Things I believe #2

Things I believe #2

I believe that "Don't judge me," in addition  to becoming the refuge of scoundrels in the public arena  has morphed, over the last decade or so, into one of the current en vogue copouts for sketchy personal behavior at all levels. 

                We see the seemingly out of control mother screaming at her child in public, for who knows what reason and of course we judge that action.  We're  human and we have,  to varying degrees, certain thresholds of what we consider as acceptable behavior.  In the same sense, we have enacted laws to enforce what we consider to be acceptable human activity. Society judges murder and theft as wrong. It is natural and to be expected. Like it or not, any thought  process which critically analyzes actions of another and decides internally if one finds said activity acceptable or not is judging.

       Should one state their opinion of an activity which they find outside the bounds of proper social action, there are those ready, nay eager, to label it as judgmental. Well, of course it is, just as  the person rendering said statement is, in their turn, being judgmental.

        Recently I garnered a lot of approval, but a small amount of flak for being critical ("judgmental") of the announced selection  of  Callista Gingrich as US ambassador to the Vatican. In doing so I reflected upon what is simply in the public record. Had I been similarly critical of Hillary Clinton, for whom  I also have relatively little regard, there would have been no such charges, but in the current environment, it seems that the more outré  and bizarre the current administration's actions and appointments  become,  the harsher is the backlash when such bad behavior is pointed out. 

        In the case of Gingrich, we have a serial womanizer who during the same period made Bill Clinton look like a monk (ok, ok, maybe not a monk, but less venal than Gingrich). Gingrich has openly  acknowledged cheating on his second wife while leading the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for allegations of perjury involving the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil case and the president's affair with Monica Lewinsky.

        His extramarital track record is such that speaking of  an affair that he carried on with a volunteer during his first campaign in 1974, one of his aides said, “We’d have won in 1974 if we could have kept him out of the office, screwing her on the desk.”

        Also tucked into the mix was the episode where he went to the hospital where his wife was recovering from surgery and tried to get her to sign papers related to their divorce while she was still coming out of anesthesia          

        That hasn’t stopped him from claiming positions of moral loftiness, decrying the impending downfall of our society, and penning books arguing, “There is no attack on American culture more deadly and more historically dishonest than the secular effort to drive God out of America’s public life.” His second ex- wife, (the one he was cheating with before he divorced the first one) in a 2010 interview, however, flatly stated, “He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected. … If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president.”

        Newt Gingrich's affair with his future (still married to the second one!) third wife  and seven year's extramarital squeeze, Callista Bisek, at the time an aide in the office of Wisconsin Rep. Steve Gunderson, was in full bloom on the eve of the Republican Revolution that propelled Gingrich to become House Speaker, in 1994. "It was  common knowledge on the Hill," according to a former colleague of Callista's in Gunderson's office. Certainly in Republican circles it was widely known ."  The former colleague's comments shed new light on the out-in-the-open nature of the Gingrich affair — years before Gingrich would petition his second wife for an "open marriage" in 1999.

       Callista, whom the former colleague remembers and describes as a "small-town girl from Wisconsin" openly discussed  her relationship with Gingrich at the office. "She was not veiled about it," he says. Callista would say things like, "Obviously you're aware of the relationship I have", (referring to Gingrich" the ex-staffer recalls.

       So, here are a couple of  questions for all you "don't judge me" types, who often actually use the phrase to mean, "Don't criticize Republicans, but we hated Obama":

        Are you being non-judgmental when you discriminate against an individual because of their sexuality? Are my gay friends who have been faithful to one another for 30 several years in the face of innumerable societal  pressures, children of a lesser God?

        Were you being non-judgmental when you decided that the previous POTUS was bad and this one good because of pigmentation?  How about when you question the former's  character in an utter absence of reason to do so, yet ignore the fact that in 2008, three Republican candidates had 9 wives between them and only the Mormon was faithful to one?

        Are you being non-judgmental when you chide someone for a political point of view which you immediately translate into what you believe to be a lack of moral character, even though your new POTUS has only been to church since his confirmation to attend either his own serial marriages or those of his children?  

        And finally: How do you make the many daily decisions of your own prejudiced and discriminatory lives life in the absence of reasoned judgment? Did you get a divine message saying "Behold my child, these are the people who are OK and these others aren't?" or did you weigh their behavior against some standard and "judge" it? Of course you didn't, did you, because you're not judgmental, you're just a bigot.       

Things I believe number 1

Things I believe

       I believe that nurture trumps nature most of the time. While I would argue that there are undoubtedly some humans born who are destined to grow into sociopaths and psychopaths ("put the puppy and the knife down, Damien!"), most humans are equipped at birth to mature into reasoning and reasonable persons. I say all that to say this: It is far more likely that your child's school behavioral problems and/or issues, if any, are the result of patterns and expectations either inculcated (or not) at home from early childhood. The odds that your kid is always right and everyone else is wrong are relatively tiny. If you are a whiny, entitled adult, the likelihood of your children being the same is high. If you would have your offspring mature into competent adults, act like one. In 20 years of secondary education experience, I rarely if ever saw a bad apple without the tree being close at hand.

        On a parallel note. If you want your child to take "challenging" courses to pump up their transcript, know this: the world of business doesn't give a rat's ass about the course title, but they care about how diligently you work. The same is true (or should be) of upper level secondary school courses. We are confronted, on  occasion, by parents who are apparently stunned, ergo angered,  by their child's  actually being graded commensurately with their effort, whether that merits an "A" or a "C." This isn't Little League, and there are no participation awards!        

       When you as a parent "hover" in and make the accusation that the entire educational system is wrong and your child flawless, you indict yourself. This is not to say that, on occasion,  children are blameless and the system is at fault. That happens, but probably  about as often an I one putt every green over 18 holes of golf.    

Sharing isn't always "nice"

"As President I wanted to share with Russia (at an openly scheduled W.H. meeting) which I have the absolute right to do, facts pertaining to terrorism and airline flight safety," Trump wrote in a series of tweets. "

Various sources disagree: "The Post is withholding most plot details, including the name of the city, at the urging of officials who warned that revealing them would jeopardize important intelligence capabilities. “Everyone knows this stream is very sensitive, and the idea of sharing it at this level of granularity with the Russians is troubling,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who also worked closely with members of the Trump national security team. He and others spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject. (Note: this is a responsible newspaper acceding to requests not to disclose all the information relative to the story in the interest of national security."  If only Trump took it that seriously. 

Do you, "have the absolute right" Sir? Do you really? Or do you simply believe that any faux pas, lapse of judgment, or ill consider action is justified after the fact, simply by your having done it? You didn't think so some time back. As candidate you said:

"The secretary of state was extremely careless and negligent in handling our classified secrets."

"WikiLeaks proves even the Clinton campaign knew Crooked mishandled classified info, but no one gets charged? RIGGED!"

"What she did is a criminal act. If she's allowed to run I would be very, very surprised."

All the above were statements tweeted by candidate Trump, and much more specificity was evident in numerous campaign smear speeches. To be clear; I think Mrs Cinton's mishandling of classified information was wrong, but then I, as an active duty military member with a Secret clearance, never knowingly did so, let alone with a Russian, so perhaps my standards are higher. 

Back to the original statement, however, which should have an "oops, my bad" immediately preceding it.  Does in fact, the President have, as a sycophant Senator from Idaho alleges, such power that, if he does it, it's legal, period?  Richard Nixon made this same allegation shortly before his resignation.  


Here is some data to help us decide: all of it is from government sources, either agencies of US Code.
"Government policies dictate that any piece of classified information is “owned” by the Executive agency which created it (ed. note: This would be the CIA, who was blindsided by Trump's release of material, but moreover the source of it.) even if the record itself is no longer (or never was) in the custody of that agency. Agencies determine the ongoing sensitivity of their information, or “equity,” and mandate its protection accordingly. Declassification is a determination that information would no longer damage national security if released, and no longer warrants withholding from the public." Did you get that? "Agencies determine", not the President...!
Additionally, there are laws which specify that this shouldn't  be a unilateral decision, made "on the fly" in the Oval Office: 

The Intelligence Authorization Act for FY2013, S. 3454, 112th Congress, as reported by the Senate Intelligence Committee, contained a number of measures to address the disclosure of classified information by federal employees, whether authorized or not....... 85 Section 504 of the bill, as passed by both houses of Congress, requires "a government official who approves a disclosure of classified information... or to another person, (and since the nature of the discussion was "explained " by Trump, it was released to the media as well.) to first report the decision and other matters related to the disclosure to the congressional intelligence committees."  Trump, who apparently disdains such things, failed to do so. 

      Section 4.1(g) requires agency heads and the Director of National Intelligence to “establish controls to ensure that classified information is used, processed, stored, reproduced, transmitted, and destroyed under conditions that provide adequate protection and prevent access by unauthorized persons.” If “transmitted” is read to include oral dissemination and “unauthorized persons” is read to mean persons who do not meet the criteria set forth in Section 4.1(a),72 then it would seem that agency heads who approve leaks could be in breach of their responsibilities under the Order. 

       The significance here, is that even if Trump alleges that he, as Executive Branch head, (a bastardization of the actual intent, since the DCIA is the Agency head in fact) he, Trump, is still in violation in the sense that he just did it, notifying no one of his intent.  

     So what does it all mean? Well, if it were anyone else, the following would almost certainly be underway:  "section 53 Stiffer penalties—fines of up to $10,000 and imprisonment for up to 10 years—attach when a federal employee transmits classified information to anyone that the employee has reason to believe is an agent of a foreign government.........," unless of course we are to believe that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak aren't really "agents of a foreign government."  It should also be noted that the law doesn't differentiate between  those we like or those we don't trust.

Since the sources for the Israeli's angry reception of said news are, by the nature of the game, not publically named, Trump again gets to call it all "fake" news. It must be noted that recent actions of the Trump White House are so bizarre that it would be a fool's errand to attempt to "fake" items more outrageous than the day to day circus that currently shames our nation. If Donald Trump were a beginning teacher in Orange County, Florida, he'd have already been let go under the 90 day rule. 

The Public Interest?

        It's truly depressing to reflect upon what the current group of Republican majority members of Congress call a "Victory." A recent Associated Press article cites the "14 Obama Era" regulations" the current GOP leadership has pushed to repeal and whose repeals are being touted as "in the public interest."

        One of the favorite GOP shell games is referring to "excessive regulation" as  almost synonymous with "any and all government  regulation." Once the body politic has been scammed into believing that lie, the door is open to deregulation of damned near anything in the interest of special interest groups while citing the public good, which is far more frequently  victim, than  victor.

        Some of the more contradictory deregulations of the last 100 days would allow: Contractors to hide labor law violations, Easier access by hackers and identity thieves to personal data maintained by cable and cellular providers, Mentally unstable persons' access to firearms, Far less restricted pollution of waterways by mine operators, and the list goes on. I doubt that any "ordinary (whatever that means today) citizen," if asked, would support such deregulation, but the Trumpists say it's good and logic becomes the casualty.

       In truth, there are sometimes government regulations which seem onerous to persons who profit from the damage they can do to our environment in an unregulated scenario. These affected entities line the pockets of legislators who then oppose such regulation. On the one hand, some (many) on the Right oppose the Affordable Care Act. Any one of these with a shred of honesty would likely, in private, admit that the name "Obama" is the primary driver of their objections, since the vast (as in 99%) majority of them will/would be essentially un-impacted by the provisions of said law, while many who have been previously uninsured will be helped, saving us all money in the final analysis. Those who oppose the ACA, rather than being honest owners of their prejudices will cite "rising costs" as a reason for its repeal. These same persons will blindly accept that their own private health insurance or that their cost share or co-pays are increasing at the same rate, without the same objection. All health care costs in the US are increasing, and it isn't the fault of insurers, but of the incredible lobbying clout of the drug industry.       

  

      A considerable number of those who oppose government regulation should pause and reflect what have been the consequences of  failure to regulate over the years. Start with Medicare paying full price for an Epi-pen, which carries (for the manufacturer) a profit margin of $600/$8 or 7500%! Then consider the S and L collapse, triggered by failure to adequately regulate or limit activities of Savings and Loan institutions, whose  greed driven operators  considered these grossly under-regulated entities  a license to steal. And steal they did, to the tune of costing us all an estimated $500,000,000! For comparison, without even adjusting for inflation between the 1990s and today, that's far more than 2 years' worth of Medicaid spending.

        Leap ahead to the housing bubble collapse of 2008, when another George Bush was at the helm when the recently under-regulated commercial banking industry almost brought down the entire economy.

       Sadly, most Americans are bombarded with the bitching and moaning of industries or business moguls with access to the media whores they pay to parrot their drivel re: "excessive" regulation, so we rarely hear of the good things that government regulation has done to protect those of us who are at the mercy of entrepreneurial malfeasance. We are treated to commercials paid for by Exxon, where a female talking head in a business suit tells us how grateful we should be to the company because of all the good things it brings us. Of course there is no mention of the $104 million paid by Exxon to NYC for ground water pollution, or the $8.8 billion Exxon Valdez disaster, or the half a billion Maryland pollution verdict, or the $21 million Arkansas spill, or the $250 million New Jersey pollution lawsuit. Of course none of these take into account the numerous fracking and climate change denials by, and lawsuits against, Big Oil.

       What don't we hear? Start with the fact that, until recently,  we have seen almost zero bank failures since the Glass - Steagall Banking Act passed in the wake of the US economic disaster of the great depression. It is worthy of note that over the subsequent years, the provisions of Glass-Steagall have been progressively weakened, leading to the debacle of the housing bubble collapse. The reason that the S &L disaster happened 25 years earlier was that they were never covered under Glass- Steagall. It's interesting, isn't it, that we seem to see these waves of public indignation and spasmodic regulation in the "public interest" only after such calamitous events, even though such events should never have been allowed to happen if the public was ever really the focus of legislative concern?

        So, have there been any good stories about regulation? Sure there have. While we almost constantly hear Big Pharma cite the FDA's approval process for new drugs and/or their applications as "excessive regulation,"  we rarely hear the name Frances Kelsey, who was after all just another one of those damned government regulators.  FDA inspector Frances Kelsey prevented Thalidomide's approval within the United States despite a great deal of pressure from the pharmaceutical company and FDA supervisors. Kelsey felt the application for thalidomide contained incomplete and insufficient data on its safety and effectiveness. because of her insistence on acting in the public interest, we were spared the wave of children born with profound physical deformities which swept Europe and Canada in 1960-62.  

        So, what have we learned?  We should realize that regulation of major industries will never be popular with those well heeled and politically active entities, and that, unfortunately, those of us in the body politic who benefit from such legislative efforts will probably be unaware of the benefits of said efforts. It's doubtful that those left alive because their mentally unbalanced neighbor couldn't get a gun during his psychotic break (an occurrence which has become easier, thanks to GOP malfeasance) will step back, reflect and say "Thank God he couldn't get his hands on an M-16." The nature of greed seems inherently to accompany the lack of concern for the welfare of others.

        Those affected by such regulation are well heeled and influential, while those of us who such laws are meant to protect generally are not. That is the nature of a government run by some of the people for the express benefit and financial well being of others, but by no means most, of the people whose collective interests they are supposed to represent. Meanwhile, our representatives, or far too many  of them, tell us "The check's in the mail and we won't......" Well, you know the rest.       

Walter Williams, wrong again.

      The first 300 words of this are the words I'm limited to when writing to the editorial staff of the local daily newspaper. What follows that is what I'm writing to the more literate who will or should read the blog page.

        "Walter Williams is a bright guy, which then begs the question of why he says such stupid things in his op-ed column with such stunning regularity. At times, Mr. Williams seems to take almost a perverse pleasure in slandering his own in the name of "conservatism" and  selling newspapers. In this he is little better  than an educated Rush Limbaugh.

        He frequently invokes his "Economist" creds, and then  draws stunningly bad parallels and conclusions.

        His latest column "Trade Ignorance and Demagoguery" is an attempt to paint a rosier picture of our overall financial deficit with China than exists in the real world. He admits to a huge deficit in balance of payments, meaning that we spend  about four times as much "buying Chinese" than they do "buying American" in terms of goods and services.

         At no time does he mention that, to working Americans, this means jobs lost due to manufacturers shipping them offshore. He then cites the  Chinese investment in US financial markets as what he calls a "current account" surplus, and as such he is again, correct. The real problem with his illogic is that Chinese investment in financial instruments and ownership of US real estate benefits only those who sell it to the Chinese, which certainly isn't anyone we of the middle class hang out with. In summary: trade deficit hurts working men and women. Current account surplus benefits only the top of the economic food chain.

        Later, in an even more bizarre statement he says: "....every President except Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose administrations ushered  in the Great Depression" Really? The Great Depression began in 1929, and FDR was inaugurated in 1933.  He took office with a national unemployment rate of 32%.  Like blaming Obama for the housing bubble collapse, and just as wrong!

   Now for the rest of the story: Williams is prone to start a column with something valid and then go off the rails as he does here. He makes several good observations re: the negative aspect of tariffs and trade restrictions, but never addresses the reasons why such deficits exist in the first place, among which are labor costs (less there than here), need for American workers to retrain in more technical specialties, and foremost, the shift in control of raw materials. That last is irreversible and uncorrectable, it is, simply, what it is. He also seems to care little about those who are financially disadvantaged, either by lack of education and training, inability to compete, or institutionalized obstacles to success.

        Where he also errs is in failing to observe that those most hurt by these goods and services imbalances are those whose manufacturing jobs have been lost because of cheaper production capabilities elsewhere. In Walter's World, if the wealthy are selling US real estate, T bills, and stocks to the Chinese and getting rich doing it, all is well with the body politic. Not bloody likely.

        The statement which was revelatory to me regarding Professor Williams inability to tell the truth was the implication that somehow FDR's administration "Ushered in the Great Depression."  That any college educated individual, let alone an  Economics professor,  could make such a statement, is mind boggling. Here are some facts (remember facts?) about that time period:

        In 1929, as in 2007 and 2008, there was little regulation of financial markets or banks. There was actually almost none in the 1920s. Bankers could, and did, play the stock market with customer's savings  funds.  Between 1929 and 1933 (Hoover's inaugural to FDR's inaugural) over 6,200 banks failed, costing depositors losses of (adjusted for today's dollars) more than $60 billion.  

       In 1929, as now, (only worse) there was significant income inequality in America and the upper classes couldn't have cared less.

        In 1929, in fact through the 1920s, America had gradually shifted from a heavy manufacturing economy to a consumer products economy , yielding two conditions. The first, over production, was a direct result of the industrialists belief that "if we make it they will buy it." Driven by the growth of the advertising industry and fueled by the advent of radio advertising, the second condition, massive consumer debt, followed hard on its heels.

        When the stock market tanked in 1929, Hoover's first action was an attempt to increase federal revenues and spur domestic consumption by imposing a new and almost punitive, tariff. The Smoot- Hawley tariff, proposed by two western state Republicans,  imposed tariffs as high as 59% on some items. Instead of generating revenues, it simply spread the depression into foreign markets. Like the current President, who has thrown the term "tariff" around like Wonder Woman's golden lasso, apparently Hoover didn't get it either.  If we raise tariffs on foreign products so our people have to buy domestically, those foreign nations will retaliate by raising tariffs on what they buy from us and both of us will lose trade, damaging the economy. It has been proven exhaustively over time,  but apparently they don't teach it in military school  

        Early attempts to force Hoover to act to help the bulk of Americans who were hungry, and jobless, like the WWI veteran "Bonus Marchers" fell on deaf ears, being simply referred to by Hoover as "socialist"

        FDR took office with the highest unemployment rate of the 20th century, and possibly ever, but there are no records for the previous "panics" in our history.  He was not responsible for anything whatsoever leading to the Great Depression.

        Jump ahead to 2009. Barack Obama took  the oath of office under somewhat similar circumstances. The market had crashed, financial markets were hammered by the housing bubble collapse, specifically by the proliferation of now nearly  worthless bonds created by an under regulated banking industry to make money from nothing. Many CEOs of major financial houses didn't even understand what happened when it happened because of (again) an under regulated banking industry.

        The resultant ripples in the economy were much like "Great Depression Lite" Like Walter Williams, there are those ignorant souls who still blame the recovery's cost on the administration which inherited the mess.

        So what are the lessons we should take from this?

        First, that of the four largest recessions after the dismantling of the Bank of the United States in 1836, all have been either directly or in directly caused by the failure of the federal government to adequately regulate banking practices, especially what banks were and were not allowed to do with investor/depositor funds, or financial speculation by those least likely to suffer from its failure.

        Second, that these financial crises, were primarily started by persons, either bankers or industrialists,  whose means allowed them to weather the financial shoals, while the bulk of the population  suffered immense hardships. These "business cycles" were exactly as described by Karl Marx in 1867's "Das Kapital" volume I.

        Third, that banks became safer in America following the enactment of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act in 1933, which created among other provisions, the FDIC, but more importantly, prohibited banks from engaging in risky speculation with depositor's funds. After a period of 66 years, however, greed won again. The Glass-Steagall Act's partial repeal in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act doubtlessly  contributed to the 2008 global credit crisis. Commercial banks around the world were saddled with billions of dollars in losses due to the excessive exposure of their investment banking arms to derivatives and securities that were tied to U.S. home prices.

        Will we ever learn that it is a fool's errand to expect an even playing field? Today, of course we are bombarded with the same old hype; that "excessive regulation" of business is the Satan spawn which threatens our well being. That left alone, it'll all be ok because large corporations and in fact small businesses, too, are honorable entities run by honorable men and women. we brush off  Big Pharma's  extortion of the general public and Medicare, as atypical, as aberrations.  Job one for the modern corporation, as taught  by any decent business school curriculum, is to maximize investor profit. What they ought to be allowed to do along the way is a very different consideration.

        A market economy is, I feel the best compromise to produce growth and implement the welfare of those who contribute to that growth, but those who reap the benefits at the top should be constrained by law to insure that those who produce their wealth are adequately compensated for their efforts.

        The age of robber barons like Rockefeller, Gould, Morgan and their ilk showed how severely the combination of lack of social conscience, unregulated greed and total market control  can hurt those of us not so fortunate as to be wealthy. That sort of unconstrained disdain for their fellow man, unregulated in the public interest, is simply a rich and greedy good old boys club. Unfortunately, we are currently in the grasp of a member of said organization in the White House.