, Obama also asks for the FCC to reconsider the Chairman’s proposed consolidation timeline and start a public review of any specific proposed rule modifications. He also asks Martin to complete a study of the responsibilities that broadcasters have to the communities in which they operate.

Obama and Senator John Kerry have previously written to Kevin Martin asking him to address the issue of minority media ownership, and the impact that new rules would have on opportunities for minority, small business, and women owned firms. http://obama.senate.gov/press/071022-obama_fcc_polic/

In case you don't understand how "community" and "diversity" is used these days by special interest groups, let's look at an example in my quiet, suburban community, Upper Arlington, Ohio when parents went to the library board to ask that explicit, how-to gay publications (bundles of free-circ, boiler-plate newspapers) be removed from the library lobby. Not removed from the collection, but removed from the lobby. Representatives of the gay community packed the meeting, objected (they didn't even live in UA) on the basis of state funding of public libraries. The result? The publications were removed from the lobby, and brought inside the library and placed on an expensive, specially designed unit, now even more prominent. No library is required to be a launch site for free materials that are primarily supported by advertising--not gay newspapers, not church bulletins, not health insurance plans designed to look like health advice. The parents lost, just as they lost the computer filtering battle, and the x-rated video battle.

The power of special interest groups over the media even without new legislation was perfectly clear when Dr. Laura, the 2nd highest rated talk show, literally disappeared over night in 2001 because she was attacted by powerful pro-gay groups when she advised against gay adoption of infants, believing as a counselor and orthodox Jew that children thrive best in a home with a mother and father. A posse of thirty liberal Christian pastors in Columbus has tried to get Rod Parsley bounced by going after his tax exempt status.

This, my readers, is "community" and "diversity" in the 21st century. Not community standards, but "community input." It isn't your community--it's any group that calls itself a community. Since virtually every organization, non-profit and church ministry now receives government money, this leaves them wide open for pressure groups like ACORN or one of their little squirrelly off-shoots planting seeds.

Luther recommended book burning--his own

There's nothing like the political season to enjoy some good name calling and personal smears. No one mastered this like Martin Luther, who struggled with the Roman church whose defenders thought he'd gone too far in his reforms, and the other Reformers who thought he hadn't gone far enough. Coxcombs and blockheads, he called them. Today at my other blog, I write about his suggestion that his own books be burned because he'd learned so much from his critics.

How much for child care and development?

Obama's concern for children (who make it through the birth canal and aren't a product of a botched abortion) is evident on his web page under "Education." I can't find details on the proposed costs, but here's the bare bones for early childhood education.

1. Zero to Five Plan: The Obama-Biden comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan will provide critical support to young children and their parents. Unlike other early childhood education plans, the Obama-Biden plan places key emphasis at early care and education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten. Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state "zero to five" efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school.
2. Expand Early Head Start and Head Start: Obama and Biden will quadruple Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both.
3. Affordable, High-Quality Child Care: Obama and Biden will also provide affordable and high-quality child care to ease the burden on working families.

Would you like to take a guess at what we've been spending under mean old President Bush, those heartless Republicans? Would you believe ELEVEN BILLION in FY 2004 and FY 2005?

For both Fiscal Years (FY) 2004 and 2005, $4.8 billion in Federal CCDF funding was available through block grants to all 50 States, the District of Columbia,5 Territories, and 261 Tribal grantees in FY 2004 and 265 Tribal grantees in FY 2005 (representing over 500 Indian Tribes). Through CCDF and other funding streams available for child care––including State Matching and Maintenance of Effort (MOE) funds, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) dollars transferred to CCDF or spent directly by States on child care services, and Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) funds––over $11 billion was available for child care in FY 2004 and FY 2005. Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF)Report to Congress for FY 2004-2005

To hear Obama tell, you'd think America's poor children have been left on street corners and with great grandmothers while their mothers go to work in sweat shops. These huge block grants to the states began back in the mid-90s under "welfare reform" so that mothers who needed to work had safe and reliable child care. I've looked through hundreds of these alphabet soup programs. I do have concerns about their effectiveness, however, lack of funding and pie-in-the-sky goals aren't it.

Keep in mind there's no hard evidence that Head Start type programs, even after 40 years, have any long term affect, because these youngsters will continue to compete their entire lives with children who have come from enriched environments, with two parents who value education. True, they would be even further behind if they hadn't learned to sit still, follow instructions, the names of colors, how to stand in line, etc., but they won't catch up no matter how many billions Obama or Bush throws their way.

Marriage is now the great divide in social class, education and wealth, and our government programs have been discouraging marriage for decades giving women with children money and keeping the fathers out of the home. The government "helps" discourage achievement, because benefits might be lost as one moves up the social and salary scale. A few hours a day in even the best enriched program cannot balance or play catch up--its a fairy tale that liberals, conservatives and religious people want to believe, in part I think, because there is so much government money waiting for those who do. Whatever gains they achieve by attending even good pre-schools are lost by second or third grade. There is some evidence that keeping mainstream kids in universal child care environments holds them back and creates more problems for their families, so perhaps thats the BO-Biden plan for fairness.

What to do with information?

Repackage and distribute for others to repackage and distribute for others to repackage and distribute, etc., etc. It's a commodity with a price tag and value added taxes, with distribution systems, with CEOs and worker bees, and it's much, much bigger than Wal-Mart, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and the federal government combined. Information, of course is important in education, but it is by far the biggest component in social services. It is sliced and diced, molded and shaped, digitized and dramatized, sifted, shifted, and sh*tted.

Since I was 5 years old I've been in the information business, and before that I had a sharp eye and was taking it all in without realizing it, analyzing, puzzling and disgorging it to anyone who would listen or look at my drawings (before I could read or write). With nearly 20 years of formal education, and probably fifty required, no-credit workshops, I went on to help other people find and redistribute information--helped them find obscure details for their novels, graduate from college, locate jobs, get tenure and promotion, nail down grants to do research, find a formula for a baby gorilla rejected by its mother, and bake blackbirds in a pie. I even published my own research on agricultural publications and home libraries by examining bits and pieces of other people's research who had done likewise.

In my pursuit to dig out, disgorge and distribute information, I held hands, wiped tears, observed love affairs, translated documents, got blisters on my ear from phone calls, created web pages, compiled bibliographies, nodded off in hundreds of meetings, lectured at conferences, ruined my rotator cuff and placed shaky fingers of the elderly on keyboards. I mopped water from leaking ceilings, tore fingernails changing print cartridges, handed out tissues, woke up sleeping students, and brought blueprints home, all in the name of organizing and distributing information. In thanks for my efforts for information I received a paycheck, benefits, thank you cards, flowers, and the occasional lunch out or box of pastries. In the late summer of 2000 I had five retirement parties. Two years later when the new library I helped design opened, I never even got an invite to the open house.

I'm eight years into retirement and think maybe it was all for nothing. 1) Repackaging of information is a huge industry in itself--but that information when it trickles down to the ordinary person doesn't seem to change lives or matter much. 2) Our ever expanding education system has created a class of people that expects and usually gets more, often by producing something other than information. It has also created yet another class, similarly well educated, who say it isn't fair for people with PhDs or MDs to earn more than social workers or government clerks, as they repackage and distribute information to earn their livings, but never produce anything.

More will follow.

CNN's ugly trick interview with Palin

The interviewer, Drew Griffin, took a comment from Byron York, where he reported some of the complaints about Palin within a longer piece basically praising her, then tells her on camera, a conservative has written it about her. Well, true, Byron York is conservative but the reviewer has turned his words inside out and upside down to throw her off. Really foul. Or fowl, as in "chicken" since this guy didn't seem able to get her on her policies and ideas. So I wrote CNN a complaint. They replied:

This auto reply is to thank you for commenting on CNN’s 2008 Election Coverage.

While we are unable to personally reply to every e-mail, your comments are important to us, and we do read each and every one. Comments become part of the viewer response report that is prepared and made available each day to our producers and senior management.

You betcha I won't be watching and waiting. Nor will I be watching election coverage by CNN now that I've seen how they lie. It's one thing to be in bed with Obama, but it's another to make us watch the love making.

Here's Byron's assessment of Palin:

". . . a look at Palin’s 20 months in power, along with interviews with people who worked with her, shows her to be a serious executive, a governor who picked important things to do and got them done — and who didn’t just stumble into an 80 percent job-approval rating."

He then went into great detail outlining her accomplishments and challenges. But according to the CNN interview, she's just a rube from the sticks.

The Obama Money Machine--Where's it coming from, where is it going?

African Americans were asking this question even before he was the chosen one. Video of Cornel West at Tavis Smiley Presents.



Comments at "The Empire and Inequality Report" via Black Agenda Reports, where it was noted that when he doodled waiting to give his speech, he drew a picture of himself.

Obama's power-worshipping campaign book The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006) - the book to which Obama refers reporters asking him for policy specifics behind his often vague statements - refers to the United States' rapacious, savagely unequal and fundamentally "materialist" capitalist economy as the nation's "greatest asset."

Audacity absurdly praises the "American system of social organization" and "business culture" on the grounds that U.S. capitalism "has encouraged constant innovation, individual initiative and efficient allocation of resources" (8). It commends "the need to raise money from economic elites to finance elections" for "prevent[ing] Democrats...from straying too far from the center" and for marginalizing "those within the Democratic Party who tend toward zealotry" and "radical ideas" (like peace and justice). It praises fellow centrist Senator and presidential rival Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for embracing "the virtues of capitalism" (9) and applauds her "recognizably progressive" husband Bill Clinton for showing that "markets and fiscal discipline" and "personal responsibility [are] needed to combat poverty" (10) - an interesting reflection on the militantly corporate-neoliberal Clinton administration's efforts to increase poverty by eliminating poor families' entitlement to public cash assistance and privileging deficit reduction over social spending.

Obama's badly mis-titled book audaciously lectures poor people on their "duty" to feel "empathy" for wealthy oppressors (12) - including Bush and Cheney, who are "pretty much like everyone else"(13) - and on their need to understood how well off and "free" they are compared to their more truly miserable counterparts in Africa and Latin America (14). It deletes less favorable contrasts with Western Europe and Japan, the most relevant comparisons, where dominant norms and institutional arrangements produce significantly slighter levels of poverty and inequality than what is found in the hierarchical U.S (15).

Paul Street's article appears in Black Agenda Report --I couldn't get the link to the notes to work, put I've left in the numbers. You know how librarians swoon over bibliographies.

Headline gets it wrong

"Markets fall as fears of slump span world"No, it's fears of Obamanomics--higher taxes, more trade restrictions, more powerful unions and more environmental regulations. If you are wealthy, better to sleep on your cash in the "mattress" and sit this one out until your well-paid accountantants and lawyers can find the loopholes. Investors and money managers aren't stupid. A president like FDR who took a struggling market in 1932 and artificially inflated it with more government programs but no real job growth, extending the Depression another decade, is not building confidence. Even if Obama and the American voter haven't read history, chances are there are some out there in Japan and Germany who have.

Ode to a very bad plan
by Norma Bruce

Capitalists and Socialists alike
around the world
invested in our bad mortgages
bundled by our biggest banks
backed by our GSEs
promoted by our Congresses
protected by our Democrats
on the banking and finance committees
handing out with a wink big grants
to community organizers threatening
the writers of the mortgages
to fund the dream that
every Joe the Plumber
and each Maria the Barista
should have a PMI
they couldn't possibly afford
when the bubble burst
as all bubbles do.

Welcome University of Florida Facebook Friends

It was late when I noticed your visits (well, late for me anyway--about 9 p.m.), so maybe you've all come and gone. Look around, visit my other blogs, and my set-aside topics like family memories and poetry. I also have a special collection on finances, something you might want to consider as you prepare to launch yourselves to change the world. And thanks for the uptick on the stats!