Archbishop doubts nation’s Christianity
London Telegraph
By Jonathan Petre
(Filed: 13/12/2004)
The Church of England’s second most senior figure said yesterday that he would be “hard-pushed” to describe Britain as a Christian country.
The Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, said people were less committed to the Church and secularist tendencies were on the increase.
While many described themselves as Christians, how they expressed their Christianity had changed enormously, he said.
“I would be hard-pushed to say we were a Christian country because of the secularist tendencies, the fact that commitment to the Christian church is less than it was,” said Dr Hope. The Archbishop is the latest senior Church figure to warn of the decline of Christianity in Britain. Last week Jayne Ozane, a senior member of the Archbishop’s Council, said she felt the outlook was bleak.
Read the entire article on the London Telegraph website..
176 comments | 
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Jacobse | Religion (general) |
Being a Christian nation requires more than the mere superficial trappings of religiosity. Christianity means doing more than singing hymns and bashing gays. Christianity means actually following the teachings of Christ by lifting up the poor, helping the sick and working for peace. By these standards, Britons might well ask whether the United States is truly a Christian nation.
We just elected an evil monster whose policies are the exact opposite of our Savior’s teachings to be our President for another four years. Our nation’s unprovoked attack on Iraq and our unncecssary war may have killed as many as 100,000 innocent civilians, while at home our government continues to reduce assistance for the poor so we can pay for tax cuts for the rich and bigger welfare subsidies for tax-evading corporations.
President Bush signed legislation creating another $100 billion in corporate welfare last October, but next year plans to release a budget that further slashes federal assistance for federal heating and housing allowances for the poor, federal contributions for state medicaid for children and disabled adults, and Pell Grants for lower-income college students. Moreover President Bush is planning to propose the dismantling of Social Security with his actuarially unsound, economically harmful and morally offensive proposal to privatize our nation’s social safety net for the elderly.
President Bush deceitfully claims he has passed tax cuts when in truth what he has enacted our tax “shifts” that transfer the burden of paying for our generation’s government services on to the next generation. Massive deficits that lower the standard of living for future generations in order to improve that of our own are clearly immoral.
Before America criticizes the speck in Britian’s eye we ought to reflect on the beam in our own.
Evil monster?
What words would you use to describe, say, a Hitler or Pol Pot? Doesn’t seem like there would be much left in the pot.
Unless of course, you rate President Bush on the same level within your moral calculus, in which case everything else you say is suspect as well.
I wouldn’t call Bush evil. Incompetent, stubborn, and dishonest but not evil. I used to think that he was corrupt, but now I would call him more of a corrupting influence than a corrupt person. I think that he has existed in a world of privilege and cronyism for so long he doesn’t realize the corrupting influence that has when imported into government.
On the positive side he’s very loyal to his friends. He has occasional moral insights. He is said to be a “person of faith,” though I’m not sure that anyone knows what he actually believes.
Dean
The United Nations recently did a study in which it compared the distribution of income in over 120 different countries. Contrary to the usual liberal caterwaul the United States has one of the best distribtutions of income in the world. In other words, our least prosperous people do better when compared to our middle and upper classes, than most other countries.
I think the use of the term “evil monster” with respect to Bush is something of a give away. Somehow I don’t think Bush will get a fair hearing from Mr. Scourtes. As Christians are we not enjoined from judging others? Dean, isn’t it true that you judge drew a personal moral judgment about an individual human being? Isn’t that vastly different from stating that you disagree strongly with some of his policies, even many of his policies? Tends to discredit your policy analysis.
As to the United States being a Christian country. I think it is fair to say that we have a majority (85%) Christian culture, but, that our government is, by virtue of the Establishment Clause, non-sectarian.
Dean, you fail to recognize that the TOP 4% of all taxpayers pay more than 50% of all income tax collected by the federal government. We have removed the federal income tax burden from a large share of the lowest earners. We have now a class of people with the power to vote for representatives in Congress who favor entitlements but this same class of voters is exempt from paying for the cost of those programs. This generates a wonderful incentive to “milk the treasury.”
The federal government already takes 50% of what I earn solely by honest work. I worked my way through college and law school. I pay heavy local property taxes although I don’t have children. I am happy to pay my fair share but anything more than what I am paying now is not taxation it is confiscation. If my taxes are reduced, it simply means that I get to keep what I have legitimately earned. Reducing taxes is the fastest way to stimulate overall economic activity which generates jobs. Dean obviously wants to punish the productive by heavier taxation in favor of a class of bureaucrats who will hand out unearned funds to the less productive.
Christians helped the poor for centuries before the creation of the welfare state, we can continute to help the poor and the needy without generating multi-generational welfare families. as they have in Britain.
Church attendance in the United States is much higher than that in Britain ( it is getting so late, I can’t remember how to spell Britian). It is a great tragedy that the U.K. is trading its inheritance for a mess of potage, but, they’ll be chanting Muslims prayers in U.K. cathedrals soon enough. Perhaps the learned Archbishop of Canterbury might want to point the finger at clergy who are unable to communicate with any effectiveness the majesty of our our Lord. Perhaps the existence of a secular clergy is something of a stumbling block to seekers. If the local Anglican priest doesn’t really believe in Christ why should the parishione?
Does the Archbishop believe in Christ and can he EXPRESS that sentiment in two or three clear sentences? I don’t know the answer to the first question, but, I do know that he is nearly unintelligle to even educated readers, what must he seem to the uneducated seeking Christ? A mumbling puzzlement, not a Christian leader charting a course in difficult times.
Bad Times for Free Speech
On Friday of last week an Australian judge handed down a guilty verdict against two Christian ministers who had held seminars on Islam. The judge concluded that the ministers had engaged in “hate speech” when they made unfavorable comparisons between Islam and Christianity.
In England, Parliament is perilously close to passing legislature desired by the Muslim “community.” The proposed legislation will make it dangerous to make any comment regarding Islam which a Muslim might find offensive.
It is truly frightening that such legislation may well pass in what many have considered the home of the idea of free speech, the U.K. These are very frightening times and I genuinely fear what may be coming in the future.
One of my memories of my Grandfather is the picture of Franklin Roosevelt that stood prominently on his fireplace mantle, next to icons of the Saints. My grandfather endured poverty so acute and so harrowing during the Great Depression that he would awake in the middle of the night decades later trembling from nightmares of that terrible time. Often there was no money to buy food for the family and as he looked for work, for he was too proud to ever accept charity, he was frequently told that there were no jobs for “your kind”; olive-skinned Greek Orthodox need not apply.
Roosevelt changed the focus of government so that the needs and concerns of people like my grandfather would not be neglected. If there were no jobs government would help create them. People who worked hard their whole lives would not be allowed to fall into poverty, federal deposit insurance, unemployment insurance and social security were developed as a social safety net to protect them from economic hardship from circumstances outside their control. Programs to allow the worthy, hard-working members of the lower classes to get an education and advance economically were enacted.
These programs helped produce a strong socially stable middle class and reflected a Christian vision for our country that provided an alternative between the Marxism of the left and the ruthless Dickensian Social Darwinism of the right.
Now George W. Bush and his minions are working feverishly to destroy the cherished vision of government as a compassionate agency working to improve peoples lives, and return America to the 19th century economic model with its privileged aristocracy and struggling proletariat, and yawning economic chasm between them. Bush’s plans to eliminate taxation of unearned income, sharply reduce federal assistance to the poor, and dismantle the social security program are proof of that. Combine these unChristian economic objectives with his ongoing pratice of deliberate, cynical misinformation and his indifference to the costs and horrors of war and you have someone for whom the term evil monster seems increasingly appropriate.
Note 6
Dean,
If you check your economic history, you will see that the primary cause of the economic collapse was an unstable banking system and unstable securities exchange. Reforms which STRENGTHENED those institutions have made rapid dollar devaluation nearly impossible. In fact, if you look at business cycle variations since WWII, you will see that the largest variation in economic activity is no more than 1/10 of the average variation prior to the institution of these reforms.
You have to dig pretty deep to drag out the memory of the Depression and Roosevelt.
You might want to remember that Roosevelt did not entertain ideas that persons apprehended on the battlefields of Europe with a gun in their hands had to have a full criminal trial with the protections of the U.S. Constitution before they could be held as prisoners. Prisoners of war were held for the duration. Roosevelt also personally approved the RELOCATION of ethnic Japanese away from the West coast and the RELOCATION of many Germans. He did it to save the country.
It is the Democrats that have intentionally fostered an addiction to free money from the government for lower income people. Something for nothing involves the classical sins of sloth and greed.
To see just how un-Christian a country we have here in the UK, look at Tony Blair (who claims he is Christian) he has stated that his ‘Christmas’ cards (I guess I should say holiday cards) won’t contain the word Christmas for fear of offending those from other faiths. I haven’t seen any Christian criticism of this ludicrous idea, but I’ve read several Muslim letters to papers pointing out the absurdity, and even patronism towards them, such a decision shows.
But it’s actually worse than this. Society here is not just un-Christian, it’s positively anti-Christian, pretty much in line with the rest of the EU. For example, I can’t remember the last time that a Christmas or Easter period has gone by without some blasphemous documentary defaming Christ, the Theotokos or some saint or other. Do they treat other religions like this? Of course not. They wouldn’t dare blaspheme Mohammed during Ramadan or Krishna during Diwali, so why is Christ a fair target, and why always during a Christian festival?
My wife is Romanian, and I was always struck by the depth of faith of the majority of Romanians, so I follow news about their EU accession talks with foreboding. I can understand why they see economic benefits in membership, but is it really worth them selling their soul? I don’t think so.
So Dean, I agree with you that America has problems, but I don’t agree with you that they are worse than ours. You have every right to criticise our society (and every incentive to ensure yours doesn’t go the same way). I don’t particularly like your president (though the alternative was worse) and I don’t like some of the beliefs and actions of your evangelical right wing, but at least Bush has some moral integrity and isn’t afraid to call himself Christian. Blair and the rest of the Labour government wouldn’t know what moral integrity was if it bit them.
No. 8. I agree that an aggressively secular society that minimizes the value of religious teachings and ethics is a danger. It is a danger because a people without religious values and ethics are a people suceptible and vulnerable to the dangerous appeals of demogogues, dictators and other seductive agents of evil. The teachings of Christ and Judeo-Christian ethics must be the touchstones and reference point for evaluating all other value statements.
That said, I belive it is wrong to restrict our sphere of Christian action to level of the individual, and oppose behaving in a compassionate Christian manner as collective entities. We cannot cherry-pick the teachings of Christ and only support those that don’t interfere with our political and economic agendas. We must support Christian economics, not Voodoo-economics.
As a Democrat I must admit the immorality of abortion, and irresponsible, promiscuous sexual behavior and join with Republicans in speaking out against those behaviors. But they must also admit the sinfulness of shredding our national social safety net and allowing millions of people to fall into the very conditions of oppressive poverty that our Savior spoke out against so many times. This un-Christian goal of eliminating, not repairing, the social safety net is at the heart of the Republican programme. It is why they believe that health care is a privilege for the rich and not a right for all, and why they believe the elderly and infirm should be made to fend for themselves and tie their economic security to the wild swings of the casino-like stock market.
I challenge anyone to walk into any government bureaucracy and then tell me that it is a “compassionate agency working to improve peoples lives.”
First Pres. Bush is described as “an evil monster whose policies are the exact opposite of our Savior?s teachings” and then this description of government bureaucracies.
The mind of the Left, if that isn’t an oxymoron, is truly an amazing thing.
Daniel
My question for Dean is whether under his plan the “compassionate agency working to improve people’s lives” will be content with taking 50% of my money OR will the agency decide that, in addition to taking 50% of my money, a social worker will be assigned to “improve my life.”
A donation to charity says that Dean work for a non-profit the budget of which would have been augmented under a Kerry or Clinton administration.
Christians created institutions such schools, hospitals and food banks for centuries before the creation of the all-powerful welfare State. We can meet our obligations to the poor without an agency.
No. 9: “Government Programs Cut Poverty in Half”
The findings of both government reports would almost certainly have been far worse if not for the assistance the federal government provides through programs like Social Security, unemployment insurance, nutrition and housing assistance, and tax credits for working families. Altogether, these programs lifted 28 million Americans above the poverty line in 2002, cutting the size of the poor population in half. The programs also provided vitally needed assistance in helping people meet their food, housing, health, and other basic needs.
?These accomplishments should remind us of the importance of maintaining a strong safety net,? said Sherman. ?Instead, parts of the safety net weakened in 2004.? He noted that last December, Congress let the emergency program for the long-term unemployed expire; more than 3 million workers have run out of unemployment benefits since then without finding a job.
See “ONE IN NINE HOUSEHOLDS AT RISK OF HUNGER” http://www.cbpp.org/12-20-04pov-pr.htm
Daniel: You have been defied.
The reason Christianity has gotten such a bad rap in the US is mostly the responsibility of our Protestant friends, I hate to say. When you have such utter silliness as the “wealth gospel” preached, the uber-tacky TBN with Paul and Jan Crouch, “Diamond Mine” Pat Robertson praying for the deaths (or otherwise serious inconveniencing of) Supreme Court justices, imprisoned televangelists, phony faith healers and Oral Roberts saying send him money or God’s going to kill him, it’s no small wonder that people are going to satirize Christianity. Such a faith deserves to be made fun of, in my opinion.
Christianity has become a product of mass marketing and is highly visible. You simply don’t see Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist televangelists, and people of those faiths are generally less noisy about it when running for office.
The visible face of Christianity has become, unfortunately, simply obnoxious.
No. 8: I would agree with the premise that a nation that turns its back on religious values and ethics is inviting trouble. A nation without Judeo-Christian ethics or values makes itself suceptible to the dangerous appeals of demagogues, dictators and other seductive agents of evil. The teachings of Christ must be our touchstone for evaluating all other value statements.
What I object to is an interpretation of Christianity that limits the sphere of Christian action to the level of the individual and opposes extending it to government. Sometimes there is no substitute to the power of government for addressing the systemic and macroeconomic causes of the oppressive poverty and injustice that our Savior spoke against.
Missourian writes: “Christians created institutions such schools, hospitals and food banks for centuries before the creation of the all-powerful welfare State. We can meet our obligations to the poor without an agency.”
This is a great idea. Here in Oregon we’ve decided to take you up on the offer.
Missourian, please write a memo to all the churches in Oregon to let them know that they’re going to have to come up with the following funds over the next couple of years to support elderly, disabled people, and children in Oregon:
Nursing homes: $438 million for 5,000 clients
Adult Foster/Residential Care: $815 million for 16,000 clients
Home care/nursing: $310 million for 11,000 clients
Child foster care: $122 million for 9,000 clients
Mental Health services: $315 million for 49,000 clients
(Now this is just for elderly, disabled, and children; welfare moms are not included, we’re cutting them off completely.)
Based on your recommendation we’re discontinuing funding of these services as of January, and that should give the churches enough time to get some money together. In addition, all other funding for social services will be eliminated. Thus, the state will no longer pay for prenatal care or any other health care or psychiatric care, will no longer provide food stamps, rent assistance, energy assistance, no vocational rehab, no drug rehab, etc. We’re even eliminating all services for crippled children and the Poison Control Center. Churches can pick up the tab for all that too — only a couple of billion total — but either way it’s no longer a governmental matter.
Anyway, please let the Oregon churches know about the new programs they’ll need to support. I’m not sure how they’ll pay for this, but I suggest maybe some bake sales or rummage sales. Bingo games are also a possibility. Thanks in advance, and keep those ideas coming!
I’ve been “defied”? No, Dean, actually you attempted to respond to a “challenge” by presenting the press release from a lobbyist that favors the welfare state and then stating that this proves that government bureacracies are “compassionate [agencies] working to improve people?s lives”.
Well, two can play at this game. Here’s a backgrounder from a lobbyist that opposes the welfare state: Sharp Reduction in Black Child Poverty Due to Welfare Reform.
And then there’s this from another lobbyist that opposes the welfare state: “There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation. Among the best of these studies is the work done by June O’Neill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Holding constant a wide range of variables, including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.(7) Likewise, research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert Plotnick of the University of Washington showed that an increase in welfare benefits of $200 per month per family increased the rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers by 150 percent.(8)”
Now, you may think it compassionate to foster out-of-wedlock birth’s and welfare dependency. I, however, tend to think of that as the exact opposite of one who has “a deep awareness of and sympathy for another’s suffering”.
So, my challenge still stands: Please show me one, just ONE, government bureaucracy that has “a deep awareness of and sympathy for [the] … suffering” of those who receive government handouts.
I’ve been “defied”? No, Dean, actually you attempted to respond to a “challenge” by presenting the press release from a lobbyist that favors the welfare state and then stating that this proves that government bureacracies are “compassionate [agencies] working to improve people?s lives”.
Well, two can play at this game. Here’s a backgrounder from a lobbyist that opposes the welfare state: Sharp Reduction in Black Child Poverty Due to Welfare Reform.
And then there’s this from another lobbyist that opposes the welfare state: “There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation. Among the best of these studies is the work done by June O’Neill for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Holding constant a wide range of variables, including income, education, and urban vs. suburban setting, the study found that a 50 percent increase in the value of AFDC and foodstamp payments led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births.(7) Likewise, research by Shelley Lundberg and Robert Plotnick of the University of Washington showed that an increase in welfare benefits of $200 per month per family increased the rate of out-of-wedlock births among teenagers by 150 percent.(8)”
Now, you may think it compassionate to foster out-of-wedlock birth’s and welfare dependency. I, however, tend to think of that as the exact opposite of one who has “a deep awareness of and sympathy for another’s suffering”.
So my challenge still stands: Show me one, just ONE, government bureaucracy that has “a deep awareness of and sympathy for [the] … suffering” of those who receive government handouts.
Dean, what I object to is mistaking the government for the Church and then forcing everyone into your idea of charity. Your idea comes very near to a specific type of heresy. The government has a role, but the more power one gives to government, the less freedom one has. Government by its very nature always seeks power for itself.
Unless one advocates theocracy (aguably the worst form of tyranny), the only way in which a government can act in a Christian manner is because the individual citizens want it to act that way. The Church is the corporate form of Christianity and the only corporate form. Any other influence we have is through the dedication, sacrifice, and asceticism of the members of the Church.
Note 15
Jim, no one seriously suggests suspending all government social programs. The point I made was that Dean urges us to follow the teachings of the Savior by voting for an all-powerful welfare state that will “improve people’s lives.” In Dean’s world, the ONLY way to follow the Savior is government welfare programs.I was pointing out that Christians did follow the Savior’s teachings for many centuries prior to the appearance of the all powerful welfare State.
You might want to note that Senator Moynihan’s study of Black America very clearly documented the ways in which social welfare programs HURT the black family. Literacy and legtimacy rates were far higher prior to the War on Poverty of the 60′s. The Civil Rights revolution was a legal and social revolution, it could have occurred without putting programs in place that tended to break-up the black family.
I have direct professional experience with child foster care and I have discussed my recommendations the care of dependent and abused children. As an attorney I won 25/26 cases that I prosecuted against child abusers. I won those cases by working harder and longer than any attorney had done in that department. Just because I don’t support unlimited, intrusive and ultimately infantilizing social programs doesn’t mean I don’t have compassion for the truly needy.
If you had read those you would not have doubted my willingness for government to intervene in selected situations with very carefully crafted assistance programs. Children, of course, would be a priority. However, Dean never limits his arguments to selected types of programs, he tends to make sweeping arguments that unless you support massive government entitlement programs, you can’t be a Christian.
Note 13 – Perhaps, James, the public face of Protestantism, as represented by Trinity Broadcasting Network and The 700 Club, has contributed to a decline in the Christian formation of our fellow Americans.
However, let us not be too hasty to cast stones at other Christians (however heretical some of their teachings may be) as Orthodox Christians have been far too willing to retreat into ethnic enclaves and look down their noses at the “strangers”, i.e., anyone not Greek, Russian, etc., wondering, “What are those xenos doing here?!?” This is something that I still experience since my taller-than-your-average-Greek frame and Scandanavian heritage makes it difficult for me to blend into your average Greek Orthodox church. Not a pleasent experience, I must tell you, especially when it is on Christmas Eve.
Missourian writes: “Jim, no one seriously suggests suspending all government social programs. The point I made was that Dean urges us to follow the teachings of the Savior by voting for an all-powerful welfare state that will ‘improve people’s lives.’ In Dean’s world, the ONLY way to follow the Savior is government welfare programs.I was pointing out that Christians did follow the Savior’s teachings for many centuries prior to the appearance of the all powerful welfare State.”
Well, then I’m not sure what programs you’re talking about. If you’re talking about traditional welfare programs — excluding programs specifically for elderly, disabled, and children — those constitute only a small portion of what could be considered the “welfare state.”
My impression of what Dean is saying is not that the welfare state is the only way to improve people’s lives. I interpret him as saying that, given a choice between benefiting a tiny number of rich people and corporations vs. benefiting a large number of others, we should choose the latter.
The tax breaks of the Bush administration — actually tax shifts — overwhelmingly favor the rich and corporations. Sure, other people benefit as well, but to a much smaller extent. What we’re going to see are cutbacks on governmental programs that help all sorts of people, not just welfare mothers. Sure, the average person might save a couple hundred bucks a year on taxes, but that’s going to be eaten up very quickly by increases in state and local taxes and by decreases in governmental services.
And this is really the problem with the whole anti-tax movement. The beneficiaries are overwhelmingly the rich and powerful. Voters inspired by local right-wing anti-tax demagogues vote against tax increases. So city parks aren’t maintained, days are eliminated from the school year, fewer police are on the streets, criminals have their sentences cut short because of a lack of jail space, some crimes aren’t even investigated, university students have to take out ever larger loans to cover unmet educational costs, roads and bridges deteriorate, libraries close, and so on. The average person saves a few bucks, while the rich save hundreds of thousands or even millions in taxes.
So it’s not just a matter of favoring the rich over the poor, but of allowing the basic infrastructure of society to deteriorate for the sake of the financial benefit of a few rich and powerful at the top. I think what Dean is saying is that this state of affairs is not just unfortunate but blatently immoral as well.
NOte 19
Your adamantine imperviousness to the facts is quite remarkable.
First, you have to demonize the “rich.” This type of argument is based on the premise that there is a great imbalance between the rich and the poor in America. In point of fact, America has one of the most balanced distributions of wealth in the world, according to studies published by the United Nations. We are not Brazil with a tiny middle class, an even tinier upper class, and millions of abjectly poor people at the bottom. We have a very healthy and large middle class.
Secondly, Americans are the most socially and economically mobile people in the world. When I was still in law school in 1980 I had extended discussion with a student from Germany. He told me that even then, in 1980, he was expected to follow his father’s occupation and to live in the same town his family lived in. He preferred the social and economic freedom of the United States. Economists who study income groups point out that “the poor” are not static. A very high percentage of people who in onc decade are in the lower 1/5 of the income distribution move up to the middle or even the top. Leftist analysts always want to paint a picture of a chronic underclass in American society. As Fr. Jacobse pointed out 80% of the homeless population are mentally ill or substance abusers. Homelessness is not primarily an economic problem, it is caused by untreated disfunction. People are not driven to homelessness primarily by a lack of jobs, they primarily become homeless due to substance abuse or mental illness. The LEft tore down the legal mechanism which allowed the involuntary treatment of mentally ill persons. Public mental hospitals were empited and former inmates now live on the streets as their families cannot manage them. Thank you Libertarian Lefties.
Thirdly, there is a great deal of nonsense advanced about taxation. As I have noted many times and which has never been refuted. The top 4% of all income earners pay more than 50% of all federal income tax. This creates a system which allows voters in the lower income brackets to elect representatives who will create entitlements for them, but, who will shield them from taxation. What is created ia an alliance between the people who get entitlements and the professional bureaucrats who give the entitlements out. This alliaance is a conspiracy against the productive who generate weaalth by work.
In order for your arguments to hold water, one first has to cast aspertions on the idea that people who earn an honest living are entitled to keep what they earn. You have to slyly condemn anyone who is economically self-sufficient as SELFISH. Who is selfish? Those who wish to take the property of others or those who earn wealth.
Human nature is such that people prefer to receive welfare payments rather than work if it is possible to continue that way. There is still good public education out there. The worst public education is found in those areas in which Democrats have had political power the longest. America still offers many opportunities for economic advancement through public educational loans, scholarships. We have a vast number of community colleges which can provide excellent vocational training allowing a young person to leave poverty permanently.
Studies have shown that if an American does three things there is a 90% chance that he will avoid poverty. The first thing is to stay in school and graduate from high school. The second thing is to avoid having a child while a teenager. The third thing is to marry before having a child. Among Americans who do these things, less than 10% ever fall into poverty.
Note 19
Hmm. Your comment is full of generalities and unspecified pre-suppositions.
Let me address a few of what I consider to be the fundamental presuppositions:
Gap between rich and poor.
The Left is always wailing that there is a terrible and growing gap between rich and poor in America. This is false in many senses. The United Nations publishes a study on the distribution of wealth in over 160 countries. The study looks at the income distribution and in particular focuses on the percentage of the entire population which is close to the mean income. Abstracting from statistical language, the United States has one of the largest middle classes in the world. by contrast, Brazil has a tiny upper class, a small middle class, and an immense class of chronically poor people.
Economic Mobility vs. Chronic Poor
Economists study not only the existing distribution of income, but, economic mobility. If a person is found to be in the lower 1/5 of the income distribution where is that same person a decade later? Again, the United States has the leading measure of economic mobility. Only a small percentage of people in the lowest 1/5 of the income distribution remain in that lower 1/5 a decade later. This means that of all the countries for which data is available, America has the smaller core of chronic poor.
Behavior vs. Economic Class
Economicts and sociologists have found that people who do three positive things have less than a 10% chance of ending up in poverty. Those three positive things are A)graduate from high school B) avoid teenage pregnancy and C)marry before having children and stay married.
Tax Burden of the “rich”
People on the top 4% of the income distribution pay more than 50% of all federal income tax. This creates a class of low income voters who can vote for entitlement programs through representatives who will sheild them from the tax burden associated with it. There exists an alliance between government workers and the recipient of government entitlements. More welfare payments mean more jobs for social workers. Conquer poverty and social workers are out of a job.
Moral Smears:
For the Left to succeed it is important to teach people to sneer at “the rich.” Productive people who are economically self-sufficient are to be tarred as SELFISH. Hmm, let me see. someone who pays 50% of the federal income tax is selfish, while someone who lives off other taxpayers is VIRTUOUS.
Tax Shift:
Your essay is devoid of any statistics that show a tax shift. Dean has been screaming that Bush is increasing the deficit. If the deficit is increased as a result of a tax cut, then no taxes are being shifted.
So, when the facts are reviewed we see the following. America has one of the best distributions of income in the world. America has the highest economic mobility in the world. America has one of the smallest percentage of its population which can be described as “chronically poor.”
Maybe this is why millions of people are willing to risk their lives to get here.
I’m still waiting for someone to tell me how treating people as faceless numbers who should receive government handouts is compassionate. The very definition of compassion is the exact opposite of how people are treated by government bureaucracies. To believe otherwise is to believe a lie.
I’d also like someone to explain to me where Christ laid down a national economic plan in the Gospels that demanded the poor to be served by onerous taxation upon the wealthy. A lot of what I read in the Bible seems to apply to how individuals treat and care for other individuals who may not be as well off. Not much at all tells me that the state is supposed to “tax the rich.” Now Marx on the other hand, had quite a lot to say about that, like, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”, which, as far as I am aware, doesn’t appear anywhere in Scriptures.
What the Left, represented here by Jim and Dean, believes is that they know better than I how my money should be spent. If they want to jump up and down, point fingures and yell at me that I don’t need a new car; and that I should give my money to the hungery instead, fine. More power to them. That is called, simply, persuasion, and it has a long and honorable tradition.
However, what is being described here is empowering an armed force to point a gun at me and tell me to give up my money so it can be redistributed to those whom the government decides are deserving. That is not persuasion, that is coercion at the barrel of a gun. And that is tantamount to tyranny.
BTW, when I can’t buy that new car because the government has reduced my income to the bare subsitence level, then the people who make that car are put out of work. Tell me how that helps them.
For brief economics lesson (sorely needed by some in this thread) I suggest starting with I, Pencil. It is, perhaps, the best lesson in economics and it doesn’t inovlve complex calculations & graphs.
One other relevant point. Liberals who cry the loudest about the poor are also those who give the least out of their own pockets. The worst offenders are liberal politicians. Blue state charitable giving is lower than red state. When taxes are cut, charitable giving goes up.
Missourian’s point about single motherhood is very important as well. Single motherhood is the most reliable indicator of poverty, yet many government programs undermine the creation of stable families. Before the great society, 70% of blacks lived in intact, two parent families, and the trend was up. After the Great Society, the black family was decimated.
Conservatives aren’t against social programs. They are against the reflexive liberalism/progressivism that defends the failures of the past. Again, a great place for immediate reform is school choice. Liberal politicians however, hold back the progress in this area as well.
For all who don’t like the “welfare state,” how about this:
- – - – - – - –
“Delegations and observer groups also criticized what they described as an effort led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States to hamper approval of so-called adaptation assistance. That term refers to payments that richer countries would make, mostly to poor, low-lying island states to help them cope with the impacts of climate change.
“The group that would receive the aid includes Pacific Ocean nations like Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, and Caribbean nations like the Bahamas and Barbados. At a news conference here on Thursday, their representatives said rising sea levels, accelerated land erosion and more intense storms were already affecting their economic development.
“But the issue was complicated by Saudi Arabia’s insistence that the aid include compensation to oil-producing countries for any fall in revenues that may result from the reduction in the use of carbon fuels.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/international/19climate.html
- – - – - – -
While the supporters of the Bush administration denounce the “welfare state,” the administration itself supports a plan to give aid to Saudi Arabia in the event their oil revenues fall because countries use less oil. While the administration dismantles the safety net for its own citizens it recommends building one for the Saudis.
What a hoot!
Note 27. “So if you believe that people are poor for no other reason than they lack morals and values then you should support increases in the minimum wage and programs and laws that extend health insurance so that parents have a little time to spend with their children talking about morals and values.”
No one of course said this.
As for the litany of ills, thanks but most of us are already aware of them. Speaking for myself, the progressive agenda is not the way to solve them. Government subsidized housing certainly is not the answer, given the track record. Maybe allowing people to keep more of their income would help.
Poverty in America:
From W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm Myths of Rich and Poor
At the end of the 1990′s 75% of those below the poverty line owened at least one car, compared with 64% in 1980. This is undoubtedly the result of the fact that the GNP of the United States doubled in inflation adjusted dollars from 1980 to 2004.
The most authoritative study of upward mobility was done at the University of Michigan, where researchers followed the fortunes of 17,000 people from 1975 to 1991. At the end of the study, only about 5 per cent of those who began at the lowest income level were still in the lowest fifth. Nearly 30 per cent had climbed to the top fifth.
The current U.S. jobless rate is about 5.4%, well below the 50 year average of around 6 per cent. IN fact, during the 2001 recession, the jobless rate peaked at 6.3%, only slightly above the 50 year average.
In 1997) the richest 1% of earners earned 17% of the income, but paid 35% of the taxes. Today they pay closer to 40%. By contrast, the bottom 50% of earners earned 14% of the income, but paid only 4% of the income taxes. To flesh this out, the top 25% of wage earners paid 82% of income taxes while earning far less of a percentage of the income.
The moral of this post is that America has provided a better standard of living for more people across more ethnic, racial and cultural lines that any other country in the history of the world.
As a Christian, I in no way reject the Savior’s teaching that we must care about the poor and the less fortunate. I am concerned about decent housing for the less fortunate. I am concerned about providing a good education for children of the less advantaged. However, I am also concerned about creating disincentives for work. One person’s “dead-end job” is another person’s “entry level opportunity.”
We must support and reward industry, effort, frugality, perseverence and an attitude of service. We must reject rewarding perpetual victimhood, profligacy and sloth.
I am willing to be heavily taxed for many worthy social programs. I would appreciate an admission from Dean that some social welfare programs provide a disincentive for work. I would appreciate an acknowledgment from Dean that the literacy rates and legitimacy rates of the Black family plummeted after President Johnson’s well-meaning “war on poverty” began.
Minimum Wage Jobs
Dean, I would appreciate it if you address the issue of the minimum wage job.
At our company we offer internships in a high tech company at close to minimum wage. The people that take the jobs are young singles. Some interns have some college, some have no college. The internship lasts 6 months. In the beginning we barely break even on the interns. They are not very productive and we cannot bill out very much for their work. For instance, it may take an intern an entire 8 hour day to do the work my husband can do in 1 hour. We cannot bill our customers for 8 hours. This is what I mean by losing money or barely breaking even on the interns in the beginning.
After about three months we are breaking even on the interns, after 6 months they are quite productive. Most of our interns have gone on to very high paying jobs in high tech industries. There is no comparable training available in academia. These interns are learning cutting edge skills. We are also giving most of them their first taste of professional life and they are learning good working habits and other job skills.
If you boost our minimum wage to the point where these interns can support a family and have health care, you will kill our internship program. We cannot pay an itnern $35,000 or $40,000 a year unless they are fully trained and fully productive from job one (not at the fourth month)
The internship program is over.
So, please try to think about the effect of raising the minimum wage. It is not a fair critique to say that a job cannot support a family. A jobs need not support a family, they can serve useful purposes short of that. Minimum wage jobs can provide a ladder up.
Missourian writes: “If you force McDonald’s, or WALMART or my family business to pay a high minimum wage you will eliminate jobs for low-skilled people.”
Certainly there are “starter” jobs that do not warrant full benefits. But many jobs are not starter jobs; you don’t see a lot of high school kids working the aisles and checkout stands of Walmart. Also, other high-volume retail companies such as Costco are able to pay better wages and benefits.
But the problem with adult jobs that do not pay benefits is that the taxpayers ultimately bear the burden:
“One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart’s success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children’s health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart’s 1.2 million US employees.
“Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state’s program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/17647
Note 32:
Examining Jim Holman’s hidden assumptions:
O.K. we are making progress here. We now have an ADMISSION that raising the minimum wage will eliminate jobs. The example that I explained is so clear that no one can miss the point.
Turning to Jim’s discussion of the nefarious Walmart.
JIM’S ANALYSIS IS BASED ON TWO IMPLIED PREMISES.
The first premise is that WALMART has a DUTY to provide health insurance to its workers. The second premise is that that GOVERNMENT must supply health insurance if WALMART does not. Please note that Jim nowhere suggests that WORKERS have a duty to provide their own health insurance coverage.
ASSUME WALMART SUPPLIES HEALTH INSURANCE: ONE OF TWO POSSIBLE RESULTS WILL OBTAIN-FEWER JOBS OR HIGHER PRICES
IF Walmart is forced by legal fiat to pay for health insurance, then low-skilled employees will be replaced by machines. There exist machines which check out customers very well. Employment will then contract. More people will show up at the welfare agencies asking for help. (Thanks alot Jim!)
OR Walmart can raise prices. If Walmart raises prices, then CONSUMERS WILL LOSE
A SOURCE OF LOW COST GOODS. Who do you think shops at WALMART? Paris Hilton?
No low-income mothers will lose a souces of low-cost baby clothes, furniture and other necessaries. High income people won’t care. (Thanks alot, Jim!)
If Walmart raises prices high enough, they may lose sales to other stores or on-line retailers and the company may contract and reduce employment. (Thanks alot, Jim!)
The fundamental flaw is the assumption that Walmart is a social welfare agency with the power to tap the infinite resources–the taxpayer. Walmart is a business and if expenses increase it will cut costs or raise prices. In none of these scenarios do the POOR BENEFIT!!
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DOES THE WALMART HAVE A MORAL DUTY TO PROVIDE HEALTH INSURANCE?
Health insurance is a wedge issue for socialists. No one likes to think of someone going without needed medical care. Who better to stick with the bill then the BIG, BAD EMPLOYER. However, today in the Midwest, a middle aged couple like my husband and myself can obtain Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage for $150/month for me and $50.00/month for my husband. This covers major medical and has a $1000 deduction.
It is true that some people cannot obtain health insurance coverage, extraordinary cases should have recourse to some public assistance. However, the truth remains that the average car payment in this country is $325.00. The vast majority of Americans can afford major medical health insurance. We bought it in our mid-30′s.Americans spend $100/month on cable TV, $325.00 per month on their car payment, the average mortgage is $800/month. Health insurance is an expense like any other expense and the average person can budget and pay for it if necessary.
There are special cases. There are people who have suffered catatrophic illnesses and who need public assistance. Most of us don’t need public assistance.
If Leftists take the emotional issue of health insurance and ply our emotions with extreme cases of needy people left without health care, then, maybe, just maybe, we go along with the deal.
Query? Who benefits from extensive public welfare programs? Government employees, that’s who. The Left in America is an employment machine for public employees. Who are the biggest supporters of the Democratic party in the U.S. Labor unions who seek laws which benefit unionized workers and impose costs of the rest of use and government employees, social workers lusting to “improve” our lives, administrators hankering after constructing long questionnaires, and so on.
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Walmart owes me a face lift and a Mercedes Benz.
If Walmart owes us health insurance, why doesn’t it owe us a clothing allowance? Why should any employee have to spend their own money on clothes when most of the money employees spend on clothes goes to the nice clothes you have to wear to work? The employee should only have to pay for jeans and t-shirts for the weekends. Walmart should pay for nice shirts, pants and dresses for work.
If Walmart owes us health insurance, why doesn’t it owe us tuition assistance? Why should any employee have to forego an education because all of his or her time is spent at work? Walmart gets the benefit of all that public education the worker brings to the job. Most of the use a employee puts his education to is his job!! Walmart owes us tuition assistance so that we can advance in the work place. Walmart gets the benefit anyway.
If Walmart owes us health insurance, why doesn’t it owe us a food allowance. Why should an employee have to pay for the food that just gives them energy to do work for Walmart? Most of the energy that an employee burns during the day is burned at work? Walmart benefits from 75% of the calories that its employees eat every day, why should those employees pay for food when Walmart gets the benefit.
If Walmart owes us health insurance, why doesn’t it owe us a good car? Why should employees have to drive an Escort? Most the miles put on the cars are just to and from Walmart for work. Clearly the car benefits Walmart! Why doesn’t the law require Walmart to pay for employees cars?
If we win on any of these, let’s see if I can get a Mercedes and a face-lift.
IF WE DON’T FORCE WALMART TO PAY FOR… HEALTH INSURANCE, CLOTHING, TUITION ASSISTANCE, FOOD and CARS THEN….. THE GOVERNMENT WILL HAVE TO PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE, CLOTHING, TUITION ASSISTANCE, FOOD and CARS. (heaven knows the employees don’t have to pay for anything)
The Lost Comment:
I just wrote a comment on the unspoken assumptions behind Jim Holman’s comments about Walmart. I pressed POST but I don’t see the comment. HMMM. So here goes.
JIM HOLMAN’S COMMENT IS BASED ON TWO UNSPOKEN PREMISES.
First, Jim assumes that Walmart has a DUTY to provide health insurance. Second, Jim assumes that if Walmart cannot be forced to provide health insurance, then the GOVERNMENT must provide health insurance. No where does Jim suggest that an employee should provide health insurance.
ASSUME JIM GETS HIS WAY. WALMART IS FORCED TO PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
There are three possible results if Walmart is forced to pay for health insurance.
If Walmart has to pay for health insurance, it will eliminate low skilled jobs. Machines exist which can check out customers. Walmart will fire checkers.(At this point, the checkers thank Jim for his compassion!)
If Walmart has to pay for health insurance and it does not eliminate jobs, it will raise prices. Every worker is also a consumer. Low income workers will lose a place to get low cost baby clothes, household goods and furniture. Paris Hilton will not notice the price increase and she rarely shops at Walmart. (At this point the low income consumer thanks Jim for his compassion!)
If Walmart has to pay for health insurance and it does not INITIALLY eliminate jobs, it will raise prices, if Walmart cannot compete, the company may contract and jobs may be lost across the board. In the worst case, Walmart may close.(At this point Walmart employees all over the country thank Jim for his compassion !)
The core problem is that Walmart is not a social welfare agency with the power to tap the infinite resources of the American taxpayer. Walmart is a for profit institution as is my business. If expenditures exceed income, the business closes, it cannot just tap a taxpayer.
SO IN CONCLUSION, FORCING WALMART TO PAY FOR HEALTH INSURANCE WILL RESULT IN THE LOSS OF LOW SKILLED JOBS AND/OR A REDUCTION IN THE SCOPE OF LOW COST GOODS AVAILALBE TO THE LOW INCOME CONSUMER.
GOOD JOB JIM!!
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Reality check.
The average car payment in America is $325.00
The average house payment in America is $850.00
A middle aged couple can obtain major medical insurance from Blue Cross/Blue Shield for $150/month for the woman and $50/month for the man with a $1000 deductible.
Yes, there will be a small segment of the population that will need help getting health insurance. Most Americans can afford health insurance. It is an expense like every other expense, it can be budgeted by the prudent.
In those special cases, where individuals have fallen prey to catastrophic illnesses or unusual circumstances, government should help. Government should not suppress employment OF THE POOR or raise prices FOR THE POOR by imposing a health insurance cost on Walmart’s or any other company. If competition between employers gives rise to employer sponsored health insurance, fine, if it is mandated by government, not fine.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
If you want to save on health costs deport the 13 million illegal aliens that consume 25% of the emergency room expense in the Southwestern United States.
High Risk Health Insurance Pool or Even a Marxist Knows the Low Skilled Pay with Their Jobs when Business is forced to pay for health insurance by Fiat.
Under Jim’s plan, low skilled employees get laid off. High skilled employees are retained but get health insurance paid for by the employer. GENIUS!!! COMPASSION IN ACTION!!!
HELPING THE GENUINELY NEEDY.
Let us assume for the sake of discussion that a group of people have been outright rejected by any commercial health insurance company for health insurance at any price. I suggest that we do what the government does for people who cannot get car insurance.
The government sets up a consortium of insurers. All health insurers participate in a special pool or plan of group insurance. The insureds are limited to those who cannot obtain commercial health insurance at any price. The insurers share risk across the industry proportionate to size (measured by total policies written).
An actuary computes the premium that would be required to cover this special high risk group. Assume for the sake of discussion the premium is $500/month per person.
The government assesses $250/month per person in premium to the high risk insured person. The government pays the remaining $250/month. All insurer’s carry a portion of the risk.
This works pretty well with uninsurable drivers. These driver’s are usually drunk drivers who haven’t lost their license yet. (Many of them my old clients!!) The driver’s get hit with high premiums but not unmanagable premiums. Everyone gets insured which benefits the safe drivers out there who might get hit by the drunks.
The government absorbs the difference between an economically determined premium and an amount the driver’s pay. This works until the drunk driver actually kills someone and the feeble justic system finally lifts his license and maybe, just maybe, puts him in jail. (Warning, this is what happens to your attitude when you practice law for too long, you see the consequences work themselves out on the backs of honest people.)
Something like this might work to provide insurance for people who have undergone truly catastrophic health events. The program should be stringent. People should be required to pay at least 15% of their family takehome in premiums. Government should pay premiums, not the full cost of health care.
The best way to help people is open to debate, but, one thing is sure, even a Marxist knows that imposing health insurance costs on a private company by fiat will displace low skill workers, which ain’t compassionate, it is just socialistic.
What Jim Thinks His Scheme Will Do
Jim thinks that imposing health insurance by fiat (government power) will force Walmart to accept lower profits. WRONG-O-ROONY.
Walmart’s investors expect a certain return on their investment. If they do not receive that return on investment, they will sell Walmart stock. The price of Walmart stock will go down. The Board of Directors of Walmart will demand that the CEO of Walmart cause profits to go back up to the level that will keep investors in the company.
So Walmart acts to protect profits. We discussed its options.
FIRE LOW-SKILLED WORKERS AND REPLACE THEM WITH MACHINES. The genius of this plan is that high-skilled workers ( who could probably afford health insurance) stay and get health insurance. Low skilled workers are OUT-OF-LUCK. This is the “way of the Teamsters.”
RAISE PRICES. Walmart caters to low and middle income people. These people will pay more for their goods. Paying more for the same goods is equivalent to taking a pay cut. (The genius of this plan is that low income or middle income workers pay more of their take home for ordinary goods purchased at Walmart, an effective pay cut.!) If low and middle income purchasers leave Walmart for lower prices elsewhere the company loses sales and may cut employees to reduce costs.
LEAVE THE JURISDICTION. Walmart may determine that it cannot compete without live checkers, and/or that it cannot compete with higher prices. Walmart will not sustain a loss, therefore it will close the store and move elsewhere. (The genius of this plan is that BOTH low and high income workers are laid off, total employment is reduced, total tax collections by local government are greatly reduced, and the poor lose a low cost source of goods. Genius all around I would say)
If the county imposes the fiat, the company moves to another county. If the state imposes the fiat, the company moves to another state. If the country imposes the fiat, the company moves to another country. Absent iron clad, militaristic, totalitarian Communism, there is no force that can make a for-profit company absorb a loss and accept lower profits than it considers acceptable. If you remember people risked their lives to flee Communism.
Missourian writes: “If Walmart owes us health insurance, why doesn’t it owe us a clothing allowance?”
The practice in the U.S. is that health insurance is obtained through employment. If you’d like to suggest a different system, go ahead.
Missourian: “If Walmart has to pay for health insurance, it will eliminate low skilled jobs.”
Or it will raise prices, or take a lower profit margin. Again, there are many high-volume retail stores that provide better pay and benefits. If they can do it why can’t Walmart? Personally I prefer to shop at stores that pay a living wage and benefits to their employees.
Missourian: “A middle aged couple can obtain major medical insurance from Blue Cross/Blue Shield for $150/month for the woman and $50/month for the man with a $1000 deductible.”
Not sure what country you’re in. The going rate for that around here would be $600 – $800 per month. I have friends who are not yet Social Security age who could retire but don’t precisely because of the cost of private health insurance — assuming that the company will decide to insure you. In the private arena they can pick who they will or will not insure. If you want some fun apply for private health insurance with Blue Cross and tell them that you want to have a baby. See how fast you get rejected — but have a good stop watch ready.
But I’m not against Walmart. It’s a great place, if you don’t mind subsidizing their profit margin through bearing some of the social costs of their employees. Of course all the other stores have to compete against Walmart, thus bringing pressure on those stores to eliminate benefits. In the race to the bottom, Walmart is in the lead.
Missourian: “In those special cases, where individuals have fallen prey to catastrophic illnesses or unusual circumstances, government should help.”
Daniel doesn’t think so. He’d rather have that new car he’s been talking about.
Health insurance helps to prevent catastrophic circumstances. Would you rather pay for relatively inexpensive primary care visits for a diabetic, or would you rather pay for ER visits, amputations, blindness, and disability?
Missourian: “If you want to save on health costs deport the 13 million illegal aliens that consume 25% of the emergency room expense in the Southwestern United States.”
Yes, it would be so much better if these people would come here and work for low wages and not cost us anything. How dare they get sick!
Iraq as Tax-Free Economy
One of the odd benefits (and nearly unreported events) of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been the abolishment of draconian import duties and sales taxes.
With no import duties, there has developed a brisk trade in automobiles purchased in Jordan and driven to Baghdad for resale. Baghdadies (real word) can now buy NEW cars for as much as 40% less. Ol’ Saddam had been milking the economy with oppressive taxes, which he then spent on palaces and hookers. Consumers can now afford brand new cars which are slowly taking over the roads. Car dealers can now enjoy vastly higher sales since the transaction is no longer burdened with a 40% tax. A brisk trade in imported household goods such as stoves, TV’s, satellite dishes and other modern luxuries has developed in Iraq.
Another boon has been the abolition of all but a 10% flat income tax.
Thirdly, professionals who are key to the development of the country, teachers and doctors, for example, have had their pay quintupled. This has resulted in the rapid empowerment of an educated middle class. (Not so dumb those Americans).
All in all, despite the misery caused by the Baathists and Jihadis the Iraq economy has been growing like Topsy. Saddam was an economic leach that drained the life out of his own country’s economy. Any company that rose above the rest by high sales and good profits was subject to acquistion by Hussein. This meant it really didn’t pay to be tooo successful in Saddam’s fiefdom. Not so now. While corruption is no means totally eliminated, honest business people have never had so much incentive and opportunity to create new businesses and the jobs that go with them.
Iraq is a textbook example of the benefits of a low tax economy. People with jobs don’t need social welfare.
Missourian answers all Jim’s comments: Like fish in a barrel.
Part I
Missourian writes: ?If Walmart owes us health insurance, why doesn?t it owe us a clothing allowance??
Jim replies:
The practice in the U.S. is that health insurance is obtained through employment. If you?d like to suggest a different system, go ahead.
Missourian answers: Jim writes that “the practice is” in the U.S. This is a non-reason. I ask why and Jim essentially says “because it is THE PRACTICE.” This is a meaningless non-answer. Stripped of its emotional aura, health insurance is just a monthly expense like any other expense. Employer paid health insurance became common in America during WWII when companies were subject to wage and price controls. Companies competed for workers with health insurance rather than wages to get around government controls. Health insurance is an expense, a steady monthly expense. It can be budgeted for like any other expense, except in a minority of cases which I discuss in detail below.
I DID SUGGEST A DIFFERENT SYSTEM for people who cannot obtain ordinary health insurance. This would represent a maximum of 10% of the country. I suggested a government sponsored health insurance pool for the uninsurable. It was parallel to the existing government sponsored car insurance pool for the uninsurable drivers. (My worthy clients I might add.)
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Part II
Missourian: ?If Walmart has to pay for health insurance, it will eliminate low skilled jobs.?
Or it will raise prices, or take a lower profit margin. Again, there are many high-volume retail stores that provide better pay and benefits. If they can do it why can?t Walmart? Personally I prefer to shop at stores that pay a living wage and benefits to their employees.
Missourian answers:
Jim, you believe that you can just pull an economic rabbit out of the hat. I will address four assertions in your careless answer. First you assertion that some mythical company exists which pays better than Walmart for the same labor. Second, your assertion that the company will raise prices. Third your assertion that the company will accept lower profits. Lastly, your condescending assertion that you will take your business elsewhere. You and Paris Hilton I might add.
First, No mythical company exists which will pay more for unskilled labor. The point of our discussion has been the unskilled laborer. These are the low-skilled people who stand to be laid off first. No company will pay above minimum wage for truly unskilled labor. If another company is paying more than minimum wage they are demanding more than minimum wage skills. The labor market is very efficient and employers are very aware that there is a glut of unskilled workers. They do not need to pay more than minimum wage for unskilled workers. In fact, many in California are illegally undercutting the MINIMUM WAGE labor market by hiring illegal aliens and impoverishing their own fellow citizens.
Second, you are correct in that a company may raise prices. When prices go up sales go down. Customers are not nitwits. No one continues to buy the same amount of goods at a higher price. They buy fewer goods or go look for better prices elswhere. Sales are price sensitive. If sales go down, Walmart will have to cut costs or accept lower profits. It will cut costs. The simplest way to cut costs is to reduce labor costs which are the largest VARIABLE cost they have.
They will lay off the lowest skilled workers and replace them with machines. Again, Walmart sells to low income customers. If prices at Walmart go up, then low income customers have suffered an effective wage reduction. They get less for their money. I know that you and Paris Hilton will be shopping elsewhere but the poor have fewer options don’t they.
Third, the Board of Directors will not allow the CEO to produce lower profits. The stockholders will demand that the Board of Directors instruct the CEO to increase profits. If the Board of Directors does not increase profits the investors will sell Walmart stock. If the price of Walmart stock drops, it will be bought out by another company who will fire the Board of Directors and either canibalize the company and take its fixed assets thereby decreasing employment OR it will hire a new CEO who will persue higher profits.
Fourth. I am terribly impressed by the high level of morality you and Paris Hilton display by taking your business elsewhere. You obviously can afford to pay higher prices at some other store. Low income people may have to pay higher prices also, but, it will hurt them more than you and Paris.
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Part III
Missourian: ?A middle aged couple can obtain major medical insurance from Blue Cross/Blue Shield for $150/month for the woman and $50/month for the man with a $1000 deductible.?
Not sure what country you?re in. The going rate for that around here would be $600 – $800 per month. I have friends who are not yet Social Security age who could retire but don?t precisely because of the cost of private health insurance ? assuming that the company will decide to insure you. In the private arena they can pick who they will or will not insure. If you want some fun apply for private health insurance with Blue Cross and tell them that you want to have a baby. See how fast you get rejected ? but have a good stop watch ready.
But I?m not against Walmart. It?s a great place, if you don?t mind subsidizing their profit margin through bearing some of the social costs of their employees. Of course all the other stores have to compete against Walmart, thus bringing pressure on those stores to eliminate benefits. In the race to the bottom, Walmart is in the lead.
Missourian replies:
The multiple of anecdotes is not data. Americans have the highest level of credit card debt in the world. Americans have the lowest savings rate in the developed world. The Japanese out save us by a factor of 4 or 5. As noted in another post, 75% of all household in the lowest 1/5 of the income distribution have a car, a TV and a microwave. The average care payment in American is $350.00
There do exist unfortunate people who cannot obtain health insurance due to catastrophic illnesses or accidents. I have proposed a plan for those people analogous to the difficult to uninsurable drivers.
The prices I quote are from a large city in the Middle West. They are typical for this metropolitcan area and the Blue Cross/Blue Shield claim service is excellent.
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Part IV
Missourian: ?In those special cases, where individuals have fallen prey to catastrophic illnesses or unusual circumstances, government should help.?
Daniel doesn?t think so. He?d rather have that new car he?s been talking about.
Health insurance helps to prevent catastrophic circumstances. Would you rather pay for relatively inexpensive primary care visits for a diabetic, or would you rather pay for ER visits, amputations, blindness, and disability?
Missourian replies:
I am impressed by your moral superiority. In the face of lay-offs of the least skilled, you will turn on your heel and shop at a better store. BRAVO, Jim.
I don’t know what Daniel said to annoy you, but, perhaps Daniel does not believe that he is responsible for all of the ills of the world. In order for Leftism to take hold, we have to bow to the “guilt trip.” Here’s a good one. So you would rather [fill in the blank] then pay for surgery for a dying child. No go, Jim. I don’t go in for guilt trips. If I abide by the law, treat people decently, and pull my own weight, I am not feeling guilty for all the misfortune that occurs in this world. I will do what I can to help, but, I do that voluntarily, not because I am guilty. The little jibe about “he’d rather have the new car he’s talking about” is a guilt trip. Gosh, don’t you get tired of that old routine?
As I stated, Lefists like talking about health insurance because they can pull on people’s emotions so well. Picture a dying child, then cast guilt on ordinary people who are doing the best they can to keep their own household going without resort to the public trough. Health insurance is an expense like any expense. Americans burn money on consumer goods through credit cards because we want our TV’s, our DVD players, or SUV’s and our great clothes. We carry 18% credit to live well. We save nothing. For some reason, NO ONE IN THIS GREAT COUNTRY can afford health insurance. You know why people don’t like paying for health insurance? Because it isn’t fun, like taxes you don’t get to open a shiny package after you pay your money.
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Missourian: ?If you want to save on health costs deport the 13 million illegal aliens that consume 25% of the emergency room expense in the Southwestern United States.?
Yes, it would be so much better if these people would come here and work for low wages and not cost us anything. How dare they get sick!
Missourian replies:
Ah shooting fish in the barrel. Mexicans come to America because Mexico is a socialist mess. Mexico had a GREAT SOCIALIST REVOLUTION. As a result, the country is improverished. Despite rich soil, long coastlines, and rich mineral resources the country is poor. Why Jim. Mexico was a colony, the United States were colonies. Why did we succeed? Mexico has hugh oil reserves? Why are Mexicans fighting to get out?
Mexicans wouldn’t come to the United States if they couldn’t get jobs. It is illegal to hire an illegal alien. American businesses hire illegal aliens and violate the federal law BECAUSE THEY WANT TO EVADE TAXES AND THE MINIMUM WAGE.
I have never hired an illegal. I will never hire an illegal. I have a friend who works in landscaping and he cannot compete with the illegal gangs. Illegal aliens compete with the lowest skilled Americans. They take American jobs. They undercut the the minimum wage.
Why do you consider yourself morally superior for approving of illegal immigration which results in a black market economy where corrupt employers evade minimum wages and taxes. Why is this good, Jim? Who benefitf from this?
I am not a hypocrite. I have never hired illegals and I have always paid all my taxes. Why should American taxpayers pay the medical expenses of people who have broken the law. The average American doesn’t benefit from illegals, businesses that hire illegals do. The average American gets overcrowded schools, jails and hospitals. Why do you think the middle class is leaving California.
The Travails of the Child-Free Blue State
astest growth found in ‘red’ states
By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA TODAY
Robust population growth continues to sweep the nation’s Southern and Western states, according to estimates released Wednesday by the Census Bureau.
If the trend continues at its current pace, states in the Northeast and Midwest that have been population powerhouses since the 19th century will lose their dominance to Sun Belt states by 2010. (Related chart: Population and population trends by state)
New York, now the third most populous state, will likely be overtaken by Florida in five years. New Jersey, the 10th-largest state, could be passed by North Carolina in three.
“By 2010, none of the three most populous states will be in the North,” says Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech.
The USA’s population on July 1 was 293.7 million, up 1% from July 1, 2003. If that growth rate holds, the nation will have 311.7 million people in 2010. That would put growth for the decade at about 10%, compared with 13.2% in the 1990s, the highest rate since the 1960s.
States grow three ways: more births than deaths, immigration and people moving from other states.
Many northern states gained immigrants from 2003 to 2004 but lost people to other states. Most of the fastest-growing states are gaining residents from other states and immigrants from abroad.
The population trends show that economic and political power is shifting to states attracting suburbanites from congested, densely populated areas, says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
The 10 fastest-growing states ? from No. 1 Nevada to No. 10 New Mexico ? are all in the West and South. President Bush won nine of them in November. The exception was Delaware, ranked eighth. Delaware is classified as a Southern state by the Census Bureau.
Seats in the House of Representatives are reallocated every 10 years to reflect population shifts. The next round will come after the 2010 Census.
Based on the latest population estimates, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana each would lose a House seat, according to Kim Brace, president of Election Data Services, a Washington D.C., consulting firm that specializes in the Census and redistricting. Arizona, Florida, Texas and Utah each would gain a seat, he says.
“It’s the New America,” Frey says. “It’s taking population and political clout from the highly urbanized Old America.”
But more people means change, and politicians should pay attention to the constant shifts of population in booming states, Frey says.
“The turbulent demographic change occurring in New America makes its political future much more up for grabs,” Frey says. “Two groups which favor Democrats, Hispanics and Gen Xers, are a significant part of (its) recent growth.”
The Census data show:
? Florida, the third-fastest growing state, gained an average 1,090 people a day, bringing its population to 17.4 million. The population estimate covers the period before four major hurricanes battered the state in August and September.
? North Carolina and New Mexico replaced California and Hawaii among the 10 fastest-growing states.
? Nevada was the fastest growing state for the 18th consecutive year.
? Massachusetts lost population for the first time in more than a decade.
? California remained by far the most populous state at 35.9 million. Foreign immigration fueled much of its growth in the past year. But California continues to lose more residents to other states than it gains from the rest of the USA.
? Colorado, long one of the top destinations for people leaving California, lost more people to other states than it gained for the second year in a row. But immigration and births pushed its population up 1.2%, to 4.6 million.
“We had a lot of high-tech jobs in telecommunications and computer software,” says Richard Lin, a Colorado demographer who tracks population estimates. “We lost a lot of these jobs.”
Big population gains in other Western states such as Idaho, New Mexico and Utah may indicate that some of Colorado’s appeal is fading, Lang says. The state had attracted many retirees and young professionals seeking refuge from congestion and high living costs. But major growth in the past decade has clogged highways and pushed housing prices higher.
“When you have multiple alternatives to California, people can be finicky about where they migrate to,” Lang says. “The minute Denver starts to look like a Rocky Mountain L.A., Boise is the next hot town.”
Rememer 44% of the Hispanic vote went for Bush. WHOOO-HOOO!!
I support Legal Immigration with an Assimilationship policy.
I support extensive legal immigration from Mexico. There is no reason why Mexican immigrants can’t make excellent citizens. I want them here legally without amnesty for law breaking. I want them paid minimum wage (or better if possible) with taxes deducted from their paychecks. I want their kids taught English.
Linguistic idiocy. The rest of the world considers English the mandatory language of politics, business, commerce and science. English is considered the language of the 21st century. While the rest of the world learns English, race hustlers in the U.S. argue that children of Mexican immigrants should not be required to learn English. Got to maintain that dependency status to keep the social work jobs coming.
Diversity ain’t nothing new. The New York Metropolitan area absorbed and educated millions of people from dozens of countries who spoke dozens of languages. The public schools educated the immigrants more thoroughly and effectively than the public schools do now, with less money. We can do it again. Just get teachers union out of the schools.
How Liberal Is California Anyway?
From Polipundit.com
The left has fared even worse in the arena of ballot referendums. Just by way of example, in so-called ?liberal California,? the following measures were directly enacted into law by Golden State voters over the past ten years: (1) a ban on gay marriage (61-38), (2) a ban on bilingual education (61-39), (3) a ban on public-money benefits for illegal immigrants (59-41 – 15th graf), (4) a ban on affirmative action (54-46), and (5) a rejection of socialized medicine (73-27 – Prop. 186.)
So, in a nutshell, Californians have rejected
gay marriage
bilingual education
public benefits for illegals
affirmative action
socialized medicine
Wow, no wonder the Libs are sweating. Can you say minority party?
Or is that PARTAY!!
What Does it Cost to Treat 13 million Illegals
America is home to 13 million people who have illegally entered its borders. Thirteen million people who are working under the table for employers who use them to pay wages below the minimum wage. These people know they can present themselves to emergency rooms in America and receive care. Emergency rooms are swamped illegals who have routine medical care, but, who have waited until a simple condition becomes extreme. Three emergency rooms in Los Angeles County have shut down this year. This is, undoubtedly, one of the reasons that the middle class is moving to Utah and Colorado.
If America spends only $1,000 per year for treatments of illegals in emergency rooms that amounts to $13 billion dollars. The average cost of emergency room treatment is, of course, much higher. Emergency room treatment is the most expensive form of medical care but it is the only kind illegals use, because they get it free.
Illegals are not improverished. Government statistics show that illegals send 100′s of BILLIONS of dolars back home. Typically young single men earn as much as they can then send their extra dollars home. They live cheaply precisely because it is their intention to send as much money as possible BACK HOME. Emergency room treatment in America is free and no questions are asked. Why pay?
There is no such thing as a free lunch. This $13 billion expense must be assessed against the paying hospital patients. This $13 billion expense becomes part of the OVERHEAD of the hospital. Patients who have paid their health insurance premiums for years now pay for the illegals.
Wonder why health insurance has become so expensive (according to Jim Holman.)
Nature of the Enemy:
From BelmontClub: A Description of the attack at Mosul from a Chaplain who observed it. Intentional targeting of medical facilties.
Chaplain Lewis was at the site. His narrative of the followup attack on the wounded and the medical personnel who responded stood out.
Regardless of what some may say, these are not stupid people. Any attack with casualties will naturally mean that eventually a very large number of care givers will be concentrated in one location. They took full advantage of that. In the middle of the mayhem the first mortar round hit about 100 to 200 meters away. Everyone started shouting to get the wounded into the hospital which is solid concrete and much safer than being in the open. Soon, the next mortar hit quite a bit closer than the first as they “walked” their rounds toward their intended target…us. Everyone began to rush toward the building. I stood at the door shoving as many people inside as I could. Just before heading in myself, the last one hit directly on top of the hospital. I was standing next to the building so was shielded from any flying shrapnel. In fact, the building, being built as a bunker took the hit with little effect. However, I couldn’t have been more than 10 to 15 meters from the point of impact and brother did I feel the shock. That’ll wake you up! I rushed inside to find doctors and nurses draped over patients, others on the floor or under something. I ducked low and quickly moved as far inside as I could. After a few tense moments people began to move around again and the business of patching bodies and healing minds continued in earnest.
Note 44
There is more than compassion going on. Jim Holman wishes to establish a framework in which businesses are considering fully responsible for health care. He then wishes to proceed to the point where any business which does not assume the duty of providing health care to its employees is seen as a burden on the government which picks up the tab.
This is a rather insidious way of removing any responsiblity from the individual for arranging his own health care. The DUTIES fall on business, then government. It is another example of the eradication of individual responsibility. It moves towards the infantilization of the individual. We are all squalling, weak, impotent creatures who must rely on government.
There is no good or service for which an argument cannot be made. For health care raise individual cases where good people have suffered a catastrophic illness. Don’t present statistics showing the health insurance is affordable for large numbers of people. Up north in Wisconsin where I grew up good cold weather clothing was critical and expensive. Similar arguments could be made for employers providing clothing. Why not require employers to pay home heating bills? We could undoubtedly find some unfortunates who are shivering in the cold of Wisconsin. In Houston, air conditioning is not a luxury. The list goes on.
In the end we are all dependents of the state. We will feast on the productive until we kill them.
We are, in fact, a country that saves practically nothing AND a country that willingly indebts itself to the HILT for consumer goods. Having done that we are now too improverished to pay for health insurance
Note 47. Another consideration: If government takes over health care, a powerful bureaucracy will be created that will ultimately decide who lives and dies. Medical decisions will become politicized even more than they are today. Imagine for example, if Hillary Care would have passed, and the major committees had members from say, Planned Parenthood, or Emily’s List — not an outlandish notion given that they and their supporters define abortion and euthanasia as a “medical procedure.”
Note 42. Re: Linguistic idiocy. Yup. Did it myself. Entered first grade knowing no English, and picked it up after a few months. It was a bit harder for my mother (my father already knew English), and I would translate from English into Dutch for her until she picked up the language too. (I see Mexican kids doing that for their parents today.) In fact, parents pick up a lot of English from their kids.
Where their some drawbacks? A few. I still remember taking an IQ test and knowing what a locomotive was but not knowing the English word for it. Can’t say it damaged my self-esteem though.
Missourian writes: “There is more than compassion going on. Jim Holman wishes to establish a framework in which businesses are considering fully responsible for health care. He then wishes to proceed to the point where any business which does not assume the duty of providing health care to its employees is seen as a burden on the government which picks up the tab.”
Employees typically get health care through their employment. This is how it’s done in the U.S. There are probably all sorts of other ways that it could be done, but this is the system that we have. Employees get all sorts of other benefits from employment including vacation and sick time off, pensions, discounts for company products, discounts in the company cafeteria, workplace health programs, educational benefits, etc. In addition, some companies provide clothing and uniforms used on duty. In Alaska I even worked for company that provided food and housing. So as to your example of companies providing warm coats and home heating, all I can say is that yes, sometimes they do even more than that.
So there are all sorts of potential benefits for working for a company. But certainly one of the most important is health care. Now were Walmart a small, struggling mom-and-pop company, I could understand why many employees would not have health benefits. But Walmart is the largest retailer in the country; it is one of the largest employers in the country. It’s practices are enormously influential in the rest of the industry. When a Walmart blows into town, all the other retailers have to compete with them. Thus existing local stores are pressured to lower wages and reduce benefits. This is why I said that Walmart is a leader in the race to the bottom.
Whatever you think about the Walmart practices, this is indisputable: you personally help to subsidize Walmart through paying for public services for their employees that a large employer such as Walmart would normally provide.
No. 48: First, Universal Health Care does not mean government-operated health care and huge bureaucracies. Many states have mandatory auto insurance but that does not mean that the government sells andadminsters the policies.
Secondly, It is an actuarial principle of insurance, that the larger the risk pool an insurance plan covers the lower the premiumss it can charge. As you know, Father Jacobse, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese provides its own health insurance plan for Priests. As younger Priests have opted out of that plan, however, leaving a pool of increasingly older Priests with greater health care needs, the premiums for the Archdiocese Health Plan have shot up dramatically. It creates a difficult decision for parishes with younger Priests who are able to purchase less expensive policies elsewhere, but are reluctant to defy the directive of the Archdiocese
This situation is a microcosm of what is happenning to health care finance in the United States on the large scale. If we require younger healthier people to purchase insurance, that they contribute to the cost of along with their employers we can expnd the risk pool and bring premiums down.
Third, we are paying for the medical costs of the uninsured aleady, only in a highly inefficient manner. The unreimbursed costs of treating the uninsured are reflected in higher hospital and medical costs, and federal, state and county taxes. The higher hospital and medical costs result in rising insurance premiums that make health care insurance even less affordable and creating more uninsured which drivesa vicious cycle.
Clearly the inertia of the free market is not taking us to a better health care system but pushing us the edge of a cliff that will see the collapse of our health care system if we do nothing.
Leaving California: If Jim Doesn’t Understand Markets Everybody Else Does and They are moving to Colorado, Utah and Montana.
I think have written a small book on labor markets just on this blog.
After I wrote extensively about the interns we hire, I FINALLY got an admission from Jim that forcing my small company to pay a “living wage” for interns would cause the intern program to shut down. Jim brushed that fact off by admitting that this would be true for “start-up” jobs. It is true for all low-skill jobs.
I have explained AD INFINITUM about the impact that imposing labor costs on private businesses have. IT HURTS THE POOR.
Jim, Walmart simply will not accept lower profits. IT WILL NOT HAPPEN. Walmart will lay off low skill employees and buy machines. Walmart is owned by its shareholders. If California makes Walmart’s operations impossible, they will simply move to another state.
Jim, did you notice the articles I submitted regarding the economic movement OUT OF CALIFORNIA. California is losing jobs, losing businessess and losing population.
The prosperous, educated and productive segments of society are leaving California and the third-world illegals who are here to MILK AMERICA, SEND WAGES TO MEXICO and UNDERMINE OUR LABOR LAWS are moving in.
When Cost Exceeds Productivity the Job Ends
Low income people are usually low-skilled people.
By definition, those will low skills are less productive than those with high skills.
Low skilled people are competing with illegals who do not demand the minimum wage and who accept tax free cash payments. Illegals create a “black labor market” and drive low skilled wages down.
Low skilled people will be laid off if the government makes their employment more expensive.
Low skilled people simply can’t be productive enough to cover the cost of high benefits. Just as I explained that interns can take 4 to 6 times more time to complete a task than a full trained employee. We cannot charge our clients 4 to 6 times more for the same job that a fully trained employee can do in an hour. We charge for an hour even if it takes them 4 hours. If we charge more, our clients go to a competitor. So for the first two months, we are paying interns more than we can charge out for their time. If an intern quits about 3 weeks, we have a net loss. (We have never had an intern quit.)
Your argument rests on the concept that Walmart will accept lower profits when it has no need to so do. Checkers have already been replaced by machines. Your scheme will accelerate the process. Walmart will not lay off accountants, they will lay off checkers and buy machines.
THE WOLRD DOES NOT WORK THE WAY YOU THINK IT DOES! Wishing will not make the world work that way. You cannot force Walmart to accept lower profits. It will cut costs or move out, it will not accept lower profits.
Dean writes:
First, Universal Health Care does not mean government-operated health care and huge bureaucracies. Many states have mandatory auto insurance but that does not mean that the government sells andadminsters the policies.
Missourian replies: Most people understand “universal health care” to mean that the government assumes the role of health care provider. Canada comes very close to this as it is illegal to provide health services on a private basis in Canada.
No reasonable discussion is possible without clear definition of terms.
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Dean writes:
Secondly, It is an actuarial principle of insurance, that the larger the risk pool an insurance plan covers the lower the premiumss it can charge. As you know, Father Jacobse, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese provides its own health insurance plan for Priests. As younger Priests have opted out of that plan, however, leaving a pool of increasingly older Priests with greater health care needs, the premiums for the Archdiocese Health Plan have shot up dramatically. It creates a difficult decision for parishes with younger Priests who are able to purchase less expensive policies elsewhere, but are reluctant to defy the directive of the Archdiocese.
Missourian:
I have studied health insurance plans available to small employers and I have found that even with a relatively small group of employees it is difficult for an employee to get a cheaper rate as an individual than he or she can get with the group. The situation that you describe for a young priest would likely only persist for a few years and only if he is single. As soon as he acquires a wife who is in child-bearing age, the advantage of the total plan is very apparent.
The Church might consider joining with a larger group similarly situated, perhaps going from local to regional or from regional to national. Life long costs will be much smaller for the participant. If the new clergy intend to be clergy for life, he will reap the benefit. If he plans on having a large family (now more than 2 children) he will reap the benefit very quickly.
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Dean writes:
This situation is a microcosm of what is happenning to health care finance in the United States on the large scale. If we require younger healthier people to purchase insurance, that they contribute to the cost of along with their employers we can expnd the risk pool and bring premiums down.
Missourian replies: It is unclear what plan you are proposing Dean. Simply “requiring younger healther people to purchase insurance” is not what most people think of by “universal health care.” You would need to delineate your plan.
There are many policies that promote affordable health insurance for the average person. We can deport illegals who drive up health costs. We can give physicians more protection from personal injury lawsuits. We can implement policies which allow physicians to turn non-emergencies away from emergency rooms. We can insist that hospitals charge the true cost of emergency room treatment and refuse to allow anyone to avoid payment. As I stated earlier, we can create a high risk pool for persons with special needs that cannot otherwise get insurance. They are many sensible policies that do involve the creation of yet another huge government bureaucracy.
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Dean writes
Third, we are paying for the medical costs of the uninsured aleady, only in a highly inefficient manner. The unreimbursed costs of treating the uninsured are reflected in higher hospital and medical costs, and federal, state and county taxes. The higher hospital and medical costs result in rising insurance premiums that make health care insurance even less affordable and creating more uninsured which drivesa vicious cycle.
Clearly the inertia of the free market is not taking us to a better health care system but pushing us the edge of a cliff that will see the collapse of our health care system if we do nothing.
Missourian:
The impact of Medicare and Medicaid on the private market for health insurance is massive. A second major factor is the cost of malpractice insurance which can amount to as much as 50% of a physicians income. This is a non-medical expense which everybody pays for. We do not have anything remotely like a “free market.” Some physicians in my area have stopped taking insurance and know accept cash only. They have been able to reduce their payroll by two or three persons and they have been able to reduce prices to their patients who now pay cash. This is a demonstration of the hugh burden on the health care system, most of which is driven by Medicare and Medicaid.
Congress just created a huge new entitlement. Seniors will get help with prescription medication. It is my understanding that there is no means test here. The public is moving in the direction of renouncing any personal responsiblity for health care costs. People are being taught to believe that they are owed health care.
Let’s Invest in Job Training
Rather than applying artificial forces to the job market, why not invest in job training for those who have some capacity to expand their skills. The government is welcome to tax me for those programs, just as has taxed me heavily all my working life to support schools I have not used.
Those who are not in a position to benefit from job training should be allowed to keep minimum wage jobs, even if it isn’t a “living wage” because it gives them dignity, and it reduces the amount of aid society may have to supply them.
But, please, let’s not make low skill jobs so expensive to the employer that they dissappear.
Wal-Mart used to be a great place to work with a customer first additude. It has changed as it has gotten bigger. They used to give stock option opportunities to even part time employees, don’t any longer. Now they force people to work off the clock and keep them under the number of hours that would qualify them for benefits as full time. They hire illegals too. That is not market forces, that is the typical actions of a company that has near monopoly power in a market and is using that power to control the market in illegal and/or inefficient ways. They are also inducing municpalities to use the power of eminent domain to confiscate property from the rightful owners and sell that property to Wal-Mart at below market rates.
Every time one shops at Wal-Mart one participates in the exploitation of prisoners in China many of whom are prisoners of conscience and our Christian brethren.
Wal-Mart should be forced to play be the same market rules everyone else has to play by. Their advantage should be in their economies of scale and not in the predatory pricing, questionable employment practices and manuiplation of the real estate market.
Missourian writes: “THE WORLD DOES NOT WORK THE WAY YOU THINK IT DOES! Wishing will not make the world work that way. You cannot force Walmart to accept lower profits.”
The world is a big place, and there are many considerations. There have been some interesting analyses between Walmart/Sam’s Club and Costco, both high-volume retail chains. The following article originally appeared in Fortune Magazine:
http://www.teamster.org/04news/hn_040211_6.htm
Bottom line: Costco has significantly higher sales per store, higher revenue per square foot, and generally better financials all around. Costco has half the annual turnover AND Costco’s starting wage is higher that Walmart’s average wage AND Costco’s benefit package is better.
So you have to look at the total business model. Walmart’s current business model involves making profit through squeezing employees. It doesn’t have to be that way, and Costco proves it.
Note 56
Can’t wrap your head about the concept of a labor market of free agents, can you?
You must be like those older East Germans who are nostalgic for Communism.
Costco doesn’t pay more than the market rate for unskilled, minimum wage labor. It would be irrational for Costco to pay more than the market price for unskilled, minimum wage labor. Costco is not irrational. If Costco wages are higher, then, by definition, they are hiring employees with higher skill levels. If they pay more, they are paying more for some form of higher type of employee productivity. If they pay more, then they are demanding from their employees a higher level of performance than that which is represented by basic minimum wage labor.
If I flew to your house and brought Milton Friedman with me he still couldn’t convince you, could he? (Milton Friedman is an internationally renowned economist)Deep in your heart you believe that people are entitled to a comfortable living from the rest of us, simply because they breathe in and out regularly. You have found me out. Employers are always selfish and we have access to an infinite, secret fund of money that NEVER RUNS OUT!!! I can really pay my employees more than what they earn for the company because I am an evil employer WHO HAS MAGIC POWERS TO GENERATE DOLLAR BILLS BY SNAPPING MY FINGERS. This is a secret only a few Marxists have discovered, please don’t tell people. If I wanted to I could support everybody very comfortably, American style.
Walmart is owned by stockholders who will not tolerate a dip in profits. They will move their money to another company. Walmart will lay off minimum wage workers and replace them with machines if the State imposes a higher minimum wage.
Costc is owned by stockholders who will not tolerate a dip in profits. They will move their money to another company. Costco will lay off low wage workers and replace them with machines if the State imposes a higher minimum wage.
If the public wishes to assist minimum wage workers the best route is to invest in job training which will make them more productive and competitive.
I do see the benefit of the higher minimum wage. The resulting unemployment of minimum wage workers will support the continued activity of social workers and those who administer welfare and unemployment programs. If you push the minimum wage high enough, unscrupulous employers will resort to the “black market” in labor. They will pay cash under the table. They will hire illegals. The government welfare jobs don’t necessarily pay alot but they have good benefits and long term security. No unemployed people? No government jobs.
Note 55
If Walmart is breaking the law, they should be prosecuted like anyone else. Our discussion centers on the assumption that people are behaving rationally and lawfully.
Missourian writes: “Costco doesn’t pay more than the market rate for unskilled, minimum wage labor. It would be irrational for Costco to pay more than the market price for unskilled, minimum wage labor. Costco is not irrational. If Costco wages are higher, then, by definition, they are hiring employees with higher skill levels. If they pay more, they are paying more for some form of higher type of employee productivity.”
Did you ever think that maybe the higher wage and the better benefits have a positive effect on productivity? That’s what the CEO of Costco believes, so if you disagree with that, you’re argument is with him, not me. I’ve shopped quite a bit at Costco and a little bit at Walmart. It does not seem to me that restocking shelves, running a register, or boxing purchases is rocket-scientist-level labor at either store. But Costco manages to treat its employees better.
The profitability of most businesses does not depend on paying as little as possible to the lowest-paid staff. Savings and loans failed in the 80s because of bad investments, not because they paid the tellers too much. Enron failed because of bad and corrupt business decisions, not because the janitors were overpaid.
Your view is that labor should be treated as a commodity and compensated as such. My view is that people should be treated as assets of the organization and compensated as such. With all due respect, your view is about 40 years behind the times, although unfortunately there are still many businesses that operate that way. In general the best-performing businesses do not. This is because employees are a business’s greatest asset, but they have to be treated as assets, not as commodities. You want to pay someone 5 bucks an hour? You’ll get 5 bucks an hour of performance, even if the person is capable of many times that.
Productivity Drives Wages:
Jim Holman notes:
Missourian writes: ?Costco doesn?t pay more than the market rate for unskilled, minimum wage labor. It would be irrational for Costco to pay more than the market price for unskilled, minimum wage labor. Costco is not irrational. If Costco wages are higher, then, by definition, they are hiring employees with higher skill levels. If they pay more, they are paying more for some form of higher type of employee productivity.?
Did you ever think that maybe the higher wage and the better benefits have a positive effect on productivity? That?s what the CEO of Costco believes, so if you disagree with that, you?re argument is with him, not me. I?ve shopped quite a bit at Costco and a little bit at Walmart. It does not seem to me that restocking shelves, running a register, or boxing purchases is rocket-scientist-level labor at either store. But Costco manages to treat its employees better.
Missourian replies: Productivity and labor availability drives wages. Costco is not irrational. Costco will not pay $45,000 a year for minimum-wage unskilled labor. Truly unskilled labor is abundant and readily available at minimum wage. If Costco can hire a person to restock shelves, run a register and box purchases for minimum wage it will do so. Costco is paying what it needs to pay to get the employees it needs–no more no less.
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The profitability of most businesses does not depend on paying as little as possible to the lowest-paid staff. Savings and loans failed in the 80s because of bad investments, not because they paid the tellers too much. Enron failed because of bad and corrupt business decisions, not because the janitors were overpaid.
Your view is that labor should be treated as a commodity and compensated as such. My view is that people should be treated as assets of the organization and compensated as such. With all due respect, your view is about 40 years behind the times, although unfortunately there are still many businesses that operate that way. In general the best-performing businesses do not. This is because employees are a business?s greatest asset, but they have to be treated as assets, not as commodities. You want to pay someone 5 bucks an hour? You?ll get 5 bucks an hour of performance, even if the person is capable of many times that.
Missourian replies: I will reply to this section in another note.
Note 61
Jim Holman writes. Labor is not a commodity.
Missourian replies. When discussing issues with Jim it is necessary to first peel away the emotion so that the mechanisms which truly control what happens in the world can be discussed.
I) EMOTIONS VS. CONTROLLING PRINCIPLES:
Newton discovered the universal gravitational constant. This constant holds true whether you are on the Moon, on Saturn or on the Earth. I don’t like tripping and falling, it hurts, but, regardless of HOW I FEEL about falling to the Earth, the universal gravitational constant operates to CONTROL MY FALL the same way.
II)THE LABOR MARKET WITHOUT EMOTION: YES, PEOPLE ARE NOT COMMODITIES BUT PRODUCTIVE LABOR IS A VALUABLE ENTITY WHICH IS TRADED IN MARKETS WHICH OPERATE JUST LIKE MARKETS FOR COMMODITIES.
II) A) THE LABOR MARKET IS ABOUT ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY NOT INTRINSIC HUMAN WORTH.
Yes, a unskilled person who stacks soup cans is just as valuable a human being as a person who designs computer motherboards. The soup stacker is a child of God. The soup stacker is a citizen of the United States ( in my store anyway) and a member of our democracy. The labor market is not about intrinsic human worth, it is about economic productivity.
II)B) TO STAY IN BUSINESS EARN MORE THAN YOU SPEND
In order to stay in business, money coming in must equal or exceed money going out.
The “productivity” of an employee is just another word for the ability of that employee to bring money into the company. A person who can design a computer motherboard used in a computer sold for $3,000 has a greater level of economic “productivity” than an unskilled worker stacking soup cans. If, over the long run you pay an employee MORE than his economic productivity warrants, you will go broke and everything comes to a halt. This is why I have said in exasperation that employers do not have a “magic treasurehouse of money” which they can use to pay low-productivity employees more than the productivity of that employee warrants.
III) COSTCO IS IN BUSINESS—THEREFORE—- COSTCO DOES NOT SPEND MORE THAN IT EARNS—-THEREFORE ——COSTCO DOES NOT PAY AN EMPLOYEE MORE THAN HIS OR HER PRODUCTIVITY WARRANTS.
Note, Costco uses sophisticated, computerized inventory control systems to manage its billion dollar inventory. It also uses high-powered machines to move goods. Costco does not hire totally unskilled people to stack boxes by hand. Those days are long gone.
Costco does not pay any of its employees a wage that is not fully justified by his or her productivity. If it did otherwise it would not be prosperous. If I can find a person to stack soup cans ( and nothing more) for $5.15 I will hire them. If that person decides that they are “worth more” than $5.15/hour that employee is free to find another employer who agrees with him. I know I can find an honest person who will reliably stack soup cans for $5.15. Unskilled labor is very available and I can easily find someone who will stack soup cans for $5.15 an hour. If I decided that I really, really liked the soup stacker and I paid him $20.00/hour, I would slowly lose money over the medium term. As a manager, I would be replaced by someone who does not lose money. You will note through all of this that the internal psychological state of the employee is not relevant. If the soup stacker develops an unpleasant personal attitude, I don’t care, as long as the soup cans are properly stacked. If his personality becomes so unpleasant that it interferes with the productivity of other employees, I replace him with someone with the same skills and better attitude.
IV WAGES DON’T DRIVE PRODUCTIVITY; SKILLS DRIVE PRODUCTIVITY and PRODUCTIVITY DRIVES WAGES.
I think that what Jim is trying to say is “paying a person more will improve their attitude and improve their productivity.” My response is not in most cases, and not over the long run. The upper limit on productivity is set by skill levels. You can improve my disposition (for a short time) by giving me a raise but you cannot improve my skill levels by giving me a raise. The motivation boost provided by a good salary disappears rather quickly, a couple of months. Human nature is such that everyone quickly becomes accustomed to his or her new level of income. Most human beings have a high sense of “entitlement.” Nobody thinks their boss values their contribution properly. The answer is, of course, that if someone is truly undervalued by their current boss, they should be able to convince another boss to hire them at a higher wage (IF THEY ARE TRULY PRODUCTIVE).
Note 61
Short answer:
What comes in must exceed that which goes out.
Employees contribute to “what comes in” through their economic productivity.
Employers who pay employees MORE than their economic productivity warrant will lose money and go out of business.
Paying the same employee more will not improve his LONG-TERM productivity, because, it will not improve his SKILL SET.
What about an employee who is motivated to work harder? Take the soup stacker. He is willing to stack 10 cans/hour at $5.00/hour. He is willing to stack 20 cans/hour at $10.00/hour. This is STILL ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY. Productivity in this case is measured by the number of cans per hour that the stacker properly stacks.
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As a matter of personal moral conduct employees should be treated with respect. This is a matter of interpersonal relations. But people should not confuse “treating employees with respect” or “treating employees well” with paying employees commensurate with their productivity.
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Jim wants employers to be social welfare agencies. Social welfare agencies will go out of business and no one will have a job. The whole idea of paying a “living wage” is the idea that payment should be set by some non-economic standard of human dignity and NOT by the economic standard of productivity. You can mandate that businesses pay a “working wage” but they will have to law off workers whose productivity is beneath that justified by a “living wage.” If they pay more in wages than the productivity of the person brings into the company, the company goes out of business.
Productivity Drops to the Minimum Required
I have employed more than 30 people over ten years in professional, semi-professional and unskilled jobs. My observation is that 10% of the population has a deeply ingrained work ethic which does not allow them to do a sloppy job. Where this comes from is beyond me, childhood probably or just personality. The remaining population of employees will sink to the lowest tolerated level of productivity.
Example, when you first hire someone they are very prompt and at the office at 9:00 a.m. Two months later, they start being a “little late.” Six months later, if you don’t do something, they will be late every week. Every time they are late they have a “good reason.” When I first started employing people I really didn’t like the idea of recording when a person came to work. I thought it was demeaning to the professionalism of the employees. Well….. ten years later….90% of the working population will fall into tardiness after six month unless monitored.
What happens when employees are late? Just last week I had an important phone call from an important client come in at 9:01 a.m. Luckily I was in the office to get it. An employee of mine who was supposed to be there at 9:00 a.m. was a “little late” for a “good reason.” We didn’t lose the client, we didn’t lose the job. This client pays us a tidy sum for some very high level work, if there hadn’t been someone to answer the phone call, he would have thought that we were not very professional and he would have thought twice about hiring us.
Rebellion of the Employers:
Jim, if you want me to raise my employees pay to the point where they bring home as much as I do, I am quitting. Each of my employees has one function.
Here is what my husband and I do.
Build computer workstations from the component level on up.
Trouble shoot and maintain multi-work station computer systems.
Program using language from the C++ family of computer languages.
Use high level computer graphics programs to create animations.
Maintain an accounting system
Maintain a legal record keeping system to comply with legal requirements for employees pay, safety, insurance.
Commit ourselves to fixed contracts like rent, and equipment rental.
Make sales presentations to meetings of high-level professionals.
Be the TARGET for every form of LEGAL LIABILITY on the planet.
Be the boogyman for socialists.
Create the company using funds we saved while working as employees.
I won’t run a company unless I make double what I could make as an employee. There are days when being only an employee, not a boss, would seem like bliss. We have committed ourselves to never missing a payroll and we haven’t. If it ever became necessary we would borrow or incur additional risk to meet a promised payroll.
In short, my employees sleep better than I do. If government forces me to become a social welfare agency and pay employees at a rate that does not reflect their productivity I QUIT!!! I will push a broom first. Try putting the company together without me..
“This is what’s the matter with Kansas, and with America. From the air-conditioned heights of a suburban office complex this may look like a new age of reason, with the Websites singing each to each, with a mall down the way that every week has miraculously anticipated our subtly shifting tastes, with a global economy whose rich rewards just keep flowing, with a promotion and a bonus every year, and with a long parade of rust-free Infinitis purring down the streets of beautifullymanicured planned communities.
But on closer inspection the country we have inhabited for the last three decades seems more like a panorama of madness and delusion worthy of Hieronymous Bosch: of sturdy patriots reciting the Pledge while they resolutely strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of hardened blue-collar workers in midwestern burgs cheering as they deliver up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life, will transform their region into a “rust belt,” will strike people like them blows from which they will never recover.”
Thomas Frank, author of “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” http://www.tcfrank.com/
I haven’t read the whole piece (judging by the excerpt it doesn’t sound very promising), but the second paragraph characterizes the Kansas red-staters as stupid because they vote against their own interests. In actual fact, they are characterized this way because they don’t agree with the author’s politics.
And liberal commentators like Frank still can’t understand why people get fed up with them.
He writes: “..the country we have inhabited for the last three decades seems more like a panorama of madness and delusion worthy of Hieronymous Bosch.” Really? In what part of the country does this guy live?
Fr. Hans writes: “I haven’t read the whole piece (judging by the excerpt it doesn’t sound very promising), but the second paragraph characterizes the Kansas red-staters as stupid because they vote against their own interests. In actual fact, they are characterized this way because they don’t agree with the author’s politics.”
I’ve read the book. It’s not that people in Kansas are stupid, but that they are manipulated into voting against their own economic interests. The book is basically an analysis of how that works. In summary, what happens is that lower- and middle-class people are kept in a constant state of umbrage over various social issues, most of which they have little control over, in order to gain their support for economic policies that benefit the upper class and corporations.
What’s happening is a kind of bizarre faux populist uprising, in which “millionaires, lawyers, and Harvard grads lead a proletarian uprising against millionaires, lawyers, and Harvard grads.” In other words, it’s class warfare in which the classes are defined not in economic terms but in terms of “authenticity.” Thus, George W. Bush goes to Andover, Yale, Harvard. He skates on his military obligation through family influence. He is bailed out of failing businesses by family friends. And finally he becomes rich through public tax money in the Arlington stadium deal. Nonetheless, Bush is seen as an “ordinary guy” who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps by many of his supporters.
In contrast to Bush are the chablis-drinking, latte-swilling, Volvo-driving intellectual liberal elites. The liberal elites are responsible for the pervasive and omnipresent liberal cultural influence that is always taking the country to hell in a handbasket. The liberal influence is seen as the perpetual fly in the ointment, always ruining everything. (Most recently Bill O’Reilly identified liberals and secularists as the enemies of Christmas.) And somehow, some way, liberals manage assert their hideous control over everything.
In this fantasy world, facts mean nothing. William Bennett fights for morality from the casinos of America. Rush Limbaugh denounces the moral demise of America while waiting for the next shipment of Oxycontin. Ann Coulter denounces liberals in one sentence, and then in the next celebrates the joys of unmarried sex ["Let's say I go out every night, I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I'm not married."---Rivera Live 6/7/00] Newt Gingrich engages in various adulterous affairs and then trumpets family values.
The list goes on and on. Entire web sites and book chapters have been devoted to the truly legendary number of divorces, adulteries, drug-ingestions, and casual “encounters” of the conservative leadership. But none of this matters, and all is forgiven. Is this stupidity? I don’t know. You explain it to me.
What’s the Matter With Kansas?
Not a thing, it turns out.
BY STEVEN MALANGA
Monday, December 6, 2004 12:01 a.m. EST
Kansas is a reliable “red” state; President Bush carried it by nearly 21% in 2000 and padded his margin to nearly 26% this year. The state’s rock-solid support of Mr. Bush and other conservative candidates has sent at least one of its native sons, political commentator Thomas Frank, into paroxysms of rage. In his new book, “What’s the Matter With Kansas?,” Mr. Frank argues that all those Jayhawk State rubes have got things backward: They’ve continued to vote Republican as the state goes through economic hardship, even though, by doing so, they’re voting against their own economic interests. The book is a big hit with left-leaning commentators and has sold very well, making the author something of a celebrity on the talk-show circuit.
In purple prose, Mr. Frank paints a grim picture of the state and its towns. Kansas is “pretty much in a free fall,” he informs us, and as a result of its economic devastation, it’s “a civilization in the early stages of irreversible decay.” The cause of all this decline, he says, is modern capitalism, especially as practiced by all those businessmen-Republicans. Kansas is “burning on a free-market pyre,” he writes. Things are especially bad in his old hometown of Shawnee, where, during his visits, he no longer sees anyone in the streets. Instead, “heaps of rusting junk and snarling rottweilers” blight the landscape.
Yet Mr. Frank’s characterization of the Jayhawk State is completely–bizarrely–at odds with the facts. Kansas’s economy has actually outpaced the nation’s for years. Throughout the 1990s and the first part of this new decade, Kansas had a lower unemployment rate than the U.S. as a whole. In fact, when the country’s unemployment rate dipped below 5% from 1997 to 2001, Kansas’s fell under 4%–a level so low that economists basically consider it full employment. Overall, the state’s economy added 256,000 new jobs during the 1990s, a 24% growth rate, compared with a 20% national gain in the same period. Even when the economic slowdown set in and the recession finally hit in 2002 and 2003, Kansas lost jobs at a slower rate than the national economy did.
It’s the same story in the state’s agricultural sector, which Mr. Frank claims the free market has driven “to a near state of collapse.” Yes, Kansas farm jobs shrank by about 9% in the 1990s, a result of farms becoming larger and more efficient (and producing more), but the state’s total agricultural economy grew by 10%, some 30,000 jobs, as areas like food processing and agricultural wholesaling expanded.
The objects of Mr. Frank’s particular concern, his hometown of Shawnee and the rest of Johnson County, have done especially well. For three years in the 1990s, the Shawnee area’s unemployment rate actually dipped below 3%, making it one of the tightest labor markets anywhere.
When the recession hit, Shawnee’s unemployment rate did rise, but it still stayed below the nation’s. And though Mr. Frank describes the place as practically desolate, Shawnee’s population grew by a robust 27% during the 1990s. Even more astonishing, today, only 3.3% of its citizens live below the poverty level, compared with about 12.5% nationally. “It’s possible his view of us is outdated,” says Jim Martin, executive director of the Shawnee Economic Development Council, in classic Midwestern understatement.
Regardless of Kansas’ economic performance, Mr. Frank’s main thesis–that people who are struggling economically should be voting as liberals, not conservatives–is dubious. As an editorial in the Wichita Eagle observed: “There’s nothing wrong with many Kansans wanting to hold onto a little more of their paychecks . . . or preferring that when they need help it comes from their family, their church, their community–not an intrusive federal government.” But what’s really astounding is that Mr. Frank, who offers little in the way of economic data, would base his argument on such blatant falsehoods. To Mr. Frank’s liberal prejudices, something may be the matter with Kansas, but it sure isn’t its economy.
Shawnee Kansas A NICE PLACE TO LIVE
I live about 20 miles from Shawnee, Kansas. My husband and I will probably drive through it while Christmas shopping today (yes, we are still shopping!!).
Shawnee is a prosperous town full of well-manicured neighborhoods. It is old enough to have tree-lined streets. Shawnee is known locally for excellent schools, low-crime and friendly neighbors.
I would recommend Shawnee to anyone.
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Note, I visit Los Angeles and Hollywood for business purposes about twice a year. I have visted approximately 20 times in the last 10 years. The energy of Los Angeles always is exciting and I always enjoy the first few days there. However, it is hard not to notice the young prostitutes, obviously strung out on drugs, frequenting the main streets of Hollywood interspersed with us tourists.
Kansas is not perfect, but, if you walk the main streets of Topeka, Manhattan and Lawrence you will be hard pressed to find teenage prostitutes prying their trade in broad daylight. There must be prostitutes in those cities but I have never seen them. I always see prostitutes in Hollywood and, as a middle-aged married woman, I am not frequenting the hip bar scene at night, I am looking for business addresses in the center of town during the middle of the day.
Kansas is a family State. If you enjoy family living, its terrific. Church attendance is very high. People are devoted to their families, their neighborhoods, their cities and their State. There is excellent education available at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, at Kansas State University at Mandhattan and at Washburn University in Topeka. The public education remains quite good, mainly because many Kansas school districts refused to follow the fads of the 60′s. Johnson County has a huge community college (JCCC)consisting of more than 15 separate buildlings. JCCC offers literally hundreds of two-year programs including traditional academic studies and well-focused technical training. It provides a great start for many students as half of its classes are offered in the evenings and on weekends and the tuition remains at $50.00/credit.
If you get a change to travel to Kansas visit the Flint Hills in the spring. Their beauty will take your breath away. The thing I particularly enjoy about Kansas is the overwhelming sensation of pure freedom that one can enjoy when traveling across its endless, fertile prairies. Fields of pure gold waving gently under an intensely blue sky. Has to be seen to be believed.
What’s the Matter with California
50 years of Democratic Misrule come home to Roost. Thank you Teacher’s Unions Mainstay of the Democractic Party
Education crisis looms in California’s future: From the Modesto Bee
Whatever else people believe about what makes a quality education, most can agree that good teachers make a big difference in student learning. Now, it’s time for lawmakers and state education leaders to make a big difference for teachers and, in turn, for students. Quick action is needed in 2005 to overcome serious challenges that await in 2006. Among them: By 2006, under federal requirements, 20,000 California teachers with emergency teaching permits or pre-intern certificates no longer will be able to teach.
In 2006, the number of teachers will start declining, largely because of retirements. Fewer college students, meanwhile, are majoring in education.
Beginning with the class of 2006, students will be required to pass a high school exit exam in order to graduate. At the same time, a huge student demographic bulge will be moving through high school.
California in the late 1990s invested in an elaborate teacher recruitment pipeline and in centers for training teachers in specific subject areas. But as the report “California’s Teaching Force 2004″ points out, that system has been disrupted.
To meet the challenges of 2006, lawmakers and education leaders should learn from the experiences of the late 1990s. The most pressing issue then as now: Students needing the best teachers are the most likely to face underprepared teachers at hard-to-staff, lower-performing schools. That cycle has to be broken.
How?
Make sure that words in last summer’s Williams settlement result in action. The settlement requires the state to address poor conditions at schools, including decrepit facilities and lack of instructional materials that contribute to high teacher turnover at lower-performing schools. It also requires county offices of education to review assignment patterns of new, underprepared and out-of-field teachers at those schools. This is an area where county offices of education should exercise leadership.
Make sure we really get more math and science teachers as a result of the Higher Education Compact between the University of California and California State University systems and Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Invest in training for middle and high school teachers. The state spent $222 million for professional development programs in 2000-01, but only $62 million in 2003-04. That money has gone primarily toward reading and math teaching in the early grades, an effort that has paid off in results. But investment in higher grades has been minimal. The need now is to extend a similar effort to middle and high schools. For example, Algebra I is now required for graduation from high school, yet 40 percent of teachers teaching algebra do not have training in math.
Revive professional development institutes and California subject matter projects, administered by UC. Funding for the institutes was eliminated; subject matter projects have been drastically cut. Both programs offered long and intense professional development with follow-up, rather than disconnected workshops.
The teaching force report concludes: “We believe there is a small window now for the state to act to avoid a crisis of the magnitude we saw in the late 1990s. Now, unlike then, the warning signs are clear; the crisis is avoidable.” It’s clear what needs to happen. Focus like a laser on the teacher recruitment pipeline and high-quality professional development.
Jim writes:
“I’ve read the book. It’s not that people in Kansas are stupid, but that they are manipulated into voting against their own economic interests. The book is basically an analysis of how that works. In summary, what happens is that lower- and middle-class people are kept in a constant state of umbrage over various social issues, most of which they have little control over, in order to gain their support for economic policies that benefit the upper class and corporations.”
Isn’t this saying that people in Kansas are stupid but in different words? Those foolish Kansians(?) are led into frenetic and mindless preoccupation with social issues by others who really want to get into their wallets? This is cogent analysis?
Sounds to me the book has more to do with the author’s complete incomprehension about why the ideas he holds as sancrosanct are in decline. He would do better to deal with facts, as Steve Malanga’s article (posted by Missourian above) makes clear.
Fr. Hans writes: “Those foolish Kansians(?) are led into frenetic and mindless preoccupation with social issues by others who really want to get into their wallets? This is cogent analysis?”
The social concerns are sincere, but in many cases are not proportional compared to other things people should be concerned about. In many cases the social concerns are played upon by people who have other agendas — in many cases economic agendas that actually do not benefit the people.
What’s gone on in Kansas is not necessarily best described by traditional measures. Missourian notes a good unemployment rate. But as Thomas Frank notes “over two-thirds of Kansas counties lost population between 1980 and 2000, some by as much as 25 percent. I am told that there are entire towns in the western part of the state getting by on Social Security; no one is left there by the aged. There are no doctors, no shoe stores. One town out here even sold its public school on eBay.”
So I suppose one way to reduce the unemployment rate is to lose people, but I would hardly describe that as an economic victory.
Missourian’s article derides Frank’s claim that agriculture has been driven “to a near state of collapse.” But Frank isn’t talking about farm employment; he’s talking about the number of family farms:
“‘The U.S. is experiencing the greatest farm loss numbers since the mid-1980s,’ says the National Family Farm Coalition. Talk to just about any farmer in Kansas, and you will find him extremely pessimistic about his livelihood. Except for the owners of the very largest spreads, farmers simply cannot make a profit. Kansas has only about half as many farms as it did in 1950; those that remain continue to grow. A few are getting big; most are getting out. . . . the main cause is the five or six huge agribusiness conglomerates that buy raw materials from farmers and process and package them for export or for sale in grocery stores. . . . [The conglomerates] have been on an unbroken winning streak now for twenty-some years, with farm legislation, trade policy, and a regulatory climate all crafted to strengthen the conglomerates while weakening farmers. For shareholders and upper management of companies like Archer Daniels Midland and Tyson, the result has been miraculous; a heaven on earth. For towns like Emporia, it has been ruinous.”
It’s not that capitalism per se is bad, but that unbridled capitalism tends to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few. With respect to the food business Frank notes that “the four largest players process 81 percent of the beef, 59 percent of the pork, and 50 percent of the chicken produced in the United States.” In grains “the largest four process 61 percent of American wheat, 80 percent of American soybeans, and either 57 percent or 74 percent of American corn, depending on the method.”
Note 73
Jim, what you really suffer from is a lack of understanding of where wealth comes from and how it is produced.
In the 19th Century Americans settled the Great Plains and established farms and ranches, in the 20th Century we developed techniques of agricultural production which required less human labor. Threshing machines process acres of land in hours. This work that formerly required large crews of people working like donkeys for weeks. Hand threshing an entire acre of week is back breaking labor. We don’t have to subject humans to that work anymore. Just as we don’t need to dig wells by hand.
Well, the process has continued. The number of people required to efficiently run a wheat farm has gone down. A small number of people can effectively run a huge, very productive wheat farm. If Jim would check the statistics on PRODUCTIVITY, Jim would see that Kansas wheat farms are still extremely productive. The American economy greatly benefits from this productivity as it provides a valuable source of funds earned by exports. We have a balance of trade problem and we need to sell more goods overseas.
Labor, land and capital are valuable resources that are used in different mixes to produce valuable goods. As technology advances, machines take over work formerly done by humans. Machines are best at rote mindless work. This frees humans up to do with only humans can do, create and invent.
It isn’t necessarily bad that fewer people live in Western Kansas. I would prefer to live a life doing something that only humans can do than being a biped beast of burden. Under your analysis, society would never advance as the status quo would be frozen in time.
Jim’s suggestions allows decrease society’s wealth and reward the non-productive.
MINIMUM WAGE WALTZ:
Government to employer: You must pay $X/hour as a minimum wage.
Employer to government: I will have to let go workers who are not productive enough to justify $X/hour.
Goverment to employer: You may not let employees go, you must decrease profits.
Employer to government: Your law has eliminated my profits, OR your law has decreased my profits below the level that I can earn elsewhere. I am going out of business, taking my investment and investing it somewhere else. I will look for a business which has a few people as possible.
Government to employer: You cannot go out of business.
Employer to government: I will leave your City, your State, your Country. Funds can travel to other countries and be invested there. ( Rich Syrians invest in America because they live in a dictatorial cleptocracy.)
Government to employer: Guards will be placed at the border. Banks will be required to report all transactions. Taxes will be imposed on withdrawals of funds. …… Welcome to Soviet Russia.
PRODUCTIVITY ANALYSIS:
Instead of mandating a redistribution of wealth from the productive to the non-productive, encourage the less productive to acquire skills which make them more productive.
Under Jim’s analysis GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT IS MAXIMIZED as GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMEES PRESIDE OVER A HERD OF UNEMPLOYED, LOW PRODUCTIVITIY PEOPLE. This could mean say… the Democratic Party and THE POOR!!
Yes, there are some people who have an upper limit on their productivity through no fault of their own: low IQ people for instance. These people are still better off working at whatever job they can do, rather than vegetating because their work doesn’t justify minimum wage. Jim wants these people vegetating under the watchful eyes of some well-paid government bureaucrat.
Under my proposal, low productivity people are retrained to do something society needs done, which is turn justifies a higher wage, which in turn increases the overall wealth of society.
Saving the Family Farm:
Government Of Jim to Agriculture: A family farm is defined as a farm of 1,000 acres. Something that can be farmed by a family. Farms over 1,000 acres are banned.
Agriculture to Government of Jim: A farmer cannot use the latest farming techniques economically on a farm of 1,000 acreas. Consequently, the productivity of a family farm is only 50/bushels of wheat per acre at the cost of $5.00/bushel. Larger farms in the neighbor country of Canada can produce 100/bushels of wheat per acrea on farms that are at least 10,000 acreas and the cost to produce the bushel of wheat is only $1.00.
Government of Jim to Agriculture: I don’t care if Canada produces more wheat (to feed hungry people) at a lower price, 10,000 acre farms throw families off the land and are forbidden.
Agriculture to Government of Jim: Canadians using 10,000 acre farms are selling wheat in the international market for $2.00/bushel. We cannot sell in the international market because it costs us $5.00/bushel to grow wheat. No one wants to buy our wheat. The price of wheat is dropping because of ABUNDANCE!!.
Government of Jim to Agriculture and Hungry People. I have decided that family farms are good and that NO WORKER MAY BE DISPLACED!!! I will prohibit the import of Canadian wheat. Americans will pay $5.00/bushel for American wheat. The cost of food for EVERYBODY INCLUDING THE POOR will be higher. But no family farm will be displaced.
Poor people all over America rejoiced as they shared their loaves of expensive bread with each other. They rejoiced knowing that no family farmer ever had to “leave a farm” and get employment elsewhere. Because of this everybody in America could only purchase from small supplies of $5.00/bushel wheat. Canadian’s enjoyed an abundance of cheap wheat and sold their goods to third world countries at low prices. The entire world enjoyed MORE FOOD, the POOR were eating better, a few workers in the farming sector got jobs doing something else.
WORKER’S PARADISE IS CONSUMER’S HELL. THE POOR ARE THE MOST PRICE SENSITIVE CONSUMERS. JIM HOLMAN AND PARIS HILTON DIDN’T MIND PAYING HIGH BREAD PRICES.
“FOR TOWNS LIKE EMPORIA IT HAS BEEN RUINOUS”
This author’s factual assertions have been successfully challenged with respect to Shawnee, Kansas. Undeterred Jim Holman is willing to contintue to give credence to this author’s factual assertions and to this author’s conclusions regarding family farms and the state of Emporia, Kansas.
I know Emporia, Kansas. Emporia, Kansas is a very prosperous town hosting a small state university. Emporia is considered a very nice place to live.
This author has no credibility with me. I seriously question his assertions about agricultural conglomerates because he was so far off base with his description of Shawnee.
ALLEGED AGRICULTURAL CONGLOMERATES
Monopolization or near-monopolization of market share is illegal under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. There are laws on the books which, if enforced, could prevent market domination by a few companies. The difficulty which arises at this point is that serious policy debates are bogged down by the fact that this author has proved himself to be unreliable with the facts.
Monopolies ARE NOT the inevitable byproduct of free-markets. Monopolies are the antithesis of free markets. Free markets can be obtained throug the enforcment of the anti-trust legislation which is on the books in the federal level as well as any other level.
In essence, Jim’s approach is the same as the approach used by the Soviet Union which failed miserably on economic grounds alone, let along political grounds.
Jim writes: “The social concerns are sincere, but in many cases are not proportional compared to other things people should be concerned about. In many cases the social concerns are played upon by people who have other agendas ? in many cases economic agendas that actually do not benefit the people.”
Says who? Frankly, this is one of the most specious assumptions I’ve heard in quite a while. If this is what drives Frank’s analysis of the data, I can see why Malanga (note 69) blew him out of the water with such little effort.
Frank’s idea is a transparent attempt to resurrect the cultural bias that conservatives are stupid hicks led by the nose by unscrupulous leaders. The problem is that the imposition of this bias on the larger culture doesn’t work anymore, chiefly because new media outlets evolved that challenge it. His argument will play well to the Nation and Mother Jones crowd, but it won’t filter into the larger culture. Times have changed but Frank doesn’t seem to realize how great a change it is.
One other reason for the decline of Frank’s ideas is that liberal intellectuals (are there any?) haven’t offered any new ideas to replace the failed ideas that they used to promote. They just try to repackage them — like Frank. You don’t see the creativity on the liberal side that you see with, say, Heritage, AEI, Hoover, and others.
Missourian writes: “I know Emporia, Kansas. Emporia, Kansas is a very prosperous town hosting a small state university. Emporia is considered a very nice place to live.”
I looked up the census data for Emporia for 1990 and 2000, and the population is smaller in 2000. It may be a nice place to live, but it sounds like fewer people are able to live there. Certainly that does not bode well for the town’s long-term prospects.
Missourian: “This author has no credibility with me. I seriously question his assertions about agricultural conglomerates because he was so far off base with his description of Shawnee.”
Ok, forget Thomas Frank and check out the National Family Farm Coalition:
“Background and Problem: In the past, large meatpackers (Smithfield, IBP Tyson, Cargill) purchased hogs and cattle on an open market from producers of various sizes, including many small diversified family farmers. Now meatpacking companies increasingly own and raise their own livestock in large-scale confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). These CAFOs pollute our environment, drive property values down, and destroy communities. Other packers enter contracts with livestock producers in which the meatpackers have management control of an animal throughout its life and after its slaughter.
“Under this system, large meatpackers keep money they otherwise would have paid to livestock producers for their animals, leading to damaging effects on small communities as the producers no longer have that money to spend locally. This shift in the economic balance of the meat packing industry from the rural producer to the corporate headquarter sector continues to devastate rural communities.
“Meanwhile, the increased profit for packers has not been passed on to consumers through lower prices. And the farmer’s share of the retail dollar has plummeted. For family farmers, this trend is devastating, causing a huge shrinkage of the available open competitive market for livestock and forcing them to compete with the huge packer operations who have access to preferential price deals through their one-sided contracts with farmers.”
http://www.nffc.net/issues/fnf/fnf_7.html
What Thomas Frank says is that you have a lot of people who are all het up over things like Janet Jackson’s televised tit, going to the barricades over that, while the economic carpet is being pulled out from under them in order to benefit large agribusinesses.
Forgetting Thomas Frank and “Moving On”
Yes, Jim, you have to ask us to move on from Thomas Frank because he has been so thoroughly discredited and demolished. This is in no small part because I live not too far from Kansas and previously lived and worked there. I also advanced certain detailed economic arguments which you have not addressed because you cannot refute them.
You have now moved on to quote the National Family Farm Coalition. These titles always sound good. The founders of these groups have enough public relations savvy to know that you always use positive buzzwords for titles. Without further research as to the background of the group, there is no particular reason to give special credence to them. A quick review of their recommendation give me no reason to think that they are anything but another group that wants the government to arrange things so that they get more and other sectors of the economy get less.
Frankly, as much I as respect the level of expertise on this board, I am not aware that anyone is really an expert on agricultural economics. The day of the horse-drawn plow is long gone and agriculture is a complex business. The government is heavily involved in agricultural markets and farmers participate in international markets for food which are affected by flucuations in exchange rates. Agriculture is the subject of many complex trade agreements.
I repeat a frequent observation of mine. If large corporations are garnering monopoly power over a market, it is against the law, specifically the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and related legislation. I support free market, which are antithetical to monopolized markets, therefore I support anti-trust enforcement by the federal and state governments.
Preferential Pricing, if proven, if illegal
Farming groups are not powerless. Famers have one of the biggest sets of lobbies in Washington. Farmers are very heavily subsidized and have been since the Depression. Some of my best friends are farmers, but, they have perfected the art of sobbing about the demise of the “family farm” as they collect billions of subsidies from the American taxpayer.
Jim quotes an article which alleges that preferential priceing schemes are entered into in the meat packing industry. If so, they violate the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The same agricultural trade groups that so effectively lobby Washington for subsidies can hire the lawyers necessary to attack this practice.
Jim, the age of the family farm is nearly over. The family corporation has replaced it. We have more abundant food and cheaper food as a result. Try to leave the 19th Century and at least move into the 20th Century if you can’t make it to the 21st.
Boycott Intel and MicroSoft who are driving stenographers/typists out of work.
During the 1950′s a person could make a living by specializing in the process of reducing verbal speech to the written page. These people were stenographer/typists. Millions of people made a living doing this.
Jim and I are starting a crusade on behalf of the stenographer/typist. The numbers of stenographer/typists have dropped precipitously since Intel started manufacturing cheap personal computers and MicroSoft came up with a word processor everyone could learn. In persuit of filthy profit, these ruthless companies have crushed stenographer/typists into the ground. People over profits!!!!!
Join us in a boycott of everything Intel and MicroSoft make.
Selective Sympathy: Unspoken Assumptions: Labor Theory of Value
Jim has a list of standard groups which elicit liberal sympathy. Note that unlike universal Christian love, this liberal sympathy is selective. Christians are tasked to love everyone, including their enemies. Liberals love…. hmmmm…workers, employees and they hate..hmm.. employers, people who own assets, corporations (which are not even people).
Essentially this comes from the old Marxist Labor Theory of Value. Essentially, Marx brushes aside the economic truism that value derives from the subjective utility that is placed on a good or a service by a human being. Marx asserts that any value found in a good or a service is solely the result of LABOR. Modern economists look to labor, capital and land as the resources which combine to generate economic value. All components—labor, capital and land–are necessary for a heatlh economy and the contribution of all components should generate a rate of return on their investment.
Marxist analysis posits that since all value derives from labor, capital is not entitled to any return. This is like trying to balance a three legged stool on one leg. The stool inevitably falls over. Therefore, the motivation behind many liberal proposals is the idea that the government should intervene in the free working of economic markets for the purpose of redirecting rewards from capital to labor. Jim doesn’t want me as an employer to get a return on my investment of funds. He wants wages increased above the level of productivity of an employee so that the return on capital is reduced or eliminated. The inevitable result of policies like this is the flight of capital OR an increase in prices OR the reduction of employment. None of these things benefits the general public. Socialism always improverishes the economy. Socialistic policies always hurt the general public in their role as consumers and decreases the overall wealth of society. Total socialism fails totally. People run from it and have to be fenced into totally socialistic societies.
(Note to the Sweden lovers, its economy is grinding to a halt as the socialistic policies of 50 years come home to roost. Their welfare state has discouraged work, broken up traditional families, depressed the birth rate. Unless a revolution occurs, Swedes will leave their country to Muslims who despise everything Swedish and will suppress Swedish culture just as they blew up the Buddhist statutes in Afghanistan.)
From time to time people have worried that foreign investors might pull their investments from the United States leaving us in a real pinch. While I agree that we need to attend to our budget deficit and we need to attend to our balance of trade problems, I have no fear that capital is going to flee the United States. Most capital is here because it has FLED KLEPTOCRACIES. Communism is another form of kleptocracy.
What baffles me is why liberals have, until lately, managed to claim the high moral ground? Why is it inherently moral to skew the labor market so that Teamsters who drive big rigs get very high wages as compared to other people? Employment in long-haul trucking goes down and prices for food and other basic goods go up. The group most sensitive to price increases are the poor, particularly for food. Why are the Teamsters anything more than a group of people who have banded together to squeeze more out of the market place, more for ME less for YOU. They didn’t derive more from the market place by being more productive, they used legal power to do it and some intimidation. Why is this moral?
Like most Christians, I’ve chosen to eschew the more inconvenient passages in the Bible (such as “give all you have to the poor and follow me”), a Marxist ideology if I’ve ever heard one (and which was obviously spoken before the advent of Dolce & Gabbana and Wittnauer).
Legislating the virtue of chastity (which Texas tried to do with the effete) is an appropriate civil expression of our righteous hatred of those who are unable to control their libidos. More understandable vices, such as the inability to control one’s American Express or Visa charge balances for the purchase of fine quality stemware or Ferrari accessories (even if others don’t have the means, or good taste, for such items) require nothing more than a high-decible rebuke. Anything else would be shockingly unAmerican!
The Gates Foundation has donated astronomical sums of money (in the billions) to charitable causes. Besides the money given to medical research and assistance, they’ve also contributed to learning (see this.)
Much of the problem with government assistance is not so much lack of funds but the lack of efficiency and bloat: I’ve seen it from experience. It would do well to learn from more successful organizations such as the Gates.
Missourian writes: “Jim has a list of standard groups which elicit liberal sympathy.
. . . Jim doesn’t want me as an employer to get a return on my investment of funds.”
I have no idea where you’re getting any of this. It appears that my suggestion that capitalism can and should operate under certain reasonable limits has been interpreted as advocacy for full-blown Marxism.
Missourian: “Jim, the age of the family farm is nearly over. The family corporation has replaced it. We have more abundant food and cheaper food as a result. Try to leave the 19th Century and at least move into the 20th Century if you can’t make it to the 21st.”
Farming is not becoming the activity of “family corporations” but of giant agricultural corporations. You have a handful of corporations that control vast pieces of the food chain.
Combine agribusiness and globalization and you create a situation in which small farms across the world are driven out of business. Of course, as you note, our corn will be cheaper. But as the small Mexican farms are driven out of existence, where do you think all those people go? Think hard now . . . . If they can’t make a living in Mexico, they’ll come to . . . yes! You guessed it!
ECONOMIC REWARDS DISCONNECTED FROM PRODUCTIVITY = MARXISM
Your approach is consistent. You advocate allocated economic rewards in a manner OTHER THAN assigned economic rewards proportionate to economic productivity. We discussed this with minimum wage economics many times. Minimum wages either A) cause lay-offs of low skilled workers B) raise prices and C) push capital investment into another industry or jurisdiction.
PUBLIC ASSISTANCE TO WORKERS SHOULD BE GEARED TOWARDS INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY WHEN POSSIBLE.
As I have noted I have always recommended that those who cannot earn a decent wage through their current work skills be ASSISTED with A) job training or B) supplemental income. The job training or supplemental income could be publicly financed. Low skilled workers who, for some reason, could not take advantage of job training would continue to work and contribute to their own support. By contrast, under a straight minimum wage approach, low-skilled workers are likely to get laid off and they are likely have to result to total support through government welfare.
ALL EMOTION, ALL THE TIME, NEVER A THOUGHT FOR ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES
Jim, you have never addressed the negative, anti-productive consequences of your suggestions. You have argued in favor of dictating minimum wages and health benefits by government fiat. You don’t take responsibility for the inevitable consequences. Actually you have SNIFFED and suggested that you would shop elsewhere (than Walmart). Fine for the middle class, low income shoppers need the low prices Walmart offers on many products.
You have assumed a morally superior stance while totally ignoring the clear economic consequences of your policies.
FARMS ARE BUSINESSES, THE ERA OF LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE IS LONG GONE
Again, in order to address an economic issue with you, it is necessary to peel away the emotional overlay. Mention “family farm” and everyone just tears up. Farming is now a high-technology business. Farmers need to be competent in scientific matters, in business matters and in high-tech planting and harvesting. Your policies would sacrifice the greater good, i.e. abundant food at low prices for everyone in favor of an anarchronistic business organization that even modern day farmers will tell you is no longer a working model. Larger farms, per se, id not necessarily bad. We don’t have many people preparing for careers as stenographers either, but that is not necessarily bad. Your approach freezes economic progress.
MARKET CONCENTRATIONS ARE ADDRESSED BY EXISTING ANTI-TRUST LAWS
The Sherman Anti-Trust Law and its related legislation addressed both vertical and horizontal market concentrations. We have legal tools to address problems such as these. Yes, I care about market concentrations but I have pointed out that we have effective legal tools which require only that our federal and state government take the iniative. Your recommendation is to get all choked up over a concept of family farming that has been outdated for several generations now.
MEXICANS ARE NOT STUPID THEY CAN FIX THEIR COUNTRY
Mexico covers a very wide swath of highly arable land. It was blessed with mineral wealth and fertile soil. Mexico was colonized by Europeans about the same time that North America was colonized by Europeans. Mexicans have long coastlines and opportunities to trade their oil and mineral wealth to their own advantage.
Mexicans need to be treated with the dignity of adults. As adults they are responsible for their own country. Why is an illegal immigrant someone to be admired? They want a better life? Why don’t they stay and work for a better life in their own country? What kind of patriot leaves his country for a buck? How can you leave your own country for a buck, then insist that you should be permitted to leach off America, degrades its laws and then continue to perpetuate Mexican culture. Perhaps,…. just perhaps… there is something in Mexican culture than retards economic development? Again, this is promotes disrespect for law in so many ways that it would take hours to list them all.
If anyone pops up with a sob story, logic and sound policy fly out the window.
WHAT VALUE, IF ANY, DO YOU PUT ON THE RULE OF LAW?
Obviously, you shrink from any concept of enforcing the immigration laws we have on the books now.
Do you put any value on the rule of law? Isn’t it true that after the rule of law breaks down, all we have is the rule of the physically strong over the physically weak, or the powerful over the powerless? I will grant you that our legal system has plenty of flaws but that hardly justifies abandoning the principle of the rule of law.
THE LEFT HASN’T HAD A NEW IDEA SINCE MARX.
The true foundation of your world view is Marxist whether you realize it or not. Ideas come from somewhere and the Left remains motivated by Marx. Marx didn’t believe that capital was truly, morally entitled to any compensation.
As Wendell Berry points out so beautifully and poignantly in his works such as The Gift of the Good Land, applying an industrial attitude to agriculture is one of the worst excesses of capitalism. When land and the people on it are considered only as capital inputs violence tantamount to rape occurs. In fact, with regard to the land, there is little difference between Marxism and unfettered capitalism. The land and her productivity is not an economic good although there are economic consequences to the way in which we treat the land.
God’s primary commandment to us is to dress and keep the earth. To fulfill our responsibility requires a loving interrelationship with our environment. Our fall made and continues to make the rest of creation suffer–not just us.
Each parcel of land is a unique eco-system and requires unique care to allow it to be fruitful. Looking at land as a factory or in need of “development” is callous. We don’t need to “come into the 20th century” if that means using more and more artificial, industrial scale technology to mine the land. Such acts and the attitudes behind them only mire us more completely in our sin.
The unholy alliance of government run land grant colleges with the agri-chemical and equipment manufacturers makes it more and more difficult for those who want to farm in a sustainable, loving, fruitful way to do so.
Missourian, look to the Fathers of the Church on this issue, not the economics of industrialism which as far as land issues is concerned is still in the late 19th century era of the Robber Barons.
James writes:
Like most Christians, I?ve chosen to eschew the more inconvenient passages in the Bible (such as ?give all you have to the poor and follow me”), a Marxist ideology if I?ve ever heard one (and which was obviously spoken before the advent of Dolce & Gabbana and Wittnauer).
Missourian replies: It isn’t even remotely Marxist. I don’t believe the Lord told us to give all power to a secular government dedicated to the eradication of religion. Many talk about Marx but how many have actually read him? James?
Many individuals have voluntarily given up opportunities to achieve a high level of economic success in favor service to God. Some may take a vow of poverty. Some my chose to teach in an inner city school rather than work at a high-paying, high technology job. Some may chose the ministry with its many hardships and responsibilities over an easier life. Choices of these kinds are not uncommon in Christian circles. I believe that the young man in question was described as being particularly attached to his wealth. I am not a scholar of the Gospel, but, it is possible that Jesus was responding to the circumstance of the individual.
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James writes:
Legislating the virtue of chastity (which Texas tried to do with the effete) is an appropriate civil expression of our righteous hatred of those who are unable to control their libidos. More understandable vices, such as the inability to control one?s American Express or Visa charge balances for the purchase of fine quality stemware or Ferrari accessories (even if others don?t have the means, or good taste, for such items) require nothing more than a high-decible rebuke. Anything else would be shockingly unAmerican!
Missourian:
Every successful civilization has recognized the need to reward those who act responsibly and bond for life to raise the next generation of responsible citizens. Non-reproductive sexual activities have received differing treatments in differing times and places. Successful civilizations do not CELEBRATE, PUBLICLY REWARD and HONOR sterile relationships. Similarly, successful civilizations have placed a stigma on those who carelessly bring children into the world without a proper home to nurture them long-term. I think I also remember something about incurable diseases possibly being passed by careless sex. I think society has good reason to be interested in the sexual conduct of individuals.
As to the punishment for charging too much on a charge card, I can inform you that the credit card companies have a very well practiced set of steps that they follow to collect. For many people the only way out is to declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy has very severe and long-lasting consequences. People feel the negative consequences of bankruptcy for many, many years afterwards. Some people feel the stigma their whole lives.
Plenty of flippancy, not much thought.
Michael
Nothing I have advanced is inconsistent with proper care of the land and concern for its continuing productivity. Nothing I have written is inconsistent with the idea of the public choosing to preserve some wilderness or natural areas indefinitely. I did point out that water management principles suggest that high human populations in Western Kansas is not good for the environment given the fragility of the Oglala Acquifer. This observation supports the idea of a lower human population. A lower human population is consistent with larger farms managed by fewer resident farmers.
Jim was observing that the creation of larger farms was necessarily, by itself, bad. The creation of larger farms has been going on for decades now, the trend is not likely to reverse itself. History has moved on and we will not be returning to the type of family farms that settled the prairie no matter how appealing it seems.
There is much value in economic productivity. It is a good thing that the same land can produce more food for people. You assume that increased productivity which arises from larger farms and ranches must come at the cost of preserving the value of the land. Not so. Larger farms can be worked using environmentally friendly farming practices.
Corporations have managed large tracts of Wisconsin forest using 50, 100 and 150 year time frames. Forests take a long time to grow and the corporations that harvest Wisconsin trees have acerages that are set aside for decades into the future. It is not true that corporate ownership, per se, means that only short term profits are considered. Fly over Wisconsin in a small plane and observe a blanket of dense, green forest.
Missourian: Just “not being inconsistent with” simply does not do it. The type of approach of which I am speaking demands an environmental ethic radically different from any currently in vogue, especially the pagan/communist “green” approaches which are anti-human. Machines can be used, but the land must come first, not the machine. The human being must come first, not the economies of scale. Using any usual economic model as the starting point will not work. I say again, land use and fertility in not an economic issue to be met with economic tools. It is a cultural and spiritual issue. The consumption economy destroys the land as well as our souls. Jim is correct in one sense, use of the land is far more fundamental than behavioral morality
The real problem in Western Kansas is that it should not be farmed using irrigation. Dry land farming is the only sustainable type of agriculture that will work here.–especially with Colorado continuing to steal our water. Perhaps the best course would be no commercial farming at all, just grazing and pasturing like the Flint Hills. The large corporate farms take no ownership, they approach it with a slash and burn mentality. Unfortunately, the culture, the agri-business/agri-college complex, and apathy rules the day. Many young people who would like to farm are simply unable to do so because of the crippling amount of money it takes these days to start. The inheritance taxes leave any possibility of keeping the land intact slim at best.
More state management is certainly not the way. More corporate consolidation is just as bad. The “cheap” government loans of the 1960′s that became the millstone of farm debt in the 70′s and 80′s are really what began the wholesale destruction of the family farm. Communism is an environmental disaster in all ways and has nothing of value to offer.
If an economic model can be used at all, it is that of the small entrepreneur, managing his business in a sustainable growth with as few inputs as possible.
Missourian writes: “ECONOMIC REWARDS DISCONNECTED FROM PRODUCTIVITY = MARXISM”
Marxism has more to do with the state controlling the means of production. As to “economic rewards disconnected from productivity,” that happens all the time.
But I’d like to discuss your virtually religious devotion to the idea of the free market. You seem to think that the market takes care of everything, and that any interference in the market is bad.
Well, I have news for you. The market is interfered with routinely. Any time the economy “heats up” and unemployment is “too low,” business interests always pressure the government to “cool off” the economy: “They worry that labor markets are too tight, wages will shoot up, and inflation will come to a boil.” — Business Week Online.
In other words, economists talk about a “natural” rate of unemployment, below which wages start to rise. The Fed can then implement various measures to “cool off” the economy. In other words, by slowing the economy you throw more people out of work, inhibit the creation of jobs, and thus keep the lid on wages by manipulating the supply of labor. When that happens, nobody calls that “communism.” That’s just “good business.” So a lot of this has to do with how the issue is framed.
Missourian: “MARKET CONCENTRATIONS ARE ADDRESSED BY EXISTING ANTI-TRUST LAWS”
Not so. Anti-trust laws address monopolies. But you can have a heck of a lot of concentration before that ever kicks in. Witness the concentration of vast segments of agriculture within a few mega-corporations.
Missourian: “They want a better life? Why don’t they stay and work for a better life in their own country? What kind of patriot leaves his country for a buck?”
In some parts of Mexico it is virtually impossible to make a living. The kind of patriot that leaves his country for a buck is the kind that wants to provide for his family. Most of the Mexicans I know — and we have tens of thousands here in Oregon — would just as soon live in Mexico. As I mentioned before, many of these people come here to escape economic devastation within their own country. Go visit the slums of Juarez some time and tell me that these are not desperate people.
Missourian: “Obviously, you shrink from any concept of enforcing the immigration laws we have on the books now.”
It is a difficult issue; it does not admit any easy analysis. Obviously a country has to have some control over its borders. On the other hand, there is a long tradition of people coming from Mexico to work in the U.S. In other words, there is an economic relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, whether or not that relationship is officially reflected in the current law.
In addition, there is a spiritual aspect at work here. In my personal life, do I have an obligation to act as an agent of the government, or do I have an obligation to act as an agent of the gospel, if there is a conflict? What does it mean that “inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, you’ve done it to me”? How do we apply the Old Testament injunction to care for the “stranger” as we would for ourselves? The gospel tells us that even the Holy Family had to flee to Egypt for a season; what does this tell us about how we should treat people who flee to our country? How do we apply the advice in the book of Hebrews that we should “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”?
I’m not saying that there are easy answers to these questions, but I believe these thoughts should be in the forefront of our thinking when addressing this issue.
The same corruption can be found on the livestock side of the agriculture industry. We now have giant hog “factories” with tens of thousands of animals that produce small lakes of waste and facal matter that foul the air and poison water sources for miles around. Similarly giant industrial chicken farms have seeped massive amounts of bacteria and toxins into the tributaries of the Chesepeake Bay
In the cattle industry, the time required to fatten a calf for the feedlot has been reduced from 4 years to 18-24 months. The beef we eat may not come from cows who graze peacefully in pastures and meadows anymore, but steroidal freaks kept in indoor pens and fed massive amounts of hormones and antibiotics. Bovine Growth Hormone – it’s whats for dinner
Dean, you are correct. And in case you have never had the olfactory pleasure of a hog farm, count yourself blessed. Industrial agriculture is an abomination.
Reply to Jim’s Note 92: Part I
UNFAIRNESS IN ARGUMENT ALERT NUMBER ONE:OMITTED TEXT: Jim quotes my first heading from Note 87 but not the text under the heading.
UNFAIRNESS IN ARGUMENT ALERT NUMBER TWO: STRAW MAN: Jim accuses me of believing as a matter of religious faith that “the market takes care of everything”. However, Jim omits the second paragraph of my Note 87 where I suggest a better method of public intervention in the labor market. In other words I suggest a better alternative to mandatory minimum economic benefits but Jim OMITS ANY REFERENCE TO IT.
UNFAIRNESS IN ARGUMENT ALERT NUMBER THREE: CHANGE THE SUBJECT: Jim vears off the topic of the value and effect of minimum wage and benefit legislation and launches off on a discussion of macro-economics. This is a different topic not addressed by my Note 87. Macro-economics is decidedly different than labor market analysis.
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Here is Jim’s reply under the heading to my first paragraph in Note 87.
Missourian writes: ?ECONOMIC REWARDS DISCONNECTED FROM PRODUCTIVITY = MARXISM?
Marxism has more to do with the state controlling the means of production. As to ?economic rewards disconnected from productivity,? that happens all the time.
But I?d like to discuss your virtually religious devotion to the idea of the free market. You seem to think that the market takes care of everything, and that any interference in the market is bad.
Well, I have news for you. The market is interfered with routinely. Any time the economy ?heats up? and unemployment is ?too low,? business interests always pressure the government to ?cool off? the economy: ?They worry that labor markets are too tight, wages will shoot up, and inflation will come to a boil.? ? Business Week Online.
In other words, economists talk about a ?natural? rate of unemployment, below which wages start to rise. The Fed can then implement various measures to ?cool off? the economy. In other words, by slowing the economy you throw more people out of work, inhibit the creation of jobs, and thus keep the lid on wages by manipulating the supply of labor. When that happens, nobody calls that ?communism.? That?s just ?good business.? So a lot of this has to do with how the issue is framed.
____________________________________________________
Missourian replies:
HERE IS THE MISSING TEXT OMITTED BY JIM. (The ‘you’ and ‘your’ referred to is Jim Holman)
Your approach is consistent. You advocate allocated economic rewards in a manner OTHER THAN assigned economic rewards proportionate to economic productivity. We discussed this with minimum wage economics many times. Minimum wages either A) cause lay-offs of low skilled workers B) raise prices and C) push capital investment into another industry or jurisdiction.
WHY THE MISSING TEXT IS IMPORTANT
For quite a while Jim Holman and I have been discussing two related economic policies—-mandatory minimum wages and mandatory health insurance benefits.
These topics came up in relation to Walmart’s attempt to open some stores in California. Minimum wages policies and mandatory health insurance policies are ECONOMIC POLICIES. The effects of economic policies can be studied and traced out with some precision. One of the challenges of discussing an economic policy with Jim Holman is peeling away the overlay of emotion and presumed moral superiority.
JIM DOES NOT ADDRESS THE CRITIQUE OF THE MINIMUM WAGE OR MINIMUM BENEFIT POLICY
Please note that Jim does not address the fundamental critique of mandatory minimum wages. At no time has he addressed the inevitable consequences of mandatory minimum wages. Those inevitable consequences are: lay-offs for low-skilled workers OR higher prices, which affect the poor more OR the flight of capital out of the industry or jurisdiction, which decreases overall employment. He always slides off to a somewhat related topic. He never takes the inevitable consequences of his economic policy recommendations seriously.
THE NATURE OF MARXISM:
Since Marxism is both a theoretical construct and an historical reality, its “true nature” can be debated endlessly. I made this observation, because, at bottom, whether Jim realizes it or not, he ascribes to the “labor theory of value.” He values the contributions of workers to economic output and thinks it should be rewarded but he doesn’t really believe that capital and the risk taken by employers should be rewarded.
Marxism is associated with a great many things. Yes, it does involve government control of the economy as a leading feature IF NOT the leading feature. This observation supports my point not Jim’s. Minimum wages are a form of government fiat. Fiat means that it is a provision which would not arise without the power of government.
THE MARXIST MOTIVATION OF JIM’S POLICY: SHIFT RETURN FROM CAPITAL TO LABOR
I have continued to address a single issue. Should the State of California require Walmart to provide health insurance and/or increase the minimum wage it pays. Jim has argued that government should force Walmart to pay higher wages. I have argued against. A person who supports higher minimum wages has to concede that it will result in a) the lay-off of low skilled workers OR B) higher prices or C) reduced profits which will push capital into other industries or jurisdictions.
Jim wants a government mandated shift from profits to wages. This is because, although he just “feels” this, he can’t be said to actually “think” it, he doesn’t think capital is entitled to a return on its investment. Marx deified the “working class” and vilified the capitalist. Marx advocated armed revolution with all the bloodshed necessary to impose his worker’s paradise on the rest of us. Lenin’s Revolution brought with it a true reign of terror.
FALSE ASSERTION THAT I BELIEVE “THE MARKET TAKES CARE OF EVERYTHING”
Jim’s assertion that I have a “religious” attachment to the free market is blatantly false. I have NEVER STATED that the MARKET TAKES CARE OF EVERYTHING.
What I have stated OVER and OVER and OVER is that there is a better way to assist workers with a low level of skills. Where do you find this alternative solution?
This argument is particularly false and even silly because I offer an alternative to minimum wage and benefit legislation. The alternative is offered in paragraph two of note 87 which Jim does not refer to.
REFERENCES TO MACRO-ECONOMIC POLICY:
First Jim fails to supply the text that I wrote that he is supposedly responding to.
Second, Jim fails to respond to the essential challenge of that text. I point out the negative effects of minimum wage and benefits laws. He has never conceded that the policies he advances have negative effects.
Third, Jim fails to supply the reader with the alternative to mandatory minimum wage and benefit laws. If the reader looks at paragraph two (2) of Note 87. I supply an alternative. You will note that I suggest PUBLIC INVESTMENT in individual producitivyt as a better solution. Public investment means public policy, means the action of government.
Fourth, Jim asserts that I have a religious attachment to the supposed unfettered working of the “free market.” This can only be asserted if he ignore paragraph two of note 87. I have been promoting an alternative to mandatory minimum wage and benefit legislation for days now.
Fifth, Jim seizes on the idea that I have somehow deified free markets and demonized government intervention in the economy. This assertion can easily be refuted by looking at paragraph two (2) of Note 87 where I suggested an alternative public policy.
Sxith, Jim, who is clearly losing on the minimum wage and minimum benefit argument vears off to macro-economics. Macro-economics is the study of the performance of the national economy as a whole. Even the strongest proponents of a free market economies prescribe a role for government in the national economy. Read Milton Friedman. Read Samuelson’s discussion of “classical economics.” The discussion is not on point. The discussion was focused on minimum wage and minimum benefits mandated by government.
Reply to Jim’s Note 92 Part II
Jim asserts in Note 92 Part II
Missourian: ?MARKET CONCENTRATIONS ARE ADDRESSED BY EXISTING ANTI-TRUST LAWS?
Not so. Anti-trust laws address monopolies. But you can have a heck of a lot of concentration before that ever kicks in. Witness the concentration of vast segments of agriculture within a few mega-corporations.
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Missourian replies:
Do you really want to engage in a legal argument? The topic under discussion is the anti-trust laws of the United States. Both the federal government and the several states have anti-trust laws. The legal literature which touches on anti-trust law and policy is volumninous. Do you actually assert that you have a bona fide understanding of this literature?
IF YOU WISH TO ENGAGE IN LEGAL DEBATE, THEN FOLLOW THE RULES OF LEGAL DEBATE.
SHOW ME THE AUTHORITATIVE LEGAL AUTHORITY TO SUPPORT YOUR CONTENTION.
Jim you should respect the limits of your knowledge. I assert my right to disregard your “legal” arguments. You are simply not competent to address this issue.
Reply to Jim’s Note 91 Part III
Jim writes:
Missourian: ?They want a better life? Why don?t they stay and work for a better life in their own country? What kind of patriot leaves his country for a buck??
In some parts of Mexico it is virtually impossible to make a living. The kind of patriot that leaves his country for a buck is the kind that wants to provide for his family. Most of the Mexicans I know ? and we have tens of thousands here in Oregon ? would just as soon live in Mexico. As I mentioned before, many of these people come here to escape economic devastation within their own country. Go visit the slums of Juarez some time and tell me that these are not desperate people.
Missourian: ?Obviously, you shrink from any concept of enforcing the immigration laws we have on the books now.?
It is a difficult issue; it does not admit any easy analysis. Obviously a country has to have some control over its borders. On the other hand, there is a long tradition of people coming from Mexico to work in the U.S. In other words, there is an economic relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, whether or not that relationship is officially reflected in the current law.
In addition, there is a spiritual aspect at work here. In my personal life, do I have an obligation to act as an agent of the government, or do I have an obligation to act as an agent of the gospel, if there is a conflict? What does it mean that ?inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, you?ve done it to me”? How do we apply the Old Testament injunction to care for the ?stranger? as we would for ourselves? The gospel tells us that even the Holy Family had to flee to Egypt for a season; what does this tell us about how we should treat people who flee to our country? How do we apply the advice in the book of Hebrews that we should ?Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares”?
I?m not saying that there are easy answers to these questions, but I believe these thoughts should be in the forefront of our thinking when addressing this issue.
_____________________________________________
IDEAS AND POLICIES HAVE CONSEQUENCES:
Immigration and border control are very serious issues, even more so given the terror threat that exists against our country. These issues need to be discussed and REAL POLICIES need to be developed to address them. Important things are at stake. Difficult decisions must be made. I believe that the Bible also supports Judges that judge rightly and enforce the law impartially.
MIGRATIONS FROM POORER COUNTRIES WILL NOT SOLVE WORLD POVERTY PROBLEMS:
Jimmy Carter once chastised Chou En Lai of China for not allowing Chinese subjects to emigrate from China. Chou En Lai turned to Carter and asked ” How many Chinese would you like? 30 million? 60 million? 90 million?” Do you think the American economy could support an additional 90 million Chinese? How about 40 million Mexicans? How about 60 million Indonesians?
Unfortunately, 75% of the world’s population live in abject poverty. More than 96% of the world’s population lives at a economic level lower than that in the United States.
If you tacitly approve, in practice, the idea of unlimited ECONOMIC IMMIGRATION. This means that the United States admits an unlimited number of people who desire economic improvement. How many people Jim? From where? If we reward Mexicans because they are close to us, is that fair to Guatemalans? Is it fair to the 100 million Chinese who would be here tommorrow if they could? What about the Somalis? What about the North Africa?
The economy of the United States cannot hold up under unrestricted economic immigration. If we let Mexicans in, we have to let other people in. Obviously, someone has to be a GROWN UP and decide what the limits to legal immigration should be. It cannot be UNLIMITED. All that is happening is that people in Mexico who are willing to BREAK OUR LAWS are getting a jump on people who are standing in line for LEGAL IMMIGRATION.
WHY DO PROPONENTS OF UNLIMITED, UNRESTRAINED ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION CLAIM THE HIGH MORAL GROUND?
I challenge the assertion that those who condone illegal immigration hold the high moral ground.
I challenge the assertion that people who break our laws should be given special considerations.
Illegal immigrants break our laws when they cross the border. Illegal immigrants break our laws when they work in the United States. Illegal immigrants break our laws when accept work at below minimum wage. Illegal immigrants break our laws by driving on our roads in cars that do not meet our safety standards.
Allowing unrestrained illegal immigration gives preference to those who are willing to break our laws over those who follow our laws. Illegals get in today, people going through the process lawfully wait years and years. What is moral about that?Again, I aske whether you have any serious interest in enforcing the immigration laws on the books? I now ask you as I have asked you in the past. Do you put any value on the rule of law? Do you understand what chaos will ensue if the rule of law completely breaks down? Do you understand that the alternative to the rule of law is the rule of the mob or the rule of the despot.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM MEXICO PROPS UP A CORRUPT GOVERNMENT
Do you understand that the government of Mexico is one of the most corrupt in the world? Do you understand that Mexico police officials are nearly all taking bribes from drug lords that send drugs into our country? Do you understand that the RICH of Mexico benefit from the corrupt government. Do you understand that the outflow of unemployed illegals takes the political and social pressure off the corrupt government?
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION HAS SO STRAINED EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES IN LA COUNTY THAT THREE EMERGENCY ROOMS HAVE SHUT DOWN THIS YEAR
Jim, policies have consequences. Allowing illegal immigration has placed a tremendous strain on the emergency medical services of Los Angeles County. Three emergency rooms have shut down.
Schools are woefully overcrowded. Importing poverty from Mexico doesn’t solve anything, either in Mexico or the United States.
I SUPPORT LEGAL IMMIGRATION
I support legal immigration. We need to enforce our existing immigration laws to protect our citizens from the large number of felonious illegals who are loose in America. We need to enforce our existing immigration laws to protect our poor who are being pushed out of low-skilled work by illegals who take below minimum wages in cash without paying taxes.
THE ROOT CAUSE OF MEXICAN POVERTY IS IN MEXICO.
Illegal immigration does not solve Mexico’s poverty problem. Mexicans who commit to improve their own country have to solve that.
Reply to Michael Bauman’s NOte 91
You probably know more about farm policy than I do.
THOMAS FRANK’S BOOK ON KANSAS
This discussion arose from assertions made in Thomas Franks’ book —-What is the Matter with Kansas.
Frank’s credibility was mortally wounded when he made unsupportable assertions about Shawnee, Kansas and Emporia, Kansas. He painted both communities as economic disasters. It wasnt’ too hard to refute those assertions.
BIGGER IS NOT NECESSARILY WORSE, BIG CAN HAVE REAL BENEFITS
The discussion continued with assertions that small farmers and family farmers were leaving agriculture. This trend has been going own since WWII. It is unlikely to be stopped in our lifetime. My argument isthat improved farming technology makes small farms uneconomic, therefore, larger farms are becoming more common. Larger is not necessarily BAD and smaller is not necesssarily BETTER. More economic farms can produce more food at a lower price.
A true policy analysis has to take into account the fact that IF larger farms are more economic and IF they produce more food at a lower price THIS HELPS THE WORLD POOR. A great deal of American foreign aid takes the form of food assistance. More and cheaper food is a GOOD THING.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS:
Related to this issue are environmental concerns. Many people fear that corporations will have only a short-term interest in the land and therefore they will be more likely to damage the environment. I pointed out an example in Wisconsin where corporations have done a good job preserving the thick blanket of forest covering the state. Forest management plans are in place for 50, 100, 150 year spans. Frankly, a greedy individual who owns land may be just as tempted to put short-term profit over long-term viability. Some individuals are moral, some arent’. Some individuals have good judgment, some don’t.
UNFAIR MARKET STRUCTURES:
If large farms are the result of practices which are monopolistic in nature and which violate anti-trust laws, then, violators should be prosecuted.
Missourian writes: “Do you really want to engage in a legal argument? The topic under discussion is the anti-trust laws of the United States. Both the federal government and the several states have anti-trust laws. The legal literature which touches on anti-trust law and policy is volumninous. Do you actually assert that you have a bona fide understanding of this literature?”
The point that I made is that the existing anti-trust laws still have allowed tremendous agricultural market concentration, and over a relatively short period of time. A 2002 USDA report notes that
“The most striking recent case of concentration occurs in meatpacking, where the 4 largest firms handle 80 percent of U.S. steer and heifer slaughter, up from only 36 percent in 1980. Concentration in hog slaughter also increased rapidly — the four largest firms handled 54 percent of all 1998 slaughter, up from 32 percent in 1985. Poultry processing concentration is lower, but increasing rapidly, the 4 largest processors handled 49 percent of all 1998 broiler slaughter up from 35 percent just 2 years before. High concentration extends to other agribusiness sectors as well. In grain and oilseed processing, the top 4 firms handle more than 60 percent of shipments in flour milling, wet corn milling, soybean processing, and cottonseed milling with some sharp increases in recent years. The largest agribusiness firms are also quite diversified, so that a few large firms face each other in many meat, grain, and oilseed businesses.” (Concentration, Mergers, and Antitrust Policy, James M. MacDonald, Economic Research Service, USDA, Marvin L. Hayenga, Iowa State University)
So I don’t really know what your position is with respect to such market concentration. Do you think that anti-trust laws should prevent such concentration? Are the laws sufficient, but not enforced? Rather than spending so much ink talking about what I don’t know, perhaps you can devote a little space to talking about what you do know, if you’re the expert.
But the passage I quoted above is a pretty good summary of the current situation — and back to the original topic — is the same situation described in Thomas Frank’s book. You may recall that *you* were the one who doubted Frank’s assertions about such market concentration: “I seriously question his assertions about agricultural conglomerates because he was so far off base with his description of Shawnee.” *You* were the one who talked about “ALLEGED AGRICULTURAL CONGLOMERATES.” I’m just trying to present the reality of the situation. If you would now like to now acknowledge that Frank’s characterization of the market is correct, and then explain how under current anti-trust all that has happened, I’m all ears.
Concerning the minimum wage — I’m not an economist either. But economists fall out on both sides of the issue. What I have observed here in Oregon is that there are always dire predictions of doom and gloom whenever there is talk of raising the minimum wage. After the minimum wage is raised, the dire predictions don’t seem to come true. We’ve had minimum wage laws for decades. Hell, I’ve been working for over 40 years, since I was 11 years old, and there were minimum wage laws back then. My first non-agricultural job was in 1966, and there was a minimum wage law in effect. So I just don’t see the problem. When we’ve had increases in the minimum wage there are no massive layoffs, no business closings, no extraordinary price increases. Perhaps there are small price increases, but I can live with that. Prices increases caused by increases in the minimum wage are dwarfed by increases in other good and services, and thus have little comparative effect on people working for a minimum wage. The big hits are in areas such as housing and energy costs, that are virtually unaffected by the minimum wage.
Concerning benefits — I wouldn’t have any problem at with a law stating that a company the size of Walmart had to pay benefits at a certain level. In other words, Walmart should have to compete on the same basis as retail companies that do provide benefits. If they have to raise prices, so be it. If they have economize in other areas, so be it. If they decide they can’t make a profit here and relocate all the stores to Sri Lanka, so be it. We’ll buy stuff from some other company that pays benefits.
Reply to Jim Holman:NOte 98
ANTI-TRUST LAWS:
Jim Holman writes:
Not so. Anti-trust laws address monopolies. But you can have a heck of a lot of concentration before that ever kicks in. Witness the concentration of vast segments of agriculture within a few mega-corporations.
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Missourian replies. Your express assertion was that “anti-trust laws address monopolies.” In common parlance, monopoly is used to mean “unacceptable market concentrations.” In legal parlance, monopoly has a specific meaning. The anti-trust laws extend beyond the Sherman Anti-Trust Law although that is the earliest and foundational law. The legal structure of the United States forbids high levels of market concentration which are deemed to suppress competition. The high levels of market concentration include but are not limited to monopolies. There are many other market configurations which suppress healthy competition which can be addressed by “anti-trust laws.”
IF YOU MAKE AN ASSERTION ABOUT THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES THEN YOU ARE ENGAGING IN A LEGAL DISCUSSION. LEGAL DISCUSSIONS HAVE THEIR OWN RULES, FOREMOST AMONG WHICH IS CITING THE APPROPRIATE LEGAL AUTHORITY: CONSTITUTION, STATUTE, CASE LAW, REGULATION.
Compared to an attorney who has practiced anti-trust law, I am not an expert, although I am qualified to discuss and evaluate any legal debate. Compared to someone who is not an attorney, yes, I am an expert. My legal training gives me the skills to identify what the law of the United States is and to apply that law to particular situations. My specialty law not anti-trust law, however, I have a general LEGAL knowledge, not layman’s knowledge, and I am an expert in the matter when compared to a non-lawyer.
What you are observing is a failure on the part of the executive to enforce existing law.
MINIMUM WAGE AND MINIMUM HEALTH BENEFITS:
If I observe that an apple sitting on a 6 foot shelf will fall to the ground if rolled off the edge, I am merely describing the operation of the law of gravity. A person who describes the law of gravity is neither morally upright or morally lax. I don’t advocate the “law of gravity” I merely observe and describe it.
If I observe that a mandatory minimum wage and mandatory minimum health benefits will do the one or more of the following A) result in the lay-off of low skilled workers B) raise prices C) push investment into other industries or jursidictions, I am merely describing something observable and measurable. There have been many studies of the labor market which support this. It is, essentially, a truism.
I don’t support A) laying off low skilled workers B) raising prices or C) pushing capital investment out of the jurisdiction. It just happens, just like the apple falls off the shelf when you push it over the edge.
I in fact support helping low skilled workers become high skilled workers with focused and effective job training for jobs that need to be filled in this economy and the economy of the future. I have volunteered to be taxed heaviliy for this. My approach supports the dignity of work and the dignity of the human being. I have acknowledged that some workers may lack the intellectual capacity for job training, I have suggested that these workers continue to work, but, that they be assisted by support which makes up for the shortfall between their earned wages and a minimum standard of living. Your approach simply results in the lay-off of low skilled workers and the warehousing of poorly educated people in welfare ghettos.
Your reponse is truly illogical and unthinking. Essentially, you again refuse to address the negatives of the policy that you advocate, you wave your hand airily and assume the problem will fix itself. It won’t, it doesn’t and it hasn’t.
A single incremental policy of this kind will displace only a few workers, OR will raise only a few prices OR will move only a little bit of capitoal out of the jurisdiction. A large number of provisions imposing minimum benefits on business will, in the course of a fairly short time span, drive business out of the jurisdiction. As businesss leave the jurisdiction, employment drops, income tax revenues drop, governmental expenditures for welfare increase, spending on infrastructure and schools is reduced or delayed and a local economy deteriorates.
Jim will be standing there waving his hands, saying that somehow it will all turn out alright and it will fix itself. He will also accuse those who pointed out the problem of moral insensitivity to the plight of the poor. Thus it ever was with liberals.
My business has provided highly valuable technological training to quite a few young people. You could call that “poverty prevention.” As explained in abundant detail, impose a high minimum wage on these young workers and their internships end. Your choice.
Missourian: Your reply to me (Note 98) is still really in the vein of looking at farms from an industrial/economic model solely, even with the environmental factors. My contention is that as long as we consider agriculture solely or even primarily as an economic activity, we will make bad, even disastrous decisions both on the individual and governmental levels. The factory farm is the result of a materialist worldview that is fundamentally anti-Christian. The fact that most of the cultural and most of the farmers have bought into it does not mean that it is correct.
Historically, the availability of good land at affordable prices that could be worked for a living has fueled the both our democracy and our power as a nation. The more we allow and encourage concentrated land ownership and promote policies that requires large amounts of capital to farm, the more we will loose both our freedom and our power.
If Dean wants an issue to champion that will benefit the poor, land use and ownership both in rural and urban areas will do far more than income redistribution to help.
As Christians, IMO, we have sacrificed our proper attitude toward the land more quickly and more completely than in any other area of culture. We have given into materialism almost without a fight. Any nation that does not recognize the inherent value and worth of land to support life, freedom, and culture cannot claim to be Christian.
Michael, why do you say that Christians have sacrificed the proper attitude toward land use? ISTM that this area is where Christians could be particularly effective in changing policy since the issue you raise is not really economic, but moral. Your point that income redistribution won’t solve it is correct IMO, and redistributionists who use moral arguments to promote a statist (or as Missourian correctly asserts, a neo-Marxist economic scheme) should be challenged.
Don’t give up the fight so easily. My hunch is that if someone were to challenge these practices on humanitarian grounds (proper treatment of animals and land), they would get a hearing as long as the arguments aren’t cover for statist policies. In fact, this is an area waiting for good leadership. I don’t think Missourian would disgree with this approach either. Missourian?
I’ve noticed that corporations look to the culture for moral direction. Corporate leaders are efficient, even gifted, at creating goods and services and this ought to be encouraged. Yes, it’s a mixed bag. There is a lot of garbage out there. But there is a lot of good too that adds to the quality (and safety) of life. Corporate leaders need direction however, and they seem to take it from those understand what they do.
In post 102 Michael you wrote “My contention is that as long as we consider agriculture solely or even primarily as an economic activity…”
I wonder where in history was the farm ever considered anything other than an economic activity for the farmer?
You also wrote, “The factory farm is the result of a materialist worldview that is fundamentally anti-Christian.” So in keeping with that idea is all industrialization anti-Christian? Are you saying that the only true Christian is the one who rejects industrialization?
Then in essence are you suggesting that the Amish are the only true economic practitioners of Christianity?
Don’t you find it Marxian to suggest that the only motivation for industrialization is greed?
CLICK THE LINK AND READ: THE ARTICLE YOU QUOTE CONTAINS A REFUTATION OF THE RESULTS YOU CITE.
The results you quote were produced by a study conducted by Card and Krueger. If you click the link you provide and READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE you will find substantial critiques of the methodology and results.
You also need to note that Card and Krueger were attempting to arrive at an estimate for the economy as a whole—– a macro-economic analysis. Serious macro-economic analysis accounts for the fact that both capital and labor can flow across jurisdictional borders AND economic decisions made by foreigners can affect our economy. Serious macro-economic analysis is usually conducted through the use of complex econometric models such as that maintained by the Brookings Institution and others. These models were not used by Card and Krueger. These models take into account the actions of the federal government and changes in balance of trade figures and international monetary policies (for starters) These econometric models have been quite accurate over 5 or 6 year spans in predicting major economic indicators such as overall inflation and overall employment.
ALTERNATIVES TO MINIMUM WAGE AND MANDATORY BENEFITS
My position has remained the same. First, I have advocated a policy which maximizes employment and productivity. As I have said many, many times, a worker with low skills should be assisted with focused and effective job training to increase his productivity. This is a policy which empowers the worker and serves to help him along the road to true, dignified self-sufficiency. I have always recognized that some workers may not be able to take advantage of job training. I have advocated that they continue to work at the highest level of which they are capable AND that they income be supplemented by society to prevent hardship.
My approach maximizes the dignity of the individual, empowers most individuals and maximizes the overall wealth of the economy. Allowance is made for those who lack the capacity to take advantage of job training. The dignity of work is attested to by the existence of sheltered workshops for the mentally handicapped people. These workshops have proven to be a terrific success. It demonstrates that there is an inherent dignity derived from doing something useful at whatever level one can function.
(I am not well informed about the national health care system and I decline to give opinions on the best policies to put in place. I am aware that that health care issues are very complex.)
Trade-Off between machines and People is very real.
At this very instant, my husband and I are considering two alternatives. We can improve the productivity and output of our company by A) hiring another person OR B) improving the quality of the machines our existing staff uses.
We can replace our existing computer workstations with new machines that will increase productivity by a factor of 20-25%. This is quite costly in the beginning, however, after the initial expense is absorbed the benefit begins instantaneously on the first day of use and continues every day thereafter. As an alternative, we can keep the existing workstations and hire another person. Hiring another person requires more supervisory time and considerably higher taxes. We pay a personal property tax on our equipment once a year. It is much lower than the plethora of taxes and benefits associated with a single employee. Machines are reliable, they don’t have attitude problems, they don’t call in sick, and they stay as long as you want them to. Employees are only somewhat reliable, they can develop bad attitudes, they call in sick after spending the night partying, and they can quit without notice after six months of training. Several of our former interns hold high paid jobs in California and Florida because of the training they received from us. They left the minute they got the job offer from the company in the glamorous location. Machines are productive the instant you turn them on. Employees take months to get fully productive.
No one seriously thinks that taxes and imposed benefits do not affect employment.
Checkers can be replaced with machines, I have used check out machines at Target. The lower the skill level the easier it is to be replaced with machines. Let’s help the worker become more productive.
Note 105 (Agreed)
Fr. Jacobse expressed it better than myself in Note 105
PURE FREE MARKET IS A STRAW MAN ARGUMENT:
No one seriously advocates the creation of a totally unregulated free market economy. This is not within the realm of political reality NOR is it desirable.
If you look at any Samuelson textbook and look up the classical economists they all give government an important role to play. Among the proper roles of government are:
A) maintaining a legal system that punishes theft and protect honest earnings.
B) regulating and policing the securities market so that investors have the confidence they need to put their money in the market and support the growth of companies, which supports the growth of jobs
C)regulating and policing the banking system and supporting a sound and stable currency.
D) ensuring the safety of products that the average person cannot evaluate themselves such as drugs (FDA) and food (Dept. of Agriculture) as well as other limited and reasonable health and safety regulations
E) policing markets to prevent anti-competitive market concentrations
F) permitting a strictly limited number of true monopolies when fixed costs make them necessary such as electrical utilities which are granted limited geographic monopolies
REPORTING THAT THE APPLE FALLS TO THE GROUND WHEN IT IS PUSHED OFF A SHELF DOES NOT MAKE THE REPORTER “ANTI-APPLE”
If we are seriously discussing economic policy that has a chance of being implemented by a government, then, we need to take into account that well-meaning provisions can end up hurting employment, raising prices and pushing companies into other jurisdictions.
Third World is Never Responsible for Anything.
By Jill Stewart
Los Angeles Daily News | December 31, 2004
Forgive me if I missed the media coverage of the international dustup between Democratic state Sen. Gloria Romero of Los Angeles and the Mexican government the other day. The media downplay stories they perceive as “blaming the victim,” particularly on the hands-off topic of illegal immigration.
Romero has gone against the tide before. Now she’s rattling cages over the 28,672 foreigners in California prisons who cost taxpayers a staggering sum to feed and house, one-half of whom are illegal aliens from Mexico.
It’s rare to hear the term “illegal aliens” in the bustling Sacramento Capitol. In an example of what George Orwell called newspeak, California politicians believe that if they don’t publicly name this contributing cause of our ongoing fiscal crisis, it will vanish.
It’s not just silly pols who keep mum. The widely respected Chief Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill rarely explains these costs. It’s too difficult, too politically hot.
So while these largely non-taxpaying residents heavily use taxpayer-financed services and infrastructure, from our jammed roads to our overwhelmed courts, hardly anyone says anything.
Chuckles John Stoos, aide to Republican state Sen. Tom McClintock, the fiscal watchdog from Thousand Oaks, “Oh yes, it will definitely go away if we don’t study it. Works for me!”
This avoidance behavior got a workout at Romero’s prison system hearing in Los Angeles on Dec. 16. Diplomats from the consulates of Canada, Germany and Sweden testified about fixing a flawed country-to-country prisoner transfer program the Schwarzenegger administration hopes can someday send up to 6,400 eligible prisoners home — mostly to Mexico. The behavior of the Canadians, Swedes and Germans stood in stark contrast to that of the Mexicans. In a bizarre bit of public theater that reminded me of my year in Czechoslovakia in 1991, where I observed bumbling ex-Communist officials firsthand, the Mexican government boycotted Romero’s hearing, offering one of the lamest official fibs I’ve ever heard.
First, Mexican officials failed to respond to Romero’s invitation to testify — pretty odd in itself. So that morning, Romero’s aide telephoned the Mexican consulate, down the road in L.A., to find out when they would arrive. According to Sen. Romero, noting it for the official record, Mexico claimed that “because of budgetary concerns, they could not fly the appropriate consulate (official)” from Mexico. Said Romero: “I am very disappointed at their failure to participate … to first of all give me even the courtesy of a phone call that they were not showing up.”
And, the peeved senator added, “We stressed that a local consulate official was sufficient.”
I’ll admit, I audibly guffawed over the bit about how Mexico, the nation, can’t afford an airline ticket. Mexican diplomats live well, and the Mexican consulate in L.A. is impressive. Let’s just say they can afford the trip. Not that Romero needed a diplomat from Mexico City anyway.
But the Mexicans do nothing but double talk on illegal immigration. On the prisoner issue, Mexico strictly limits the number of prisoners it takes back — yet comically insists it has no limits. Pathetic. According to the California Board of Prison Terms, “all other nations accept all of their prisoners for transfer.” Except Mexico.
In 2003, Mexico took back only 109 prisoners from the U.S., even though in California alone, 17,500 prisoners are Mexican nationals — including more than 14,000 illegal aliens. And get this: Mexico won’t take back those who’ve been here longer than five years. Just because.
Our biased media hate placing even a smidgen of blame on Mexico for illegal immigration. But in fact, most solutions won’t be found in Sacramento or Washington. The lasting fixes must come from Mexico’s legislature, courts and President Vicente Fox — or more likely, his successor.
People come here illegally because Mexico’s elected leaders and rich ruling families cling to quasi-socialism, circa 1930. Moreover, the rule of law is so weak that lenders are afraid to risk money on Mexican entrepreneurs — a terrible obstacle to building a middle class. Mexico will remain Third World while China surges forward, as long as mafia types and corrupt judges run Mexico’s legal system.
Yet Fox, an indecisive and disastrous president, does little. Why do I never, ever, read about this in California media? Oh, that’s right: It’s blaming the victim.
As long as Mexico’s ruling class ducks the responsibilities of the modern world — even shirking such simple if unpleasant tasks as attending a hearing into how to fix prison transfer policies — Mexico will remain its own tragic victim.
But apparently nobody told Romero that silence is the rule among elected Sacramento politicians regarding the costs of illegal immigration. That day in L.A., she publicly criticized the Mexican government, presented data on the staggering $500 million to $800 million a year paid by California taxpayers to house foreign prisoners, and basically opened a can of worms. Somebody, please give this woman an award.
Missourian writes: “Trade-Off between machines and People is very real. . . . We can replace our existing computer workstations with new machines that will increase productivity by a factor of 20-25%.”
In my experience, the trade-off between humans and machines doesn’t involve fairly marginal considerations such as small increases in the minimum wage, or even the cost of benefits. Many times going with the machine doesn’t even mean laying off current employees.
For example, several years ago in the medical supply warehouse we purchased a “supply carousel” system. Basically, instead of people walking around the shelves picking medical supply items, the shelves walk around to the person, so to speak. The new system pretty much doubled the productivity of the order pickers.
In addition, the new system provided much better inventory control, and a way of labeling each item as it was picked. Order fill rate increased to around 98 percent. There were a number of other advantages and improvements that I won’t bore you with.
In addition, no staff were laid off, and people generally ended up with more interesting jobs. Overall productivity of the facility increased by over 30 percent.
Now I can guarantee you that at no time did we sit around agonizing over nickel and dime wage increases, or bemoaning the fact that the employees in question got good benefits. In other words, large companies don’t implement automated processes and systems merely because the minimum wage goes up by a quarter. They implement such systems because they seek to achieve whole new levels of productivity or quality or service that would not be possible otherwise.
In your case, I really don’t know what the new machine would do for you vs. what another employee would do for you. But the fact that you are making that decision is hardly an argument against the minimum wage. But if the work that employees are doing for you is of such low quality or low importance that it’s not even worth paying them minimum wage, then by all means, go with the machines.
Back to Thomas Frank for a moment. There’s an interesting article in the Washington Post by Terry Neal:
GOP Corporate Donors Cash In on Smut
“In this world of irony, corporate leaders at companies as diverse as News Corp., Marriott International and Time Warner can profit by selling red state consumers the very material that red state culture is supposed to despise. Those elites then funnel the proceeds to the GOP, which in turn has used the money to successfully convince red state voters that the other political party is solely responsible for the decline of the civilization.”
” . . . The General Motors Corporation, the world’s largest company, now sells more graphic sex films every year than does Larry Flynt, owner of the Hustler empire. The 8.7 million Americans who subscribe to DirecTV, a General Motors subsidiary, buy nearly $200 million a year in pay-per-view sex films from satellite, according to estimates provided by distributors of the films, estimates the company did not dispute.
” . . .EchoStar Communications Corporation, the No. 2 satellite provider, whose chief financial backers include Mr. Murdoch, makes more money selling graphic adult films through its satellite subsidiary than Playboy, the oldest and best-known company in the sex business, does with its magazine, cable and Internet businesses combined, according to public and private revenue accounts by the companies.
” . . .AT&T Corporation, the nation’s biggest communications company, offers a hard-core sex channel called the Hot Network to subscribers to its broadband cable service. It also owns a company that sells sex videos to nearly a million hotel rooms. Nearly one in five of AT&T’s broadband cable customers pay an average of $10 a film to see what the distributor calls ‘real, live all-American sex — not simulated by actors.’”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15644-2004Dec21.html
Note 112. Not only the GOP, but Democrats too. Porn profits corrupts almost everything it touches. See: Porn Now a Staple of Big Business.
Another note: Frank would do better if he would quit underestimating the intelligence of conservatives. Nevertheless, to his credit he is speaking out against the vulgarization of culture — something we don’t hear too often from liberals. (I am assuming of course that Frank decries the embrace of pornography by big business and is not using the fact merely to buttress his thesis that conservatives are being hoodwinked by their leaders.)
Spend 100 Pennies and you have spent a Dollar
My discussion of the choice between adding a person and adding additional computing power was an illustration. In a small company, decisions such as these are easy to explain to outsiders.
Again, a single incremental change in the cost of doing business may not by itself cause a company to lay-off a worker. However, you may rest assured that COSTCO and Walmart and every professionally run business watches all types of costs very carefully. As costs accumulate, pressure is increased to lay-off workers, raise prices or move capital out of the jurisdiction.
Talk to your accountant about the practice of shredding $10.00 on January 1, 2005. Nothing happens, you have not gone bankrupt. Shred another $10.00 on January 2, 2005 again, nothing happens, you have not gone bankrupt. Try continuing the practice through the year.
If you don’t believe that, try eating an extra 100 calories a day. Change nothing else. By the end of the year, you will have gained 12 pounds. It is called incrementalism. Nature builds volcanic islands by incrementalism. Nature carved the Grand Canyon by incrementalism. Going bankrupt takes a lot less than geological time frames.
I don’t want to be harsh on a religious website, but, I am surprised that I have explain things like this to an adult. Everything action has consequences, consequences accumulate until they are critical.
Missourian writes: “Talk to your accountant about the practice of shredding $10.00 on January 1, 2005. Nothing happens, you have not gone bankrupt. Shred another $10.00 on January 2, 2005 again, nothing happens, you have not gone bankrupt. Try continuing the practice through the year. . . . I don’t want to be harsh on a religious website, but, I am surprised that I have explain things like this to an adult. Everything action has consequences, consequences accumulate until they are critical.”
Perhaps we’re talking about differences in scale. I work for an organization with a $1 billion annual spend and over 10,000 employees. My particular department oversees the purchase and distribution of over $300 million in goods and services annually and is staffed by about 200 people. My latest work involved an analysis of around $100 million in revenue generated by 40 different departments, with recommendations on how to increase that by another $500K – $1 million. My particular department itself generates around $55,000 in revenue per day. While $3,650 is a lot of money, to be honest we don’t spend a lot of time chasing down an extra 10 bucks per day. It’s just not going to show up on the radar. I’m sure that would not be the case in a smaller firm. I don’t mean to be insensitive to the concerns of smaller businesses, but that’s not my background.
Fr. Hans writes: “Frank would do better if he would quit underestimating the intelligence of conservatives.”
I think it’s not a matter of intelligence but of propaganda. There is a vast right-wing media empire out there devoted to getting out a particular message. They’ve been developing this for 30 years now, and they are reaping the rewards. Nothing like that exists on the other side of the political spectrum. The mainstream media, often condemned as “liberal,” operate under journalistic standards, even if they don’t always adhere to those standards. Unlike the mainstream media, the right-wing “news” outlets have no such standards or restrictions. The right-wing pundits and news organizations have no problem at all with passing off opinion or even blatent falsehood as fact. For example, long time right-wing financier Richard Viguerie recently said “That’s what journalism is. It’s just all opinion. Just opinion.” The right-wing media corporation moguls also have no problem censoring news and music and firing employees who fail to tow the political line.
So when people hear over and over that the problems of the country are due to liberals, that the liberals are evil, traitorous, cowards, hate America, etc., etc., this is what people come to believe. Fortunately, a few do bother to educate themselves as to how these issues are actually manipulated, and it is those people who are the audience for Frank’s book.
Drifting Discussion:
I think I have said all that I have to say about the original controversy here. I think we are losing the original issue. The original issue was whether California should mandate high minimum wages and health benefits for workers at Walmart. Jim Holman was the liberal knight on a white house defending the poor and downtrodden and advocating liberal minimum wage laws to restrain evil Walmart. I took the role of Dark Lady of Free Markets who merely observed that such policies raise prices, cause layoffs or cause capital to flee the industry or jurisdiction.
I have pointed out, ad nauseum, the very logical economic consequences of these policies: they either hurt the low-skilled workers through lay-offs, increase the price of goods which hurts the poor the most or drive capital investment out of the particular industry or jurisdiction.
Jim Holman seems to have adopted the position that either effects either do not happen or are not important. They happen and they are important.
The relevance of my discussion of incrementalism is that a single piece of legislation which imposes a one-time, modest increase in the minimum wage would might not—standing alone—result in a layoff. However, the discussion was not about a single instance of benefits by government fiat, it was about a business atmosphere in California that depressed productivity and employement. It was about an approach to social welfare through mandated benefits and where that approach leads.
I was not without alternatives which were more helpful to the low-skilled and to the economy as a whole. My alternative was to provide focused job training for low-skilled employees who could take advantage of it. Those employees could then compete for higher paying jobs based on higher productivity. Only a small percentage of individuals would be unable to benefit from any job training at all. These individuals could continue to work at the highest level they are capable of while receiving public assistance.
There was a great deal of rhetorical posturing such as “human beings are not commodities.” There is an underlying theme along the lines of —-EMPLOYEE GOOD, EMPLOYER BAD, RETURN ON CAPITAL EEEEEVILLLLL.
I suspect that what Jim Holman really desires is a shift of wealth from return on capital to labor. This shift would not reflect an increase in productivity, it would essentially be a form of social welfare because employees would be granted wealth that they themselves they did not earn through their own productivity. Jim really wants resources for these wage increases to come from return on capital. It can only come from return on capital or increased prices. I don’t think that Jim really thinks that return on capital is something that is truly —-KOSHER. Profit is probably something that he approaches only in a gingerly manner.
My approach is to maximize productivity, maximize employment, and maximize the overall wealth of society. After this is accomplished we can direct, focused educational assistance to those who need or desire it. This assistance empowers the employee and puts him on the path to true economic self-sufficiency while helping supply the economy with skilled workers.
This ties into Marxism and the Labor Theory of Value. The Labor Theory of Value is, in my opinion, the hallmark of Marxist economic theory. It is essentially an ethical statement that capital is not really entitled to a return (profit) because labor generates all economic value.
A simple example might be something like a person, Mike, who taps his savings to raise $2,000 for seed, fertilizer and rent for an acre of wheat. Mike hires Joe to help him plant, cultivate and harvest the wheat. Mike is lucky in that the wheat crop is bountiful and he can sell it for $7,000. The labor theory of value dictates that Mike receive $2,000 back for the expenses he invested and that the remaining $5,000 gain should be divided between the two workers: Mike and Joe. This is an approach which essentially provides no return on capital. Mike, however, observes that he could have lost his investment of $2,000 if the weather had turned bad or if an insect infestation occurred or if the national market for wheat had been depressed by cheap importsn. Needless to say Mike wants to see at least —- say, 10% return on his capital– a return that reflects his risk. After his capital is assigned its return Mike wants to pay wages based on the labor market, not the wheat market.
By imposing health benefits and high minimum wages on industry, Jim Holman hopes to depress return on capital, which in my opinion, he basically disdains. I don’t think that Jim thinks that investors are really entitled to much.
In my opinion, there is no particular morality about Marxism it is just an attempt to favor one group over another. Read the Communist Manifesto and you will see that violent revoluation is contemplated. The revolution is needed to control the economy to such an extent that all capital is owned by the state.
I have no particular animosity towards large corporations, and I’m particularly fond of Microsoft (which is technically responsible for my employment in the last 5-6 years).
My experience in the corporate world, however, is that companies have come to place extraordinary demands on their workers: a sort of “what have you done for us lately” ideology that requires not just that workers do their jobs but that they go “above and beyond” as a minimum. Bring in more business, work overtime for no pay, come in on the weekends. In return, if the stock is a penny or two below where it should be, this loyalty is returned with layoffs, pay cuts or benefits reductions to the same employees.
It is no wonder that people do not have the same dedication to their employers that they once did. People switch jobs every few years and often do just the minimum while they’re there.
Perhaps this is peculiar to consulting, I don’t know.
I’m aware of the bottom-line issues of profit. But when it becomes more evident that companies place value in their workers as people and don’t treat them as cattle, I think more workers will be inclined to go the extra mile for the companies they work for.
Companies Have to Compete for the Best Workers:
Jim writes:
I have no particular animosity towards large corporations, and I?m particularly fond of Microsoft (which is technically responsible for my employment in the last 5-6 years).
Missourian replies:
A corporation is nothing more or less than the people who run it.
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Jim writes:
My experience in the corporate world, however, is that companies have come to place extraordinary demands on their workers: a sort of ?what have you done for us lately? ideology that requires not just that workers do their jobs but that they go ?above and beyond? as a minimum. Bring in more business, work overtime for no pay, come in on the weekends. In return, if the stock is a penny or two below where it should be, this loyalty is returned with layoffs, pay cuts or benefits reductions to the same employees.
Missourians replies: Non-professional employees are protected against demands for unpaid overtime by the Fair Labor Standards Act and its state counterparts. There are considerable penalties written into that law in favor of aggreived employees.
Professionals are generally expected to fully identify with their company and to be available for overtime when urgency merits. In the law firms that I have worked for the secretarial staff had enjoyed a clearly delimited morning break, lunch break, afternoon break, and evening end time. Lawyers were not allowed to demand secretarial staff to work overtime. The firm maintained a list of employees who wanted to volunteer for overtime and when it was needed they were asked if they wanted to earn some extra hours. If none of our staff was available we hired temp workers. We were not allowed to discriminate against employees who were not available for overtime. Most of the time the secretarial staff were women and we understood they had families waiting for them.
Lay-offs are not totally free, they carry a cost. The unemployment tax rate assessed against employers goes up if more employees are fired rather than leave voluntarily. This is a provision which encourages employers to carry employees as long as possible in the hope that sales will go up. Again, there is no magic pot of gold in the sky that employers can tap when sales go down. If sales and revenues go down, costs must eventually go down also if the company is to survive.
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Jim writes:
It is no wonder that people do not have the same dedication to their employers that they once did. People switch jobs every few years and often do just the minimum while they?re there.
Perhaps this is peculiar to consulting, I don?t know.
Missourian replies: I think that this may be a myth of the “golden years.” Employee protections and benefits have grown through the 20th century, not declined. Again the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) protects non-professional employees. People stay at jobs as long as it suits them, when the circumstances of an employee changes, they leave. As I have noted our interns have generally left immediately after they receive an offer from a glamour firm in California or Florida, even though we may need them at the moment and they literally learned everything they know about the business from us. So it goes. We accept that.
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I?m aware of the bottom-line issues of profit. But when it becomes more evident that companies place value in their workers as people and don?t treat them as cattle, I think more workers will be inclined to go the extra mile for the companies they work for.
Missourian replies: Employers are always in competition for COMPETENT, and PRODUCTIVE EMPLOYEES. Given that employees who do not treat their people well will lose the competition for good people. It isn’t hard to find time-servers.
Intellgent employees know that they cannot be a success unless their company is, as grown-ups they shouldn’t have to be cajoled with what?….. I thought an employee agreed to work for pay, if an employee gets a paycheck and the benefits he bargained for what does the company owe him? Should the managers be polite and have good manners? Sure. I have never known anyone who is a success in business who did not have good manners. In fact, I have often noted that “the bigger they are, the nicer they are.” Why, because it doesn’t promote your success to make unnecessary enemies and a firm policy of constant good temper will very much rebound to your benefit over the long run.
Only those who “don’t bother to educate themselves” are conservative? Again, the condescension never ends.
Jim Holman writes:
Fr. Hans writes: ?Frank would do better if he would quit underestimating the intelligence of conservatives.?
I think it?s not a matter of intelligence but of propaganda. There is a vast right-wing media empire out there devoted to getting out a particular message.
Missourian replies: In Britain newspapers openly adopt a political viewpoint. Nobody tries to fool anybody. In the United States we have lived under a fiction. The fiction was that MSM news outlets are objective and MSM news is written by impartial professionals. The fiction of impartial professionals (don’t try this at home laypeople) serves an intellectual monopoly well. All three broadcast networks hire journalists trained in the same institutions, such as Columbia University. All of the educating institutions march in lock-step with the Democratic party and the cultural left. When Americans could look to only three TV channels for news and their local newspaper, the journalistic elite could shape the debate very well. Not so any longer. Americans have acces to many more sources of news and commentary. The intellectual monopoly has been broken, let’s hope forever.
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Jim complains:
They?ve been developing this for 30 years now, and they are reaping the rewards. Nothing like that exists on the other side of the political spectrum. The mainstream media, often condemned as ?liberal,? operate under journalistic standards, even if they don?t always adhere to those standards. Unlike the mainstream media, the right-wing ?news? outlets have no such standards or restrictions. The right-wing pundits and news organizations have no problem at all with passing off opinion or even blatent falsehood as fact. For example, long time right-wing financier Richard Viguerie recently said ?That?s what journalism is. It?s just all opinion. Just opinion.? The right-wing media corporation moguls also have no problem censoring news and music and firing employees who fail to tow the political line.
Missourian replies: Hmm, so much ripe fruit to pick from so many low-hanging trees. Jim asserts that the MSM have been impartial and have not passed off propaganda as objective reporting. Not only that the MSM has standards. With respect, it is flabergasts me, and it takes alot to flabbergast me, that anyone can talk about MSM “standards” after Rathergate. But apparently, the word hasn’t completely gotten out yet.
As to impartiality lets look at a few facts.
Survey after survey after survey show that the liberal arts faculty of major Universities vote Democratic by a factor of 6 or 7 to 1. This data is taken from public registration records. This includes Schools of Journalism. The MSM rewards the graduates of the same cluster of Journalism Schools, all of which are run by professors with the same world view.
Survey after survey has shown that reporters label themselves as Democrats by a factor of 4 or 5 to 1. Polls of this type have been taken over the span of several years always with the same result.
Most Agregious Example of Bias comes from the New York Times. Walter Duranty was the reporter assigned by the New York Times to report from Moscow during the Stalin years. Duranty won a Pulitizer Prize for his reporting from Moscow. Documents unearthed after the fall of the Berlin Wall confirmed facts that Ukrainian groups had tried to convince the New York Times were true, that is, Duranty knew of and HELPED COVER UP THE INTENTIONAL MASS STARVATION OF THE UKRAINIANS BY STALIN. The New York Times has all the confirmed information it needs on this topic from multiple reliable sources but it will not admit the truth that Duranty was RANK PROPAGANDIST and a STALINIST STOOGE.
Among the many telling pieces of evidence from Bernard Goldberg’s book BIAS was the fact that MSM journalist selectively withhold information that doesn’t fit their agenda. In one case, a demented law student obtained a gun and went on a rampage in Kentucky. However, it was two other law students who went to their cars and obtained guns who restrained the killer until the police arrived. The fact that the killer was initially restrained by non-criminal, gun-carrying citizens was suppressed from all MSM press coverage. It didn’t match the MSM agenda.
William McGowen in his book Coloring the News documents that editors discourage independnt investigation and critique of affirmative action/quota policies BECAUSE the news organization has already committed itself to those same policies. Reporters who took a skeptical eye towards such policies would jeopardize their standing in their own organization. This is only one example
Last, but not, least is probably the biggest recent scandal. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes ignored the advice of documenta analysts that they themselves had hired, and publicized forged documents. An error in judgment of this kind could only occur because of an inveterate hatred of Bush and a desire to block his re-election. The truly pathetic thing about the scandal is that a bright high-school student could have proven the documents false in a few minutes.
Stanley Karnow is among the most respected historians of the Viet Nam War. Karnow is not known as a axe-grinding ideologue. Karnow agrees that the reporting from Walter Cronkite after the Tet Offensive was critical in discouraging Americans who supported the war. Cronkite believed and shaded his reporting to show that the Viet Nam War was unwinnable. In fact, the Tet Offensive was a military failure by the Viet Cong and a victory of American troops in close-in urban fighting. Documents revealed many decades later, show that the Viet Cong and North Viet Nam were desperate and on the verge of collapsing just before Tet. A little persistence and the South could have prevailed. Please remember that over 2 million people went into re-education camps after the fall of Saigon. Their blood is on American hands.
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Jim writes:
So when people hear over and over that the problems of the country are due to liberals, that the liberals are evil, traitorous, cowards, hate America, etc., etc., this is what people come to believe. Fortunately, a few do bother to educate themselves as to how these issues are actually manipulated, and it is those people who are the audience for Frank?s book.
Missourian replies: The classical formulation of the free speech doctrine of the United States Constitution is that the Constitution protects virtually all speech except child pornography and direct incitement to violence. If the VAST RIGHT WING PROPAGANDA MACHINE is delivering misleading information to the American public, the proper response is to provide the other side. In what way is the MSM handicapped from providing allegedly missing pieces of information to the public? They still have a very large platform from which to speak.
A great deal of news coverage is DISCRETIONARY and therefore can many times be described as based on opinion. A classic example highlighted in by Bernard Goldberg is the coverage of homelessness by the New York Times. Goldberg actually went through the New York Times over several decades. When Republicans were in the White House homelessness was always a crisis. When Democrats were in the White House the problem received very little press. Homelessness is a problem which deserves public discussion in every Presential term, however, it only becomes of interest to the NYT when a Republic is President.
I have the Powerline blog to thank for this piece of news analysis. When may one use the term “mandate?” The following is from Powerline.
The New York Times, for example, has regularly questioned the presence of a mandate in recent elections?but only when the winner has been a Republican. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan bested incumbent President Jimmy Carter by 10 percentage points, the paper?s editors observed that his ?mandate,? a word they themselves put in suspicion-arousing quotation marks, had ?little policy content,? a position they reiterated four years later when Reagan won reelection over Walter Mondale by a whopping 18 percentage points (a ?lonely landslide? and ?a personal victory with little precise policy mandate?). Nor could the 8-point victory by Bush?s father over Michael Dukakis ?fairly be called a mandate,? asserted the paper in 1988.
Why I am Conservative. Hint, it isn’t because I haven’t bother to educate myself.
I was part of the Baby Boomer generation. My generation opposed the war in Viet Nam and instigated the sexual revolution.
I have seen what happened to members of my generation when they followed the advice of the liberals.
Liberals told us that Christian morality was based on a sick, psychological hatred of human sexuality. Liberals told us that thoughtless sex was the road to mental health.
Liberals told us that the older generations wanted to deny us pleasure by outlawing intoxicating drugs. Liberals told us that our lives would be enriched by drugs.
Liberals told us that prohibitions against murdering the unborn were intolerable restrictions of a woman’s right to have careless sex and dispose of the physical consequences. Liberals told us that we wouldn’t bitterly regret ending an innocent life.
Liberals told us that the nuclear family was oppressive and should be destroyed. Liberals told us to avoid marriage and to avoid parenting. Liberals didn’t tell us that facing old age without a committed spouse as partner and without children as comfront was a daunting experience.
Liberals told us that if we just left Viet Nam the Vietnamese would be able to settle their own affairs and chose their own government. This is precisely what Kerry told Americans. Liberals said nothing when the Communist armies swept down from the North and imposed a dictatorship that continues today to imprison Christians and practicing Buddhists.
Liberals told us that our economy oppressed our citizens and that we should be more like the Soviet Union. Liberals told us to ignore the voices of people like Pope Paul who lived principled lives in opposition to the Communists.
Liberals told us that their teacher’s unions could teach inner city children if they could only get more money. The Washington, D.C. school districts receive more money per student than any other in the country and the school are a shambles after 40 years of Democratic mismanagement.
Liberals told us we have to renounce pride in our country and disregard the genius of the Founding Fathers, those “dead-white men.” Liberals told us that we had no right to criticize cultures that mutilate female genitals and imprisoned women in their homes.
Liberals have told us that we have to renounce respect for the intellectual traditions of Greece. We are supposed to be ashamed of the greatness of Greek thought. We are to abandon the study of Greek and Latin, so that we may be ignorant of the intellectual foundations of our own culture.
Liberals told us that we should import people to our country who hate use and want to destroy our culture. Liberals invited into Europe the people who killed Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh.
Liberals told us that we deserved to have 3,000 of our fellow citizens incinerated because of our refusal to abandon Israel to the tender mercy of the worlds foremost terrorists.
Liberals tell us that we should open trade up to Cuba and ignore the intellectuals rotting in Castro’s prisons. Liberals told us that we should ignore the fact that Castro will benefit from any trade with Cuba because he is a totalitarian and nothing happens in Cuba that he does not control and that he does not benefit from.
Liberals have joined hands with terrorists and supported the Palestianians killing Israeli innocents.
Liberals have told us that we should accept the idea that Muslims are not required to allow Jews to live in their countries.
Liberals have told us that we must accept that idea that our religious expressions offend Muslims and that we are at fault if we expose Muslims to religious discomfort.
Liberals have told us that we must renounce the rule of law and that we have no right to control our borders.
Liberals have told us that it is oppressive to require people living in our country to learn English, even though Mexico has troops at the border with Guatemala and enforces a Spanish only law very strictly.
Liberals suggest that the debacle that is Mexico is our fault and that we should accept people who disregard our laws against entering the country illegally, against working here illegally, against taking payment in cash without paying taxes, against working for less than the minimum wage.
Liberals tell us that we are to give preference to illegals who send their money from American to Mexico over our own low-skilled workers.
Liberals have told us that Muslims, unlike others, have a right to be free from multi-culturalism themselves. One Middle Western newspapers takes the occaision of Muslim holidays to educated Christians in the holiness of Islam. It also takes Christian holidays to educate Christians in the holiness of Islam. Virtually every religious event is taken as an opportunity to educate Christians in the holiness of Islam.
In addition to these life experiences and observations I have read and studied the foundational literature of the Left in great detail. I have read both historical literature and current literature. I read Left wing publications and I have listened to their leaders speak for many years.
Liberalism as practiced in the 20th/21st Century American political world is a culturally suicidal, nihilistic, anti-religious, anti-Christian form of totalitarianism by piecemeal. It deserves our unrelenting opposition in every forum.
Missourian writes: “Only those who don’t bother to educate themselves are conservative? Again, the condescension never ends.”
Well, there are some good articles and books on the topic. I’ll be happy to make some recommendations. If you don’t want to read them, that’s your business.
Missourian: “In the United States we have lived under a fiction. The fiction was that MSM news outlets are objective and MSM news is written by impartial professionals.”
Obviously individuals have points of view. It is reasonable to think that these points of view influence what issues are addressed. So no, you’re never going to have news media governed by some kind of Platonic idea of objectivity.
That said, the mainstream media do not act as overt spokespersons for issues and candidates. In the right-wing media you have literally hundreds of talk show hosts advocating for issues and candidates. You have people like Sean Hannity openly endorsing Bush, and going on speaking tours that are endorsements of Bush. I recently heard an except of an interview that Hannity did with Bush. Concering the debates with Kerry Hannity asks Bush “when John Kerry tells these lies, do you think he really believes what he’s saying?” How’s that for hardball question.
Where I live one right-wing talk show host openly advocated for the passage of an anti-tax initiative. Every day he interviewed the head of the initiative drive, and he also held live shows from locations where signatures were being collected. This same guy then gripes about “liberal bias” in the media.
Missourian: “Survey after survey after survey show that the liberal arts faculty of major Universities vote Democratic by a factor of 6 or 7 to 1. This data is taken from public registration records. This includes Schools of Journalism. The MSM rewards the graduates of the same cluster of Journalism Schools, all of which are run by professors with the same world view.”
You’re comparing “world view” with active, open, and continuous advocacy of definite issues and candidates. It’s a false comparison.
Missourian: “Last, but not, least is probably the biggest recent scandal. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes ignored the advice of documenta analysts that they themselves had hired, and publicized forged documents. An error in judgment of this kind could only occur because of an inveterate hatred of Bush and a desire to block his re-election.”
Your example proves my point. The fact that there was a “rathergate” proves that the mainstream media are governed by standards. When they fail to adhere to those standards they are rightly criticized. You assume that Rather’s failure occurred because of “hatred” of Bush. More likely it was due to the desire to get a scoop on a big story. And you may recall that the personal secretary of the military officer in question said that the documents, though false, did in fact represent the feelings of that officer about Bush.
No such standards exist or are enforced in vast tracts of right-wing media. Compare rathergate to the Swift Boat case. In that case veterans claimed to have “served with” Kerry who were never in the same boat with him. Their accounts were contradicted by Kerry’s crew members. They were contradicted by the guy who actually got pulled out of the water. They were contradicted by the official military record. They were even contradicted by some of their own statements in previous years. Some of these people had long associations with Republican officials, and various right-wing people financed them. Nonetheless, the Swift Boat allegations were repeated continually throughout the right-wing domain, truth be damned.
Missourian: “Karnow agrees that the reporting from Walter Cronkite after the Tet Offensive was critical in discouraging Americans who supported the war. Cronkite believed and shaded his reporting to show that the Viet Nam War was unwinnable.”
First Stalin, now Vietnam. Ok Cronkite came out against the war after it had gone on for years and taken thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives. But you’re talking about more than 30 years ago, and one news anchor. I’m talking about now, and literally hundreds of talk show hosts, and a number of news anchors, reporters, and news organizations that function as Republican shills. Compare Conkite of yesteryear with today’s legion of right-wing media chickenhawks acting as cheerleaders and apologists for the war.
Missourian: “If the VAST RIGHT WING PROPAGANDA MACHINE is delivering misleading information to the American public, the proper response is to provide the other side. In what way is the MSM handicapped from providing allegedly missing pieces of information to the public? They still have a very large platform from which to speak.”
The problem is the volume of propaganda vs. the opportunity for rebuttal. You’re talking about hundreds of talk show hosts, right-wing news organizations, foundations, newspapers, magazines, journals, think-tanks, and so on. Also, it’s the job of the mainstream media to report the news, not to function as a counterweight to a propaganda machine.
Missourian: “A classic example highlighted in by Bernard Goldberg is the coverage of homelessness by the New York Times.”
Such classic examples are dwarfed by what goes on in right-wing media. Goldberg is talking about bias as a failure of balanced coverage on a general issue. I’m talking about overt political advocacy on specific issues, firing of reporters who fail to adhere to the party line, directives given to the news staffs about what they will and will not cover, words they will and will not use, and so on. The two situations are completely different.
Missourian: “The New York Times, for example, has regularly questioned the presence of a mandate in recent elections-but only when the winner has been a Republican. . . . a word [mandate] they themselves put in suspicion-arousing quotation marks.”
Oh no! Say it ain’t so! Not the questioning quotations marks! How dare they! Well, don’t lose sleep over it. You have Rush, Bill, Sean, Rupert, Ann, and all the rest of that nasty pack to balance it out.
Missourian writes: “Liberals told us that . . . ”
I have tried to demonstrate the existence of a right-wing propaganda machine, but your own words are a far more effective and eloquent demonstration. Thanks. I rest my case.
Jim continues:
Missourian: ?If the VAST RIGHT WING PROPAGANDA MACHINE is delivering misleading information to the American public, the proper response is to provide the other side. In what way is the MSM handicapped from providing allegedly missing pieces of information to the public? They still have a very large platform from which to speak.?
The problem is the volume of propaganda vs. the opportunity for rebuttal. You?re talking about hundreds of talk show hosts, right-wing news organizations, foundations, newspapers, magazines, journals, think-tanks, and so on. Also, it?s the job of the mainstream media to report the news, not to function as a counterweight to a propaganda machine.
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Jim, do you seriously think that CBS does not have the opportunity to defend themselves? CBS is fully able to document and critique any program which they feel was misleading or unfair. The audience for broadcast media is still several times larger than the audience for cable. Fox leads cable ratings, but, fewer people watch FOX than the total broadcast media combined. Remember, Jim, Sean Hannity is a cable commentator. CBS is broadcast. You do understand the difference between cable and broadcast?
No one seriously believes that the MSM cannot defend themselves in thousands of newspapers and in daily broadcasts and newsmagazine shows.
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Missourian: ?A classic example highlighted in by Bernard Goldberg is the coverage of homelessness by the New York Times.?
Such classic examples are dwarfed by what goes on in right-wing media. Goldberg is talking about bias as a failure of balanced coverage on a general issue. I?m talking about overt political advocacy on specific issues, firing of reporters who fail to adhere to the party line, directives given to the news staffs about what they will and will not cover, words they will and will not use, and so on. The two situations are completely different.
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No, you are confusing disparate phenomena. Goldberg pointed out a very important aspect of jouranlism. Journalists get to choose what topics are discussed in both the news section of the newspaper and in the editorial or commentary section of the newspaper. Goldberg was able to take 10 leading newspapers and simply count the number of articles on the homelessness problem. The coverage of homelessness nearly evaporated during the Clinton administration but was very heavy during the Reagan administration and Bush I.
This is a demonstration of the poiwer of the MSM to decide what it thinks the public should focus on.
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Jim continues:
Missourian: ?The New York Times, for example, has regularly questioned the presence of a mandate in recent elections-but only when the winner has been a Republican. . . . a word [mandate] they themselves put in suspicion-arousing quotation marks.?
Oh no! Say it ain?t so! Not the questioning quotations marks! How dare they! Well, don?t lose sleep over it. You have Rush, Bill, Sean, Rupert, Ann, and all the rest of that nasty pack to balance it out.
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The New York Times sets the agenda for a large percentage of local newspapers. The reason that Goldberg and others study the New York Times is that smaller newspapers pick up their news service and run the stories developed by the New York Times. This means that the New York Times articles may run, not only in Manhattan, but in Tallahassee, Memphis, Denver, Seattle and many other places. Local editors pick up the story word for word and run it with the New York Times’ writer’s byline.
This is the first time in 50 years that the MSM has been subject to fact checking from a source outside its own cozy little group. They can’t stand fact-checking and studies of their editorial and news judgment. They no longer own the journalistic means of production. Somebody else can get listened to.
The conservative commentators you list, have every First Amendment right to speak their opinions. They generally appear on programs where they are required to debate with liberals. They are seldom presented unopposed by their ideological opposites. The American people now have some intellectual breathing space.
Note 123. You had no case to rest.
Can you refute a single assertion in my list? Start with abortion.
Can you refute the fact that the Democrat party is strongly pro-abortion and has resisted restrictions on abortion in every conceivable way?
Can you refute the fact that the Left through NOW has promoted abortion as a constitutional right?
Just refute a single assertion and you might have some kind of case, not a winning case, but a case.
All the Officers from His Chain of Command
Announcer: They served their country with courage and distinction. They?re the men who served with John Kerry in Vietnam.
Announcer: They?re his entire chain of command, most of the officers in Kerry?s unit. Even the gunner from his own boat.
Announcer: And they?re the men who spent years in North Vietnamese prison camps.
Announcer: Tortured for refusing to confess what John Kerry accused them of. . . of being war criminals.
Announcer: They were also decorated. Many very highly. But they kept their medals.
Announcer: Today they are teachers, farmers, businessman, ministers, and community leaders. And of course, fathers and grandfathers.
Announcer: With nothing to gain for themselves, except the satisfaction that comes with telling the truth, they have come forward to talk about the John Kerry they know.
Announcer: Because to them honesty and character still matters. . . especially in a time of war.
Announcer: Swift Vets and POW?s for Truth are responsible for the content of this advertisement.
For Those Who Don’t Think Academics in America have an Agenda
John Leon on Wesleyan
In the fall of 2000, I promised my daughter the freshman that I wouldn?t write about Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.) until she graduated. As a result, you readers learned nothing from me about the naked dorm, the transgender dorm, the queer prom, the pornography-for-credit course, the obscene sidewalk chalking, the campus club named crudely for a woman?s private part, or the appearance on campus of a traveling anti-Semitic roadshow, loosely described as a pro-Palestinian conference.
Instead of hot news items like these, you usually just hear that Wesleyan is very ?diverse.? Newsweek once hailed the school as the ?hottest? diversity campus in America, apparently using the word diversity in its normal campus meaning of ?no diversity at all.? A one-liner about the campus is that ?Wesleyan is so diverse that you can meet people here from almost every neighborhood in Manhattan.? And the students tend to have opinions from every known corner of MoveOn.org.
After the 2000 election, my daughter told me that 80 percent of the students had voted for Al Gore. ?Bush got only 20 percent of the vote?? I asked. ?No, Dad,? she explained, ?the 20 percent was for Nader.? Visiting speakers who challenge any aspect of campus orthodoxy are as rare as woolly mammoths. However, columnist Nat Hentoff, whose son had gone to Wesleyan, showed up in 2002 and criticized the lack of intellectual diversity and free speech.
At a Manhattan holiday party last week, hosted by a friend with Wesleyan ties, I overheard my daughter explaining that no real debate takes place on campus. This was a major frustration, since she is feisty and brilliant and loves to argue ideas. She is politically liberal but wonders how Democrats of her generation will be able to speak convincingly to the middle of the political spectrum when so many of them shun the complexity of arguments and simply spout the party line.
Two years ago the Argus, the student newspaper, ran a survey and found that 32 percent of the students feel ?uncomfortable speaking their opinion.? Orthodoxy plays a role, of course, but so does an exaggerated fear of giving offense. Identity politics is so strong that criticizing other students? ideas can seem like a faux pas, if not a challenge to their core identity. Better to keep your head down and stick to standard opinions.
The naked dorm and the porn course were both examples of Wesleyan?s determination to accommodate as much sexual confusion as possible. The porn course, which had some students filming S&M scenarios, ended when the teacher died. The popularity of the naked dorm, which featured nude wine and cheese parties, seems to have faded. ?I just sometimes feel the need to be nude,? a Wesleyan male told the New York Times in 2000. ?If I feel the need to take off my pants, I take my pants off.? The obscene chalkings, which included colorful references to the sexual practices of professors, are now forbidden, possibly because they were upsetting donors and enraging some faculty.
But the Wesleyan campaign to stamp out diversity continues, this time in a move against fraternities. The university is pressuring its frats to accept women as members or pay a stiff financial price. The antifraternity campaign is standard on the politically correct campus these days, usually with an announced aim of reining in a boozy, sexist, right-wing culture. But this is Wesleyan, which has no right-wing culture and no sexist, out-of-control frats. The Argus has quoted gays and women saying mild and kind things about the Wesleyan frats, some of which are receptive to gays and set rooms aside for female residents. Much of the opposition to the frats seems to depend on the gross national image of fraternities, not the essentially harmless frats at Wesleyan. The administration and radical feminists oppose the frats for violating the campus nondiscrimination rule by not allowing women as members. However, they don?t bother to apply the same objection to Womanist House (a residence for females) or Malcolm X House, which caters to blacks.
I should add that I think my daughter got a decent education at Wesleyan. You can do this if you are strong-minded, independent, and willing to pick your courses very carefully. But admission to the university should come with a warning label: If you are fainthearted, go somewhere else.
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It should be remembered that many of these colleges have student conduct codes that incorporate these same, bizarre ideas. Students who violate the conduct codes can suffer real damage to their academic career. Those students who feel uncomfortable expressing their opinion are concerned about something more than mere social reprocussions, they are concerned about charges of misconduct under the student code.
Victor Davis Hanson:
I refer you to “Who Killed Homer” by Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson is a Professor of Classics at a state university in California.
Hanson takes an entire, well-documented book to show the decline in Classical Studies. He points out that during the 1950′s many high schools offered Latin. Latin was considered an important college preparation course. Latin has virtually disappeared from public high school curriculums. He fully documents the domination of the Classics field by persons interested in “deconstructing” the Classics for the their own contemporary political purposes. Classics has been nearly destroyed from within.
I also just complete 4 years on a college campus and I am tell you that of a catalogue of 500 courses, only 1 course a semester is offered in either Greek or Latin language and that alterates Greek for Latin every semester. There are more than 10,000 undergraduate students at this campus. Any student wishing to major in the Classics will be dissapointed, there is no major, only a minor concentration in the History department which is not very well supported by the faculty. A review of the text used by the teacher of the first semester Western Civilization devotes an entire 10 pages to Ancient Greece out of a total of 320 pages. Today’s students coulnd’t tell you who Pericles was, or for that matter Leonidas. By contrast, the fully bogus, and unscholarly Leftist enclave called the Women’s Studies Department offers 20 courses per semester.
Again, I refer you to Mr. Hanson who has spent the last 20 years in the field.
As to documentation of the policies of the Left, you can refer to the platform of the Democratic Party as well as the web sites of NARAL, ACLU, NOW, MALDEF and more. I think the public knows where to find the official statements of the Left.
The Left’s Support for the Iraqis Struggle: From Front Page Magazine.
How the Left Betrayed My Country – Iraq
By Naseer Flayih Hasan
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 3, 2005
Before the last war, we Iraqis spent decades cut off from the outside world. Not only did the Baathist regime prevent us from traveling during the Iran-Iraq conflict and the period of the sanctions, but they punished anyone possessing satellite television. And of course, internet access was strictly limited. Because of our isolation, most of us had little idea or sense about life beyond our borders.
We did believe, however, that democracy and human rights were important factors in Western civilization. So it came as a shock to us when millions of people began demonstrating across the world against America?s build-up to the invasion of our country. We supposed the protests were by people who had no idea about the terrible atrocities that the regime had inflicted upon us for decades. We assumed that once they learned what had happened in Iraq, they would change their minds, or modify their opposition to the war.
My first clue that this would not happen was a few weeks after Baghdad fell. I had befriended a French reporter who had begun to realize that the situation in Iraq was not how the international media or the so-called ?peace camp? described it. I noticed, however, that whenever he tried to voice his doubts to colleagues, they argued that he was wrong. Soon afterwards, I met a Dutch woman on Mutinabi Street, where booksellers lay out their wares on Friday morning. I asked her how long she?d been in Iraq and, through a translator, she answered, ?Three months.?
?So you were here during the war??
?Yes!? she said. ?To see the crimes of the Americans!?
I was stunned. After a moment, I replied, ?What about the crimes of the regime? It killed millions of Iraqis. Do you know that if the regime was still in power, the conversation we?re having now would result in our torture or death??
Her face turned red and she angrily responded, ?Soon will come the day that the Americans will do worse.? She then went on to accuse me of not knowing what the true facts were in Iraq?and that she could see the situation better than me!
She was not the only ?humanitarian? who expressed such outrageous opinions. One afternoon, I was speaking to some members of the American anti-war group ?Voices in the Wilderness.? One of the group?s members declared that the Iraqi Governing Council (then in power at the time) were ?traitors.? I was shocked. Most of the Council were people whom we Iraqis knew had suffered and sacrificed in a long struggle against the regime. Some represented opposition parties who had lost ten of thousand of members in that struggle. Others came from families who had lost up to 30 loved ones to the Baathists.
After those, and many other, experiences, we finally comprehended how little we had in common with these ?peace activists? who constantly decried American crimes, and hated to listen to us talk about the terrible long nightmare that ended with the collapse of the regime. We came to understand how these ?humanitarians? experienced a sort of pleasure when terrorists or former remnants of the regime created destruction in Iraq?just so they could feel that they were right, and the Americans wrong!
Worse, we realized it was hopeless to make them grasp our feelings. We believed?and still believe–that America?s removal of the regime opened a new way for democracy. At the same time, we have no illusions that the U.S. came to Iraq on a white horse to save our people. We understand this war is all about national interests, and that America?s interests are mainly about defeating terrorism. At this moment, though, U.S. interests are doing more to bring about democracy and freedom in Iraq than, say, the policies of France and Russia?countries which also care little for the Iraqi people and, worse, did their best to save Saddam from destruction until the last moment.
It?s worth noting, as well, that the general attitude of peace activists I met was tension and anger. They were impossible to reason with. This was because, on one hand, the sometimes considerable risks they took to oppose the war made them unable to accept the fact that their cause was not as noble as they believed. Then, too, their dogmatic anti-American attitudes naturally drew them to guides, translators, drivers and Iraqi acquaintances who were themselves supporters of the regime. These Iraqis, in turn, affected the peace activists until they came to share almost the same judgments and opinions as the terrorists and defenders of Saddam.
This was very disappointing for someone like me, who thought for decades that the Left was generally the progressive power in the world. You can imagine how aghast I was when my French reporter friend told me that the Communist Party in his country actually considers the ?insurgents? to be the equivalent of the French Gaullists! Or how troubling it is to hear Jacques Chirac take satisfaction from the violence wreaked by the terrorists?those bloody monsters that we Iraqis know so well?because they justify France?s original opposition to the war.
And so I have become disillusioned, at least with the Leftists I met in Iraq. So noble in their rhetoric, they looked to the stars, yet ignored what was happening around them, caring only about what was inside their minds. So glorious in their ideals, their thoughts were inflexible and their deeds unnecessary, even harmful. In the end, they proved to me how dogma and fanaticism had transform peace activists into?lifeless peace ?statues.?
Missourian writes: “I refer you to �Who Killed Homer� by Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson is a Professor of Classics at a state university in California.”
Thanks for the reference. I’ll try to get a copy. I have his “Landmark Thucydides,” but have not read this book.
RE: No. 128; Missourian: Why do you spread evil, venomous lies? John Kerry never said that our POWs were war criminals nor did he say that the majority of soldiers who fought in Viet Nam war were war criminals. Kerry testified that, as is documented by many other reliable independent sources, a small number of US soliders like Lt. William Calley committed atrocities and that the policies of the US government created an environment that was partly responsible. Kerry never called US POWs war criminals and when you posted that comment you maliciously slandered a war hero and a fine and decent man.
My New Years resolution suggestion for you is to find another role model besides Ann Coulter.
Have a Happy New Year.
Dean Where Have You Been?
John Kerry launched his political career by appearing before Congress and testifying to the commission of war crimes by American soldiers in Viet Nam.
He most definitely did not testify that these crimes were only of a few, scattered incidents by maverick American soldiers. He claimed the entire American armed forces were war criminals. He made this claim while Americans were in North Vietnamese prisons. War criminals are stripped of any rights under the Geneva Convention. Kerry directly imperiled and betrayed his fellow service men and his country on more than one occaision. Kerry is a traitor. I have some experience in criminal prosecution and I don’t think it would be hard to convict him for violating various laws when he collaborated with the enemy in Paris.
Kerry is the author of a book called The New Soldier. The cover of the book shows ragged men in dissheled American military uniforms holding the American flag upside down. This image is a “finger in the eye” of all Americans and particularly those who served in the military. The contents of the book contain a broad condemnation of the America as a country. It’s on the net.
Where you in the United States during the most recent Presidential election? Did you not read voluminous discussion of John Kerry’s anti-war activities? Surely these things cannot be news to you?
Christmas in Cambodia: For Starters
Christmas in Cambodia?
Michael Barone (archive)
August 16, 2004 | Print | Send
?Mr. President,? said John Kerry, addressing his fellow senators in March 1986, ?I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and having the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared — seared — in me. …?
This was not the only time during the last 35 years that Kerry has claimed that he was in Cambodia in Christmastime 1968. In an article in The Boston Herald in 1979, Kerry wrote: ?I remember spending Christmas eve of 1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon claimed there were no American troops was very real.?
Well, not quite real: Richard Nixon was president-elect, not president, in December 1968. In 1992, Kerry told States News Service: ?On Christmas eve of 1968, I was on a gunboat in a firefight that wasn?t supposed to be taking place. I thought, ?If I?m killed here, what will my family be told??? That same year he told The Associated Press, ?We were told, ?Just go up there and do your patrol.? Everybody was over there (in Cambodia). Nobody thought twice about it.?
?That memory which is seared — seared — in me.? Except that the story evidently isn?t true. Andrew Antippas, the foreign service officer in the Saigon embassy in charge of keeping tabs on the Cambodian border from 1968 to 1970, recalls only one ?river incident involving the Cambodian border or Navy actions inside Cambodia.? Adm. Roy Hoffman, the commander of the swift boats then, says that none of them went inside Cambodia. Steve Gardner, one of the crewmembers on Kerry?s boat, flatly denies that they were in Cambodia on Christmas Eve.
You can discount, if you want to, Hoffman?s and Gardner?s testimony, on the grounds that they are members of the Swift Board Veterans for Truth, the group sponsoring the book “Unfit for Command,” which mentions the Christmas-in-Cambodia claims but makes a much broader case against Kerry. Douglas Brinkley, in “Tour of Duty,” the admiring book was written with Kerry?s cooperation, places him at Christmastime 1968 in Sa Dec, some 50 miles from the Cambodian border. Brinkley is reported to be writing a piece for The New Yorker saying that Kerry ?was mistaken about Christmas in Cambodia,? but that he was in Cambodia in January or February.
On Aug. 9, Fox News?s Carl Cameron asked the Kerry campaign whether Kerry still claimed to have been in Cambodia on Christmas time — the campaign had no comment. On Aug. 11, Kerry spokesman Michael Meehan said Kerry?s boat was ?in the watery borders between Vietnam and Cambodia? on Christmas eve,? then ?headed north to the Cambodian border? and were fired on. ?Kerry?s was not the only United States riverboat to respond and inadvertently or responsibly cross the border.? A Veterans for Kerry spokesman said that Kerry was in Cambodia some other unspecified time and may have confused that with Christmas Eve. Those awkward responses are far from convincing affirmations of the memory that in 1986 remained ?seared — seared — in me.?
Kerry?s Christmas-in-Cambodia claims were first noted in the widely read instapundit.com on Aug. 6. As this is written, on Aug. 13, not a word about them has appeared in The New York Times or The Washington Post, nor have they been discussed much or at all on ABC, CBS or NBC News. This is a vivid contrast with the treatment by these news organizations of the charges — false charges — by Michael Moore and Democratic Chairman Terry McAuliffe that George W. Bush was AWOL while in the National Guard. A double standard seems to be at work. But then, as Newsweek?s Evan Thomas said on “Inside Washington”: ?Let?s talk about media bias here. The media, I think, want Kerry to win.?
Kerry?s Christmas-in-Cambodia statements, made over many years, seem to be the kind of resume padding that routinely disqualifies political appointees and damages political candidates. His repeated tellings of this story seem more than a little weird, and usually we don?t want people who do weird things to be president. Perhaps by the time you?re reading this appears, the Times, the Post or the broadcast networks will have addressed this issue.
If they don?t, it?s reasonable to ask why not.
Our Thoroughly Corrupt Neighbor: Mexico
Dear Reader: Yes, I know it is difficult to imagine that a poor country could be corrupt. But if you think about it, Mexico is poor precisely because it is corrupt. There is no rule of law and the government is a klepocracy, tends to stifle economic growth.
But, I digress, Mexico doesn’t even attempt to conceal its contempt for our laws:
From the Washington Times
To keep good relations, neighboring countries must respect each others’ immigration laws. The government of Mexico has repeatedly professed that it agrees. If it truly does, how does it explain last month’s release of “The Guide for the Mexican Migrant”? The guide, published by the Mexican Foreign Ministry and distributed inside Mexico, gives tips to would-be illegals on how best to get to the United States safely. As such, it constitutes egregiously official assistance to Mexicans preparing to immigrate illegally, and undercuts its leaders’ professions of goodwill and cooperation.
Excerpts of the 32-page document obtained by the Washington Times reveal the extent to which Mexican authorities are condoning the breaking of U.S. law. One section we reviewed advises would-be migrants on how to deal with U.S. authorities if caught. Another tells how to survive in “high risk zones” like rivers and deserts. A third tells how best to avoid detection once past the United States’ borders. The specifics are telling, since they presume situations where law-breaking has already occurred or is occurring concurrently. The guide warns migrants not to throw rocks at U.S. authorities or to insult them or brandish weapons. It advises that “it is better to be detained a few hours and to be repatriated to Mexico than to get lost in the desert.” It warns that drinking salinated water guards better against dehydration and that heavy clothing makes it harder to swim safely. And on laying low once inside the United States, it tells would-be illegals not to change travel routines.
In an editorial board meeting with the Washington Times last month, Mexico’s Ambassador to the United States, Carlos de Icaza, assured us that his government intended to cooperate with U.S. initiatives on illegal immigration. “It is a good idea for good neighbors to cooperate,” he told us, and also said that “as an ambassador I am respectful of the fact that it is up to the American Congress and the president to decide how to best protect the rights of the immigrants already in the United States.”
To be sure, the guide does advise would-be migrants that getting a U.S. visa is the best way to get into the United States, and that crossing the border illegally could land them in jail. But Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies calls these “disclaimers,” and tells us he thinks the guide is essentially an official wink and a nudge to illegals. Speaking for the Mexican Embassy yesterday, Press Secretary Alfonso Nieto disagreed. “The guide in no way promotes undocumented immigration into the United States,” he said, calling the guide part of a public safety campaign. “It is in the interests of both countries to discourage dangerous crossings of the border.”
Surely it’s in both countries’ interest to discourage illegal crossings. But we also think that when a government counsels its citizens on crossings that are illegal in character, that government is in effect offering an endorsement of the lawbreaking in question.
When Secretary of State Colin Powell gets back from his tsunami relief trip, he should call Ambassador de Icaza to the State Department to register the U.S. government’s official complaint. A government can’t advise its citizens to break a neighbor’s laws and then call it “public safety.”
Another Kerry Whopper: As Bob Dole said “all 125 swifties can’t be Republican liars”
Every officer in his chain of command joined in the criticism of Kerry.
Here is a summary of just one of Kerry’s lies from the Swifties, John O’Neil specifically.
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On June 6, 1971, John Kerry described the work of the Swift boats to the Washington Star as follows:
“We established an American presence in most cases by showing the flag and firing at sampans and villages along the banks. Those were our instructions, but they seemed so out of line that we finally began to go ashore, against our orders, and investigate the villages that were supposed to be our targets. We discovered we were butchering a lot of innocent people, and morale became so low among the officers on those ‘swift boats’ that we were called back to Saigon for special instructions from Gen. Abrams. He told us we were doing the right thing. He said our efforts would help win the war in the long run. That’s when I realized I could never remain silent about the realities of the war in Vietnam.”
What John Kerry told the Washington Star was a lie.
Contrary to Kerry’s claim, our consistent policy was to take every precaution to avoid harming civilians. On many occasions we did this at the cost of suffering additional casualties ourselves. We have interviewed hundreds of veterans who served on the Swift Boats or supported them, and there is simply no justification for Kerry’s statement. Several members of our organization addressed the issue of atrocities during our May 4 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
John Kerry also completely misrepresented our meeting with General Abrams and Admiral Zumwalt. Far from being a pep talk for officers distressed by their butchery of civilians, the purpose of this conference with the two highest-ranking American officers in Vietnam was to announce a new Swift boat mission: to drive the Vietcong out of the Ca Mau Peninsula. The goal of Operation SeaLords was to dominate the rivers in this area, and to eventually establish a permanent presence in the Cua Lon River, an effort later named Operation SeaFloat. This was to be done publicly, with the full participation of the media, to negate the claim of North Vietnamese negotiator Lee Duc Tho that Henry Kissinger could not legitimately represent South Vietnam because the U.S. did not control these areas.
We succeeded in that mission. We returned to Anthoi and drove the Vietcong out of the region, and soon the North Vietnamese and Vietcong representatives in Paris returned to the negotiating tables.
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John Kerry has the blood of millions of Vietnamese on his hands. He betrayed and slandered his fellow soldiers and he advanced the cause of Communism. Millions died in re-education camps and thousands of Boat People perished in the sea trying to escape from Viet Nam. Talk to anyone in the Vietnamese community here in America, most are in California and Texas. They will tell you what they think of Kerry.
Note 134. Dean, were you asleep the last election cycle? Kerry certainly did charge that his fellow troops with war crimes that they never committed and was never a part of US policy in Viet Nam. His lies are what prompted the Swift Boat veterans to speak out. They were protecting, and in some measure restoring, their reputations.
If your revisionist characterization was true, Kerry’s impotence in responding to the Swift Boat charges would disqualify him for leadership on this ground alone. His impotence however, arose from the fact the charges were true and he could say nothing to dispute them. He soiled the reputations of these fine men to launch a political career. When he grasped for the grand prize thirty years later, they fought back, and justifiably so.
Also, leave off the demonization of those you disagree with. It’s a common tactic to demonize people when one’s ideas are not strong enough to make the point and “Why do you spread evil, venomous lies?” doesn’t make a point that you ever prove.
Note 139:
I had to dig real hard to find outrageous comments by “Conservative” commentators but I did find a few gold nuggets:
Rush Limbaugh:
“If we are going to start rewarding no skills and stupid people–I’m serious, let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do–let the stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work.”
Once, in response to a caller arguing that black people need to be heard, Limbaugh responded: “They are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?”
Michael Savage:
“Just be careful. One day, when you and your family are cooking hot dogs in the backyard, just be careful, because your Korean neighbor might actualy be cooking his dog. That’s how they do it over there, you know.”
“You and all your sodomite friends should all get AIDS and die”–to a caller who expressed sympathy for homosexuals.
Anne Coulter:
COULTER: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
PETER FENN (Democratic strategist): Oh, OK.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
FENN: This is a great idea.
COULTER: God says, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
FENN: Terrific. We’re Americans, so we should consume as much of the earth’s resources…
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: … as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.
Pat Buchanan:
“We are in the process of destroying the one working economy [in lower Africa -- South Africa] — because it doesn’t adopt an idiotic ‘One man, one vote’ regimen.”
“[Hitler was] an individual of great courage, a soldier’s soldier… [and] a political organizer of the first rank.”
Nevertheless, I don’t by association assume this same insane line of thinking is held by all others who declare themselves as “conservative”. Try to extend the courtesy!
I apologize if I took too strong a tone, but I find the attempt by the Republican sleaze machine to dishonor a decorated war hero extremely offensive. And yes, I think the lies of the Swift Boat Veteranss are evil.
The Swift Boat Veterans charged that Kerry accused ALL Viet Nam war veterans and ALL POWS of being war criminals. In fact, Kerry testified that a small number of soldiers had committed atrocities, and that military tactics such as “free-fire zones” where soldiers were directed to shoot at anything that moved, led to the shooting of innocent civilians. There is a significant difference in what kerry actually said and what the Swift Boat liars accuse him of saying.
To deny Kerry’s testimony, first you have to deny that events like My Lai or peration Phoenix ever took place, and you have to deny that the mililtary ever ordered soldiers to use free-fire zones, and you have to deny that an innocent civilian could have wandered into a free fire zone. There is a difference between charging that US policies
The lies of Swift Boat Veterans represent the absolute scum and bottom of the barrel in American dirty tricks. One party had a candidate who was a decorated war hero who had volunteered for duty in Viet nam. The other party had a candidate who used his father’s connections to escape duty in Viet Nam, and who may not have completed his National Guard responsibilities. To even the balance, the Later uses shadowy figures to plant insinuations, lies and distortions about the Former’s later opposition to the war.
If GW Bush wouldn’t even acknowlege or support the the sleazy accusations of the Swift Boat Veterans why should anyone take them seriously?
Note 141: So what happened at My Lai? I don’t wish to overplay this but did the Charlie Company not commit any wrongdoing? If they did, why is it inconceivable that there were others out there who committed similar acts? Yes, I’m sure most troops didn’t behave this way, but should we not recognize the fact that some groups did?
This is the problem with war: to successfully train and groom a legion of troops to kill, they must not be able to view the enemy in any human terms. The enemy then becomes not just the soldier with a gun pointed at them, but often any person who resembles them as well. It is easy for weaker minds to temporarily degenerate to something akin to that of a serial killer’s: that is, dehumanization of one’s victims who are no longer people but objects to be destroyed or used. I don’t see how this is avoidable, even when the cause of the war is “just”. To win, one must be able to kill without compunction, at least for the time being.
Missourian writes: “Here is a summary of just one of Kerry’s lies from the Swifties, John O’Neil specifically.”
Why take his word over Kerry’s? John O’Neil started out as a political hit man for the Nixon administration. Much of what he said about Kerry has been discredited by people who actually “served with” Kerry — as on the same boat, not on a different boat. O’Neil’s assertions are often contradicted by the offical record. [Of course, as with the Schiavo case, conservatives seemingly don't give a rip about the official record.] An ABC News crew even went to Vietnam to interview people in a village close to where one of the disputed actions occurred, and the interviews were largely consistent with Kerry’s account and inconsistent with O’Neil’s account.
Missourian: “Documentation of the Self-Hating Left: Susan Sontag was revered and respected by the cultural Left . . . ”
There you go again! It’s as if in your mind whoever is to the left of Ann Coulter is part of the “The Left.” I consider myself to be on the left of the political spectrum. But I didn’t know Susan Sontag. I never read anything about her. I never read anything by her. I never discussed anything she wrote with any of my “leftist” friends. I don’t know that I actually know anyone who has read anything by her. I suspect that were I to read something by her I would disagree with most of it. Nonetheless, she is part of the baggage that everyone on “the left” has to carry around, in your view.
Make you a deal: we on the left will accept full responsibility for Susan Sontag if you on the right will accept full responsibility for Timothy McVeigh. Deal?
One final point on Kerry. Had he apologized for slandering his fellow soldiers, the American public would have given him a second chance, just as they did Bill Clinton after his tacit confession of adultery after Jennifer Flowers surfaced. People do stupid and wrong things, especially when they are young, and Kerry’s self-serving and discredited testimony to Congress was stupid and wrong. But, he was young, it was a confusing time, and merely admitting his wrong doing would have been the end of it.
But Kerry didn’t seem to understand this. Clinton did. In fact, Clinton understands the American character much better than Kerry ever did. An apology would have given the Swift Boat Vets the vindication that they justifiably sought and defused the issue entirely.
The only people who don’t seem to grasp this are the liberals still incensed over the political damage Kerry incurred by the Swift Boat charges. Kerry could have put the issue to bed overnight. So why didn’t he?
One reason for Kerry’s blundering writes Michael Barone (arguably one of the best political analysts writing today) in the current issue of “The American Spectator” was that Kerry relied on Old Media to remain silent about the issue and keep it from mainstream view (which they did when the issue first surfaced). His campaign miscalculated the reach of the new media, just as Dan Rather and CBS did when they stonewalled about the forged documents purportedly proving Bush didn’t fullfill his National Guard requirements. Old media, and the politicians who depended on them, didn’t grasp that their dominance was waning.
As a result, as the country was waiting for a response from Kerry, there was nothing. We still don’t know if he regards his earlier testimony as honest or a lie. He did not say either way. This created the impression that Kerry’s core values are weak — which is probably closer to the truth. In any case, the issue was Kerry’s to lose, and he lost it in a big way.
Note 145: Missiourian is correct that Susan Sontag set the tone and sometimes substance of the left wing. You may not have heard of her in Oregon, but she was very infuential in the idea, rather than the political, circles of the cultural left.
Note 146: Dean, there you go again. Rather than follow through with a defense of your idea, you respond with another unrelated provocation. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you defend an idea in any substantive way.
As for “taking too strong a tone…”, it’s not the tone that is the problem, it’s the language. Don’t use the term “evil” unless real evil is perpetrated lest you diminish the import and power of this crucial and necessary term. Reserve the term “evil” for evil things, and don’t confuse political wrangling with evil-doing and don’t use the term for its emotional effect alone.
If you really believe that Kerry was telling the truth in his testimony to Congress, well, be my guest. (Your links provide no real corroboration, BTW.)
As I said above, Kerry could have salvaged this. It was his to lose and he lost it big.
Fr. Hans writes: “If you really believe that Kerry was telling the truth in his testimony to Congress, well, be my guest. (Your links provide no real corroboration, BTW.)”
There are other sources of information similar to what Kerry told congress. In some cases Kerry was repeating what had been told him, so he can hardly be blamed if some of that information was not accurate. The truth of what happened in Vietnam is out there, but you have to wade through massive amounts of misinformation to find it. But this is the new right-wing strategy. When faced with a difficult issue the right-wing simply overwhelms the public space with so much garbage, continually echoed throughout all of their hundreds of outlets, that it is difficult to know what the facts are. In the right-wing media there simply is no distinction between fact and fantasy, fact and opinion, fact and propaganda. Of course, since the vast majority of right-wing media personalities are not “journalists” but “pundits” and “commentators,” this is seen as acceptable. Meanwhile, the mainstream media are accused of “bias.”
Here’s how it works: 1) stories are floated on web sites or other alternative media. 2) major right-wing commentators pick up on the stories and give them legs. If the stories are false, they can’t be blamed, because they are simply “reporting” what others have said. 3) the mainstream media, framed as “liberals,” are then blamed for not carrying the stories. This because of their “bias.” 4) Every right-wing talk show host in the country picks up on the stories, and for literally hundreds of hours per day across the country people hear nothing else. At this point you have a national story that the mainstream media have to report. When the mainstream media show that the stories are largely false, this is because of their “bias.” 6) a vast amount of right-wing money is then pumped into the stories in the form of ads, book deals, magazine articles, etc. This is what finally puts the nail in the coffin.
Believe it or not, I really don’t care. We’ll see more of it in the next election because it works so well.
Fr. Hans: “As I said above, Kerry could have salvaged this. It was his to lose and he lost it big.”
Well, give Kerry the same propaganda empire that Bush had and you would have seen a different result. You and I both know that whatever candidate the Democrats had fielded would have been savaged just as much as Kerry. Again, believe it or not, I don’t care. We’ll see it next time.
No one on the Democratic side makes this argument Jim, including Kerry operatives. They are frustrated the left can’t marshall their own media (Al Gore tried, Al Franken is trying), but you are the only one arguing that the free press is actually a vast right wing conspiracy.
Look, two bloggers brought down Dan Rather’s transparent attempt to influence the election three weeks before election day. Rather went with forged documents. Two guys figured out it was a fraud even from copies off the internet. If the blogosphere wasn’t there, a fraud would have been perpetrated (and Rather would still have a job).
This works from the other direction too. If a fraud is perpetrated on the right, liberals have the same tools at their disposal to ferret out the truth.
The same arguments used against torture can be used against any act of war. The same arguments can also be used against any action police officers take. Any violence of any type against a fellow human being defiles the image of God, both in the perpetrator and in the person who is the object of the violence. Violence is a fact of the fallen world, we are all victims of it and we all participate in it. Violence is inescapable. Even total pacifists who refuse to do any violence allow violence to continue by their inaction.
Given such a reality, one must look at violence from a pragmatic standpoint not from an idealistic standpoint. That is why we need to reclaim an ethic of war informed by the experience of communion with Christ. Unfortunately, there is no clean, completely moral way addressing the subject.
Two moral principals are, IMO, the foundation of any consideration of the appropriate use of violence: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”; “As you give, so shall you receive”. The first is a moral choice governing behavior, the second is a cosmic law.
Why are we even discussing the use of torture? The debate is a result of the barbaric fixation of the Islamists with beheading (in which they are only imitating their prophet) and the overall cruelty with which they conduct their attacks and treat their prisoners. The reaction of a substantial plurality of Americans is in line with the second principal. Does that excuse or allow a policy of cruelty on our part? No, but it does set in motion a series of events that inevitably leads to more aggressive treatment of the prisoners we hold. Since it is unlikely that the United States treatment of prisoners will ever come close to the barbarity of the Jihadists, the argument that U.S. soldiers will be treated in worse ways does not hold water.
To be appropriate, violence must be directed at protecting the innocent, establishing a just order, and be proportionate. There are times in which torture might be justified, just as, IMO, Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan was justified. To quote Mr. Spock, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one (or the few)”. We need to have the discussion of when (or if) to allow the use of physical/emotional violence against prisoners so that the soldiers and interrogators in the field will have clear guidelines that can be enforced and maintained. The discussion needs to be just that, a discussion, not a political/emotional bombast of self-righteous condemnatory rhetoric
Let’s see if I am reading Comment 150 correctly: Stories analyzed and commented on by the “right wing media” provide “simply is no distinction between fact and fantasy.” And then they, i.e., “right wing media”, dismiss criticism of this since “[i]f the stories are false, they can’t be blamed, because they are simply “reporting” what others have said.” And all this is presented as support for the position that one should not trust anything written by the likes of John O’Neill or published in the Weekly Standard, the National Review or on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, because they’re all part of the “evil” “Republican propaganda machine”. So far so good?
But I’m confused about something; when John Kerry sat before a Senate Committee in 1971 and repeated stories about War Crimes committed on a day to day basis by his fellow soldiers and sailors, with the full knowledge and support of the entire chain of command, during the Vietnam War, “he can hardly be blamed if some of that information was not accurate” because, after all, he is simply “repeating what had been told him … ”
I don’t know about other readers but this looks like a double standard to me.
I’m also wondering how it is that John Kerry can’t be blamed for “repeating what had been told him … ” when he is describing War Crimes that he, himself committed.
For the record, I don’t think that John Kerry actually committed any War Crimes during the Vietnam War. I do think that he lied and distorted his military service in order to promote himself within the anti-American Left and in order to advance his own political career.
Daniel writes: “Let’s see if I am reading Comment 150 correctly: Stories analyzed and commented on by the ‘right wing media’ provide ‘simply is no distinction between fact and fantasy.’ And then they, i.e., ‘right wing media’, dismiss criticism of this since ‘[i]f the stories are false, they can’t be blamed, because they are simply ‘reporting’ what others have said.’”
Yes, that’s correct. Also, it is convenient that the right-wing have a large number of pundits and commentators, since they are not held to the same standards. In other words, you can rightly accuse a “journalist” of bias, but accusing a “pundit” of bias is rather beside the point.
Daniel: “And all this is presented as support for the position that one should not trust anything written by the likes of John O’Neill or published in the Weekly Standard, the National Review or on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, because they’re all part of the ‘evil’ ‘Republican propaganda machine’. So far so good?”
No. It’s not that we shouldn’t trust what is said merely in virtue of the source. It’s that you have to look at the nature of propaganda in order to understand the information you’re getting.
Daniel: “But I’m confused about something; when John Kerry sat before a Senate Committee in 1971 and repeated stories about War Crimes committed on a day to day basis by his fellow soldiers and sailors, with the full knowledge and support of the entire chain of command, during the Vietnam War, ‘he can hardly be blamed if some of that information was not accurate’ because, after all, he is simply ‘repeating what had been told him.’ I don’t know about other readers but this looks like a double standard to me. ”
I didn’t explain myself very well. Kerry was not a journalist. He was not a researcher in an air-conditioned office in the Heritage Foundation. He was not a talk show host throwing out the latest entertainment before the commercial break. He was a very angry young soldier trying to bring home to the congress certain unpleasant aspects of the war that had not been adequately considered. These were both things that he had experienced and things that he had been told about in the context of a brutal and confusing war. You want to hold him to journalistic standards, fine; I don’t. While George Bush was abandoning his flight status and getting drunk and pissing in parking lots in Alabama John Kerry was commanding troops in battle. So I’m willing to cut the guy some slack.
Daniel: “For the record, I don’t think that John Kerry actually committed any War Crimes during the Vietnam War. I do think that he lied and distorted his military service in order to promote himself within the anti-American Left and in order to advance his own political career.”
See, that’s a perfectly valid opinion. I disagree, but I understand your point of view. But when you have Fox News, Sinclair, the big-name pundits, “news” show hosts, and hundreds of talk shows around the country continually harping on the point for months before an election, that’s not opinion. That’s propaganda.
Jim, your position is a double standard, as I’ve clearly shown. For you it is OK when John Kerry repeated inaccurate information, which you admit he did, but it is not OK when those on the Right, whom you feel are mere propagandists, do the same thing. This is the classic definition of double standard, which, according to Merriam Webster, reads: “a set of principles that applies differently and usually more rigorously to one group of people or circumstances than to another.” That you want to put Kerry and the Right’s so-called propagandists in different groups under different circumstances only reinforces my point.
BTW, which do you disagree with; my contention that John Kerry was not a war criminal (which he, wrongfully in my opinion, admitted in his 1971 testimony) or that he lied about and distorted his military service. If it is the latter that is something that a clear review of his complete military record, which Mr. Kerry never authorized for release, would either prove or disprove. If it is the former, why would you or anyone on the Left support a war criminal to lead the most powerful and best trained military force in the world?
Fr. Hans, Lawson, et.al.:
Land use and Christian Culture:
Widespread ownership and availability of fertile and productive land is the foundation for freedom, equality, and cultural vitality. The more concentrated the ownership (private or state), the less free the country and the less vital the culture. Continued fertility of land contributes greatly to a strong country and is correlated with lower levels of poverty.
Further: Our primary, God given, job is to dress and keep the earth. The fruitfulness of the land is directly tied to our ability to lead a God-pleasing life. Proper care of the land is founded in Incarnational theology. It is an element of sacramental living and therefore salvific in nature.
Machinery and theoretical economics can easily be de-humanizing. When combined in the approach to the land, they are tremendously destructive. While I appreciate the Amish approach to farming and community, I do not believe theirs is the only Christian approach possible. One can and should use machinery in appropriate ways that are economically profitable and growth oriented.
Factory farms that are founded on animal cruelty, industrial models of land use and look at natural resources as expendable capital inputs are a violation of our stewardship responsibilities, weaken our culture, diminish our freedom and increase poverty while destroying the environment.
I don?t have the time or space to fully support my contentions. They are the result of a lifetime of observation, experience, and study. If we want a strong, vibrant, Christianized culture, we need to approach land use in a strong, vibrant, Christian manner?not just in rural areas, but in urban areas too.
My public health officer father looked at inner city property use and care as a public health issue. He tried to develop an educational and finance program for inner city residents to help restore dignity, thereby decreasing crime and disease. Unfortunately, the prevailing governmental solution at the time was what was called urban renewal. Urban renewal essentially was a program to bulldoze all deteriorated inner city property, displace the residents and turn the denuded property over to commercial developers. My father strenuously opposed such an approach because it destroyed lives and only spread the problem.
In my experience, the vast majority of Christians have simply abandoned land use issues to industry, government, social workers, and the market place. In doing so, we ignore a fundamental cultural issue that is at the heart of our calling by God to follow Him and care for His creation.
Daniel: “Jim, your position is a double standard, as I’ve clearly shown. For you it is OK when John Kerry repeated inaccurate information, which you admit he did, but it is not OK when those on the Right, whom you feel are mere propagandists, do the same thing.”
The two situations are completely different. In Kerry’s case you are talking about a single round of testimony by an individual. And no, inasmuch as that testimony was inaccurate, for whatever reason, that would not be Ok. In the case of right-wing media we are dealing with literally hundreds or thousands of individuals, some of whom have financial relationships with the Republican party or with the many foundations or think tanks. You have TV networks such as Fox, and CBN, and media conglomerates such as Sinclair, in addition to hundreds of radio stations, exercising an enormous amount of control over the issues that are brought to people’s attention throughout the entire country.
In addition to the vast differences in scale, with Kerry you’re talking about testimony that occurred decades ago. With the right-wing media you’re taking about a current and ongoing enterprise.
Daniel: “BTW, which do you disagree with; my contention that John Kerry was not a war criminal (which he, wrongfully in my opinion, admitted in his 1971 testimony) or that he lied about and distorted his military service. . . . If it is the former, why would you or anyone on the Left support a war criminal to lead the most powerful and best trained military force in the world?”
Being a war criminal is a pretty subjective thing. If you’ve seen the recent documentary “The Fog of War” with Robert McNamara, you’ll recall the conversation he had with Gen. Curtis LeMay about the firebombing of Japanese cities. LeMay said that had the U.S. lost the war they all would have been tried as war criminals. McNamara agreed.
What I find interesting is that Kerry’s painful, frank, and heartfelt statement of over 30 years ago is now used against him, whereas he could have just come home and done nothing, and could never have even volunteered for a combat position to begin with. I guess skipping your flight physical and getting drunk in Alabama is a far better way to prepare for the presidency. At least it causes you much less trouble down the road.
Susan Sontag: Of Course she represents the Left
Jim, you may not have known about Susan Sontag but if you Google her name, OR, look for her on LEXIS/NEXIS you will see millions of entries.
Susan Sontage was a leader of the intellectual left of this country for decades. Her articles were published in leading academic journals, as well as respected popular magazines, such as Harpers. Her books were published by leading academic publishers. Her writings were assigned as readings in thousands of college departments all over America for decades. To suggest that Susan Sontag is not a exemplary leader of the intellectual left in America is to depart from reality.
Note 142: Quotes without sources are worthless. Produce the source and we’ll give it consideration.
Note 159:
Rush Limbaugh:”>Rush Limbaugh:
Anne Coulter:
Hannity & Colmes, June 22, 2001
Pat Buchanan:
http://www.realchange.org/hitler.htm
from the Chicago Tribune article
Michael Savage:
Why am I thinking that without hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, some of us here will disbelieve these quotes?
As I said, I don’t believe these people speak for all conservatives. That was my point.
Where is the Horse’s Mouth?
AM I A KNEE-JERK REPUBLICAN? YOU SEEM TO THINK SO
First, the snide content of your comment suggests that you think that I am such an ideologue and such a partisan that I will accept anything said by anyone identifying themselves as a conservative and that I will defend the policies adopted by the Republican party no matter what. Basically, you are suggesting that I don’t really think issues through I just follow a knee-jerk approach.
Let me give you a little insight on my political history. I have followed history, politics and public policy since I was a teenager. I have an honor’s degree in economics from a nationally recognized university. I have a law degree with distinction in legal debate from a nationally recognized university. I have a degree in electrical engineering with membership in the national engineering honor society (Tau Beta Pi) and the national electrical engineering honor society (Eta Kappa Nu). I am also a membe fo MENSA. I have been a trial attorney for more than 20 years and have won more than 8 trials in a row in one two year stretch of my career. I have appeared in state and federal courts at both the trial level and the appellate level.
I was a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party for more than 15 years and I even did local political organizing for the Party. I no longer do so. This proves that I am not an ideologue who never examines my thinking. I have spent so much time examining my thinking that I concluded about 6 years ago that I could no longer support the Democrat Party. In the area in which I live and the work that I do, I would be better off professionally if I were a Democrat rather than a conservative.
I try hard to limit my opinions and comments to those areas in which I have bona fide knowledge. I am likely to discuss issues in the fields of economics and law and avoid putting in my opinion in the areas of theology, as I am not trained in that.
RUSH LIMBAUGH: WHAT WOULD CONSTITUTE DOCUMENTATION:
You believe that you have caught Rush Limbaugh in a comment which proves that he is a despicable person. First, you have to prove that this is really his comment. Bona fide documentation of such a comment should come from:
A) a published book written by Rush Limbaugh which can be accessed at a library
B) an article written by Rush Limbaugh which could be accessed in the archives of the magazine or journal
C) a public appearance by Rush Limbaugh for which a record was kept by a neutral party. For instance, a transcript of an appearance at the National Press Club created by the National Press Club and maintained at their archives for public view.
What you have produced is a reference to a commentator. Commentators are fine, they are people who offer their opinions and conclusions. However, this commentator does not quote any of the acceptable sources I have mentioned, he simply referes to a SECOND COMMENTATOR. When the reader follows the link to the SECOND COMMENTATOR there is NO LINK TO THE RELIABLE SOURCE.
Given that you have not produced a reliable source for Rush Limbaugh, I feel no need to persue the other commentators.
ANN COULTER:
Whatever you think of Ms. Coulter, the fact remains that she is a graduate of a major law school. Do you think it reasonable to believe that she would allow herself to be quoted as saying that the Bible allowed people to “rape” the earth.
Tut, tut, tut. Find the original source archived by a neutral entity.
Kerry’s Status at the Congressional Hearing Reply to Note 152)
From Jim Holman
didn?t explain myself very well. Kerry was not a journalist. He was not a researcher in an air-conditioned office in the Heritage Foundation. He was not a talk show host throwing out the latest entertainment before the commercial break. He was a very angry young soldier trying to bring home to the congress certain unpleasant aspects of the war that had not been adequately considered. These were both things that he had experienced and things that he had been told about in the context of a brutal and confusing war. You want to hold him to journalistic standards, fine; I don?t. While George Bush was abandoning his flight status and getting drunk and pissing in parking lots in Alabama John Kerry was commanding troops in battle. So I?m willing to cut the guy some slack.
************************************************************************************
John Kerry begun his political career after he returned from Viet Nam. He joined the Viet Nam Veterans against the War (VVAW)soon after he returned home. While a member of the VVAW he organized the Winter Soldier hoax. At the Winter Soldier meeting supposed veterans of the Viet Nam war publicly claimed to have participated in or observed war crimes. The particularly crucial aspect of this Winter Soldier event is that the soldiers claimed SYSTEMIC war crime policies on the part of the American military, not EPISODIC war crimes which resulted from misconduct on the part of individuals and possible lax supervision by officers.
When John Kerry went to Congress, his testimony was part of his political plan to gain a high profile in the anti-war movement. [Remember this was 1971 and the American people were getting weary of the war started by Democrat John Kennedy and continued and escalated by Democrat Lyndon Johnson. ( President Eisenhowever declined to become embroiled in the mess the French left.) The road to political stardom appeared to be through anti-war activity which was on the ascendent.]
His testimony was part of a calculated political plan.
He provide for himself deniability by reporting hearsay. He even stated at the beginning that “he was not well prepared.” If something didn’t pan out, well, he could say that it wasn’t his testimony, he was simply repeating the testimony of others. However, this is disingenous because he arranged for those particular “others” to testify at the Winter Soldier event. He helped create the Winter Solder event, he helped pick those who would speak and he influenced the content of their speech.
Kerry knew full well that a Congressional hearing was the best place to put this anti-American propaganda into national circulation. He knew that the sensational parts would get wide distribution. He knew that he would appear to be the
“white knight” alerting America. He also knew that he would not be SUBJECT TO CROSS-EXAMINATION. The entire episode was to his benefit for his could wide circulation of his claims BUT be free from any cross-examining attorney.
The actual testimony of the Winter Soldiers has been discredited in full long before this Presidential campaign. Several of the soldiers claiming to have witnessed war crimes, in fact, where never stationed in Viet Nam. Winter Soldiers was a fraud perpetrated by John Kerry and VVAW.
John Kerry did exactly what a Communist sympathizer in his position would do to discredit the honor the American military and undercut American will to fight and win. Subsequently published histories of the war emphasize that the North Vietnamese, just prior to Tet, had reached a point of exhaustion. Tet was a military disaster for them, but, American press coverage portrayed Tet as a VICTORY for the NOrth Vietnamese and lead by Chronkite convinced the American people that it was futile. That, dear friends, is why there is a Communist government persecuting Christians and Buddhists as we speak. John Kerry contributed to that, John Kerry is partially responsible for that.
The VVAW is PRIMARILY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE IMAGE OF VIET NAME VETS AS LOSERS AND BABY KILLERS. The primary reason anyone now uses the slogan “support the troops” is that John Kerry and his group VVAW worked so hard and so long to undermine the confidence of the American people in their own sons, brothers, and husbands serving in the Viet Nam.
John Kerry has partial responsibility for the deaths of millions of Vietnamese on his hands.
Missourian quotes: “After perusing the year-end (Dec. 27/Jan. 3) issue of Newsweek, I defy any editor there to deny this magazine is a mouthpiece for the political left.”
Well, this article certain proves that one can pull out the highlighter and find bias in anything. Note that the article profiles a number of people who bear watching in 2005. Santorum is portrayed as someone who might even run for president, which is hardly a slam.
The interesting thing to me is that, looking at the two profiles in question, the bias is not toward the left but toward the *center*. Obama is portrayed as a “purple” politician — as one who can draw people to the center through appealing to both blue and red states. Newsweek talks about the possibility that Obama can “work with the GOP on bridging Red-Blue divisions and getting some things done.” It quotes Obama as saying that “One party seems to be defending a moribund status quo, and the other is defending an oligarchy,” he says coolly. “It’s not a very attractive choice.” — certainly an implied criticism of both the Democrats and the Republicans. It mentions the fact that Obama wants to represent all Americans, not just blacks.
The comparison with Santorum focuses on Santorum’s very conservative and right-wing views, and his appeal to a right-wing constituency.
So the theme of the two profiles taken together is that Obama has to potential to bring people to the center, whereas Santorum’s appeal is definetly to the right.
Now tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that a bias toward the center is exactly what we would expect from a mainstream news magazine. Thus, in a mainstream magazine a politician who potentially can work in the center is going to be seen more positively than one who does not.
Of particular interest to me is that the author of the article quoted by Missourian — and possibly Missourian also(?) — perceives the political center not as the center but as the left! In that view, there really is no center; if you’re not right, you’re left, and the center doesn’t exist.
But the center is what glues a country together. If you lose the center you end up with chaos. Yeats poetically observed that when “the center cannot hold . . . anarchy is loosed upon the world.” In an Atlantic Monthly article of a few months ago James Fallows stated that one of the strengths of the Clinton adminisration was the presence of a strong Republican opposition in both houses of Congress. The balance of opposition is what draws both sides to the center and blunts the influence of the extremists. Without a balance — the situation we currently are in — the pull toward the center is diminished and the extremists carry the day. This is true whatever party happens to dominate.
RE: 160. Just because Rick “Man/Dog” Santorum once claimed that gay marriage would lead to an outbreak of human-canine sexual relations the outrageous liberal media is portraying him as strident. How dare they!
Note 164:
The Susan Sontag reference thus also constitutes hearsay, as she is quoted within an editorial by an evidently “conservative” writer without footnotes or references of any sort. Where did he get these quotes? He also speaks about her dining habits as if he knows her. Did he?
Note 164: The Ann Coulter reference can be found in about 100 links. Do a search on Google. Nevertheless, if it will make you feel better, I’ll contact FOX News and request a copy of the transcript.
Ms. Coulter may have an education, but for being a writer and commentator, her linguistic skills are wanting: her analogies are puerile and completely juvenile, she has no command of any style or tone outside of sarcasm and she is incapable of recognizing any nuance of reality: the “conservatives,good … liberals,BAAAD” mentality may be appropriate for a kid in a middle school debate class but not for someone with her background who gets as much air time as she does.
Note 164: I hope you appreciate this, Missourian. It cost me $9.95.
From Kamilla Hebron (khebron@fdchemedia.com), and a direct transcript of Hannity & Colmes:
ANN COULTER, CONSTITUTIONAL ATTORNEY: I think conservation is a
terrible idea. She’s actually is taking the Unabomber idea.
PETER FENN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: No! Con…
COULTER: I take the biblical idea. God gave us the earth.
FENN: Oh, OK.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees.
FENN: This is a great idea.
COULTER: God says, “Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.”
FENN: Terrific. We’re Americans, so we should consume as much of the
earth’s resources…
COULTER: Yes! Yes.
FENN: … as fast as we possibly can.
COULTER: As opposed to living like the Indians.
Let me know if you’d like me to forward it to you.
James, Note 170
I do appreciate it, thanks for spending the money. Since at this point, it doesn’t cost you anything, forward it to editor@orthodoxytoday.org showing the e-mail trail.
Thanks.
Note 171:
Forwarded, with full HTTP headers no less.
Nature of Free Speech:
The First Amendment protects all speech with only a few narrow exceptions for child pornography and very, direct and immediate incitement to violence. Political speech is most heavily protected.
Sidenote on “incitement to violence.” These cases arise in the context of the tradition of public political speaking in public areas. Typically, someone organizes a rally to promote some political position. Tempers often flare, rallys often attract hecklers and sometimes the police are called. These cases test the right of the police to arrest the speaker because the crowd is getting upset. The Court have created a consistent policy whereby the speaker is allowed to speak unless he directly, expressly and explicity tells the people immediately in front of him to pick up a weapon and kill someone immediately in front of him. So, don’t go on about tangential “incitements to violence.” It isn’t disresprecting an ethnic group.
Given that Americans do not have receive their news and commentary after it has been reviewed by a Truth Commission. The Courts call it the “marketplace” of ideas. Some ideas hold up under examination, some don’t. However, the U.S. Constitution states that everyone has the right to throw their ideas into the arena of public discussion.
Helen Thomas recently stated that she was upset that all of her favorite liberal jouralists (Tom, Peter and Dan) were leaving the scene through retirement. The reason that this is significant is not that they were liberal, BUT, that they pretended to be objective and concealed their point of view.
Everyone watching Sean Hannity has full knowledge that he has a conservative point of view. They are watching comment and commentary and interviews. You will note that the people Hannity interviews are generally public figures who have made a career of appearing in public and promotion their political ideas. For instance, one can expect someone like Peter Fenn, a lifelong, professional Democratic campaign consultant, to be very well equipped to state his case.
Sean should be able to broadcast if peopel want to listen to him. As I noted, Hannity brings on people who are very well equipped to present their side, such as Robert Kennedy, Jr. or Peter Fenn. Let people listen and decide for themselves.
A growing number of Americans have cable, as well as broadcast and internet service. People will get their news and opinions from many sources, they will sift out whom they wish to believe and they will reach their own conclusions.
Political Point of View? Fine. Concealing the Political Point of View? Dishonest
Just as Sean Hannity has a First Amendment Right to give his opinions on the air, if people want to listen to him, so does Dan Rather.
So, what is the difference?
Sean Hannity does not hide his political point of view. Hannity invites people who are fully capapable of speaking for themselves such as Robert Kennedy Jr. or Peter Fenn or many other people who are professional public speakers.
Dan Rather, held a position of great power, for a long time. During the 50′s Americans got their news from the local newspaper and only 3 channels. For a long time Dan was on of the three journalist who presented news to America. Rather’s liberal bias was not a problem, what was a problem, was his insistence that he had no bias and that anyone who challenged him was either crazy or an ideologue.
Dan Rather’s partial monopoly on the news has been broken. Dan Rather got fact checked by a source he couldn’t control.
Now everybody is subject to fact checking, right and left. This is only good.
Note 171: Thanks James, I await the Editor’s perusal
I stand corrected. It amazes me that someone with her experience in the public forum would say that. It undermines her credibility and her judgment. It doesn’t represent the Christian point of view. I won’t dwell on the theological issue because as I said I am not really qualified to comment on theology.
If you review some of my comments you will see that I explained that I had been an active member of the Democrat party. After a while, I had to admit that my allegiance to the Party, per se, was in conflict with my true principles. The lesson it taught me was that one should not have an unwavering, intellectual allegiance with an single human being, OR, with any single collection of human beings, political parties included.
An intellectually honest person can adopt a set of ideas or principles are guiding his conduct. You probably won’t believe it but I retain my skepticism towards political parties. I disagree with Bush on many issues and I have my differences with the Republican party. When asked I generally call myself an
“independent” or a “conservative” rather than a Republican. That may change, I may decide to become active in the Republican party, I don’t know. But as yet, I have not.
Note 175: My whole point was that just as “conservatives” are rarely best exemplified by the conservative media spokespeople such as Limbaugh, Coulter, etc, liberals are likewise typecast by the more outspoken members seen on tv. In real life, conservatives and liberals lead remarkably similar lives, in my experience.
Sontag does not speak for all liberals, just as Limbaugh and Coulter hold only coincidental similarities to many conservatives.