Sacred Ground

People are talking of “sacred ground” at the opening of the Holocaust Museum.  It might better be called scared ground.  It feeds our fears and supports wasteful spending on airport security.  Do we really think terrorists will attack airplanes again, when there are plenty of other easy targets such as shopping centers as is being done in many countries?  My heart goes out to the victims’ families, but we need to stop crying and ask why it happened.  Why are we so hated that people are willing to take their own lives to harm us? We are arrogant, militaristic bullies.

The New Abolitionists

The exchange value of a particular commodity is a matter of property rights.  Exchange value is not an immutable fact, but rather an artifact.  Change the rights and it changes exchange values.  An existing exchange value cannot be used to justify the property rights that produced it.  Rather it is a moral question about what kind of world we want to live in.

Chris Hayes writing in The Nation (May 12) draws a parallel between the loss of wealth of slave holders after the Civil War and the potential loss of the value of coal and petroleum reserves if we reduced mining and pumping.  He calls supporters of carbon regulation “The New Abolitionists.”  Before we shed crocodile tears for the dramatized losers, let’s ask what would have happened if humans had had the right to be free of slavery and now carbon emissions.  What compensation would you require to become a slave?  The cotton plantation owners could not afford to buy out these humans. 

Likewise, what compensation would environmentalists require to sell the right to pollute?  The oil companies and the strip miners could not afford to buy them.  Hayes calls our attention to the losses to them and assumes they own the right to pollute and drive people and their earth support system to extinction.  Property rights are the issue to be decided and no dollar signs that are produced by assuming one side owns are relevant.  It is ultimately a moral question and cannot be deduced from any exchange values.

Minimum Wage

President Obama is making a push to raise the minimum wage.  Many economists using simple supply and demand analysis are sure this will hurt low income people by destroying jobs.  Some states and cities have defied economists and passed higher minimum wages laws. Michael Reich and Ken Jacobs of the University of California Berkeley have found that the $13 minimum wage in San Francisco has not had the predicted ill effects.  "Our studies show that the impact of these laws on workers' wages (and access to health care) is strong and positive."  They says supply and demand analysis" is not the whole story though.  A full analysis must include the variety of other ways labor costs might be absorbed, including savings from reduced worker turnover and improved efficiency as well as higher prices and lower profits.  Modern economics therefore regards the employment effect of a minimum-wage increase as a question that is not decided by theory, but by empirical testing."
    Reich and Jacobs say that there is a moral value as well.   I used to tell my students, "You are not paying enough for your burgers. The workers need to eat too."

War on the Low income worker

Robert Reich makes the following points about the ruling class in Congress:
1. They refuse to extend unemployment benefits.
2. They don't want to raise the paltry minimum wage.
3. They are against extending medicare benefits to millions (Congress of course has its own medical benefits.)
4. They cut food stamps in the latest farm bill.
5. They refuse to invest in education and job training.
6. They do not want to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure, or any other job creating program.
7. They are out to bust what unions remain.
Why do they do this? 
Big employers like a docile workforce who are thankful for whatever they get.

     I say that this low wage policy is backfiring.  Poorly paid and unemployed can't buy the products of these corporations.  Weak consumer spending is hampering our recovery.
Besides, this war on the poor and working class is greedy and immoral.

Rich Farmers, Yes. Poor hungry, NO

The new farm bill assures relatively rich farmers $956 billion for the next 10 years. Taxpayers pay about 60% of the cost of insurance against low prices for farmers.  Spending on food stamps for the poor and unemployed meanwhile, will be cut $8 billion. 
     Of course, it is good that money is added to the bill to combat fraud in the food stamp and crop insurance programs, but the whole thing is a fraud.

World Wealth Distribution is Skewed

One percent of the world's population owns 45 percent of the wealth.  Absurd!
At least the President of France has proposed a substantial tax on the super wealthy.
How long will we put up with this before people revolt.  Maybe they already are, and we call them terrorists.

Minimum Wage again

The following from Robert Reich, with whom I agree completely"
"The President agrees that the minimum wage should be raised to $10.40 an hour but, unsurprisingly, Republicans oppose any increase. In this as in many other dimensions, the conservative mind is remarkably flexible. The minimum wage must not be increased, they say, lest employers lay off millions of low-wage workers. But record levels of CEO pay must not be tampered with because corporations need to attract top talent. The poor must have less if they are to be adequately motivated, but the rich must have more in order to ensure their maximum effort. Food stamps and unemployment insurance must be curtailed to prevent laziness among the needy, yet special tax loopholes that subsidize the wealthy (such as "carried interest" for private-equity and hedge-fund partners) must be retained. The 22 percent of American children now in poverty don't merit free school lunches or health care, but it is necessary and just that the richest 1 percent of children receive $10 million free of estate taxes."

Bird Brains

Chickens and geese have more brains that we have given them credit for and more than some members of Congress who care little for the less fortunate.  This from Nicholas Kristof--
"The nobility of geese was most on display at execution time.  My job as an 11-year-old when we beheaded the geese was to capture a bird and take it to the chopping block as my dad wielded the ax. So I would rush at the terrified flock and randomly grab an unlucky goose.  The bird in my arms would honk in terror and try to escape, and the other geese would cower in the corner of the barn.
       Then one goose would emerge from the flock and walk tremulously toward me, terrified but unwilling to abandon its mate.  It would waddle after me toward the chopping block, trying to honk comfort to its mate."  NYT Oct. 20, 2013

Accountants must act in public interest in Britain.

A British court ruled that accountants must act in the public interest rather than helping merger raiders from pocketing a large part of the assets of firms going bankrupt. NYT Sept. 12, 2013
Sometimes good sense rules.

It's All About Money

"Bill Clinton earned $17 million last year giving speeches, including one to a Lagos (Nigeria) company for $700,000.  Hillary gets $200,000 a speech."
This is a contrast in moral values with previous presidents.
"Until Harry Truman wrote his memoirs, the ex-president struggled on an Army pension of $112.50 a month."  He said, "I could never lend myself to any transaction, however, respectable that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency."
NYT August 18, 2013.
I long for the old school values.

Goldman Exploits

Goldman Sachs exploits pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange to make billions.  There are 27 industrial warehouses in Detroit and each day trucks shuffled aluminum between warehouses to fulfill the letter of the regulations.  This increases storage costs and consumers thus pay higher prices.  (NYT July 21 2013)
    Never have such brilliant people put their smarts to work for evil.  It is complex thievery, but thievery nevertheless.

Evolutionary theory is work of devil

Georgia Congressman Paul Broun says evolutionary theory is work of the devil.  And he is a member of the Science Space and Technology Committee. May heaven help us! The inmates are in charge of the asylum.

Same Sex Marriage

Twenty-nine states have enacted constitutional amendments blocking same-sex marriage. Twelve states bar same-sex marriage by statute. This is in spite of the fact that 53% of Americans say gay marriages should be legal. Go figure!

Outrage of the Day

Noted without further comment:
U.S. Senator John Kyl, R-AZ, stated that abortions comprised over 90 percent of the services performed by Planned Parenthood. It's more like 3 percent. When questioned he said, "No problem--it wasn't meant to be factual."

Super Bowl and the Decline of Western Civilization

We have a society where business firms are willing to spend three million dollars for a 30-second spot on television. At the same time, local governments are hard pressed to provide police and fire protection and some say we can't afford health care for the uninsured. This is sick. I wonder what the equivalent was in the days leading up to the fall of the Roman Empire??

Bonuses on Wall Street

Bonuses on Wall Street are not likely to be up much from last year, though they will still be strong. Over all, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase have set aside $89.54 billion this year to pay employees, 2.8 percent less than a year ago, according to data from Nomura.

Total revenue for the five firms, meanwhile, has fallen about 4 percent this year. A study by the influential compensation expert Alan Johnson says broadly that bonuses will be up 5 percent this year across all financial services companies, with employees in some businesses like asset management getting increases of 15 percent.
This is a far cry from 2007, when some firms on Wall Street set records for compensation payouts. That year Goldman Sachs set aside $20.19 billion in compensation and benefits; in 2008, it set aside just half of that amount, $10.93 billion for pay. In 2009, that number climbed to $16.19 billion. These guys were royally rewarded for creating a financial crisis that most other people suffered from.

In the years leading up to the credit crisis some executives became famous for their expenditures, like L. Dennis Kozlowski, the ex-chief executive of Tyco International whose $6,000 shower curtain became a symbol of unnecessary extravagance.

I repeat, and the new Congress wants to extend tax cuts to these people!

Moral Values

The right wing has a point about the decline of moral values, but it is not about gays and abortion. It is about the rise of rampant greed and me-ism and the decline of responsibility. Those most responsible for our recent banking crisis refuse to acknowledge that they did anything wrong (and are doing it again.) Another example--Enbridge, a pipeline company that operates in Michigan has had over 90 violations in the last several years, but no government agency did anything about it. Their latest failure resulted in a spill and pollution of a river near Kalamazoo. In my hometown, real estate sellers use the curb-side public right away to advertise their homes, even if it is against city codes. When I called them on it, their answer was "Well, we have to sell real estate." They are saying that their needs are the only thing that counts, and others be damned. And, they justify it in terms of freedom, theirs!
Far too many people touting support for moral values are missing the point.