New Politics

New Politics

"It's foolish to assume that the wealth of America was earned justly."--Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin.

An elderly, impaired president, an avowed socialist and stroke victim who is a senate candidate in Pennsylvania, this Barnes guy, how could people like this be nominated for national office? What voter or political party could support them?

"The El Dorado of Unearned Wealth"

A well regarded commentator was writing an article opposing fracking. Because the technology has been investigated to death and found innocent it was an article of mostly innuendo with references to "Gasline" and fishkills, examples that have long been put to rest but, in this era of zombies, can be resurrected as "might be" or "could happen" possibilities. Buried in this screed-disguised-as-reason was a comment on the people who sold their mineral rights to the gas miners. Most of these people are, of course, farmers. Their contracts were referred to as "the El Dorado of unearned wealth."

I always admire a well poisoner's good turn of phrase. "George Bush was born on third base and thought he hit a triple" was one of the cleverest of pointed, dismissive cruelties. Whether any part of the line is accurate, truth always takes a backseat to the bon mot. And this is especially true if there is clever collateral damage. How wonderful it is to paint all the sons of the wealthy with George Bush's brush! Makes you want to run out and burn their estates. Or at least rewrite the inheritance laws.

"The El Dorado of unearned wealth" is one of those lines. "El Dorado:" a myth believed and sought by crude, disease bearing, homicidal adventurers. "Unearned wealth." What could be worse? Unearned poverty? It does make the mind wander. How could we set this all straight? How do we define "earned" anyway? Does a neurosurgeon earn enough? What about a soldier? Or a good cleanup hitter?
Or does "earned" imply "worked for," sweated and labored for? In that light, all investment would be tainted. Interest would be a sin. (Who does that remind you of?)

All of these people have, in their mind somewhere, an unspoken hierarchy, a preferential list. Some things are inherently of more value than others. And this structure is not for we the people to decide. What we value is not up to us. Galton's large sampling must be trimmed down to include only special clubs, unions and groups. These Illuminati know the truth about us, our wants, needs and desires. They know our faults and foibles. And they know the solutions to our conflicts.

They have a warm and holy glow about them. We should be happy just to be allowed to be near them.

Elite Jobs

A subtle move is afoot in the halls of our esteemed leaders: There is developing a hierarchy of "approved professions" manifested by how college loans are managed. This is appearing in how the government handles its educational debtors.
There are no constraints on education costs. Lovely campuses, casual teaching workloads, top-heavy administrations all contribute to an expanding educational cost that exceeds medicine's. This is all done at a usurious interest rate with most close to 8%, all owed to the government. And you can't default on the government. 40% of students have at least one school loan and the national total is 1.2 trillion dollars. 18.2% is cosigned and last year 155 thousand people had their social security attached to pay for their grandchildren's defaulted loans.
But some students can cut their indebtedness entirely. Wipe them clean. How? Certain special professions are forgiven their loans. Who? People who go into government work or nonprofits. Why? Why indeed.

Abuse of the Corpse

Benghazi has been exhumed.

From Al Capone to Watergate to Martha Stewart the cover-up has always been more important than the crime. Whether that is wise for a society is a reasonable question but the "why?" in a society like ours is more understandable: We hate making difficult value judgments. We judge the interference with process more harshly than the crime itself because it is a cleaner--and easier--decision. We might not be able to get you for the murder but we will get you for abuse of a corpse. And so it will be with this stupid Benghazi debate. The Republicans will hammer away at the idiotic YouTube claim and the Democrats will hammer away at the Republican political motives.

But the real unanswered question will continue to be unasked: Why didn't they help those guys?

A Short Summary of America and its Debt

"Now remember, we've already done more than a billion dollars' worth of cuts, so we need to get some credit for that."---Harry Reid speaking about expenditures. This is a quote from the leader of the Senate during debates over spending and taxing, euphemistically known as raising revenue.

The U.S. deficit--what we spend versus what we take in as taxes--is 1.2 trillion--TRILLION--dollars. Annually.

Our debt--the sum of our accumulated deficits which we pay interest on (as we did borrow it to spend it)--is 16 trillion--TRILLION--dollars. This does not include the future costs of current commitments.

Despite the vote this year, the vast majority of voters polled felt there was too much government in American lives. Yet, according to the most recent (2009) OECD statistics, government expenditures per person in France are $18,866.00 and in the U.S., $19,266.00.

But a comparison of taxation does not match the European expenditures. Government spending in Australia is 33.1% of GDP, and tax revenues are 27.1%. Likewise, government spending in Norway is 46.4% and revenues are 41%. But government spending in the U.S. is 42.2%, but revenues are 24%.

So...
1. We want more from government in our lives than we admit.
2. We are not willing to pay for those subsidies.
3. We elect laughable leadership and we do not care.

Work and Jobs

There is a dishonest fragment in this staggeringly dishonest presidential campaign: The debate about jobs.

How can Romney run against Obama with both the assertion that the government can not create jobs and that Obama has failed to create them? This position is as stupid as Obama's position that government can create jobs and he has done a good job of it. Perhaps because these positions are so illogical, Obama has sought safety in accusing Romney of incredible crimes and Romney has responded with politeness. The United States is close to become an also-ran in economic production after leading the world for 150 years and the two candidates for the presidency are playing Truth or Dare.

Built into this problem is that anything the government spends is, by definition, a positive contribution to the Gross Domestic Product. If it spends X dollars on a failed cold fusion company, X dollars on teachers or X dollars on breakthrough method of cheap hydroponics all--all--would contribute X dollars to the GDP despite being of grossly different importance and value to the nation.

Here's a little number to ponder. In the last three years things have been economically bad in the Western world and are beginning to decline in the East. These conditions are the result of a number of serious errors in political judgment as well as irresponsible public behavior. In that three year period 2.6 million Americans got jobs with new employers; 3.1 million Americans went on Social Security Disability. For every five people who got jobs, six people went on disability.

That is more than an "economic malaise." That is a restructuring of the nation's mindset. It is what has kept South America from mirroring the success of North America and is destroying the living standards of Europe now.

It is hard to imagine, after all of the world's struggles and experiments, that the United States, the most successful economic and political entity in the history of the world, would be facing an election which demands a reassessment of the relationship between a government and its citizens. What is worse is there seems to be no one on the political landscape willing even to broach the topic.

Armstrong and Roving Bands of the Morally Outraged

An American nonprofit body called the USADA is taking Lance Armstrong's French medals away. They successfully blocked Armstrong's complaints in an American court. Will the USADA now send their police to pick the medals up?

Armstrong's original lawsuit challenged the USADA's right to bring any judgment against him and criticized the USADA for ignoring "500 to 600" drug tests they say Armstrong had passed. His attorneys said the USADA was, instead, bringing a case based on witness testimony, known as "non-analytical positive testing."

Non-analytical positive testing.

Armstrong has said the agency violates his constitutional rights to due process. USADA officials say their process is fair and widely recognized by sports agencies across the globe.

That is apparently not entirely true.

In fact, the latest charges from USADA has spawned a turf war between competing sports agencies. The Switzerland-based International Cycling Union said USADA did not have jurisdiction to pursue the case and urged the American agency to turn over evidence to them to determine if an investigation should proceed. On the other hand, the World Anti-Doping Agency supported USADA's claims of jurisdiction. Any similarity     between these and the jurisdictional disputes of FBI and the CIA are coincidental; the FBI and the CIA are not self-appointed.

The International Cycling Union is the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the world governing body for sports cycling that oversees international competitive cycling events, issues licenses, enforces rules--particularly doping--classifies races and manages the points ranking system across mountain, road and track biking for both men and women, amateur and professional. It also oversees world championships.

The World Anti-Doping Agency was created in 1999 by the International Olympic Committee after it stole the march on the other nonprofits and held the world's first World Conference on Doping in Sports (in Lausanne, of course).

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) itself  is the national anti-doping organization for the Olympic movement in the United States. It is non-profit (of course) and non-governmental (it receives $10 million a year from the U.S.).

The particulars of the case are not so important (although arson, child molestation and armed robbery have shorter statutes of limitation than many of the charges against him.) Armstrong's personal achievements far outstrip his athletic ones. For this reason he is held in some considerable regard and, consequently,  self-appointed disciplinary agencies should be on firm footing when dealing with him. Otherwise they run the risk of appearing to be scolding, free-booting, blue-nose self-righteous clerics looking for a witch to dunk and retrieving awards they did not give--reminiscent of those constantly outraged groups that periodically put George Bush on trial in abstentia in college classrooms during lunch.

Here is a statement from Armstrong's site: http://lancearmstrong.com/news-events/lance-armstongs-statement-of-august-23-2012

Greatness Among the Little People

Our politicians and moral leaders are also health care professionals. We should have known this: Remember when the Washington administration taught us how to sneeze? There is very little they think us capable of. And they think very highly of themselves. A bad combination.

Now comes the esteemed New York administration banning large drinks with sugar in them. No more "large coffee, cream and sugar" for me. Banned? The entire menu of popular sugary drinks found in delis, fast-food franchises and sports arenas, but not diet sodas, dairy based drinks or alcohol.

As crazy as this sounds, what is difficult to understand is the tolerance. Once you have made the moral decision to ban a neighbor's behavior, why be forgiving, especially when the forgiven objects have so much to damn them, like alcohol?

How can the qualities of moral outrage be strained?

The Middle Ground Between Frick and Frack

For several years there has been a peculiar debate over Marcellus Shale drilling. So many opinions, intense opinions. Then, at an Allegheny College seminar April 2, 2012, a reporter recorded this exchange after one of the panelists lamented the lack of a "middle ground" in the discussion: "Lustgarten ..(a reporter)..agreed, noting that concern about the environmental impacts of Marcellus drilling has escalated into hyperbole and almost-hysteria — and he’s not sure why. “Any middle ground has been lost,” he said. “It’s dissolved into a false choice between frack and not frack, while attempts to educate the public has turned into panic.” "(Mary Spicer Meadville Tribune on Allegheny College conference)

The solution lies in the characterization of the conflict: This is not a "discussion." Indeed, how could one explain the press' reporting of the Dunkard Creek fish-kill, the radionuclide scare from Rolling Stone, the movie Gasland? It certainly is not a "discussion." The obvious answer is bias, a deep-seated judgment delivered before the evidence is in. Another is more pernicious: a visionary distortion, the belief that a certain outcome is desirable even if it is contradicted by facts or reality--a solution that exists only in the arrogant mind of its superior creator. As John Hanger wonderfully said, "Gas is compared implicitly to a mythical perfect alternative that none of us use." So the cure for cancer is likely in alternative medicine, education could be improved using the techniques of the Vulcans in "Star Trek," potency is improved by the powder made from a unicorn horn. A third is worse, these people do not have a good grasp on these topics and are unteachable--not because they are obdurate or enthusiastic but because they have no scientific or technical ability. They are out of their depth.

There is no "middle ground" for the bigot, the enthusiast or the stupid.

One cringes on hearing a politician use phrases like "Darwinism." The jury is in; these politicians, lawyers and other humanities graduates should accept that they are not qualified for any such topic. Most science students do not expect to understand quantum mechanics; these soft course students should abstain from commenting on science entirely.

The Press, the Bathoes and Groundhogs

The Cairo streets are alive with democratic fervor...or Islamic fervor...or something else. The economic crash was caused by greedy bankers...or inept regulators...or low interest rates...or something else. The health plan is a godsend...or a disaster...or unconstitutional...or something else. We are buffeted by conflicting winds of change. And, while the politicians and the press are episodically quite convinced and convincing, they are changable. Obama's State of the Union Speech was all spend and stimulus in the first half, all caution and frugality the second. Now it seems the leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012 is Jon Huntsman Jr.; where did he come from? Who decided that?

In 1954, June 18th, 480 men, led by an exile named Armas, armed and lightly trained by the United Sates invaded Guatemala with the intent of overthrowing the current president-for-life Arbenz. Their plan was not to engage the government forces because they knew they were too weak. (They lost half their men the first several days anyway--most at the hands of local townspeople.) This was convenient for Arbenz who was fearful that total destruction of this ragtag group would cast him as a tyrant in the eyes of the Americas. But while Armas had few men, he had a big radio--"The Voice of Liberation"--that touted itself as a jungle revolutionary station but was actually relayed through Honduras from Miami. This CIA funded effort gave out dramatic accounts of battles, heroes and victories as it charted a gradual advance of a nonexistent army towards its objective, the evil Arbenz. Eventually Arbanz resigned and Armas became president and the next assignation target.

Manipulation of information is as old as the Garden of Eden but usually less malevolent; it is usually just bias. Or conjecture. Or a result of a need to fill a space. The West--indeed everyone--is at a point where errors can have significant impact. Dithering, guessing or dogmatism are not going to be adequate responses to our highly leveraged problems. Probably the mob in Cairo is well intentioned, Jon Huntsman Jr. is likely a swell guy, the politicians in Washington may well know what they are doing but the world needs some leadership that is well grounded.

This country has no Delphi. And politicians--and the press--have to do more than come out every so often and make decisions based on whether or not they see their shadow.

Bathetic and Bathoic

A question has been raised about my use of the word "bathoic" in reference to Blagojevich rather than "bathetic." Bathos comes from the Greek word for depth (e.g. bathysphere) and has been used in that context as the depth or bottom: Samuel Johnson called a poem "the very bathos of insipidity." Pope redefined it in his poem Peri Bathous, a satire on contemporary poetry that he felt trivialized important subjects accidentally,thus debasing the very things they attempted to elevate. (One of his examples was presenting God as a baker.) More than presenting this art as low in the artistic hierarchy, he meant to show a decline, a distance between the high quality of artistic ancestors and the low quality of the descendants and hence a loss. Hogarth followed with his final etching, The Bathos, which shows more than just failure, it shows failure set in the relief of expectation. http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/18c/hogarth/30.html

The phrase "sublime to the ridiculous" first appears in Thomas Paine's Age of Man as "one step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." This implies a continuity, a rising progression from one to the other. Bathos, on the other hand does not; it implies a discontinuous fall closer to "the decline of the sublime to the ridiculous." It is used most often satirically, as anticlimax. And "bathetic" has become "syrupy, sentimental."

This fall, this decline, is lost in Samuel Johnson's--and the more humorous modern--meaning and I wanted to preserve it. My particular interest is the change of American leaders and culture over the years, the change from Washington to Nixon, from the world of ideas to conjecture. So I looked at "bathoic"--and coined it. I also decided to coin "Bathoe" and "Bathoes", to signify the principles in this decline.

Blind Bathoes and Elephants

A number a years ago a woman held up my neighborhood bank with a handgun. She was quickly arrested, tried and convicted. The judge--a bathoes character if there ever was one--sentenced her to nursing school.

I have never forgotten this story because it so typifies modern thinking. The judge felt that nurses were as a group upstanding, responsible, hardworking citizens. The distinguishing characteristic that separated nurses from others was their nursing degree. Therefore, he reasoned, this criminal would be improved by a nursing degree. You can catch almost anything in a hospital, why not responsibility and integrity. Indeed perhaps the entire community would be improved if everyone was conferred a nursing degree at birth.

Observations lead to generalizations. Sometimes these are brilliant, like Darwin. Sometimes they are only bigotry, like blacks are lazy or Asian girls can't drive. No observation is worth anything unless it is confirmed, critically. Science is not consensus, it is contentious. It is the battlefield of argument over inference. Information never, ever, implies; we infer. It is only after brutal analysis that information becomes meaningful.

Our current culture does not understand this and we will suffer for its ignorance. We look at home ownership and see that people who are homeowners seem to be better invested in their communities. We ask no further questions; we assume --infer--that home ownership is beneficial in itself. We ignore all the other possibilities--the buyer saved for his down payment so he was disciplined, the buyer did not buy until he had a good and stable job, the buyer had a stable family--all perfectly reasonable circumstances that might contribute to the successful homeowner demographic success. No, the house is the thing. People with college degrees earn more than their fellows without a degree, thus a degree is good for you. (Not a nursing degree this time around.) Do we have any idea if a 120 IQ woman with a degree out earns a 120 IQ woman without a degree? No, that study has never been done. So we slog on and encourage home ownership and college degrees with only the most superficial evidence.

Poor scientific thinking is more than erroneous, it distracts us from the truth. It misleads us as surely as an intentional, malicious lie. Years ago a seminal study was done on the mortality rates in cities versus farm communities in Great Britain. It showed a significantly higher mortality rate in urban communities. The conclusion was that pollution was very bad for you and plans were initiated to curb smog. Now it might well be that smog is terrible for one's health but the study omitted one point: It did not correct for smoking. When the statistics were later reviewed to eliminate the factor of smoking among the subjects, the difference went away; the survival rate among the two communities was identical. Smog might be bad for you but there was no evidence in this study for that; but there was real evidence that cigarettes were killing people.

We are less insightful than we think. And we are less kind. Basing plans and programs on shoddy thinking traps everyone in the shoddy results. More, it distracts us from the true answers to our questions. One can hope that with time we, as a community, will get better at this thinking but one worries. Shoddy thinking, like bigotry, is easier.