Jack LeMoult's Blog

Newt the Salamander

2012-01-27T07:30:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich, former Loudmouth of the House, won a plurality of the votes in the South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary because the ignorant rednecks of that benighted state liked his aggressive way of attacking liberals. Despite their claims to “Family Values,” the right-wingers of that state were able to overlook Newt’s many moral failures because their belief system is ultimately built on the same kind of hypocrisy that underlies the career of Newt the Salamander.

Why is it that so many ultra-conservative Republicans like this slimy reptile? I suspect that they recognize in him the same set of rotten moral values that they hold. Most of them claim to have “Family Values,” but in reality, most of them live morally hypocritical lives just like Newt. He appeals to their darker natures, their resentment of the more educated and intelligent liberal Democrats, and their hatred of blacks and immigrants.

In one editorial, The New York Times described some of Gingrich’s many inflammatory rants against Democrats including the claim that President Obama and his party are “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then averred that: “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.”

Recognizing that he was in South Carolina, the bigotry capital of America, Newt stooped to abject racism in his fight for the nomination. This is not new from the former Georgia congressman. He had previously charged that President Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.” In the South Carolina fight, he repeatedly called Mr. Obama “the greatest food-stamp president in American history,” and lectured a black questioner at a debate about the amount of federal handouts to blacks, suggesting their work ethic was doubtful. Once again, the South Carolina right-wingers (who no-doubt drip with nostalgia for the good-old days of racial segregation) approved of Newt’s appeal to their hatred of blacks.

Gingrich appeals not only to racism but also to every form of bigotry available. He has claimed that advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment. He stated that Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a “Latina woman racist.”

The most disturbing thing about Newt is not his long history of marital infidelity. It is his blatant hypocrisy. Newt repeatedly denounced President Clinton for immoral behavior when the House tried to impeach Clinton for the affair with Monica Lewinsky. Nevertheless, Gingrich was, at the same time, while married, having a sexual affair with a female staffer. Newt’s history of marital infidelity is epic, especially when seen against the background of his moralizing criticism of Bill Clinton.

Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, when he was 19 years old and she was 26, he married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher. In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after having an affair with Marianne Ginther. Battley said that Gingrich visited her while she was in the hospital following cancer surgery to discuss the details of their divorce. Six months after the divorce from Battley, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther.

In the mid-1990s, while still married to Marianne, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the period in which Gingrich was a leader of the Republican investigation of President Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal. Marianne claims that after Newt took-up with Callista, he told her that he wanted her to agree to an “open marriage” which would allow him to continue his affair with Callista while still married to Marianne. In 2000, Gingrich divorced Marianne and married Callista.
In a 2011 interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Gingrich addressed his past infidelities by saying: "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” This is Newt’s excuse for infidelity and hypocrisy! He loved America and worked too hard! If anybody swallows that line of crap, they deserve to have Newt as their president.

While Slick Mitt Romney may be the leading flip-flopper among the Republican presidential hopefuls, Newt is not far behind. In 2004, Gingrich repeatedly bashed then Democratic nominee for President, John Kerry, saying his flip-flop on Iraq war funding disqualified him from being president. Gingrich said on Fox News: "You can't flip-flop and be commander-in-chief." Nevertheless, Gingrich has repeatedly flip-flopped on the issues.

On Meet the Press, Gingrich said: “I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond.” When David Gregory asked him: “But that is the individual mandate, is it not?” Gingrich replied: “It’s a variation on it.” Nevertheless, in May 2011, Newt issued a statement saying: "I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone because it is fundamentally wrong and I believe unconstitutional."

As of March 7, 2011, President Obama had not yet announced that the United States would be involved in a military action to institute a no-fly zone over Libya. When asked by Greta Van Susteren on March 7: “What would you do about Libya?” Gingrich replied: “Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Gadhafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more likely they were to survive ... This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with.” On March 23, after President Obama ordered U.S. forces to be actively involved in instituting a no-fly zone over Libya, Gingrich said: “I think that two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot ... I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.”

In 2007, Gingrich favored "mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system.” In 2008, he even produced a video with Nancy Pelosi on the urgent need to stop global warming. Later in 2008 he said: "A carbon cap and trade system ... would lead to corruption, political favoritism, and would have a huge impact on the economy."

In a recent editorial, The New York Times pointed-out that: “Newt Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina turned on an almost comically broad deception, an inversion of the truth in which the insider whose personal wealth and political experience are entirely creations of Washington becomes the anti-establishment candidate. That it worked speaks poorly of voters who let themselves be manipulated by the lowest form of campaigning, appealing to their anger and prejudices.” The editorial goes on to point out that: “For years, he was a lobbyist for Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage company, making more than $1.6 million over eight years. He also cashed in on his influence by selling access to health-care companies and insurers, bringing in $37 million over eight years.”

Former Republican Leader of the Senate and Presidential Candidate Bob Dole recently said that Newt Gingrich did not listen to others or take advice. Said Dole: “It was his way or the highway.” This, no doubt, partially explains why, earlier in the current campaign, most of Gingrich’s campaign staff quit on him. It is hard to imagine him as President of the United States. He is a deceiving, manipulative, flip-flopping, egotistical, hypocritical salamander, and the people who are enthused by his appeals to anger and prejudice are no better than him.

Slick Mitt

2012-01-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

George Romney, father of Mitt Romney, and former governor of Michigan, was too honest. He admitted that when he visited Vietnam he was “brainwashed” by the generals. For this candor he lost his bid to be Republican nominee for president. His son Mitt learned the lesson well. He decided that the last thing you need in politics is honesty and integrity. With his abundant fortune, and vulpine character, he is now the frontrunner in the race to get the prize that escaped his father.

In 2006, when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he supported and signed a health care law that became the model for the federal health care law, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) signed by President Obama. The Massachusetts health care insurance reform law mandates that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a state-government-regulated minimum level of healthcare insurance coverage. It provides free health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL) who are not eligible for Medicaid. The law also subsidizes health care insurance for those earning up to 300% of the FPL.

Now that he is again running for President, Romney has condemned the federal health care law that was based on his state law. His most fervent distinction is that his was a state law and that the law signed by President Obama is an excessive exertion of federal power. This is not the first time Romney has had to explain his many flip-flops on political questions. Like all of his other flip-flops, however, the explanations he provides are little more than nit-picking and quibbling.

In 1994, when Mitt was running against Ted Kennedy for senator from Massachusetts, he said: “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.” During the 2002 governor's race in Massachusetts, Romney said: "The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's." Yet, when he first began campaigning for president, Romney came out in support of state laws forbidding abortion and criticized the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. He said: “I am firmly pro-life.”

In his 1994 senate run, Romney indicated that he opposed prayer in the schools. In 2007, he called for allowing prayer in school ceremonies.

When he ran for governor in 2002, Romney strongly advocated stem-cell research and promised to lobby President Bush to provide federal funding for such research. During his presidential campaign, however, Romney renounced his 2002 position and said that he now agreed with Bush's decision to ban federal funding for stem-cell research.

In Romney's 2002 race for governor, he said: "We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them. I won't chip away at them; I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.” But just before declaring his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president, Romney joined the National Rifle Association. He said: "I have a gun of my own. I go hunting myself. I'm a member of the NRA and believe firmly in the right to bear arms.” The Associated Press reported in April 2007 that Romney never sought a hunting license in any of the four states where he has resided.

In 2002 Romney supported the right of homosexuals to form civil unions and said he would support domestic partnership benefits. He said: "All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual orientation." During his first campaign for president, however, Romney stated that he is opposed to such civil unions as well as same-sex marriages.

These are just a few of the issues on which Slick Mitt has changed positions since he started running for president. Romney has calculated that the base of the Republican Party is far more conservative than the electorate in Massachusetts. He simply could not get nominated with the positions which he embraced during his races for senator and governor of Massachusetts. He appears to have calculated correctly. Republican voters do not care that this man is a total fraud and liar. They like him now that he is speaking like a true conservative. What does this say about the values of the “values” Party? Is honesty not one of the Republican values?

In an editorial, The New York Times said of Mitt Romney: “It is hard to find an issue on which he has not repositioned himself to the right since he was governor of Massachusetts. It is impossible to figure out where he stands or where he would lead the country.”

Romney called himself the candidate of “change.” What did he mean? During the 2008 run for the presidency John McCain made a good point when he said that sure, Romney was the candidate of change because had changed his position so many times.

What this country needs is not the small change of an imposter like Mitt Romney. It still needs a man of integrity like Barack Obama.

The Birth of Jesus

2011-12-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

Now as we approach the Christmas holiday we should take a look at the true history of Jesus' birth. Scholars agree that the story of the Nativity is fictitious. This does not mean that we should not celebrate Christmas, but it does mean that there is nothing wrong with taking Christ out of Christmas. People have celebrated the winter solstice for thousands of years. Long before the birth of Jesus, people celebrated the birth of other pagan gods at the winter solstice. The winter solstice is a bleak time of year when the days are short and the nights are long. People have always needed something to pick-up their spirits at this time of year. That is the true purpose of Christmas, and the real reason why we celebrate Jesus' birth at this time of year. Here is the true story of Jesus' birth.

In the first place, the story says that Caesar ordered a census to levy taxes and that Joseph, as a descendent of David, had to travel to Bethlehem, the city of David, to register (Luke 2:1-5). This was supposed to fulfill the prophecy that the “Messiah” would be “from the house of David.” The story is inherently preposterous!

There is no evidence that Augustus Caesar ordered a worldwide census at the time of Jesus’ birth. There was a census under Quirinius, the Governor of Syria (Luke 2:2), but that occurred after the death of Caesar and years after the birth of Jesus. The late Raymond E. Brown, S.S., a Catholic priest, internationally regarded as the dean of New Testament scholars, and former Professor of Biblical Studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York, said in his magesterial "The Birth of the Messiah," “Luke’s reference to a general census of the Empire under Augustus which affected Palestine before the death of Herod the Great is almost certainly wrong.” Said Brown, “Luke begins his story with a reference to a census of the whole world ordered by Augustus, conducted by Quirinius, and affecting Joseph, a Galilean inhabitant of Nazareth, so that he had to go to his ancestral city. This supplied the occasion for the birth of of Jesus in Bethlehem....this information is dubious on every score...We have no evidence of one census under Augustus that covered the whole Empire, nor of a census requirement that people be registered in their ancestral cities.” In a census, they counted people at their place of domicile, not where they were born. They would not have required Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. The Romans cared nothing for genealogies. They would have wanted him to stay in Nazareth and be counted where he lived.

The distinguished biblical scholar, E.P. Sanders, points out that David lived 42 generations before Jesus. He asks, why would would the Romans require Joseph to register for a tax in the town (Bethlehem) of an ancestor who lived 42 generations earlier? He describes Luke’s story of the Nativity as “Fantastic!” Bart D. Ehrman asks, “Can it be possible that everyone in the empire was to return to the place their ancestors lived a thousand years earlier?”

Another mistake by the authors of the Gospels is that they place the census of Quirinius and the birth of Jesus during the Reign of Herod. Scholars know that Herod was already dead at the time of Quirinius’census. Raymond E. Brown says, “...the one and only census conducted while Quirinius was legate in Syria affected only Judea, not Galilee, and took place in A.D. 6-7, a good ten years after the death of Herod the Great.” Moreover, Caesar would not have taxed Judea while Herod was king. And, at the time of Jesus’ birth, Bethlehem would have been in an area that was exempt from taxation.

The world's most highly recognized biblical scholar, a Catholic priest named John P. Meier, notes that it would have been impossible for Mary to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem in an advanced state of pregnancy. Meier says, “Somewhere aroung 7-6 B.C. a Jew named Yeshua, a shortened form of the Hebrew Yehoshua (Joshua), was born in the hillside town of Nazareth in lower Galilee. The Infancy Narritive traditions that locate his birth in Bethlehem of Judea (traditions isolated in chap. 2 of Matthew and Luke respectively) are probably later Chriustian theological dramatizations of the belief that Jesus was the royal Davidic Messiah.”

Jesus obviously was not born in Bethlehem. He was not born on December 25 either. Nobody knows the date on which Jesus was born, but it definitely was not December 25That was the date of the birth of the Greek/Roman god Mithras. The story of Mithras is similar to the story of Jesus.

Mithras was the god of light, or the Sun, and was born of a virgin. He was identified with a bull who had to die as a sacrifice for all humanity. His worshippers believed that Mithras promised resurrection from the dead and that he ascended into heaven. The worship of Mithras included forgiveness of sin by baptism of initiates and a communion of bread and wine to commemorate Mithras’ last meal on earth.

The early fathers of the Christian Church did not know the date when Jesus had been born, so up until the fourth century AD there was no celebration of Christmas. The worship of Mithras presented a real problem for the Church fathers because of the similarities to the worship of Jesus. There were pagan festivals around the time of the winter solstice, such as the Roman feast called Saturnalia which was dedicated to the god Saturn. In around 353 AD, the church fathers decided to combat Mithraism and other pagan holidays by celebrating the birth of Jesus on Mithras’ birthday, December 25. Merry Mithramas!

Born In The Wrong Century

2011-12-03T14:37:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong century. I am an atheist who has spent his life studying religion and theology, and has written a book entitled “The Case Against God, A Lawyer Examines the Evidence” (Which is available on Kindle), and yet I do not fully understand why so many people believe in God. I realize that there are millions of atheists like me, and that there are probably millions of people who share most of my beliefs. I know that the number of atheists continues to grow around the world, but I am still puzzled by the prevalence of religion in our society. Why is this so?

I recognize that we all think that we are correct in our opinions and beliefs. People who believe in God are often quite certain that nonbelievers are terribly mistaken or downright evil. Atheists think that believers are terribly mistaken or downright stupid. How can we be sure that we are right?

I recently listened to several televangelists on T.V. On the same day I also listened to the channel that broadcasts the thinking of the Catholic Church. The Catholic channel was quite moderate and thoughtful, but it was nevertheless focused on this being whom I believe to be mythical—God. I find that most people with whom I speak believe in some kind of God, even if not in one of the organized religions. The televangelists, unlike the Catholics, speak to the ignorance of their listeners. Their silver-tongued orators appeal to their listeners’ emotions, prejudices, and hates. But their message is not substantively different from the message of the quiet thoughtful priests and laymen of the Catholic channel. It is that there is a God who created, controls, and continues life on Earth and in heaven. It is that we should love and worship that God because he is all loving and good. The thing that amazes me is not that the yokel televangelists believe in God and spread their ignorance around the world, but that moderate and intelligent priests and philosophers like the speakers on the Catholic channel hold a set of beliefs about God that is as absurd as the beliefs of the rednecks.

On the same day I also listened to the PBS science show, NOVA, and heard a discussion of the possibility of a multi-universe or “Multiverse” by the physicist and writer, Brian Greene. Green postulated that there may be an infinite number of universes out there, which would mean that statistically speaking, there would probably be a universe exactly like ours with everything the same as in this universe, including our galaxy, solar system, planet, humans, and an identical reproduction of each of us. This gives rise to the question of whether, if I were to die, I would continue to live in another universe, and therefore be immortal. I have never believed in life after death, but I recognize that the idea is not forbidden by the laws of physics. This does not, however, change my core belief that there is no life after death.

For most of the people in the world there is no philosophical postulate like the one by Brian Greene. They simply feel that after we die our soul goes to heaven and lives eternally in heaven with great glory and happiness. I know that there is no basis for such thinking, and I am absolutely certain that it is wrong. I am also quite certain that death means the end of all life, memory, thinking, feeling, everything. I am firmly convinced that even if the Multiverse concept is correct, this life of mine, this brain, this body, this mind and memory, this being, will, for all intents and purposes, cease to exist. Even if an exact reproduction of me were to exist in a different universe, and even if that being continued to exist long after I am dead, I am certain that I would not experience that life or know about it.

My perplexity about the beliefs of others is that I do not understand how they can go on believing in God or anything supernatural without having even a scintilla of evidence to support such beliefs. After I lost all belief in God, I became able to see the many absurdities that surround religion, absurdities that I had previously taken for granted, like belief in the sacredness of holy water or the usefulness of blessing the throats on the feast of St. Blaise. I took for granted that God was situated in the sanctuary of the Catholic Church, and that you had to genuflect each time you walked in front of it. I took for granted that a priest on the alter had the power to change ordinary bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ—and that for some reason, the most important thing you could ever do was eat Christ’s body and blood.

I recognize that I am simply one person who insists that his atheism is correct, but I also recognize that my ideas are supported by many brilliant people. Most of the world’s leading scientists do not believe in God. Most of the highly intellectual thinkers in the world are atheists. Thus, I am not alone. I’m sure that most of those scientists have the same problem I have understanding why so many people believe in and worship a non-existent being.

It is amazing to me that people pray to God for help of some kind or other. There has never been any evidence that God answers prayers. People pray to God for health, but there is not a single case that anyone’s health was ever helped by the hand of God. People point to the Bible as evidence that God has performed miracles, but study of the Bible reveals that it is simply a book of myths with practically no historical value (See my book, “The Case Against God”). There is no evidence of any kind that God or anybody else ever performed miracles.

If millions of people around the world agree with me, why do I feel that I was born in the wrong century? Perhaps it is because I am mystified by the fact that so many other people continue to believe in God and in all the accessories of religion. I would think that it is self-evident that there is no God. I would think that all of the things surrounding religion are so absurd that uneducated, simple, even stupid people would recognize the facts. But as I watch television, I see intelligent priests and laymen seriously discussing concepts like prayers for the poor souls in Purgatory, prayers to the saints, devotion to the Virgin Mary, and the healing powers of places like Fatima and Lourdes. To me, such talk is incredibly stupid, yet the people who engage in it do not seem like stupid people.

I am not surprised by the hillbilly televangelists roaring out against sin in their southern drawls, but I am simply amazed to see priests of the Catholic Church draped in elaborate vestments, carrying out ancient rites in gigantic cathedrals, surrounded by golden statues, crucifixes, chalices, and other sacred items of priceless metals. It is as if God would want to be worshipped with an elaborate and dazzling display of finery.

A friend of mine said that one day there will be no churches and that places like St. Peter’s Basilica will be museums. I am sure that he is right, but I still wonder why it is not like that today.

Should We Thank God on Thanksgiving?

2011-11-25T09:51:00.000-08:00

On Thanksgiving people often voice thanks for the many benefits of life. But whom do they thank? God? Should we really thank God for the good things in life, or should we condemn him for the horrors and terrors of life?

The primary reason for the existence of religion is to relieve people of fear. Marx called religion the “Opiate of the Masses.” This was a perfect explanation of the religious impulse. We live in a world filled with pain, sorrow, depression, and horror, but the religions tell us that there is a God out there who loves us and loves the world. This God will take care of us and, after death, will provide us with a paradise of joy and happiness.

I was speaking to someone and I proposed that if there really was a God, we should not worship or love or adore him, but rather, we should hate him. The person responded that we should worship him because “life is beautiful.” I replied that although life has moments of beauty and happiness, there is far too much sorrow and unhappiness to say that life is beautiful.

Consider the following: The great majority of people in the world live in abject poverty. Most of those people suffer from hunger, disease, famine, tsunamis, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, plagues, infestations, and war. When one looks at the continents of Africa, Asia, and South America, one wonders how there could be a loving God looking over those people. Hundreds of millions of the people on those continents are subjected to widespread diseases such as cholera, malaria, sleeping sickness, AIDS, Dengue Fever, and Yellow Fever. They have insufficient clothing, shelter ,and medical care. They are ruled-over by tyrants and dictators. Hundreds of millions of women throughout the world are treated as chattels without civil rights. They are beaten, raped, stoned, and subject to genital castration designed to eradicate their sexual pleasure. It is hard to imagine that such people are happy.

What about the lucky people in America and the more affluent countries of Europe? One would think that they have many reasons to thank God. But we need to ask, are the lives of Americans so blessed and happy? Let’s start with health. Practically everybody in America has somebody in their family suffering from some serious illness. Millions of Americans have children with serious congenital diseases and infirmities such as autism, blindness, deafness, physical deformity, Down Syndrome, mental retardation, mental illnesses, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, heart disease, cancer, and hundreds of other less common syndromes and disorders. The parents of such children often live lives of great sorrow.

Millions of adult Americans also suffer from terrible diseases. Heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, liver disease, Emphysema, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), AIDS, Crohn’s Disease, chronic pain, and hundreds of other conditions beset the happiness of their lives. Millions of Americans suffer from mental problems, depression, anxiety, fatigue, lonliness, phobias, panic attacks, disabling shyness, and stress throughout their lives. Millions of Americans suffer from the effects of terrible automobile accidents and other injuries. They go through life as cripples with disabled or missing limbs, internal organs, and other essential parts of their bodies, or suffering from terrible pain.

As people get older, they greet a host of problems afflicting older Americans such as strokes, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, hearing and seeing defects, prostate problems, osteoporosis, erectile dysfunction, sleep disorders, Alzheimer’s and memory loss, and hundreds of other medical and psychological problems that impair their happiness. As people age their bodies breaks-down, their skin wrinkles, their hair disappears or turns white, their energy fails, and they lose their sexual ability and attraction.

Millions of Americans are addicted to alcohol, pain medication, and illegal drugs. Almost all of them are living in terrible misery, unable to shake the imprisonment of their addictions. There are millions of homeless people living on the streets, in tents, under bridges, and in shelters. Millions of other Americans are addicted to behavior patterns such as gambling addiction, fetishism, sexual addiction, frigidity, obsessive-compulsive behavior, dependency, and other forms of addiction. There are millions of people with sexual deviations including the need to molest children or rape women. Millions of people engage in abusive behavior, physically beating or verbally berating their spouses, companions, and children. Millions of spouses, companions, and children are victims of such abuse. Such people cannot possibly be happy.

Millions of Americans live in poverty surrounded by a land of plenty. They eke-out a living in slums, tenements, housing projects, trailer parks, and rural shacks. They often go hungry in this land of plenty. Many go without decent clothing, shelter, ordinary medical care, and live in places without heat, cooling, electricity, telephone service, computers, sanitation, or even running water.

Millions of Americans are the victims of discrimination. People of all minorities suffer from bigotry. Millions of homosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, and other trans-gender people are the objects of prejudice and condemnation by millions of other people.

Every day one reads in the paper about people who commit crimes. There are thousands of kinds of crimes committed every day by millions of people. It is difficult to guess what percent of the populace is dishonest, violent, dangerous, fraudulent, and deceitful, but judging from the constant news of crimes, schemes, scams, and corruptions, the number must run well into the tens of millions. There are millions of people engaged in serious and not-so-serious crime, including robbery, larceny, drug offenses, burglary, mugging, assault and battery, murder, and thousands of other kinds of crime. Millions of Americans are incarcerated in prisons and jails. There are millions of wives, children, parents, and other close relatives of prison inmates. These people must suffer having their loved ones in jail. There are millions of victims of crimes whose lives have been ruined by the crimes of others.

Millions of Americans are in unhappy marriages or relationships. Millions of Americans are suffering from the breakdown of their marriages or the breakup of relationships in which they were very much in love. Half of all marriages end in divorce. A majority of those who do not get divorced go on living in unhappy marriages. Millions of people are engaged in illicit sexual entanglements that cause them emotional pain and guilt. Millions of people are almost suicidal because of the infidelity of a spouse or loved one. Millions of people suffer from feelings of inferiority or lack of self-worth. Millions of people suffer from the feeling that they are too fat, too thin, or unattractive.

Millions of Americans hate their jobs or suffer under cruel, tyrannical, or sadistic bosses. There are millions of people with sour, nasty, cruel, vicious, malicious, and evil personalities who make it their business in life to damage, spoil, and injure the lives of other people. Millions of people live lives consumed with envy, jealousy, and hatred of others whom they perceive to be more fortunate than they.

Millions of families have children with serious behavior problems. Many of these children may grow up in middle class homes with respectable parents, yet the children are constantly in trouble with school, neighbors, the police, and others. Thousands of such children run away every year only to wind-up on the streets caught-up in drug addiction, prostitution, and crime.

For every Bernard Madoff carrying-out a giant stock swindle, there are thousands of businessmen, brokers, hedge fund managers, and others engaged in insider trading and other blatant violations of the rules of business law and ethics. Millions of Americans cheat others in smaller ways for smaller amounts of money. If one were able to calculate the amount of money embezzled from businesses, organizations, and charities each year it would probably be up in the billions if not trillions. I have known several embezzlers in my lifetime. I’m sure everybody has.

Although one would expect great probity from the wealthiest and most successful people, it is simply not there. Doctors routinely over-bill for services. Andy Rooney told a story about a doctor who came into his room while he was in the hospital for treatment. The doctor said hello and mentioned that he liked Rooney’s work. He then departed without examining or treating Rooney, and later billed Medicare for $240. I have heard many such stories. I have had personal experience with dishonest doctors. One doctor who came in and handed my wife a card while our son was being treated for a broken bone at the hospital, later billed for services even though he did not examine or treat my son at all. Doctors frequently bill for services never rendered. Medicare and Medicaid pay tens of billions for fraudulent claims by physicians who are wealthy by any standard.

Eventually, we die. Death is not a simple leaf dropping off a tree. Death is usually painful. Often, it is horrible. It is usually accompanied by the grief of loved ones.

Yes, life does have its moments of happiness and beauty. There are some wonderful things in life, and some people do live very happy, prosperous, safe, healthy lives. Those people can be thankful for all they have, but they probably represent a small fraction of the people on earth. If you stop and consider all of the unhappiness, pain, disease, grief, and guilt suffered by the vast majority of people in the world, it can hardly be said that life is beautiful.

While many people suffering from the terrible things listed here may not think life is bad, that is because of the human ability to cope with the things that make us unhappy. It is a wonderful thing that people going through the most extreme torments will often try to look on the bright side of life. But if we stop and look at all of the problems faced by humans and listed here, we can hardly say that life is beautiful. We can hardly find reason to thank that mythical being called God.

Surely, if there was a God, and he was a good and loving God like the one worshipped by most religions, life would not be filled with such misery. There would not be millions of starving, diseased, oppressed people in Africa and other parts of the world. There would not be so much tragedy, horror, injury, illness, poverty, hunger, anger, war, and death. We would not have to wait for some mythical afterlife to experience a better life. Life on earth would really be beautiful for everyone.

Republican War Against Healthcare for Seniors

2011-11-11T13:31:00.000-08:00

I suspect that most senior citizens who call themselves Republicans are unaware of the plans that the Republican candidates for President and the Republicans in Congress have for Medicare and health care. I suggest that they find out now so that when the time comes to vote they will know who wants to abolish their right to health care in old age.

The Republicans in both houses of Congress are now on record as having voted for a budget prepared Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Chairman of the House Budget Committee, which would abolish Medicare as we know it. Ryan’s plan would save the government billions of dollars by shifting the burden of paying for medical care from the government to the senior citizens who would otherwise be covered by the current program.

The way Medicare works today, the government pays for all approved medical care of senior citizens. Let’s say that you need to have heart-bypass surgery. The surgeon will bill Medicare for the cost of the surgery, which might be in the tens of thousands. Medicare will approve a percentage of that bill and pay the surgeon. Most surgeons will accept as full payment the amount paid by Medicare, but if there is a deductable or amount in excess of the Medicare amount, most seniors are able to pay it by taking-out Medicare-Plus insurance.

Under the Republican plan put forth by Representative Ryan, the government would no longer make Medicare payments for people who are 55 years old and under at the time of the legislation. When those people become eligible for Medicare, there would be no Medicare for them. They would have to purchase private health insurance. Under the Ryan plan the government would assist people earning less than $80 thousand per year by giving them a voucher to help pay for health insurance. For people earning over $80 thousand, the voucher would be half the amount, and even less for people earning over $200 thousand per year. The voucher amount would be pegged to the cost of living.

The basic problem with the Ryan plan is that the cost of health insurance is rising at a rate far higher than the cost of living. The leading economists have asserted that in ten years, when the 55-year-old generation reaches eligibility for Medicare, the cost of health insurance will be more than double the amount provided for in the Ryan budget. That means that those seniors would have to pay an amount equal to, if not more than, the amount they would have to pay for health insurance today if there were no Medicare. Sure, this would save the government billions of dollars, but it would deprive millions of seniors of health care during that period of their lives when they are most in need.

Senior Citizens should also realize that the Republicans want to repeal the healthcare reform law, more properly known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). The Republicans in the House of Representatives have already voted overwhelmingly to repeal PPACA (which they derisively call “Obamacare”). Fortunately, that effort could not succeed because of Democratic control of the Senate. But who knows? Perhaps at some later date Republicans will gain the strength to carry out their plan to totally repeal all of the provisions of the law. What would happen then?

Senior citizens who are beneficiaries of the Medicare Part D drug program should be aware that the PPACA provides for the eventual elimination of the “doughnut hole” and has already begun to close it. The “doughnut hole” is the period during which seniors have had to pay the full cost of their prescriptions after they amassed $2,700 in drug costs. After $2,700, Medicare did not resume paying for drug expenses until seniors reached $4,350 in out-of-pocket payments, a figure most seniors never reach in one year. The PPACA has already cut the doughnut hole by $500 and has instituted a 50 percent discount in brand-name drugs. For many seniors who simply cannot afford to buy their essential medications during the doughnut hole, that will be life saving. If the law is repealed, the doughnut hole will remain. Of course, many Republican leaders want also to repeal the whole Medicare Part D drug program and make seniors pay the full cost of all medications.

The PPACA also provides many provisions that will benefit seniors as well as everybody else. Included are provisions that forbid insurance companies from denying coverage on account of preexisting conditions, from placing lifetime or annual caps on coverage, and from rescinding coverage after a patient files a claim. The law creates a long-term-care insurance program, financed by voluntary payroll deductions, to provide benefits to adults who become functionally disable. It eliminates co-payments for preventative services and exempts preventative services from deductibles under the Medicare program. There are many other provisions, too numerous to set forth here, benefiting seniors.

Seniors should be aware of the position of the current Republican candidates on health care. All of the candidates have shown support for the Ryan budget plan that abolishes Medicare. All of the Republican candidates, including Mitt Romney, would repeal PPACA. For example, Michele Bachman, who has called for repealing PPACA, has also called for the phasing-out of Social Security and Medicare. Governor Rick Perry has plainly stated that he considers Medicare and Social Security to be unconstitutional. He calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Ron Paul has long held that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional. Herman Cain wants to totally eliminate Medicare and Social Security. Newt Gingrich has argued that Medicare, Social Security, and other entitlement programs are fiscally unsustainable. He would replace Medicare and Social Security with private accounts so that seniors could save their money and pay for private health insurance. For low income seniors, he would offer vouchers similar to those offered in the Ryan budget plan.

If you are a senior citizen, or somebody who is on the brink of qualifying for Medicare, you have to ask yourself: Do you want to have Medicare abolished as the Republicans have already tried to do? Do you want to go on paying the full cost of medications after reaching the doughnut hole? Do you want the Medicare Part D program abolished? Do you want to restore the practices by insurance companies of denying coverage on account of pre-existing conditions, lifetime or annual caps, and other factors?

I would think that regardless of whether you are a Republican or a Democrat, you would strongly oppose the Republican efforts to eliminate your health benefits. You should remember this when the time comes to vote for the next president and U.S. Congress.

Harold Camping Again

2011-10-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

Once again Harold Camping's prediction that the world would end on a given day has proved false. Anybody with half a brain could have told you that nothing would happen. Camping first predicted that the world would end and the "Rapture" would occur in 1994. Of course, it didn't. Nevertheless, undaunted, Camping then predicted that it would occur on May 21, 2011. He made it clear that he was quite certain of the date. The stupid people who believed him sold homes and businesses and moved to California to be with him when the Rapture occurred. Naturally, nothing happened. He then predicted that it would occur on October 21, 2011. That day passed like any other day.

Now I don't blame Camping. He makes millions off of this scam, even if he truly believes in his preposterous claims. But people who still believe in him have got to have brain damage. You've all heard the phrase, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Well, now the morons have been fooled three times at least. Do they still believe in Camping? Do they still believe in any of the jokers who continue to say that the world is about to end? Do they still believe that the Bible is the word of God? Do they still believe in God?

In May I offered to bet Camping $10 million that there would be no end of the world or rapture or anything else on October 21. I said that I would be willing to bet Harold that October 21 will go by like any other Fall day, like May 21, like September 1994, and that there would be no Rapture, no end of the world, no apocalypse. He probably never heard of my offer, but if he had agreed to the bet I would be rich today.

There is only one reason why Harold Camping is a false prophet. The reason is that there is no such thing as God, and any prediction based on the Book of Revelations in the Bible is pure nonsense. There is a large number of phony prophets out there claiming that the world is about to come to an end. I have heard Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Tim LaHaye and others who claim to believe that we are approaching the apocalypse. They base their whole argument on the wording of the Book of Revelations. None of them seems able to pierce the veil of idiocy surrounding that book and the absurdity surrounding all predictions based on the Bible.

The Judeo-Christian Bible is not a book of history. It is not a book of fact. Virtually nothing in it is true. It is a fairy-tale, a book of myths, which, in many cases, is based on more ancient myths of other ancient religions. Millions of dimwitted people base their lives on this book of myths, just as millions of Moslems base their lives on the Quran. In the absence of a real god, or of any real evidence for the existence of God, these people latch onto the one thing that they believe gives them access to the teaching of God. It is pitiful.

I wish people would read my book: "The Case Against God: A Lawyer Examines the Evidence." It is available on Kindle and can be brought-up on any device that has Kindle applications. In it I demonstrate that the Bible is merely a kind of mythological sacred scripture. I show that Moses was nothing more than a mythical figure, that the Exodus never happened, and that Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than a Jewish holy man who wanted to share certain ideas about Judaism based on the teachings of the Pharisees. In no way did he want to start a new religion naming himself as the Son of God. The poor misguided millions of sheep who went on to create and follow a church based on this misinterpretation of his teaching are always prey to the seduction of cults, sects, televangelists, rogues, and phonies of every kind.

The world is not about to end. We are not about to face the apocalypse or experience the Rapture. During the Cuban Missle Crisis I thought we might face a thermonuclear holocaust, but I no longer worry about that. Perhaps terrorists will get hold of a nuclear bomb and bomb a big city in America, or Israel and Iran will exchange nuclear bombs, but I doubt that these things will mean the end of the world. No, the world will carry on for a long time to come and there is no God to change that. Stupid, or dishonest, or clever men have always predicted the imminent end of the world. It is nothing new. I just hope that the obvious falsity of Harold Camping's predictions will make people use their heads a little more and stop believeing in these absurd myths.

Defending President Obama

2011-09-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

At this stage of the political game it is not surprising that Republicans exhibit scathing hatred for President Obama. They have dedicated themselves to opposing him on every front, even to the point of helping to ruin the economy so that he would not be reelected. Before he was elected, right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh asserted that they hoped he would fail. Since then Republicans have acted as if improvement in the economy was the last thing they want. A good economy with reasonable levels of employment might help the President get reelected. A lousy economy might help a Republican get into office.

But it seems incongruous that loud criticism of the President has also come from Democrats and those of the left who feel that he has not fulfilled his promises and has too easily capitulated to Republicans. Many African Americans, who somehow thought that a biracial president would be able to change their whole history overnight and bring about the kind of equality called for in “I have a dream,” are discouraged that life seems to go on as usual.

In an opinion piece in Newsweek Magazine, William Broyles compared President Obama to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who has gone down in history as the man who appeased Hitler and failed to take action to stop the aggression of Germany before World War II. Broyles accused President Obama of appeasing the right-wing factions in Congress when negotiating budgets and the debt limit. I believe that Broyles’ commentary is more than simply unfair. It is incorrect and terribly harmful. It reveals that Broyles and many others on the left are acting like spoiled children, whining because they have not been able to get everything they want in Washington. For some reason they thought that Obama was a miracle worker who would turn America into a Garden of Eden.

People like Broyles fail to face reality and fail to understand what President Obama has been up against. They ignore the fact that even when Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress, Obama was faced with fanatic opposition from filibuster-minded Republicans and Blue-Dog Democrats. Like FDR, Jack Kennedy, and Bill Clinton before him, Obama has been a pragmatist who understands the need to compromise in a nation equally divided between Democrats and Republicans.

They also ignore the tremendous accomplishments of President Obama in the face of such fierce opposition. These include a historic reform of the health-care system; increased regulation of the financial services industry; a large stimulus package that saved millions of jobs, kept us out of a depression, and saved the auto industry from going down the drain; reversal of the Bush era regulations forbidding federal support for abortions; reversal of the Bush era regulations weakening environmental controls; elimination of the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy on gays in the military; signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Bill on equal pay for women; reversal of the Bush ban on stem-cell research; ordering the reduction of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; repeated extension of unemployment benefits for those out-of-work; signing of a nuclear limitation treaty with Russia; improvement in American prestige throughout the world (which won him a Nobel Prize); and the signing of laws to help veterans, school children, college students, minorities, immigrants and many others. It was on President Obama’s watch that the Navy Seals finally brought Osama bin Laden to his final justice. President Obama’s accomplishments in less than one term are far too many to list here. They can be found on a website called “The 244 accomplishments of President Obama.”

Left-wing critics of President Obama also seem to ignore the elements of character that infuse his presidency. He is a decent, compassionate, steady, and considerate man. Perhaps they would like a more aggressive person, but I feel that he is an ideal role model for young people today. When you look at the list of potential Republican candidates today, you realize that they are either right-wing fanatics like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann who haven’t got the intelligence to believe in evolution or global warming, or slippery phonies like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich who frame their ideas according to which way the political winds are blowing.

President Obama is going to be the Democratic candidate for president in 2012, and Democrats need to close ranks and support him now. The petty sniping by discontented liberals will do nothing to help him get reelected. Lets not aid the right-wing forces of reaction and bigotry.

Are Members of the Tea Party Intelligent?

2011-08-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

Tea Party people are very conservative. They also claim to be very religious. The question I have is whether they are very intelligent. Several of the Republican candidates for president, including Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann, reject the Darwinian theory of evolution. They do this primarily on religious grounds. They tend toward the creationist theory that God created all living things just as they are. Also, despite the overwehlming weight of scientific evidence, they reject the current theory of global warming. It is kind of scary to think that one of these ignoramuses could become president of the United States.

The distinguished British biologist and author, Richard Dawkins, wrote about the ignorance of Rick Perry as follows:

"There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown
in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow
the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore
Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this:
In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally
rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s
Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack
of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory.
Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican
voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like
themselves over someone actually qualified for the job."

The advent of "Uneducated fools" in the ranks of the Republican Party is explained by the general level of ignorance to be found in its Tea Party base. The people who make up the Tea Party fanatics are, for the most part, a highly uneducated group who resent the high education of President Obama and those around him. The fact is that Liberals and athiests are better educated and brighter than conservatives and religious believers.

It seems from all the studies done of the relative intelligence of conservatives and liberals, and of religious believers and atheists, that on the average liberals are more intelligent than conservatives, (George Will may or may not be an exception to the rule), and atheists are more intelligent than religious believers. Aside from the overwhelming weight of intelligence studies, the difference in intelligence between these groups is encountered on a daily basis. Have you ever noticed that the most educated people you know and meet are usually liberal and non-religious? The corollary of this is that the most conservative and religious people you know and meet are usually less well educated. One need only look at the high percentage of liberals and atheists among scientists, collage professors, and members of other educated professions.

I will not waste a lot of time defining the terms liberal, conservative, and atheist. But when I speak of somebody being “religious,” I am not talking about being spiritual, holy, or pious. By the term “religious” I mean the Tea Party type of people such as “Born-Again” Christians, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and outspoken bible-thumping members of the so-called Religious Right who claim to be religious.

There have been a number of studies looking at whether liberals and atheists are more intelligent than conservatives and religious types. One is the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (or Add Health). The other is the General Social Survey (GSS). Both studies demonstrated that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives. The Add Health study shows that the mean IQ of adolescents who identify themselves as "very liberal" is 106, compared with a mean IQ of 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative." The Add Health study also found that there was a correlation between religion and intelligence. Non-religious people tended to be more intelligent than religious believers. The Add Health study is statistically significant because more than 20,000 young people were surveyed.

Researcher, Satoshi Kanazawa, of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has written a paper in which he quotes from the Add Health Survey along with other sources. He finds that more-intelligent people are more likely to describe themselves as liberal and non-religious. In another study, a British team found that young people with higher intelligence scores were more likely to grow into adults who vote for Liberal Democrats.

In 2008, intelligence researcher Helmuth Nyborg examined whether IQ relates to religion, using representative data from the Add Health and other studies. His results, published in the scientific journal "Intelligence," demonstrated that on average, Atheists scored 5.89 IQ points higher than religious types. These findings are supported by many other studies including the study by Lazar Stankova of the National Institute of Education in Singapore, the 1975 study by Norman Poythress, using SAT scores as a measure of intelligence, and others.

You need only look at the levels of education for media conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and compare them with those for liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college (Limbaugh flunked-out), Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England.

The question is: Does this make any difference? I say yes. We obviously want our political leaders to be highly intelligent and well-educated. We have a president who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He is surrounded by some of the most brilliant and highly educated people ever to work in the White House. Some of his Republican Tea Party opponents, however, seem to occupy the opposite end of the educational spectrum. Rick Perry of Texas, who graduated from Texas A&M with a 2.22 GPA in Animal Science, has been described as “intellectually challenged.” One Republican strategist says that Perry “benefits from an uncluttered mind.” Look at the educational credentials of Sarah Palin, the Right-Wing’s poster girl for dimwittedness. Michele Bachmann, who graduated from that distinguished center of learning, Winona State University, and got a Law degree at Oral Roberts University, displays her lack of knowledge with repeated and sometimes hilarious gaffs.

Liberals tend to be far more accepting of the findings of science than Tea Party types. Liberals accept the firmly established Darwinian theory of evolution, the science of global warming, and the burgeoning developments of stem cell research. Tea Party people embrace the pseudo-science of Creationism, deny the overwhelming evidence of global warming, and would stop stem-cell research in its tracks.

But even if liberals and atheists are smarter, are they any better people than Tea Party conservatives and religious believers? I say yes. Despite their claim for patriotism, piety, and purity, Tea Party types are often narrow, bigoted, hypocritical, and mean-spirited. They tend to despise minorities, poor people, gays, immigrants, non-Christians, and others. Liberals and Atheists tend to be more open-minded about the differences between people, and more accepting.

Theoretically, religion is supposed to make people better, kinder toward their fellow man, full of love and generosity. This is just not the case with Tea Party types. They tend to be small-minded, envious, and angry. While Christ spoke of charity toward the poor, Tea Party people deeply resent the aid that government gives poor and minority people. They are very judgmental toward poor people, asserting that such people are lazy parasites on the state. Instead of Christian charity, they seem to have a coldness if not repugnance toward the less fortunate.

The following by Paul Krugman is also very pertinent to this issue:

"Within the G.O.P., willful ignorance has become a litmus test for candidates...So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe. And the deepening anti-intellectualism of the political right, both within and beyond the G.O.P., extends far beyond the issue of climate change."

I believe that when all things are added up, liberals and atheists are not only smarter than Tea Party types, but also better, more decent people. In many ways, they follow the teachings of Jesus better than the Tea Partiers.

TEA PARTY PEOPLE ARE NOT TERRORISTS

2011-08-05T08:42:00.000-07:00

Tea Party people are not terrorists, they are something else. The terrorist charge has been leveled at them because so many were willing to vote against raising the debt limit. While it is true that failure to raise the debt limit would have caused a default on our national obligations, the Tea Party people didn’t fully realize the catastrophe that would ensue. No, their motivation was not to bring-on another giant recession. It was simply to cut future spending.

In a recent poll, three-quarters of Tea Party supporters said that they opposed any rise in the debt limit because they were more concerned that raising the debt ceiling would “lead to higher government spending and make the national debt bigger.” It didn’t matter to them that in return for a rise in the debt limit the Republican leadership would be able to get trillions of dollars of spending cuts.

What those Tea Party supporters didn’t seem to know was that a rise in the debt limit was needed not to pay for future spending, but to pay for obligations already incurred by the United States government. Those Tea Partiers were not worried about a default on our nation’s debt, or the economic catastrophe predicted by leading economists, because they thought that failure to raise the debt limit would simply make the President cut-back on future spending. They had no understanding how the economics of government works, and they didn’t want to hear the facts.

The problem with the Tea Party is not terrorism. It is ignorance. Those people in the Tea Party who opposed any rise in the debt limit, even if it was matched by spending cuts, were acting out of ignorance. They didn’t understand why it was necessary to raise the debt ceiling.

In addition, I believe that they were acting out of bigotry toward a president who presents a combination that they hate—he is biracial and highly educated. In an interview on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly asked the President why so many people hated him. Obama politely answered that people don’t know him, and that if they did they would not necessarily feel so much hostility. I think that we should face the real truth. Right-wing people hate President Obama because he is an educated black man and he makes them feel inferior. Most of the white Tea Party supporters have spent their lives holding strong feelings of bigotry toward African Americans and other people of color. Even though they may themselves have been poorly educated, they have always assumed that Blacks are mentally inferior to whites. While most of them would not admit to such bigotry, and would not only deny their racial hate but point to all the nice Black people who are their friends, underneath it all they are repelled by Blacks.

To Tea Party bigots, President Obama is the worst possible kind of president. He is not only a liberal, but he is black. He graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude. He taught constitutional law in Chicago. He speaks with the assurance of a highly intelligent and cultivated person. The Tea Party whites look at him on television and realize that this Black man is far more educated, far more sophisticated, far more articulate then they are. They assume that he will want not only to help poor people, but also that he will do everything he can to spend tax dollars helping Black people.

I believe that a major motivation of Tea Partiers is anger, resentment, and jealousy at liberals who are more educated than they are. One Tea Party congressman who had never been to collage made that clear when he complained that a rise in the debt limit would simply mean more money for Pell Grants so that people like the Barack Obama could go to college and get educated by liberals. Tea Party types hate white liberals because they believe that liberals want to spend governmental money to help improve the status of poor people, particularly African Americans. They look upon Blacks as inferior people who are lazy and dishonest. They resent the idea of spending their tax money to support African Americans. They hate paying taxes, and the use of tax money to support people they despise is intolerable.

When Tea Party people look at liberal spokesmen on television, they realize that those liberals are almost always better educated and better informed than they are. They also realize that those liberals are better educated and informed than the conservative spokesmen found on radio talk shows and Fox News. They call the liberal media the “elite” media because of the greater level of education of liberal media journalists. I once wrote a column for the newspaper in which I pointed out the difference in education between conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, and liberals like Anderson Cooper, Keith Olberman, Bill Maher, and Rachel Maddow. Whereas Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity never graduated from college, Anderson Cooper graduated from Yale, Keith Olberman and Bill Maher both graduated from Cornell, and Rachel Maddow obtained a doctoral degree from Oxford University in England. When one compares the educational accomplishments of Tea Party Congressmen with those of liberal Democrats in Congress, the difference is astounding. Liberals, on average, are far more educated than Tea Partiers.

I am convinced that much of the evil in American politics is due to the ignorance of far-right-wing Tea Party types. A good example was presented in a recent newspaper article in Dayton, Ohio, where a local school board member, who is also the head of the local Tea Party cell, called for the teaching of creationism in schools. It is frightening that someone in a position to influence the teaching of children is so fundamentally stupid. This woman demonstrated ignorance on several levels. First, she showed that she was unaware of the law in America. Creationism (and its ugly sister “Intelligent Design”) has been declared by the courts to be a religious and not scientific theory and has been banned in every case. In Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Louisiana law requiring that creationism be taught in public schools, along with evolution, was unconstitutional because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion.

In addition, the board member demonstrated the kind of ignorance about science common among Tea Party people. Evolution is an established scientific fact, not just a theory. It has been proven in thousands of scientific studies published in thousands of scientific papers in hundreds of prestigious scientific publications. Creationism is a wacky non-scientific theory that has religion as its base and no legitimate science to support it. The simple-minded people who believe in it are religious zealots who have no real understanding of science.

So the main characteristic of people in the Tea Party is not terrorism. They do not want to blow-up federal buildings. They want only to stop all social programs that give tax money to poor and minority people. Their main characteristic is not terror, it is ignorance combined with bigotry.

Warren Jeffs Rapist

2011-08-04T15:07:00.000-07:00

A court in Texas has convicted Warren Jeffs of sexual molestation of two young girls. One was age 12 when she was married to Jeffs. The other was 14. Apparently the evidence against Jeffs included a tape recording of Jeffs talking to the young girl during the rape. I am told that the jury cried when it heard the slender tiny voice of this girl. When Jeffs asked during the sex act her how she was, she said she was okay. Jeffs said the pain would mean that she was going to heaven. The jury will now have the option of sending this miserable scoundrel to Hell. Now the law enforcement officials in Texas should prosecute every man and woman in that cult who had anything to do with the rape of young girls.

If the many witnesses who have spoken about the cult are to be believed, these child-brides become part of harems for church elders who eject young men from the sect so that they will not have any competition for the young girls’ attention. The wives and children of these men are raised and brainwashed to believe that it is God’s commandment that they surrender their virginity and freedom to older men in order to propagate the sect.

But it is not God’s commandment. It has nothing to do with God. It has nothing to do with religion. It is the raw exercise of power and lust by dirty old men who want to enjoy sex with young virgins. It is rape. History shows that people have always used religion to cloak their nefarious designs. Just as Moslem fanatics use religion to justify their insane attacks against innocent people, men have always used religion to justify the rape of young girls.

I have nothing against these rapists practicing polygamy with adult women if that is what they want to do. My problem is with elders and parents compelling their children to take part in such a sick culture. Most states in the union forbid sex between adults and children under the age of consent. In Texas the age of consent is 17. In most states it is 16. There is a good reason for treating children under 16 or 17 as being unable to consent. Most children under 16 or 17 do not have the fortitude to resist the impositions of adults and do not have sufficient understanding to assent to such impositions. The twisted individuals who prey upon young girls on the internet deserve to have the book simultaneously thrown at them and shoved down their throats.

It does not matter that this form of child-abuse is institutionalized as a religion. They can call it anything they want, but it is nothing more than child molestation. It has been going on for ages and has always been common in primitive societies. In parts of Africa and Asia it has proceeded hand-in-glove with the genital mutilation of young girls. The freedom of women from mistreatment and exploitation is an important part of the story of civilization. We in America may have a long way to go to be thoroughly civilized, but we do not have to tolerate this kind of beastly behavior.

You need only look at the women from this cult to see what damage can be done by brainwashing. They come on television in their grotesque hairdos and pioneer dresses and speak in robotic voices. You could say that they should not be punished because they have obviously been hammered by the abuses of the men of the cult, but they are adults, and however brain-damaged they may be, they are answerable to the law for their transgressions. Any adult that would let her 12-year-old daughter marry a 55-year-old man is a pimp and deserves no sympathy.

It seems apparent that despite denials, the practice of forcing underage girls into polygamous marriages is widespread in the cult. For this reason, the proper thing to do is not only to prosecute all of the men and women in the cult, but also to permanently take all of the children in the sect away from their biological parents. These people look upon the cult as one large “family.” They live communally. The children call all of the women their “mothers” and all of the men their “uncles.” As in any abusive family, when some of the children are being abused the government must take all of the children out of the household.

Republican Leaders vs. Republican Voters

2011-07-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

Many Republican middle-income voters do not fully realize that their representatives in Washington are actually working against their best interests. They imagine that their congressmen are fighting to reduce the size and cost of government and to keep taxes down. What they don’t seem to know is that their representatives are actually fighting for big businesses and very wealthy people.

Let’s start with the current fight over raising the debt limit. Although the Republicans in Congress are demanding deep cuts in spending in return for a rise in the debt limit, they refuse to allow any increase in taxes. The problem is, the only increase in taxes demanded by the Democrats is a restoration of the tax rates for very wealthy people that existed under the Clinton Administration. Ordinary middle-income Republicans would not be hurt by restoring the old tax rates on billionaires. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy were one of the main causes of our current deficits. Surely the restoration of the previous tax rates will not impoverish wealthy people. But Republican legislators are loathe to restore the old tax rates because it is the billionaires who contribute so much to their coffers.

Consider the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created under the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The purpose of the Bureau is to protect ordinary American consumers from dubious and deceptive financial behavior by banks, credit card companies, stockbrokers, and other financial powers. The Act will protect against abuses by predatory mortgage lenders, credit card companies, credit rating services, and payday loan companies. The Republicans fought mightily against creation of the CFPB, and are now fighting to prevent it from exercising any jurisdiction over the Republicans’ beloved multi-billion dollar financial titans. They have refused to approve the appointment of Elizabeth Warren, a strong consumer advocate, to head the CFPB, and have signaled that they will oppose the appointment of former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, an honest and effective administrator, for the post. In other words, they want to prevent any regulation of those in the financial industry who would happily defraud ordinary Americans of their money.

Many Republicans expressed anger at the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), (derisively called “Obamacare”). What few seem to realize is that that law will help not only working poor people who have gone without health insurance, but also millions of ordinary middle-income Americans. The law will create insurance exchanges that will make the cost of health insurance significantly lower for ordinary people. It will prevent insurers from refusing coverage on account of prior existing conditions. It will eliminate the “doughnut hole” which all seniors must endure after they reach a certain cap in payments. It will allow the coverage of children up until age 26 on parents’ policies. It will eliminate the annual caps on coverage provided in most health insurance policies. These and many other provisions benefit all middle-income people, not just the wealthy, or Democrats, or the government. The main opposition to such provisions comes from the insurance industry which sees those provisions cutting into its profits.

Somehow, the Republicans in Congress have gotten ordinary Republican voters worked-up against climate change legislation, particularly the “Cap-and-Trade” bills proposed by the Democrats. It is as if such laws would somehow harm the welfare of ordinary people. Even many top Republicans now admit that global warming is an established fact and that the human emission of greenhouse gasses is one of the major causes of this phenomenon. There is now almost unanimous agreement among climate scientists that continuation of this process will have disastrous effects on the Earth in the coming years if nothing is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions. These effects will include, among many other things, melting icecaps with massive flooding of coastline cities and islands, and dramatic changes in weather patterns with adverse effect on agriculture and ordinary living conditions. These catastrophes will have a terrible impact on ordinary Americans. So why are the Republicans so adverse to climate change legislation?

The answer is not that such legislation will cause higher taxes, higher fuel bills, or more discomfort to middle-income Americans. The reason for Republican opposition to climate change legislation is that it will cost more for giant utilities, coal and oil companies, and manufacturers. These fabulously wealthy businesses are run by the fat cats who pour-out the money for Republican politicians. Those politicians are not thinking about ordinary Republican voters. They are thinking about the billionaires who supply them with the money to run election campaigns.

If you look at many of the main financial issues between Democrats and Republicans you will realize that Republicans furiously oppose the enactment of laws that will protect consumers against the abuses of big business. If ordinary Republicans and Independents really care about their own welfare and their pocketbooks, they should look closely at the actions of their representatives in Congress and question whether those actions are really for the benefit of the middle class.

Debt Limit and the Republicans

2011-07-12T10:50:00.000-07:00

It seems almost unbelievable, but there is a chance that the Congress will refuse to raise the debt limit of the United States and the nation will go into default. The reason for this could be that the Republicans are simply unwilling to restore the tax rates previously placed on extremely wealthy people. In addition, there are many of the Tea Party Republicans who simply want the default to occur. Even though we have been warned that default could destroy the economy, these people believe that it would also destroy the Administration of President Obama. They are filled with hate for our biracial president, and are willing to bring on an economic catastrophe in order to unseat him.

The Republicans are playing a dangerous game of Chicken. The debt limit is basically the maximum amount of money that the U.S. can borrow at any one time. Because of the deficit spending during the Administration of George W. Bush, the nation has already spent more than the amount of the debt limit. Thus, it is not a question of more spending. It is a question of paying for things that have already been bought. Among the things causing this problem are the costs of two wars, the Medicare Part D Drug Program, and the huge tax cuts for the wealthy granted by Bush and the Republicans.

Few People realize that we have already gone past the date when the debt limit should have been raised, and that the U.S. Treasury has been able to function only by juggling the books and using certain pension and other funds in order to keep the government running. It will no longer be able to do that after August 2. If the Congress does not raise the debt limit by that date we are in for economic catastrophe. But we should not wait until then. Each day that the Congress delays in approving a rise in the debt limit, the crisis becomes more severe and the damage to America’s credit grows.

Back in January, Treasury Secretary Geithner warned lawmakers that the national debt could hit the legal limit on borrowing as soon as March 31, 2011, and he urged quick action to avoid a government default that would spark "catastrophic economic consequences that would last for decades." He said that unless Congress acts to raise the limit, the United States will default on its debt, an unprecedented event that could destroy "millions of American jobs," cause interest rates to spike, damage the dollar, and halt payments to millions of Social Security recipients, veterans, and active U.S. troops.

It is sad to think that partisan politics in America has arrived at the point where members of one major party are so filled with hatred for the government that they are willing to destroy the economy of the nation rather than allow the government to run smoothly. The Congress has never failed to raise the debt limit when needed. During the last Bush Administration, Congress raised the debt limit four times. It is simply unthinkable that it would fail to do so this time.

Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman advises that “If we hit the debt ceiling, the government will be forced to stop paying roughly a third of its bills, because that’s the share of spending currently financed by borrowing. So will it stop sending out Social Security checks? Will it stop paying doctors and hospitals that treat Medicare patients? Will it stop paying the contractors supplying fuel and munitions to our military? Or will it stop paying interest on the debt?... At least one, and probably several, of these components will face payment stoppages if federal borrowing is cut off.”

According to Matthew E. Zames, a managing director at JPMorgan Chase and the chairman of the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee, any delay in making an interest or principal payment by Treasury even for a very short period of time could trigger another catastrophic financial crisis. Mr. Zames notes that a default by the U.S. Treasury, or even an extended delay in raising the debt ceiling, could lead to a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating. The resulting financial crisis could trigger a run on money market funds and economic collapse.

The Republicans have a right to demand that there be spending cuts to counterbalance any rise in the debt limit. But their demands are outragous and amount to blackmail and extortion. Now they are demanding that the President reduce the deficit by repealing much of our social legislation. Many of them want the Democrats to agree to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. They want to eliminate certain departments of government. They want the government to adopt the Ryan budget which eliminates Medicare. They are obsessed with reducing the deficit, but for some reason, they are violently opposed to restoring the tax rates for wealthy taxpayers that existed at the time of the Clinton Administration.

It seems clear that the Republicans feel beholden to the fabulously wealthy fat cats who finance their campaigns. Meanwhile, the ordinary Republican voters seem oblivious to the fact that many of the Republicans in Congress are willing to sacrifice the economy of this country by letting it go into default. And they are willing to sacrifice the senior citizens of this country by allowing the stoppage of payments of social security and Medicare.

Jesus and Atheism

2011-07-09T09:29:00.000-07:00

While atheists universally deny that Jesus was God or the Son of God, I think that there is room for acknowledging that he must have been a very good man and that his teachings represent the highest moral and ethical aspirations of man. In my book, "The Case Against God; A Lawyer Examines the Evidence," I discuss the fact that Jesus was nothing more than a Jewish holy man who taught traditional Jewish teachings and who had no intention of describing himself as a God or Son of God. He did not intend to form a new church or to go contrary to the laws of Judaism. He was most likely a Pharisee who conveyed the teaching of Hillel, the Pharisee sage. We cannot accept the apotheosis and sanctifying of Jesus by later writers and churchmen.

Nevertheless, the picture of Jesus presented to us is a beautiful one. This cannot be explained solely by the embellishment of his image by churches and clerics. Much of it must stem from the man who actually lived in Israel over 2000 years ago. Scholars believe that many of the quotes of Jesus set forth in the New Testament were actually spoken by the real Jesus. Prior to the writing of the New Testament there apparently were a set of sayings called the “Q source” which were picked-up by the evangelists who wrote the canonical Bible.

Even if we consider that some of the stories about Jesus may have been added by later writers, we must admit that the picture painted of Jesus reflects the highest form of human ethics. Ludwig Feuerbach said that our ideas of God are merely a reflection of the highest human ideals. To a certain extent this is obviously true of our picture of Jesus. But it says something good about man. With all of our evil, cruelty, greed, and selfishness, we were able to imagine a Man/God who flowed with the goodness, kindness, love, charity, and sense of sacrifice that all humans admire. One writer described Jesus as a “sweet soul.”

It is helpful to think about things he probably said to his followers. He probably emphasized the idea of loving your neighbor. This was an ancient Jewish teaching. It is one of the hardest things anybody can do, but it is a lofty goal. It humanizes us more than almost any other thing. He probably told his followers to turn the other cheek, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, to bless the poor and the meek and the peacemakers, to avoid self righteousness, and to show mercy. He probably gave the Sermon on the Mount. He probably told a crowd that he who is without sin should throw the first stone at the woman caught in adultery.

His kindness and goodness seems to have been abandoned by a Church that burned heretics in the Inquisition and waged crusades and wars against those who did not share the Church’s teaching. It is certainly lost on those today who practice the theology of anger, resentment, bigotry, sanctimoniousness, and self-righteousness. The New Testament describes a man who was kind and loving. He obviously loved children. He ate with sinners and forgave their sins. He obviously enjoyed a party and drank wine. He seems like somebody who laughed and enjoyed a joke. He even got angry and cursed a barren fig tree. He obviously rejected hypocrisy and false piety. I have no doubt that he would have been appalled by the strict Puritanism of many of the Protestant sects. I have no doubt that he would have been appalled at the great wealth and pomp of the Catholic Church. I have no doubt that he would have been appalled by monasticism in all its forms. I believe that he would have been devastated by and wept at the molestation of little children by members of the clergy.

I also have no doubt that Jesus would have glowed with pleasure at the kindness of many people today. He would have loved the people who dedicate their lives to helping others, who are kind and merciful, who stand for peace, who are filled with love for their fellow man. In the novel "Let the Great World Spin," by Colum McCann, the main character is a man from Ireland who becomes a brother and goes to live among the pimps and prostitutes of the lower Bronx in New York. He does not judge these poor sad women or preach to them. He helps them. What would Jesus think of this saint? One reads every day about saints like the character described by McCann. Their aim is to make life better for others, and to live in the image of Jesus.

As an atheist, I cannot believe in Jesus as some divine Son of God who created the universe and fills the air around us with his presence. But I do believe that the Jesus who actually lived and the Jesus we have created is a great man, an ideal human, someone to be imitated.

Michele Bachmann Extremist

2011-06-20T11:52:00.000-07:00

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R. Minn.), the two-term representative for Minnesota's 6th Congressional District, has now announced that she is running for president. Perhaps what she really wants is to be chosen as a Republican vice-presidential candidate. Her candidacy is being treated like any other candidacy even though she is a representative of extreme right-wing politics. She should not be looked upon as a traditional conservative. Her views are in line with the views of ultra right-wing militias and hate groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that exposes and fights hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and far-right-wing militias, she is one of the chief political “enablers” of hate groups and “has used her office as a megaphone for outrageous claims and conspiracy theories that in the past wouldn't spread far beyond the firing ranges and obstacle courses where militiamen and other antigovernment ‘Patriots’ gather.”

In 2009, Bachmann became a critic of what she characterized as proposals for mandatory public service. Speaking in reference to the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, an expansion to AmeriCorps (a federal community service organization), she said: “The real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.” Nevertheless, her son, Harrison, joined “Teach for America,” which is a member of the AmeriCorps program.

You can get an idea of how extreme her views are from statements such as “I am very concerned that he [Barack Obama] may have anti-American views." When asked during the Meet the Press interview if she would take back her previous comments that Obama held "anti-American views" and was running a "gangster government", Bachmann backed her statements, saying "I do believe that actions that have been taken by this White House -- I don't take back my statements on gangster government. I think that there have been actions taken by the government that are corrupt...I said I have very serious concerns about the president's views, and I think the president's actions in the last two years speak for themselves.

Bachmann would be happy to see a return to McCarthyism because she believes that there are a lot of “Anti-Americans” in Congress. She found the Capitol teeming with so much anti-Americanism that she called on the media to ferret-out the unpatriotic politicians. "I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?" she said during an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews in 2008.

Bachmann has embraced the culture of conspiracy advocated by ultra right-wing militias with their fear of concentration camps and U.N. black helicopters. When it comes to the Census, Bachmann sees a sinister plot hearkening back to World War II. "They used the U.S. Census information to round up the Japanese and put them in the internment camps," she said during an interview with Fox News' Glenn Beck. "I know for my family the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home, we won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that." However, she failed to realize that the Constitution does not require citizens to complete the census.

Bachmann does not just oppose the proposed cap-and-trade legislation to fight global warming. She claims that global warming is a hoax, and says that she wants Minnesotans "armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back."

Like many far-right zealots, Bachman believes that almost every form of government program to help the poor, disabled, youth, and the aged is socialistic or communistic. She has called for phasing-out of Social Security and Medicare. I wonder how many senior citizens know that and will vote for her in the primaries. She wrote that education laws passed by Congress in 2001, including "School To Work" and "Goals 2000", created a new national school curriculum that embraced "a socialist, globalist worldview; loyalty to all government and not America."

Bachmann has voted against continuing resolutions enacted to prevent the government from closing while the budget is being debated. She has made it clear that she would rather see the government shut down than see a continuation of current governmental programs. She said: "I am vowing to vote 'no' on future Continuing Resolutions to fund the government unless there is specific language included to defund Obamacare and rescind the funding that has already been appropriated. Defunding Obamacare, along with defunding Planned Parenthood, must be non-negotiable planks in our budget negotiations.”

Bachmann has made it clear that she will vote against extending the debt limit of the United States and would rather see the collapse of the American economy and credit. She has posted a petition on the Web site of her political action committee, encouraging voters to tell Congress that the "spending frenzy cannot continue. It's time to force our elected officials to stop spending cold turkey, and we can start by making sure they do not raise the debt ceiling."

Among her other positions, Bachmann supports the teaching of “Intelligent Design” in public school science classes. Intelligent Design is a purely religious concept that says that there was no Darwinian evolution of the species by natural selection, but rather, that God designed everything. The theory has been scorned by most legitimate scientists and has been banned from the classroom by the courts. During a 2003 interview on the KKMS Christian radio program Talk The Walk, Bachmann said that evolution is a theory that has never been proven one way or the other.

Bachmann explained in a 2010 speech that if the United States turns its back on Israel, "a curse" will be placed on the land. As proof, she cited Genesis 12:3, in which God says to Abraham, "The one who curses you I will curse." It was an uncommonly explicit blurring of policy and theology from a prominent politician

Bachmann supports both federal and state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and any legal equivalents.

Michele Bachmann is an attractive woman. She is a good speaker and a tireless campaigner. People seeing her might be lulled into thinking that she is just another conservative trying to stop the growth of taxes and government. But she is much more than that. She is an ultra right-wing ideologue. If she was president, she would abolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, the Obama Medical Reform Act, and most other social legislation. She would abolish most restrictions on business and most laws governing fraud in the securities markets. She would inject prayer into the schools, prosecute people seeking or carrying-out abortions, cancel all laws protecting the rights of gay people, and withdraw America from the United Nations. She would cancel most of our First Amendment rights and prosecute people with left-wing views. She is not just an extremist. She is dangerous.

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The Paul Ryan Budget Plan

2011-06-10T11:59:00.000-07:00

The Republicans in both houses of Congress are now on the record as voting for a budget prepared Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, which abolishes Medicare as we know it. The Ryan plan attacks the deficit by lowering taxes paid by the wealthy and makes the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Ryan’s plan to demolish Medicare would save the government billions of dollars by shifting the burden of paying for medical care from the government to the senior citizens who would have been covered by the current program.

The way Medicare works today, the government pays for all approved medical care for senior citizens. Let’s say that you need to have heart bypass surgery. The surgeon will bill Medicare for the cost of the surgery, which might be in the tens of thousands. Medicare will approve a percentage of that bill and pay the surgeon. Most surgeons will accept as full payment the amount paid by Medicare, but if there is a deductable or amount in excess of the Medicare amount, many seniors are able to pay it by taking-out Medicare-Plus insurance. That insurance is low in cost and affordable for most senior citizens.

Under the Republican plan put forth by Representative Ryan, the government will no longer make Medicare payments for people 55 years old and under at the time of the legislation. When those people become eligible for Medicare, there will be no Medicare for them. They will have to purchase private health insurance. The government will assist people earning less that $80 thousand per year by giving them a voucher to help pay for health insurance. For people earning over $80 thousand, the voucher will be half the amount, and even less for people earning over $200 thousand per year. The voucher amount will be pegged to the cost of living.

There is one basic problem with the Ryan plan. The cost of health insurance is rising at a rate far higher than the cost of living. In ten years, when the 55-year-old generation reaches eligibility for Medicare, the cost of health insurance will be more than double the amount provided in the Ryan budget. Sure, this will save the government billions of dollars, but it will deprive millions of seniors of health care during that period of their lives when they are most in need.

According a new survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, health insurance premium are going up much faster than overall inflation and workers’ wages. By the survey’s calculation, increases over the next decade would translate to the average policy for a family costing in the neighborhood of $24,000 a year.

While Medicare may be an expensive program, the solution is not to eliminate it. There are ways to lower the cost of Medicare without the drastic kind of demolition envisioned by the Republican budget. President Obama has offered a proposal which would lower the cost of Medicare by lowering the cost of the terribly wasteful (private insurance) Medicare Advantage program. There are many other steps that can be taken without lowering the benefits to seniors.

Supposedly, the impetus for the Ryan/Republican budget comes from the huge deficit which was initially incurred during the Bush Administration due to tax cuts for the wealthy, two wars, and the Medicare Part D Drug program. Because of Republicans’ refusal to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, the deficit has continued to rise during the Obama Administration. Ryan’s solution to the deficit is to—cut taxes! Yes, Ryan and the Republicans want to cut the tax rate on the wealthy and on corporations from 35% to 25%. They also want to make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent! Needless to say, Ryan intends to reduce the deficit and support this reduction in revenue by cutting programs for the poor, disabled, and aged. His proposed cuts include $2.17 trillion in reductions from Medicaid and related health care; $350 billion in cuts in mandatory programs serving low-income Americans (other than Medicaid); and $400 billion in cuts in low-income discretionary programs.

The Nobel Prize laureate and economist, Paul Krugman, says the Congressional Budget Office, “finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade, the (Ryan) plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law."

The United States is now approaching the most dangerous financial catastrophe in its history. If Congress does not approve an increase in the debt limit by August 1, the country will go into default and the economy will be shattered. It appears that the Republican Party, driven by Tea Party fervor, will demand spending cuts as outlined by the Ryan budget. One can only hope that the American people will let their representatives know that that plan cannot form the basis of any reasonable budget compromise.

Depression

2011-06-07T12:22:00.000-07:00

I have long suspected that depression might be the most realistic way of feeling. I have written about the many sorrows, tragedies, and horrors of life, and have often wondered why depression is classified as a mental illness. Illness is something that is not normal. Depression should be considered a normal way of feeling, thinking, and behaving. Anybody who takes a hard look at life realizes that as we age, if we don’t die young, we go through a long period of physical, and often mental, disintegration. In old age we become more and more reliant upon doctors, surgeries, treatments, therapies, medications, and hospitals. In the end, we die, often in great pain and agony. Some of us may think that there is life after death, but that is most unlikely.

Even if we are especially blessed with a life full of riches, good health, respect from the community, and fine children, we still have to go through the degeneration of old age and the ultimate insult of death.

When we look around us we see a world overflowing with misery. I have written about the massive amount of tragedy in the world resulting from poverty, disease, starvation, war, accidents, natural disasters, lack of clothing and shelter, mental illness, pain, addiction, sexual abuse, crime, envy, cruelty, sadism, dishonesty, deceit, disloyalty, treachery, infidelity, political tyranny, bigotry, ignorance, and many other causes of sorrow. Nobody goes through life without experiencing some of these evils. Yet most of us find that life is sweet, and we have a desire to go on living and not to die. One would think that it would be quite natural to want to commit suicide, but that is looked upon as a horrible thing. Why?

In an article by Tali Sharot in the June 6, 2011, issue of Time Magazine entitled: “The Optimism Bias,” the author, a cognitive scientist, finds that we are all genetically programmed with optimism. She says that without a neural mechanism generating optimism, all humans would be mildly depressed. In other words, even though the events of life should make us depressed, we tend to look for a silver lining because of an evolutionary adaptation of our brain which makes us optimistic even in the face of horror and tragedy. This is a tremendously important finding about human nature. It is actually this genetic tendency toward optimism that keeps the human species alive. Without it we might all commit suicide.

Tali Sharot’s finding helps explain the existence of religion in our world. A number of cognitive scientists, including Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, and David Sloan Wilson, claim that religion is an evolutionary adaptation. Humans go on believing in gods, heavens, paradises, and life after death, despite the complete absence of evidence for their existence. I assume that such beliefs help to relieve us of the crushing grief surrounding the death of a loved one. They help us to deal with the dismal prospect of our own death. In the usual religious funeral services, the pastor will assure the relatives that the deceased “is in a better place.” Most people are unable to deal with the likelihood that such beliefs are overly optimistic and unwarranted.

One of the most terrible tragedies that can occur to a family is the death of a young child. While such a death destroys the life of some parents and siblings, others are somehow able to deal with it. They may be comforted by the belief that the child went to heaven and is living a life of wonder and beauty in the presence of God. If such people were able to critically examine such beliefs I think they would wind-up in deep despair. They would realize that there is no rational basis for such beliefs. The genetically built-in predisposition toward optimism enables such persons to get around the enormous grief of death and to go on living.

Despite this neural predilection for optimism, millions of people in America and around the world are depressed. The use of antidepressant medicine is widespread. Some critics claim that we use far too many antidepressants. I don’t agree. If the sorrows of the world are as prevalent as I think, it is surprising that there are not more people on such medications. Even depressed people want to go on living and do try to find happiness. The genetic predisposition toward optimism makes them eager to find some good even in bad situations. Nobody wants to be unhappy.

Our gene for optimism might help explain many of the ways we seek to find pleasure. Today I was listening to some beautiful music. It made me feel wonderful--as have so many beautiful pieces of music. Perhaps music is one of our ways of coping with the sadness of life. During times of depression and sorrow I have often turned to music. One piece that has soothed me is the slow movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. While I do not believe in God, I remember the line in the movie Amadeus where Salieri looks at the scores of Mozart and complains that somehow this must be the voice of God. There are times in great music when it almost seems that the beauty comes from something supernatural.

It is a good thing that we are blessed with a gene that veils the sorrows of life. It enables us to go on living, and sometimes to feel great bliss in the midst of all the bad things of life. It is wonderful to enjoy the pleasure of love and sex, to feel the beauty of a lovely spring day, to appreciate great art, literature, film, and theater, to take joy in the play of young children, to take pleasure in food and drink, to dance, to sing, to laugh, and sometimes, even to cry. Bart Ehrman tells us that we should confront the evil in the world by enjoying life, and that part of that enjoyment should be the helping of other people. Perhaps that is the answer to depression.

Newt the Salamander

2011-06-05T13:33:00.000-07:00

In a recent editorial, The New York Times described Newt Gingrich’s many inflammatory rants against Democrats. Newt called President Obama and his party: “left-wing radicals” who lead a “secular socialist machine.” He accused them of producing “the greatest political corruption ever seen in modern America.” And then averred that: “The secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did.” Then, stooping to abject racism, he charged that President Obama displayed “Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.”

Gingrich has claimed that advocates for gay rights are imposing a “gay and secular fascism” using violence and harassment. He stated that Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the Supreme Court is a “Latina woman racist.”

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about Newt is his blatant hypocrisy. Newt repeatedly denounced President Clinton for immoral behavior during his efforts to impeach Clinton for the affair with Monica Lewinsky. Nevertheless, Gingrich was, at the same time, while married, having a sexual affair with a female staffer. Newt’s history of marital infidelity is epic, especially when seen against the background of his moralizing criticism of Bill Clinton.

Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, when he was 19 years old and she was 26, he married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher. In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after having an affair with Marianne Ginther. Battley said that Gingrich visited her while she was in the hospital following cancer surgery to discuss the details of their divorce. Six months after the divorce from Battley, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther.

In the mid-1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the period in which Gingrich was a leader of the Republican investigation of President Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal. In 2000, Gingrich divorced his second wife, Ginther, and married Callista Bisek.

In a 2011 interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Gingrich addressed his past infidelities by saying: "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.” This is Newt’s excuse for infidelity and hypocrisy! He loved America and worked too hard! If anybody swallows that line of crap, they deserve to have Newt as their president.

While Slick Mitt Romney may be the leading flip-flopper among the Republican presidential hopefuls, Newt is not far behind. In 2004, Gingrich repeatedly bashed then Democratic nominee for President John Kerry, saying his flip-flop on the Iraq war funding disqualified him from being president. Gingrich said on Fox News: "You can't flip-flop and be commander-in-chief." Nevertheless, Gingrich has repeatedly flip-flopped on the issues.

On May 15,2011, on Meet The Press, Gingrich said: “I’ve said consistently we ought to have some requirement that you either have health insurance or you post a bond.” When David Gregory asked him: “But that is the individual mandate, is it not?” Gingrich replied: “It’s a variation on it.” Nevertheless, the following day Newt issued a statement saying that he opposes an individual mandate.

On April 20, Newt Gingrich said he would have voted for Paul Ryan's Medicare reform and praised it as just a "first step” toward fixing our health care system. On May 15Gingrich ripped Ryan's plan as "radical change."

As of March 7, President Obama had not yet announced that the United States would be involved in a military action to institute a no-fly zone over Libya. When asked by Greta Van Susteren on March 7: “What would you do about Libya?” Gingrich replied: “Exercise a no-fly zone this evening, communicate to the Libyan military that Gadhafi was gone and that the sooner they switch sides, the more likely they were to survive ... This is a moment to get rid of him. Do it. Get it over with.” On March 23, after President Obama ordered U.S. forces to be actively involved in instituting a no-fly zone over Libya, Gingrich said: “I think that two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a lot ... I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.”

In 2007, Gingrich favored "mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system.” In 2008, he even produced a video with Nancy Pelosi on the urgent need to stop global warming. In April of 2009, he testified before the House against cap and trade.

Do the Republicans really want this clown to be President of the United States?

Harold Camping

2011-05-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

Harold Camping has made millions of dollars falsely predicting the coming Rapture and the end of the world. The dimwits who believe in him and who sold everything and emptied out their bank accounts on the strength of his prophesy are nothing more than marks in a great scam. Is Harold going to give his millions to those poor dummies who relied on him? No, apparently he is just moving the date for the apocalypse to October 21, 2011. It is likely that many of his followers are so stupid that they will go on believing in him and prepare for the October date.

If Camping is so sure of the October date, perhaps he would be open to a wager. I would be willing to bet Harold $10 million that October 21 will go by like any other Fall day, like May 21, like September 1994, and that there will be no Rapture, no end of the world, no apocalypse. Harold may refuse to bet me because I don’t have $10million, or because he doesn’t believe in gambling, but if I were to lose, what difference would it make? Harold and his believers would all be sucked-up into heaven, and people like me would be left on earth to experience the horrors he predicts.

There is only one reason why Harold Camping is a false prophet. The reason is that there is no such thing as God, and any prediction based on the Book of Revelations in the Bible is pure nonsense. There is a large number of phony prophets out there claiming that the world is about to come to an end. I have heard Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe, Tim LaHaye and others who claim to believe that we are approaching the apocalypse. They base their whole argument on the wording of the Book of Revelations. None of them seems able to pierce the veil of idiocy surrounding that book and the absurdity surrounding all predictions based on the Bible.

The Judeo-Christian Bible is not a book of history. It is not a book of fact. Virtually nothing in it is true. It is a fairy-tale, a book of myths, which, in many cases, is based on more ancient myths of other ancient religions. Millions of dimwitted people base their lives on this book of myths, just as millions of Moslems base their lives on the Quran. In the absence of a real god, or of any real evidence for the existence of God, these people latch onto the one thing that they believe gives them access to the teaching of God. It is pitiful.

I wish people would read my book: "The Case Against God: A Lawyer Examines the Evidence." It is available on Kindle and can be brought-up on any device that has Kindle applications. In it I demonstrate that the Bible is merely a kind of mythological sacred scripture. I show that Moses was nothing more than a mythical figure, that the Exodus never happened, and that Jesus of Nazareth was nothing more than a Jewish holy man who wanted to share certain ideas about Judaism based on the teachings of the Pharisees. In no way did he want to start a new religion naming himself as the Son of God. The poor misguided millions of sheep who went on to create and follow a church based on this misinterpretation of his teaching are always prey to the seduction of cults, sects, televangelists, rogues, and phonies of every kind.

Catholic Church Smokescreen

2011-05-19T12:26:00.001-07:00

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has just released a report explaining the scandal of priests who abused thousands of young boys over several decades and who were protected by the hierarchy. As one who was raised in the Catholic Church, attended Catholic grammar school and college, and who even briefly entered a Catholic seminary, I can say that the Stories in the news about the report are consistent with the fact that the Catholic Church is an organization that sees its primary mission as preservation of its own existence--and not necessarily the promulgation of the teachings of Jesus Christ or the worship of God.

The report says that the abuse of these thousands of children occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s. The New York Times reported that this “blame Woodstock” explanation has been floated by bishops since the church was engulfed by scandal in the United States in 2002. Now the bishops, who are the ones largely responsible for the continuation of this abomination, have offered this phony report as a lame excuse for their inexcusable behavior.

In one of its most bizarre findings, the report says that fewer than 5 percent of the abusive priests exhibited behavior consistent with pedophilia, which it defines as a “psychiatric disorder that is characterized by recurrent fantasies, urges and behaviors about prepubescent children.” The report goes on to say: “Thus, it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests.”

I can tell you that the priests who abused children are pedophile priests. During my life as a lawyer I had the opportunity to conduct a great deal of research on the subject of pedophilia and on one occasion I wrote a lengthy report for the court in connection with the sentencing of a pedophile. I can say for certain that the conclusions of the Church’s report are hogwash. The Church is attempting a vast cover-up of its own complicity in the abuse of so many children.

Another dishonest revelation of the report is the claim that the scope of abuse of “prepubescent” children was far less than imagined. The report employs a definition of “prepubescent” children as those under age 10. Using this cutoff, the report found that only 22 percent of the priests’ victims were prepubescent. However The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifies a prepubescent child as generally age 13 or younger. The New York Times reports that if the bishops had used that cutoff, a vast majority of the abusers’ victims would have been considered prepubescent. Moreover, even if some of the priests’ victims were 14, 15, or16, the sexual attack on such youngsters is still repellent.

Perhaps the most outrageous finding of the report is the claim that the silence by the young victims “is one reason why the abusive behavior persisted.” In other words, blame the victims. Can the Catholic Church be so indifferent to the suffering of these innocent young victims that it fails to realize why so many failed to speak-out about the unspeakable behavior of their trusted priests?

The real cause of the sexual abuse of children by priests is self-evident. During the 1960s and 70s vocations to the priesthood began to fall-off dramatically. In order to fill-up the seminaries, the Church loosened its ban on people with alternate sexual preferences. When I entered the seminary in 1958, the priests in charge questioned me and all other novitiates extensively to be sure we were not homosexual or pedophiliac. In the following decades, such screening simply was not done.

The result of the loosening of criteria for entrance into the priesthood was the ordination of large numbers of men who did not have the usual heterosexual orientation. To men with pedophiliac predispositions, employment by the church became an enticing occupation. Such men were not driven by desire to serve God. Rather, they were encouraged by the opportunity to be around, influence, and exert authority over young boys. In my research I came to understand that most pedophiles are not attracted to grown women. They are strongly attracted to young boys. By becoming priests they were able to avoid the uncomfortable problem of having to explain why they were not getting married. On the contrary, they could feel assured that their parents and relatives would admire and respect their choice of vocation.

It should be understood that homosexuality is not the same as pedophilia. Most homosexuals are not pedophiles. They are not interested in having sex with children. However, some forms of pedophilia do involve homosexuality. I do not believe that the ordination of homosexuals hurt the Church. Consensual homosexual behavior between adults should not be considered a reason for denial of ordination and should not be thought of as a sin. But many pedophiles are sexually attracted to children of their own sex. Pedophilia is a crime and an abomination. A child cannot consent to such treatment. It is irrelevant that the crime is caused by a mental irregularity. Many crimes are caused by psychological disturbances. That is not an excuse. The sexual abuse of a child is no more excusable than the rape of a woman.

According to the report, it was not possible for the church, or for anyone, to identify abusive priests in advance. The report said that priests who abuse minors have no particular “psychological characteristics,” “developmental histories” or “mood disorders” that distinguished them from priests who had not abused. In other words, the bishops want the public to let them off the hook because there was nothing they could do to prevent this atrocity. Well, I do not believe that for a moment. I remember the grilling we received when I entered the seminary, and if the church had continued that form of screening there might have been fewer priests but there also would have been far fewer pedophiles.

More important, the actions taken by the bishops after learning about the sex abuse of children were unconscionable. Instead of reporting these offenders to the police, the bishops sent them to internal programs run by the church. After treatment, the pedophiles were transferred to other parishes where many of them continued their predatory behavior toward young boys. Basically, the bishops committed the crime of aiding and abetting in the commission of felonies. In legal terms it is called “compounding a felony.” The bishops should have been sent to prison. The only reason they were not jailed is that the scandal did not break until years after much of the abuse was conducted and somehow the bishops received special treatment from the law because of their positions in society.

I suspect that there was more than one motive for the cover-up by the bishops of these crimes. Obviously, the bishops did not want to see the priests being hauled before the courts with the accompanying bad publicity for the Church. Also, they obviously felt that the Church could not afford to lose more priests from its already thinning ranks. But one further motive may have prevailed. I suspect that large numbers of bishops were also themselves pedophiles who understood the sexual drives of these priests and wanted to protect them.

One would think that an organization dedicated to religion, holiness, worship, and truth, would have the decency to come clean about this scandal. Instead, this report shows the Church for what it really is. There is nothing holy about the Holy Catholic Church.

Slick Mitt Romeny

2011-05-15T11:59:00.000-07:00

George Romney, father of Mitt Romney, and former governor of Michigan, was too honest. He admitted that when he visited Vietnam he was “brainwashed” by the generals. For this candor he lost his bid to be Republican nominee for president. His son Mitt learned the lesson well. He decided that the last thing you need in politics is honesty and integrity. With his oily neat hair, abundant fortune, and vulpine character, he may be the frontrunner in the race to get the prize that escaped his father.

In 2006, when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he supported and signed a health care law that became the model for the federal health care law, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) signed by President Obama. The Massachusetts health care insurance reform law mandates that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a state-government-regulated minimum level of healthcare insurance coverage. It provides free health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level (FPL) who are not eligible for Medicaid. The law also subsidizes health care insurance for those earning up to 300% of the FPL.

Now that he is again running for President, Romney has condemned the federal health care law that was based on his state law. His most fervent distinction is that his was a state law and that the law signed by President Obama is an excessive exertion of federal power. This is not the first time Romney has had to explain his many flip-flops on political questions. Like all of his other flip-flops, however, the explanations he provides are little more than nit-picking and quibbling.

In 1994, when Mitt was running against Ted Kennedy for senator from Massachusetts, he said: “I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country.” During the 2002 governor's race in Massachusetts, Romney said: "The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's." Yet, when he first began campaigning for president, Romney came out in support of state laws forbidding abortion and criticized the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. He said: “I am firmly pro-life.”

In his 1994 senate run, Romney indicated that he opposed prayer in the schools. In 2007, he called for allowing prayer in school ceremonies.

When he ran for governor in 2002, Romney strongly advocated stem-cell research and promised to lobby President Bush to provide federal funding for such research. During his presidential campaign, however, Romney renounced his 2002 position and said that he now agreed with Bush's decision to ban federal funding for stem-cell research.

In Romney's 2002 race for governor, he said: "We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts; I support them. I won't chip away at them; I believe they protect us and provide for our safety.” But just before declaring his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination for president, Romney joined the National Rifle Association. He said: "I have a gun of my own. I go hunting myself. I'm a member of the NRA and believe firmly in the right to bear arms.” The Associated Press reported in April 2007 that Romney never sought a hunting license in any of the four states where he has resided.

In 2002 Romney supported the right of homosexuals to form civil unions and said he would support domestic partnership benefits. He said: "All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual orientation." During his first campaign for president, however, Romney stated that he is opposed to such civil unions as well as same-sex marriages.

These are just a few of the issues on which Slick Mitt has changed positions since he started running for president. Romney has calculated that the base of the Republican Party is far more conservative than the electorate in Massachusetts. He simply could not get nominated with the positions which he embraced during his races for senator and governor of Massachusetts. He appears to have calculated correctly. Republican voters do not care that this man is a total fraud and liar. They like him now that he is speaking like a true conservative. What does this say about the values of the “values” Party? Is honesty not one of the Republican values?

In an editorial, The New York Times said of Mitt Romney: “It is hard to find an issue on which he has not repositioned himself to the right since he was governor of Massachusetts. It is impossible to figure out where he stands or where he would lead the country.”

Romney called himself the candidate of “change.” What did he mean? John McCain made a good point when he said that sure, Romney was the candidate of change because had changed his position so many times.

What this country needs is not the small change of an imposter like Mitt Romney. It still needs a man of integrity like Barack Obama.

Why Do Catholics Go On Believing?

2011-05-08T12:11:00.000-07:00

When I was a young boy I wanted to be a Catholic Priest. It seemed like a sure way to gain prestige and honor throughout one’s life. I went into the Catholic Seminary, but while I was there it occurred to me that there may be no such thing as God and that I may be wasting my life. I left the seminary and began a lifelong search for the truth about God. Ultimately, I concluded that there is no such thing as God, and that all teaching about him is an illusion.

Today, as I drive by Catholic Churches on Sunday the parking lots are filled with cars. It is plain to see that millions of Americans still believe in the Church and still go to weekly mass. It astonishes me to think that with all of the scandals and errors of the Church, there are still a lot of people who want to believe that this is the true religion.

People do not seem to be bothered by the silliness of a Pope strolling around magnificent cathedrals clad in lustrous medieval vestments and wearing a fabulous medieval crown. They are not turned off by the absurdity of a Pope claiming to be infallible on matters of faith and morals. They are not in the least bothered by the claim that Catholic priests can turn bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.

Catholics go on believing even when their rational faculties are attacked by the most bizarre claims of the Church. When the Shroud of Turin was exposed as a Thirteenth Century forgery, believers refused to accept the evidence and continued to venerate the cloth. When the James Ossuary was proven to be a fraud, believers continued to insist that it was the receptacle of the bones of James, the brother of Jesus.

Catholics who study history seem unfazed by the many atrocities and abominations committed by the Catholic Church in the name of God. They hear about the Crusades and their slaughter of innocent Jews and Moslems. They read about Medici Popes with their rampaging greed and lust. They read about the Inquisition and its sheer horror. They read about the expulsion of Jews from Spain in the 1400s and the Church’s confinement of Rome’s Jews to a place called the Ghetto. They learn of Pope Pius XII’s failure to speak out against the Nazi terror and the aid given by Catholic priests to escaping Nazis who were being sought after World War II for crimes against humanity.

When the Catholic Church forbade the use of contraceptives, millions of Catholics went on attending mass while continuing to use the forbidden birth control devices and pills. When it was revealed that thousands of Catholic priests had practiced child molestation on tens of thousands of victims over several decades and that the hierarchy had protected the priests and failed to enforce the laws against this abomination, Catholics simply continued to attend mass in the dioceses where such priests and bishops fester.

Catholics have a powerful need to believe in their Church even in the face of the worst scandals and happenings. In my book, "The Case Against God: A Lawyer Examines the Evidence" (now available on Kindle), I discuss the reasons why people go on believing in God despite the absence of evidence for his existence. This need to believe in God makes them able to believe in the Catholic Church with all of its disgrace, dishonor, and scandal. Catholics are taught that the Church is more than just the popes and clergy. It is the body of Christ, and therefore even when a bad priest (say a pedophile) says mass, he is capable of turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus.

As I noted in a previous blog, the “sacrifice” of the mass is actually a reprise of a bloody and disgusting lynching and murder of Jesus as a human sacrifice to propitiate a loving God on account of humanity’s sins. The whole basis of the mass is an affront to human intelligence.

Somewhere in my youth, after leaving the seminary, I began to realize these things and stopped considering myself a Catholic. I don’t fully understand why most thinking Catholics do not do likewise.

THE CIVIL WAR

2011-05-06T10:47:00.000-07:00

The primary cause of the Civil War was slavery. This is clear from the pronouncements of all the leaders of that time. Lincoln made it emphatically clear in his Second Inaugural Address when he said: “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war.” The arguments made today by right-wing apologists for the Southern cause are spurious at best.

What is not fully understood is the reason why slavery was so important a ground for conflict between the North and the South. It was not simply racial bigotry that caused the South to so fervently support the institution of slavery. It was money and greed. Slaves were considered property, and a very large percentage of the wealth of southern planters was tied-up in slaves. To the southerners, abolition of slavery meant abolition of much of their fortune. In addition, refusal of the government to allow the expansion of slavery to the western part of the country meant a stark restriction on where and to whom slave holders could sell their slaves. Lincoln said: “To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.”

The powerful hatred between North and South was generated by the fear in the South that the North planned to take away a very large part of southern treasure. For this, the southerners were willing to fight to the death.

It is immaterial that many of the common southern soldiers did not own slaves. Like everyone today who wishes to become more affluent, they looked upon slavery as a way to gain riches, and considered the institution of slavery to be a proper capitalist endeavor.

Even the southern slave holders knew that slavery was wrong. They clung to it because of its importance to their economy. They could not simply free their slaves without giving-up much of their wealth. Those few who did free their slaves showed a lot of courage and humanity.

Slavery was, after all, a gigantic horror. In my mind it is second only to the Nazi Holocaust in evil. Regardless of whether slave traders and slave owners thought that Black people were inferior, they knew that they were human beings and not just animals. Many felt deep pangs of conscience at the exploitation of their fellow men, and some people, like the Englishman Wilberforce and the American William Lloyd Garrison, could not tolerate such evil.

The legacy of slavery today is a divided America. It is not just divided between whites and blacks. It is divided between rich and poor, northerners and southerners, liberals and conservatives. It is no coincidence that the most conservative parts of America are in the South where slavery was prevalent, or that the most liberal areas are in the North where abolitionism prevailed. The legacy of racial intolerance which once belonged to southern Democrats called “Dixiecrats,” now belongs to southern racists called Republicans or Tea Partiers. They continue to recite all of the old slogans and canards of states’ rights, smaller government, and freedom from governmental interference, but what they really want is the right to continue their discrimination against and mistreatment of African Americans. They deeply resent the fact that some of their tax dollars are spent to aid poor Black people, and that the government is the main enforcer of the civil rights of Blacks.

Easter

2011-04-24T08:18:00.001-07:00

It is Christian doctrine that Jesus died as a sacrifice for man. The idea is that “Original Sin” was committed by Adam and Eve, and that the stain of that sin was upon every human being born thereafter. Thus, even though subsequent humans did not commit the original sin, they were guilty of it as well as other sins. Christ came to save man from original sin and all other sin, and to provide a means for man to achieve everlasting life in heaven. In order to save man, Christ had to perform a sacrifice. Jesus was God, so he performed a sacrifice to himself. The sacrifice was a human sacrifice of the most bestial and agonizing kind, a painfully slow death by suffocation on a cross.

One has to wonder why this omnipotent, all-loving, almighty God couldn’t have simply forgiven all men of sin without this orgy of torment? Why did he have to be the scapegoat for all human beings and go through this horrendous nightmare of torture in order to provide salvation? The answer is that the writers of the Bible lived in a benighted and barbaric time when this was thought to be the right way for the gods to behave.

I confess, I simply do not understand how rational people living today can accept such nonsense as a fundamental part of their religion.

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead has been called the basis for all Christianity. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:13-14: “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” The celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the most important date on the Catholics’ liturgical calendar. It is also the concoction of Paul and other writers who came long after Jesus died.

Scholars use various methods of textual criticism, including language and style, to determine if text is authentic or was added to the original gospel at a later time. There are many things on which they agree. Scholars agree that Jesus did not predict his own resurrection from the dead or his second coming. The quotations in the Bible in which he makes such a prediction (e.g. Mark 8:31) are considered to be later additions.

Moreover, the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection are so contradictory and improbable that the whole story has to be dismissed as fiction. Matthew says that the day following Jesus crucifixion Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to the tomb (Matt 28:2), but Mark says that the two Marys and Salome went (Mark 16:1). Luke writes that Mary Magdalene went with Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and other women (Luke 24:10). Matthew says that the stone was removed by an angel at the time the women arrived at Jesus’ tomb (Matt. 28:2), but Mark and Luke say it had already been removed (Mark 16:2-4, Luke 24:1-2). Matthew says that when the women arrived, the angel was outside the tomb (Matt 28:2), but Mark says the angel was inside the tomb (Mark 16:5) and Luke says there were two men inside the tomb (Luke 24:4).

In Matthew the two women rush from the tomb to tell the disciples (Matt 28:8-9), but Mark says that they said nothing to anyone (Mark 16:8). Luke says that they reported the story to the disciples (Luke 24:9-11). John tells a very different story from the others (John 20:1-18). Later post-resurrection stories are also in conflict (compare Matt 28:16-20 with Luke 24:13-53, and John 20:19).

The first Gospel written was the Gospel of Mark. Scholars can tell that the whole story of the resurrection of Jesus in Mark was added to the Gospel by somebody else long after the original version was written. Originally, the Gospel of Mark ended at Chapter 16:8. That is the part where the women find the empty tomb and are told by a “young man” that Jesus has risen. The part of the Gospel after that, in which Jesus appears to various people, was added by later writers who wanted to supply authenticity to the myth of Jesus’ resurrection. As Professor Bart D. Ehrman of the University of North Carolina says: “These verses [Mark 16:9-20] are absent from our two oldest and best manuscripts of Mark’s Gospel, along with other important witnesses; the transition between this passage and the one preceding it is hard to understand….and there are a large number of words and phrases in the passage that are not found elsewhere in Mark.”141

If you consider the fact that the Gospels of Mathew and Luke were based on the gospel of Mark, then it becomes clear that the Gospels’ story of Jesus’ resurrection is pure myth that was made-up long after the Gospels were written. The earliest Christian scriptures were the Epistles of Paul, yet Paul does not give any details about Jesus’ resurrection other than referring to it (See Rom. 6:5, 1 Cor. 15:13).

The early Christians observed Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as a Passover celebration. Thus, in Asia Minor and other places, it was not celebrated on a Sunday. It was celebrated on whatever day the Passover occurred. Around 154 AD the Christians in Rome began celebrating it on Sunday because Sunday was the Christians’ day of worship. When Rome became the seat of the Pope, the Church made Sunday the official day for the celebration of the resurrection. The day was later named “Easter” after Eostre, the Saxon goddess whose feast was celebrated at the Spring equinox.142

The idea of resurrection by a god did not begin with Jesus. Lots of gods arose from the dead in ancient times. Among them are Mithra, Attis, Dionysus, Osiris, Tammuz, Ishtar, Adonis, Persephone, Semele, Heracles (or Herakles), and Melqart. Some claim Buddah was resurrected from the dead.

When my daughter was 5 years old I asked her if she believed in Jesus. She said yes. I asked if she believed that Jesus was God. She said yes. I asked her if she believed that Jesus was crucified. She said yes. I then asked her if she believed that Jesus rose again from the dead. She said: "No way!"

THE HOLOCAUST

2011-04-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

With Passover approaching on April 19, I choose to remember the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust. As a gentile, the Holocaust has always presented a serious problem for me. How could a modern, culturally rich, Christian nation carry-out such a monstrous act of evil? With all of the crimes of man, including the genocides committed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and other places, and the atrocities committed in every war, I still see the Holocaust as a horror unmatched in the history of human evil. It should never be compared to other acts of evil.

Emil L. Fackenheim, in his book, "To Mend the World," said: “To link Auschwitz with Hiroshima is not to deepen or widen one’s concern with humanity and its future. It is to evade the import of Auschwitz and Hiroshima alike.” The same can be said of all of the other cataclysms suffered by humanity. Each is a separate occurrence of evil.

The history of the Jews, beginning with the conquest of Israel and banishment of Jews by the Romans, is one long sorrowful testament to man’s inhumanity. The Nazis did not invent the genocide of the Jews. They merely took it to new depths of horrendous magnitude. Over the centuries before the Holocaust, the Jews experienced repeated pogroms and persecutions by Europeans and Arabs. Around the time when Columbus was sailing to America, the rulers of Spain were expelling all of the Jews from their realm. Many reasons are given for this massive persecution, but no explanation can begin to justify such evil.

One frequently hears people compare things to the Holocaust. The right-wing anti-abortionists like to say that abortion is the same as the Holocaust. Such unthinking speech is morally abhorrent. How can any person compare the elimination of a not-yet-conscious, not-yet-thinking, not-yet-feeling embryo to the deliberate murder of grown, thinking, feeling human beings? At Auschwitz and other camps the Nazis used to save time and trouble by throwing live babies and small children into the ovens without gassing them first. If you cannot identify the distinction between that and abortion, you are morally numb.

The excuse given by the Christian Nazis and Fascists for persecution of the Jews was usually that they were: “Christ Killers.” It is a revoltingly stupid claim. Jesus of Nazareth was killed by the Romans, yet nobody has ever wanted to exterminate the Italians. Even if it had been the Jews who killed Jesus (himself a Jew), why blame it on Jewish descendents living thousands of years later?

According to the Bible, Jesus had brothers and sisters. We must assume that many of the descendents of these brothers and sisters were Jews, and that millions of Twentieth Century Jews in Europe had the blood of Jesus’ family in them. The Christians who marched Jews into the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other camps were actually murdering the descendents of Joseph, Mary, and the family of Jesus.

As a gentile, I am able to find something valuable in the teaching of Emile Fackenheim. He said “To grasp the Holocaust whole-of-horror is not to comprehend or transcend it, but rather, to say no to it, or resist it.” Fackenheim said that 613 commandments were given on Mt. Sinai. He offered a 614th commandment. In effect, he said that if we forget, or minimize, or diminish the importance of the Holocaust, if gentiles engage in anti-Semitism, if Jews give-up their beliefs and culture because of the Holocaust, they will be letting Hitler gain a form of victory. He said that we must not let Hitler win.

I may not share the beliefs of religious Jews, but by dedicating my life to tolerance and brotherhood, I can join in the crusade to defeat Hitler and his progeny.

The Tea Party Wanted a Shutdown

2011-04-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

If there had been a governmental shutdown, you could blame it on the right-wing Tea Partiers in Congress. While they may not constitute a majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, they carry more weight than their numbers would justify. Leaders like John Boehner are fearful of confrontation with these ideologues who would have no compunction about attacking fellow Republicans. Many of the Tea Party fanatics came to Washington by defeating more moderate Republicans.

Michele Bachmann is a good example of the kind of person produced by the far right. In a speech before anti-abortion demonstrators she made it clear that she has no problem with a governmental shutdown. Like all Tea Party people, she has a hatred for the government and a desire to diminish its power. A total shutdown would not bother her at all.

Bachmann and other Tea Party representatives voted against the continuing resolution that kept the government running when the parties reached a settlement of the budget dispute on April 8. Bachmann voted against an earlier continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown. She said that she did it because it didn’t defund Planned Parenthood and “Obamacare.” She called abortion the “watershed issue of our time” and said she’s prepared to fight “eyeball-to-eyeball” to defund Planned Parenthood in the next continuing resolution. The budget compromise reached on April 8 left the issue of funding Planned Parenthood for another day.

Those who want to defund Planned Parenthood are not doing so because of the budget or the deficit. For them it is a purely ideological issue. They object to Planned Parenthood because offices of Planned Parenthood provide abortions. Under federal law, Planned Parenthood is not allowed to use any federal money to fund abortions, but the Tea Party people hate the organization even though it does a great deal of good by providing other health services to women. The simple fact is that, as Senator Chuck Schumer said, the fanatical right-wingers of the Republican Party would relish a governmental shutdown in order to flex their muscles and demonstrate their ability to force their ultra-conservative agenda on the nation. They ignore the fact that a majority of Americans support the right to choose abortion.

The Tea Partiers are acting like children. If they can’t get their way they will not play at all. They do not seem to understand that in order to get things done in Washington it is often necessary to compromise. In the middle of a financial slowdown with millions of people out of work, they were willing to add to the rolls of the unemployed by laying-off approximately 800,000 government workers. Their unthinking negligence could have had an enormously adverse affect on the economy of America. Not only would many government departments be shut down, but thousands of private companies which depend on government business would be severely damaged.

Defense Secretary Gates said that if there was a government shutdown, troops would receive half a paycheck for the first two weeks. After that, troops wouldn’t be paid until a deal was reached in Washington to fund the government. Considering the fact that most military people do not get very high pay, a shutdown would cause hundreds of thousands of them great hardship. In a shutdown, many thousands of civilian employees of the military would be laid off.

The last time the government was shut down, disability benefits and pension claims were held-up for more than 400,000 veterans. New applicants for Social Security benefits were turned away. Clinical research trials at the National Institutes of Health were halted and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped disease surveillance. Nine million people were turned away from national museums, monuments, forests, and parks. The government suspended cleanup at 600 toxic waste sites.

In a shutdown, all of the government departments that provide federal monitoring and inspection would be closed. This would include mine safety inspections, food and drug inspections, and financial regulation and oversight of financial markets. Many other governmental activities would be suspended including visa and passport services, energy information services, and cleanup at 600 toxic waste sites. The Small Business Administration would not process loans for small companies.

If Tea Party fanatics had been able to buffalo the leadership into their extreme positions, the shutdown might have lasted a long time. This could have thrown the economy back into deep recession with millions more Americans out of work. The Democratic and Republican leadership showed statesmanship. The Tea Party extremists demonstrated juvenile irresponsibility.

The Case Against God

2011-03-11T07:17:00.000-08:00

My book, "The Case Against God: A Lawyer Examines the Evidence," has now been published by Amazon on Kindle. This means that anybody owning a Kindle or a device with Kindle applications such as iPad, iPhone, PC phone, Mac phone, Blackberry, Android phone, and Windows 7 phone can buy my book for $5.00. The book is a discussion about whether God exists from the point of view of a nonbeliever. In it I have explored The Old Testament, The New Testament, and the teachings of and about Jesus. I have researched all of the leading biblical and theological experts and I present the facts found by them. I also discuss the arguments of philosophers for the existence of God, the dispute between science and religion, the so-called “Intelligent Design” theory, the problem of evil, and the question of why so many people believe in God. Even if you don’t agree with my views about God, I hope that if you have a Kindle-type device, you will get the book and read it. Whether or not you agree, it is very informative and will greatly increase your knowledge of the Bible and religion.

What if they Repealed the Health Care Law?

2011-03-01T11:30:00.000-08:00

I confess that I do not fully understand the reason why Republicans are so fiercely opposed to the health care reform law, more properly known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA). It cannot be denied that it enacted many reforms favorable to the American people. It might be said that the opposition has been fueled by the health insurance industry, or that well-heeled Republicans object to the higher taxes the law imposes on wealthy taxpayers. But that would not explain the widespread fervor of grass root Republicans against the law. There must be something more. Now the House of Representatives has voted along party lines to repeal the law. That vote could not succeed because of Democratic control of the Senate, but who knows? Perhaps at some later date Republicans will gain the strength to carry out their plan to totally repeal all of the provisions of the law. What will happen then?

1. Repealing PPACA would add to $230 billion to the deficit. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate, the health care reform law reduces the deficit by $230 billion over the next decade. This is because the law not only provides for government financial support of many reforms but also provides for higher taxes on wealthy taxpayers in order to pay for the reforms. The taxes exceed the amount needed to finance the law by $230 billion.

2. If health care reform is repealed, 32 million fewer people will have insurance than if the bill is left to stand. This is according to the CBO estimate. These millions of people would constitute a burden on the health care system. Many of them would die of their illnesses and many others would go back to using the ER as their first line of medical treatment.

3. Repealing reform would mean higher health insurance premiums. The amount people actually pay for premiums would be much higher under repeal because right now most people will be able to get a subsidy from the government to help pay for the cost of health insurance.

4. If the law is repealed, senior citizens will not get relief from the “doughnut hole.” Senior citizens who are beneficiaries of the Medicare Part D drug program should be aware that the health care reform act has already begun to close the “donut hole.” That is the period during which seniors have to pay the full cost of their prescriptions after they amass $2,700 in drug costs. After $2,700, Medicare does not resume paying for drug expenses until seniors reach $4,350 in out-of-pocket payments, a figure most seniors never reach in one year. The health care reform bill has already cut the donut hole by $500 and has instituted a 50 percent discount in brand-name drugs. It will eventually abolish the donut hole. For many seniors who simply cannot afford to buy their essential medications during the donut hole, that will be life saving. If the law is repealed, the doughnut hole will remain.

5. If the law is repealed, uninsured people or people who have been denied insurance because of preexisting conditions will lose the temporary program enacted to help them buy health insurance. The health care reform bill creates an Insurance Exchange that begins in 2013 and will enable purchasers to search for the best and lowest-cost insurance. Until the Exchange is put in place, however, the bill creates a temporary insurance program to help uninsured people or people who have been denied policies because of preexisting conditions.

6. If the health care law is repealed, the insurance companies will be able to go back to denying health insurance because of preexisting conditions, placing lifetime caps or annual caps on health insurance coverage, or rescinding a patient’s policy when the patient files a claim for benefits.

7. The PPACA allows displaced workers to keep their COBRA coverage until the Exchange is in place and they can access affordable coverage. Repeal would take away that right.

8. The law creates a long-term-care insurance program, financed by voluntary payroll deductions, to provide benefits to adults who become functionally disable. Repeal would remove that program.

9. The law requires that health plans allow young people up to age 26 to remain on their parents’ insurance policies if their parents so choose. Repeal would mean no such coverage for young people.

10. The law eliminates co-payments for preventative services and exempts preventative services from deductibles under the Medicare program. Repeal would mean return of such co-payments and deductibles.

11. The law prohibits Medicare Advantage (the private Medicare insurance program subsidized by the federal government) from charging enrollees higher cost-sharing for services in their private plan than is charged in traditional Medicare. Repeal would take away this protection.

There are a number of other beneficial provisions of the law that are now in effect. Others will take effect in 2013 and 2014. If the Republicans are able at some point to repeal the health care law, it will mean the loss by millions of Americans of reforms that make it easier and less expensive to obtain health care. It will also mean that greedy health insurance companies will be able to go back to gouging the public.

Why We Believe--Fear of Death

2011-01-14T12:55:00.000-08:00

Religion may not have arisen solely because of the fear of death, but if you ask people today, they will tell you that there has to be some continuing life after death. Religion provides assurance that there is such life.

Death is part of nature. Every living thing dies. All humans die. No matter how long science is able to extend the length of a human life, we will all die. It is inherent in all living things. Why do we fear death? Why is death the most terrible part of life? Why have we surrounded death with such enormous horror and grief? You would think that such a natural, universal event would be stoically accepted by us as inevitable. But it isn’t.

We fear death because fear is part of our survival as a species. Any species that does not develop some type of fear of death is likely to become extinct. Our young species has managed to survive for hundreds of thousands of years in part because of our fear of death. Like other genetically successful species, we have developed evolutionary methods of avoiding death, at least until we have reproduced and spread our genes. Whether we will be as successful a species as the long-lived turtles, sharks, and alligators, remains to be seen.

I believe that one of the many strategies the human race uses to deal with its fear of death is the creation of imaginary beings called “gods.” By creating gods, humans seek to avoid the despair that might accompany a full understanding of their fate. The invention of gods is a tranquilizer that helps man deal with the fact that when we die, we die to eternal oblivion.

Most people realize that the human body does not survive death. What they hope for is the survival of human consciousness and memory. The idea is that our spirit or “soul” survives in an afterlife. It would make little difference if the spirit or soul survived but did not remember living on earth. Most people wish for the survival of our memory. In heaven we would know who we are and remember our lives and family on earth. For most people this includes seeing and getting back together with our loved ones (although Jesus said that in the resurrection there was no marriage, Matt. 22:23-30). For most, the afterlife is an idealized version of life on earth. There is no pain, no misery, no stress, no sin, no evil, only unlimited joy. For Catholics it is the “beatific vision.” For Moslems it is “Paradise,” an eternal feast in a green garden with beautiful virgins serving the faithful. For most people, people in heaven are aware of what is happening on earth, and many believe that the dead can intervene in earthly events.

There is something contradictory about the idea that our consciousness survives our deaths. Death is, ipso facto, the death of consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the brain, and if the brain is dead it does not function. We want to believe that somehow, through the hand of God, our consciousness, our brain, goes on working after death even though for earthly purposes it is finished. We want to believe that the mind is not really part of the body, but rather, a spiritual function. Science knows that the mind is the brain and the nervous system, a purely physical phenomenon, and like the rest of the body, it dies.

Noah's Ark in Kentucky

2010-12-21T10:50:00.000-08:00

The State of Kentucky is subsidizing the construction along U.S. Route 75 of a replica of Noah’s Ark along with other biblical projects in a religious park. The ark is to be built according to the dimensions set-out in the Bible. The state justifies this involvement in religion as a way of creating jobs for construction people and of attracting visitors from around the country to the park. The people behind the project are not doing it to create jobs, but rather, to provide inspiration and belief in the biblical account of Noah’s flood. They are fundamentalist Christians who really believe that there was such a flood and that there was a man named Noah who built an ark and saved his family and the animal kingdom from the flood.

Some time ago ABC News did a story about some Christian archeologists from Texas who claimed to have found the remnants of Noah’s Ark. They apparently found something that looked to them like the Ark on Mount Suleiman in Iran's Elburz mountain range rather than on Mount Ararat in Turkey, the site identified in Genesis 8:4. Nevertheless, they believed it was the Ark. "I can't imagine what it could be if it is not the Ark," said Arch Bonnema of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute--a Christian archeology organization dedicated to looking for biblical artifacts.

We have to wonder at the pathetic spectacle of “scientific” teams of grown people going out and climbing mountains to find the remains of Noah’s Ark. It is a little sad. Serious archeologists, geologists, historians, and theologians know that the story of Noah’s Ark is an ancient myth, a fairy tale, not history. It never really happened.

In the first place, there are two flood stories in Genesis. In one, God tells Noah that he is going to destroy sinful mankind with a flood and that Noah is to take his family and two of every kind of animal on board the Ark (Genesis 6:19). In the other, God directs Noah to take seven pairs of clean animals, of every type, and one pair of the unclean (Genesis 7:2). The reason that there are two stories is because there were different people who wrote different stories at different times which were later stitched together into what we now call Genesis. It was not written by Moses as is claimed in the Bible.

According to the Bible, the Ark was 300 cubits (about 450 feet) long. This is considerably longer than the largest wooden vessels ever built in historical times. Shipbuilders know that wooden ships over 300 feet long (the size of a football field) would not be able to float. The schooner Wyoming, launched in 1909, was the largest documented wooden-hulled cargo ship ever built. It measured only 350 feet and needed iron cross-bracing to counter warping and a steam pump to handle a serious leak problem.

Try to imagine fitting all those thousands of animals onto the Ark. There would be two (or seven) of every kind of elephant, rhinoceros, hippo, gorilla, ox, cow, horse, lion, tiger, bear, giraffe, wildabeeste, elk, moose, buffalo, etc. It would have been impossible for many of the animals to come from distant parts of the world. How could kangaroos and koalas get from Australia to the Middle East? How did Noah keep lions, tigers, bears, panthers, and hyenas from attacking deer, elk, antelope, sheep and other kinds of natural prey? How did Noah feed all those animals?

Anthropoligists and paleoanthropoligists have used fossils and DNA to trace the history of man. They know that our species originated in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. They recognize that man evolved from lower animals over a period of millions of years. There has been no worldwide flood interfering with human history. Moreover, geologists are unable to find any physical evidence of the kind of worldwide flood spoken about in the Bible.

The story of Noah and the Flood did not originate with the writers of the Hebrew Bible. It was borrowed from ancient Mesopotamian myths that precede the writing of the Bible by thousands of years. The Mesopotamian myths were written about different gods and different people.

The Babylonian Epic of Atrahasis, written over a thousand years before the Hebrew Bible, is an account of a pious hero who is warned by the god Enki to build a great ship and load it with family and selected animals in order to escape the coming deluge. The rains come, and everybody else in the world is drowned. The ship grounds on a mountain in Armenia and the hero releases three birds. The third bird does not return. A sacrifice pleases the god, and the god promises never to send another flood. Sound familiar?

The Sumarian story of Ziusudra, and the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, both written thousands of years before the Bible, have similar stories. In the Babylonian flood myth, the central story is about a fight between the gods Marduk and Tiamat.
Fundamentalist Christians and Jews might argue that the building of the Ark was a miracle and that the whole story must be taken as miraculous. Why then do they expect to find the actual Ark? Surely if it was a miraculous vessel that God created only for that one period of time, it would not still survive today.

Fundamentalist Christians have constructed a “Creation Museum” out near the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport. In order to get there from Dayton, Ohio, the one has to drive over bedrock of Ordovician and Silurian rocks that were deposited between about 435 and 445 million years ago. World geography was quite different then. North America straddled the equator and Ohio was located south of the equator. The Ohio River did not exist. From a geological standpoint, the Ohio River is quite young. It was formed on a piecemeal basis beginning between 2.5 and 3 million years ago from north-flowing rivers dammed by the early ice ages.

In late May, 2009, seventy paleontologists took a break from a conference at the University of Cincinnati and drove over Ordovician bedrock to visit the Creation Museum. I’m sure that they were interested in seeing not only the displays at the museum, but also the living fossils of a species that was thought to have become extinct at the time of the European Enlightenment--the irrational, superstitious, religious believers for whom modern science means nothing. Those believers insist that the earth is 6000 years old. They believe this despite the fact that everybody knows that even Dick Clark is more than 6000 years old.

One display at the museum shows two prehistoric children playing while dinosaurs, which became extinct 63 million years before the human species developed, cavort nearby. The scientists visiting the museum were astonished. "I'm speechless," said Derek E.G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale; "It's rather scary.” Jerry Lipps, professor of geology, paleontology, and evolution at University of California, Berkeley, said: “It's sort of a monument to scientific illiteracy, isn't it?” Lisa Park, a University of Akron professor of paleontology, who is an elder in the Presbyterian Church, called it "bad science and even worse theology -- and the theology is far more offensive to me."

Leaving aside the geological evidence, it doesn’t seem likely that the earth began 6000 years ago. There was already a flourishing civilization in Egypt over 6000 years ago. British archaeologists have found 30 sites rich in art chiseled into rocks up to 6,000 years ago in the desert east of the Nile. The rock drawings show cattle, boats, ostriches, giraffes, hippos and the men and women who lived in the area in 4,000 BC, long before the first pharaohs or the first pyramids.

“Lucy” was the name given to an early ancestor of the human species discovered by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray in 1974 at Hadar in Ethiopia. Its age is about 3.2 million years. Lucy was an adult female of about 25 years and was assigned to the species “Australopithecus Afarensis.” There have been hundreds of discoveries of pre-human fossils going back millions of years.

Fossils of the now extinct species of human called Neanderthals have been found in various places in Europe and the Middle East. The first proto-Neanderthal traits appeared in Europe as early as 600,000–350,000 years ago. Fossils of our ancestors, Cro-Magnon men, date back 40,000 years. Archeologists in Oregon have located an ancient trash dump and latrine which was found to contain human DNA linked directly to modern-day Native Americans with Asian roots. The materials found were radiocarbon dated to 14,300 years ago. It is believed that the ancestors of Native Americans came over the land bridge to Alaska around 20,000 years ago. People who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old don’t want to hear about science or truth. They want to live in their own world of nescience.

ARE THE REPUBLICANS GUILTY OF TREASON

2010-11-29T08:03:00.000-08:00

What is treason? The dictionary says that it is “Violation of allegiance toward one's country.” To me, this would include aiding in the economic destruction of one’s country and blocking efforts to make one’s country prosperous and safe. Why would anyone engage in such treasonous actions? Perhaps in order to replace those in power and take-over the government. This, I contend, is exactly what the Republicans are trying to do.

You would think that such treasonous actions would be a thing of the past. Control of the government no longer includes attainment of great wealth, castles, and lands. But it does include the acquisition of great power, and this is probably what the Republicans want. They have captured the House of Representatives and now they want to control the Senate and the Presidency. They believe that in order to do this they need to oppose every effort of President Obama and the Democrats to improve the nation’s economy and security.

It may sound harsh to call this kind of Republican political behavior treason, but the effect of their actions could be the continuation of economic stagnation and unemployment, damage to our relationship with Russia, weakening of our national security, and decrease in American prestige abroad. The Republican’s idea, as recently espoused by Senator Mitch McConnell, is to do everything possible to defeat President Obama in the next election. This means that even if Americans have to suffer more unemployment and poor economy, it is worth it to win the presidency. McConnell knows that President Obama will have a much harder time getting reelected if the economy remains lethargic.

You can expect that the Republicans in Congress will oppose and try to block any effort to give further stimulus to the economy. Every economist knows that extending unemployment insurance not only provides desperately needed relief to people out of work but also helps the economy because of the tendency of such people to spend unemployment benefits right away. Every economist knows that providing more stimulus to rebuild American’s infrastructure will improve the economy by creating jobs and enhancing interstate commerce. Nevertheless, Republicans have already blocked the building of a new rail system in Ohio and a new Hudson River tunnel in New Jersey.

The Republicans in the Senate are, apparently, filibustering a bill that would provide health care and economic compensation for tens of thousands of citizens suffering severe effects from the cleanup of the 9/11 collapse of the World Trade Center. Police, firefighters and citizen volunteers suffered various illnesses after their labors amid the toxic fumes and clouds at ground zero. They have not received compensation or health care because they were not part of the original lawsuits that were settled. So far, only one Republican Senator appears willing to support the bill. That is not politics, that is cruelty.

There are certain things that can be done to lower the federal deficit, some of them very hard. But you can be sure that Republicans will not agree to allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire while keeping the tax cuts for the middle class. Despite the fact that economists have warned about the extreme danger of allowing our huge deficits to continue, it is questionable whether the Republicans will be willing to compromise on any genuine deficit-cutting programs. If the Republicans in Congress refuse to agree to increase the spending limit next year the nation could be faced with a critical economic crisis.

In a recent column in The New York Times, Nobel Prize Laureate Paul Krugman, wrote that the Republicans have joined forces with Germany and China in an effort to stop the Federal Reserve from buying governmental bonds and thereby helping American manufacturers compete abroad. The Fed’s activity will lower the dollar, increase exports, narrow the trade deficit, and help fight unemployment. Krugman asks, “So what’s really motivating the GOP attack on the Fed?” He cited the remarks of budget expert, Stan Collender, saying that: “‘With Republican policymakers seeing economic hardship as the path to election glory,’ they would be ‘opposed to any actions taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better.’ In short, their real fear is not that Fed actions will be harmful, it is that they might succeed.”

God forbid that the Democratic President and the Democrats in Congress are able to increase exports and employment! God forbid that the economy of America improves greatly before the next presidential election! God forbid that President Obama gets credit for securing an arms limitation treaty with Russia!

It appears that the Republicans want not only for the economy to remain stagnant, but for it to go into a double-dip recession with more millions out-of-work. They believe, perhaps correctly, that such economic crisis will lead to Republican recapture of the White House and the Senate. They are oblivious to the damage that will be done to the country and to millions of hard-working Americans. It is not that they want power in order to improve things. They have no program to bring-on an economic miracle. They have no plans to vastly reduce unemployment. They have no program to improve the security of America and our relations with Russia. They want power for the sake of power. That is often the reason that traitors want power.

Should The Democrats Rethink Their Strategy

2010-11-09T12:58:00.000-08:00

If the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress feel that recent losses in the House of Representatives and in various state governorships and legislatures require them to rethink their strategy and move more toward the middle, they will be giving the Republicans and Conservatives a victory that they never earned at the polls. After all, the President is still a liberal Democrat. The Democrats are still in charge of the U.S. Senate. There are still plenty of Democratic governors and state legislators. In my opinion as a liberal Democrat, the Democrats should move more to the left, and leave the middle for the Republicans.

The reason why the Republicans won this year was not because the Democrats are liberal and the Republicans are conservative. The Republicans won because of “the economy stupid.” The mass of independent voters, and many Democrats and Republicans, always vote their pocket-books. They do not care about, or know very much about, the big issues. They look at what is happening in the economy and how it is affecting or likely to affect their personal finances. They opposed the stimulus because they resented money going to big banks and stockbrokerages. They did not realize that much of the stimulus money was designed to go to jobs for lower and middle income Americans. They resented the health care reform bill because they believed that it would help only poor people and that it would raise taxes. They didn’t realize that it would benefit all people and that only the wealthy people would pay higher taxes. They also did not realize that the bill would actually lower the deficit.

Thus, it was not their political philosophy that hurt the Democrats. It was the continuation of a sluggish economy and unemployment from a recession started under a Republican administration and caused by Republicans’ anti-regulation policies.

So what should the President Obama and the Democrats do now? Should they retain the Bush tax-cuts for the wealthy as well as for the middle-class? Should they abandon all hope of getting legislation to stop global warming? Should they give-up on trying to have a public option attached to the health care legislation? Should they forget about trying to strengthen the Wall Street reforms? I say that, if anything, they should increase their efforts to pass these things and other liberal legislation. The last thing they should do is kowtow to the Conservatives and become more conservative themselves. By moving to the right the Democrats will have truly lost the election and given-in to the Republicans.

It is particularly important that President Obama not believe that the election was a referendum on his popularity. It was a referendum on the economy, which still suffers from high unemployment. Moreover, a large percentage of the people who voted Republican this time voted against Obama when he ran for president. President Obama won the White House by a 52 to 46 percent margin. That means that 46 percent of the electorate was already prepared to vote Republican two years later. All it took was a small shift of independent voters to insure a Republican victory in the midterm elections. There can be no doubt that those independents did so in the hope that it would improve their finances.

Conservatives will point to Bill Clinton who appeared to become more conservative after the Democrats lost control of Congress in the 1994 midterm election. But Clinton did not become more conservative. Rather, he recognized the necessity of working with a Republican congress in order to get anything done. In that sense, President Obama has it better than Clinton did. At least he has a Democratic Senate to work with. As President Obama has said, he will have to compromise with the Republicans in the House in order to get legislation, but he will not have to go as far as Clinton did. In addition, the Republicans will have to compromise with the President and the Democrats in the Senate if they want to pass any legislation. Otherwise they will revert to the kind of obstructionist party they were before the election.

I hope that President Obama and the Democrats in Congress do not take their eyes off the ball. I hope that they will not surrender their values as a result of this midterm election.

BART EHRMAN

2010-10-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has read my Blog will be aware of the fact that one of my primary areas of interest is the relationship between belief in God and the presence of evil and suffering in the world. For anyone who shares this interest I would like to recommend a book by Bart Ehrman which I have just finished reading entitled: God’s Problem. In this book, Ehrman, who is a professor at the University of North Carolina, discusses the question of whether it is possible to believe in God and still be aware of the massive amount of suffering that goes on in the world.

Professor Ehrman considers all of the explanations for suffering given by apologists, philosophers, and by prophets in the Judeo/Christian Bible, and one-by-one he dismisses each of them. He shows that the explanation of suffering based on free will simply does not give any reason to believe in God. He demonstrates that the idea that suffering is redemptive cannot be reconciled with a loving God. He rejects the idea that suffering is a test of faith or the idea that suffering is caused by forces of the devil. He does not accept the idea that suffering is caused by God, but that its reason is a mystery that will be revealed and explained after we die. This is the conclusion reached by the biblical author of the Book of Job.

The most powerful section of the book is near the end where Ehrman discusses the part of the book called “The Rebellion” in "The Brothers Karamazov" by Dostoevsky. There, the brother Ivan, who still believes in God, says that even if, after we die, there is a full explanation of the reason why God allowed or perpetrated the suffering in the world, he, Ivan, will never accept the explanation. Ivan points to the acts by Turkish soldiers, tossing babies up in the air before their mothers and impaling the babies on their bayonets. He also tells the true story of parents who punished their little daughter for wetting the bed by smearing her face with excrement and locking her outside in the freezing-cold outhouse overnight. Of course the child died.

I found myself totally in agreement with the ideas of Professor Ehrman. Even if I could believe in God, which I cannot, I could never accept any explanation he might give for the horrors of the world. Even if the explanation was free will, I could never accept any excuse for the suffering of children. What does free will have to do with the suffering caused by tsunamis, volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, diseases, birth defects, and hundreds of other causes? If God is perfectly loving and omnipotent, how could he allow things like the holocaust, other genocides, plagues, war, mass murder, and suicides? The only explanation is that there is no such thing as God.

But Ehrman gave me something to latch onto besides the sad absence of God. He somehow finds a redemptive resolution of suffering in, of all places, the Bible. He says: “I have to admit that at the end of the day, I do have a biblical view of suffering. As it turns out, it is the view put forth in the book of Ecclesiastes. There is a lot that we can’t know about this world. A lot of this world doesn’t make sense. Sometimes there is no justice. Things don’t go as planned or as they should. A lot of bad things happen. But life also brings good things. The solution to life is to enjoy it while we can, because it is fleeting. This world, and everything in it, is temporary, transient, and soon to be over. We won’t live forever—in fact we won’t live long. And so we should enjoy life to the fullest, as much as we can, as long as we can. That’s what the author of Ecclesiastes thinks, and I agree.”

Ehrman says that enjoying life means not just relaxing, going to the theater and the symphony, eating great food, drinking the best wine, dancing all night, (although we should do all of those things), but it also means working to alleviate the suffering and bringing hope to a world devoid of hope. We can enjoy life and still try to live upright, decent, helpful lives in which we refuse to accept the explanation that life is hopeless and miserable. We can be good, kind, generous, and loving. We may not cure the horrors or ills of life, we may not be able to save mankind, but we can be kind to those around us and show love for our fellow man. In the end, that is the real message of Jesus.

Should the Tax Cuts Be Allowed to Expire

2010-10-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

At the start of his presidency, President George W. Bush believed that it was necessary to cut taxes in order to spur the economy. During his first term (2001–2004), he obtained Congressional approval for the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Job Creation and Worker Assistance Act of 2002, and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. These acts decreased all tax rates, reduced the capital gains tax, increased the child tax credit, and eliminated the so-called "marriage penalty.” The tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2010. The question is whether the cuts should be extended or allowed to expire.

So far, these tax cuts have cost the government $2.48 trillion. This includes the revenue loss of $2.11 trillion that resulted directly from the Bush tax cuts as well as the $379 billion in additional interest payments on the national debt that we must make since the tax cuts were deficit-financed.

When Bush took office in 2001, there was no deficit. He inherited a $236 billion budget surplus, with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion. As a result of the tax cuts and Bush’s continued spending, including two wars and expansion of the Medicare drug benefit, the deficit at the end of Bush’s term for fiscal year 2009 was in excess of $1.2 trillion. Thus, President Obama inherited most of the deficit for which he is now being criticized.

The dispute between conservatives and liberals in Congress over whether to allow the tax cuts to expire or to extend them, and even make them permanent, reflects deep philosophical differences between the parties. Republicans hate budget deficits and loudly call for reduction of spending, but despite the fact that the tax cuts caused huge deficits, they are united in their demand that the tax cuts be extended. Democrats are willing to extend the tax cuts for the middle class, but wish to allow the tax cuts for people making over $200,000 per year to expire. Republicans claim that this would be disastrous at a time of economic difficulty, but leading economists say that expiration of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans would have no adverse effect on the economy. Remember, these taxpayers are wealthy people! They have an upscale standard of living. Repeal of the tax cuts will not make them poor. It would not cut down on their purchases, because they do not use all of their income to purchase things. It is well known that the very rich use only a small portion of their income to make purchases. They put the rest of their income in savings. Allowing the tax cuts to expire would result in only a small decrease in their savings.

Economists have pointed-out that the “Program for America” pushed by Republican leaders would be impossible to implement. Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman explains that if we were to follow the Republicans program, keep the tax cuts, keep funding the wars, keep Social Security and Medicare, but cut enough spending to balance the budget, the remainder of federal government would disappear. There would be no federal departments, no federal agencies, no federal programs of any kind—nothing. The Republican program would be impossible to implement.

When the Obama Administration was faced with the recession it was necessary, in order to avoid a horrendous depression, to intervene and spend government money to stimulate the economy. All of the leading economists supported the stimulus, and all of them now know that it worked. Robert J. Samuelson reported in Newsweek that when Obama took office in early 2009, the economy and financial markets were in virtual free-fall. By summer they were steady. Alan Blinder of Princeton and Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics estimate that without the government’s aggressive response, gross domestic product would have dropped 12 percent instead of 4 percent, and 16.6 percent of jobs would have been lost instead of 8.4 percent.

Republicans cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot eliminate deficits and still maintain gigantic tax cuts for the wealthy. They cannot have a stimulated economy and still avoid government stimulus. The truth is that the Republicans are not worried about the economy. They are worried about their wealthy contributors. The tax cuts for the middle class should be extended, but the tax cuts for those fat cats should be allowed to expire.

Why Do People Believe In God

2010-08-17T06:01:00.000-07:00

Why do people believe in God despite the overwhelming lack of evidence for his existence? Why do people go on praying to God despite the fact that there is no evidence that prayers are answered? How can people continue to believe in the various religious denominations, sects, and cults when science has so thoroughly destroyed many of their central beliefs? People continue to flock to churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques despite the many fakes, scams, frauds, absurdities, and even crimes of their denominations’ and leaders.

Perhaps the answer is our fear of death. Religion may not have arisen solely because of the fear of death, but if you ask people today, they will tell you that there has to be some continuing life after death. Religion provides assurance that there is such life.

Death is part of nature. Every living thing dies. All humans die. No matter how long science is able to extend the length of a human life, we will all die. It is inherent in all living things. Why do we fear death? Why is death the most terrible part of life? Why have we surrounded death with such enormous horror and grief? You would think that such a natural, universal event would be stoically accepted by us as inevitable. But it isn’t.

We fear death because fear is part of our survival as a species. Any species that does not develop some type of fear of death is likely to become extinct. Our young species has managed to survive for hundreds of thousands of years in part because of our fear of death. Like other genetically successful species, we have developed evolutionary methods of avoiding death, at least until we have reproduced and spread our genes. Whether we will be as successful a species as the long-lived turtles, sharks, and alligators, remains to be seen.

I believe that one of the many strategies the human race uses to deal with its fear of death is the creation of imaginary beings called “gods.” By creating gods, humans seek to avoid the despair that might accompany a full understanding of their fate. The invention of gods is a tranquilizer that helps man deal with the fact that when we die, we die to eternal oblivion.

Most people realize that the human body does not survive death. What they hope for is the survival of human consciousness and memory. The idea is that our spirit or “soul” survives in an afterlife. It would make little difference if the spirit or soul survived but did not remember living on earth. Most people wish for the survival of our memory. In heaven we would know who we are and remember our lives and family on earth. For most people this includes seeing and getting back together with our loved ones (although Jesus said that in the resurrection there was no marriage, Matt. 22:23-30). For most, the afterlife is an idealized version of life on earth. There is no pain, no misery, no stress, no sin, no evil, only unlimited joy. For Catholics it is the “beatific vision.” For Moslems it is “Paradise,” an eternal feast in a green garden with beautiful virgins serving the faithful. For most people, people in heaven are aware of what is happening on earth, and many believe that the dead can intervene in earthly events.

There is something contradictory about the idea that our consciousness survives our deaths. Death is, ipso facto, the death of consciousness. Consciousness is a function of the brain, and if the brain is dead it does not function. We want to believe that somehow through the hand of God, our consciousness, our brain, goes on working after death even though for earthly purposes it is finished. We want to believe that the mind is not really part of the body, but rather, a spiritual function. Science knows that the mind is the brain and the nervous system, a purely physical phenomenon, and like the rest of the body, it dies.

Another reason people today seem to want to believe in religion is that religion gives an answer to the question of evil. Religion tells people that certain actions are right and certain actions are wrong. People fear that without religion, there is no reason for morality, no punishment for evil, no reward for good. People say that without God there is no meaning and purpose in life.

We live in a violent world, full of tragedy and sorrow. Our invention of a God helps us to deal with life. Without God, we find no transcendental reason to be good rather than evil. Without God, life seems meaningless. We see evildoers prospering, while good people suffer. We want an explanation. We desperately need to believe that there is a supreme being who hands down moral laws, rewards goodness, and punishes evil.

When believers argue that without God there is no meaning and no purpose in life they are making a meaningless argument. Meaning and purpose are not things that exist as separate transcendental entities in the universe. They are concepts invented by human beings to explain certain things. Meaning and purpose exist only in the human mind. If a thing has meaning, it has meaning only to the mind of a person. It is the sense, significance, import, intent, or end of something as construed by the mind. The purpose of something is the goal or object for which something exists or is done by a human being. The existence or nonexistence of God has nothing to do with meaning or purpose. Even if God existed, the concepts of meaning and purpose would still be functions of the human mind and not something created by God.

There is something magnetic about great art. People are powerfully attracted to and inspired by it. When we view a great painting or sculpture, we are able to lose ourselves in it. We forget it is a piece of canvass or a chunk of rock, and see it instead as a representation of something. It is capable of moving us deeply. The same is true of great music. While we listen to it, we do not think of it as a series of sound waves varying in length. We are transported, lifted out of the moment, moved to wonderful feelings and emotions. When we read a novel, we forget that it is just a story, and get caught-up in its plot.

In the theater and motion pictures we are captivated by the story. We forget that the characters are only actors mouthing the lines written for them. We suspend our disbelief. We let our thoughts and emotions go with the story as if it were really happening. Our art, as a reflection of ourselves, is something we not only create, but something which--if it is even halfway good--can move us to suspend our knowledge of reality. It captures and enthralls us.

This can all be explained by the working of the brain. I believe that each person in his or her innermost mind recognizes that there is no God. We must deal with the absence of God and the powerful desire that he be present. To deal with this we have created God--the pictures, stories, music, theology, ritual, liturgy, mystery--everything. It was necessary to do this to explain what we did not know, to help us deal with death, and to explain our awe, fascination, and need for meaning. We objectified our feeling of the numinous. Once we created God, as with all of our artistic creations, we were captured by him. God became not just a creation, a story, a picture, but a reality--a creator, a God who is wholly other.

But somewhere deep in the mind of every halfway intelligent person is the realization that there is no such thing as God. He does not exist. He is a figment of the human imagination. That is a melancholy thought. But it is the truth.

Is Life Really Beautiful?

2010-08-08T04:02:00.000-07:00

The primary reason for the existence of religion is to relieve people of fear. Marx called religion the “Opiate of the Masses.” This was a perfect explanation of the religious impulse. We live in a world filled with pain, sorrow, depression, and horror, but the religions tell us that there is a God out there who loves us and loves the world. This God will take care of us and, after death, will provide us with a paradise of joy and happiness.

I was speaking to someone and I proposed that if there really was a God, we should not worship or love or adore him, but rather, we should hate him. The person responded that we should worship him because “life is beautiful.” I replied that although life has moments of beauty and happiness, there is far too much sorrow and unhappiness to say that life is beautiful.

Consider the following: The great majority of people in the world live in abject poverty. Most of those people suffer from hunger, disease, famine, tsunamis, cyclones, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, plagues, infestations, and war. When one looks at the continents of Africa, Asia, and South America, one wonders how there could be a loving God looking over those people. Hundreds of millions of the people on those continents are subjected to widespread diseases such as cholera, malaria, sleeping sickness, AIDS, Dengue Fever, and Yellow Fever. They have insufficient clothing, shelter ,and medical care. They are ruled-over by tyrants and dictators. Hundreds of millions of women throughout the world are treated as chattels without civil rights. They are beaten, raped, stoned, and subject to genital castration designed to eradicate their sexual pleasure. It is hard to imagine that such people are happy.

What about the lucky people in America and the more affluent countries of Europe? One would think that they have many reasons to thank God. But we need to ask, are the lives of Americans so blessed and happy? Let’s start with health. Practically everybody in America has somebody in their family suffering from some serious illness. Millions of Americans have children with serious congenital diseases and infirmities such as autism, blindness, deafness, physical deformity, Down Syndrome, mental retardation, mental illnesses, muscular dystrophy, diabetes, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, heart disease, cancer, and hundreds of other less common syndromes and disorders. The parents of such children often live lives of great sorrow.

Millions of adult Americans also suffer from terrible diseases. Heart disease, cancer, kidney disease, liver disease, Emphysema, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), AIDS, Crohn’s Disease, chronic pain, and hundreds of other conditions beset the happiness of their lives. Millions of Americans suffer from mental problems, depression, anxiety, fatigue, lonliness, phobias, panic attacks, disabling shyness, and stress throughout their lives. Millions of Americans suffer from the effects of terrible automobile accidents and other injuries. They go through life as cripples with disabled or missing limbs, internal organs, and other essential parts of their bodies, or suffering from terrible pain.

As people get older, they greet a host of problems afflicting older Americans such as strokes, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, hearing and seeing defects, prostate problems, osteoporosis, erectile dysfunction, sleep disorders, Alzheimer’s and memory loss, and hundreds of other medical and psychological problems that impair their happiness. As people age their bodies breaks-down, their skin wrinkles, their hair disappears or turns white, their energy fails, and they lose their sexual ability and attraction.

Millions of Americans are addicted to alcohol, pain medication, and illegal drugs. Almost all of them are living in terrible misery, unable to shake the imprisonment of their addictions. There are millions of homeless people living on the streets, in tents, under bridges, and in shelters. Millions of other Americans are addicted to behavior patterns such as gambling addiction, fetishism, sexual addiction, frigidity, obsessive-compulsive behavior, dependency, and other forms of addiction. There are millions of people with sexual deviations including the need to molest children or rape women. Millions of people engage in abusive behavior, physically beating or verbally berating their spouses, companions, and children. Millions of spouses, companions, and children are victims of such abuse. Such people cannot possibly be happy.

Millions of Americans live in poverty surrounded by a land of plenty. They eke-out a living in slums, tenements, housing projects, trailer parks, and rural shacks. They often go hungry in this land of plenty. Many go without decent clothing, shelter, ordinary medical care, and live in places without heat, cooling, electricity, telephone service, computers, sanitation, or even running water.

Millions of Americans are the victims of discrimination. People of all minorities suffer from bigotry. Millions of homosexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, and other trans-gender people are the objects of prejudice and condemnation by millions of other people.

Every day one reads in the paper about people who commit crimes. There are thousands of kinds of crimes committed every day by millions of people. It is difficult to guess what percent of the populace is dishonest, violent, dangerous, fraudulent, and deceitful, but judging from the constant news of crimes, schemes, scams, and corruptions, the number must run well into the tens of millions. There are millions of people engaged in serious and not-so-serious crime, including robbery, larceny, drug offenses, burglary, mugging, assault and battery, murder, and thousands of other kinds of crime. Millions of Americans are incarcerated in prisons and jails. There are millions of wives, children, parents, and other close relatives of prison inmates. These people must suffer having their loved ones in jail. There are millions of victims of crimes whose lives have been ruined by the crimes of others.

Millions of Americans are in unhappy marriages or relationships. Millions of Americans are suffering from the breakdown of their marriages or the breakup of relationships in which they were very much in love. Half of all marriages end in divorce. A majority of those who do not get divorced go on living in unhappy marriages. Millions of people are engaged in illicit sexual entanglements that cause them emotional pain and guilt. Millions of people are almost suicidal because of the infidelity of a spouse or loved one. Millions of people suffer from feelings of inferiority or lack of self-worth. Millions of people suffer from the feeling that they are too fat, too thin, or unattractive.

Millions of Americans hate their jobs or suffer under cruel, tyrannical, or sadistic bosses. There are millions of people with sour, nasty, cruel, vicious, malicious, and evil personalities who make it their business in life to damage, spoil, and injure the lives of other people. Millions of people live lives consumed with envy, jealousy, and hatred of others whom they perceive to be more fortunate than they.

Millions of families have children with serious behavior problems. Many of these children may grow up in middle class homes with respectable parents, yet the children are constantly in trouble with school, neighbors, the police, and others. Thousands of such children run away every year only to wind-up on the streets caught-up in drug addiction, prostitution, and crime.

For every Bernard Madoff carrying-out a giant stock swindle, there are thousands of businessmen, brokers, hedge fund managers, and others engaged in insider trading and other blatant violations of the rules of business law and ethics. Millions of Americans cheat others in smaller ways for smaller amounts of money. If one were able to calculate the amount of money embezzled from businesses, organizations, and charities each year it would probably be up in the billions if not trillions. I have known several embezzlers in my lifetime. I’m sure everybody has.

Although one would expect great probity from the wealthiest and most successful people, it is simply not there. Doctors routinely over-bill for services. Andy Rooney told a story about a doctor who came into his room while he was in the hospital for treatment. The doctor said hello and mentioned that he liked Rooney’s work. He then departed without examining or treating Rooney, and later billed Medicare for $240. I have heard many such stories. I have had personal experience with dishonest doctors. One doctor who came in and handed my wife a card while our son was being treated for a broken bone at the hospital, later billed for services even though he did not examine or treat my son at all. Doctors frequently bill for services never rendered. Medicare and Medicaid pay tens of billions for fraudulent claims by physicians who are wealthy by any standard.

Eventually, we die. Death is not a simple leaf dropping off a tree. Death is usually painful. Often, it is horrible. It is usually accompanied by the grief of loved ones.

Yes, life does have its moments of happiness and beauty. There are some wonderful things in life, and some people do live very happy, prosperous, safe, healthy lives. Those people can be thankful for all they have, but they probably represent a small fraction of the people on earth. If you stop and consider all of the unhappiness, pain, disease, grief, and guilt suffered by the vast majority of people in the world, it can hardly be said that life is beautiful.

While many people suffering from the terrible things listed here may not think life is bad, that is because of the human ability to cope with the things that make us unhappy. It is a wonderful thing that people going through the most extreme torments will often try to look on the bright side of life. But if we stop and look at all of the problems faced by humans and listed here, we can hardly say that life is beautiful. We can hardly find reason to thank that mythical being called God.

Surely, if there was a God, and he was a good and loving God, life would not be filled with such misery. There would not be millions of starving, diseased, oppressed people in Africa and other parts of the world. There would not be so much tragedy, horror, injury, illness, poverty, hunger, anger, war, and death. We would not have to wait for some mythical afterlife to experience a better life. Life on earth would really be beautiful for everyone.

Media's Cringing Failure to Confront the Absence of God

2010-07-27T03:32:00.000-07:00

Today’s media are bursting with the latest developments in politics, economics, culture, technology, and science, but in one area they remain stagnated in the Middle Ages. No matter how hard you look, you will rarely find a word in any newspaper, magazine, television, or internet source contesting the widely prevailing and erroneous belief that somehow, out there, there exists an invisible, all-powerful being called “God.” Nobody, from the President on down, dares challenge the taboo against seriously discussing this widespread myth. Even the most sophisticated media outlets dare not expose the fact that the emperor, called “religion,” is unclothed.

I am a retired attorney who practiced in New York and Connecticut for 37 years. My entire life was devoted to the consideration of rational evidence. Every court in America adheres to the proposition that the assertion of any claim requires evidence. There is no place in the legal world where you can claim that someone exists who is invisible. You cannot go before any jury and claim that it ought to accept your argument on faith. You have to come up with the cold, hard, empirical facts or you and your client will be tossed out of court on your collective duffs.

For some reason, when it comes to discussing God, this is not the case in the media and popular culture. It is not only de rigueur today to fully accept the claim that there is an omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good and loving being who tools around in the sky and controls our lives, but it is a violent sin against political correctness and good manners to suggest that this absurd belief is without any merit.

Every city, town, and village in this land is peppered with churches. A thousand meetings a day are commenced with invocation of a remote deity. Every funeral serves up the comforting pabulum that the deceased is not really dead but has gone to a “better place” (Paris?). We are incessantly assured that despite the conflicting raw evidence of the Holocaust, earthquakes in Haiti, tsunamis in Asia, deadly diseases, the slaughter of 9/11, and the terrible suffering of children everywhere, “God loves us.” We are perpetually advised to pray to this aloof and detached spirit despite the fact that in thousands of years there has never been a scintilla of solid evidence that the divinity has ever answered a single prayer.

Much of organized religion today surrounds itself with medieval rites and trappings calculated to inspire awe and mystery. Many less ostentatious groups, such as Protestants, practice ancient rites of healing, speaking in tongues, and the singing of sacred hymns. Connected to all of this there is a considerable amount of baloney and angling for money. The faithful seem numb to the fraud and deceit inherent in these activities.

Why are the media unable to confront this subject with rational discourse? Why do they shun it like the Swine Flu? Is it because they are afraid of losing customers and advertisers? Is it because they are afraid of offending the hierarchy of the various organized sects and denominations? Do they fear retaliation from conservative politicians? Are they afraid of the millions of ordinary citizens who have invested so much emotional capital in these fairy tales?

Perhaps it would not be a good thing to open up these sources of comfort and consolation to critical examination. Perhaps people should be left alone with their delusions about God, saints, angels, devils, and a moral law based on the word of the Almighty. But I ask, is it moral and proper to go on promulgating a false myth just because it is widely accepted?

The mathematician, William K. Clifford, put it well when he said: “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” To Clifford, the life of the man who suppresses doubts and avoids inquiry about questions which might disturb belief is “one long sin against mankind.”

Republicans Pour Trouble on Oiled Waters

2010-06-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

The Republicans, who made it a campaign issue during the 2008 elections to call for more drilling of offshore oil, are now sitting-back and enjoying the agonizing difficulty President Obama is having with the catastrophic Gulf oil spill. Despite the fact that the President is in no way responsible for this disaster, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to resolve the problem, Republicans have made it a political issue. If there is any political blame to be handed out for the oil spill, it must go to the Republicans.

As reported on the MSNBC Rachel Maddow show on June 14, 2010, there was an earlier oil explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that poured millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. On June 3, 1979, Ixtoc, an exploratory oil well being drilled in the Gulf of Mexico by the Mexican Government, suffered a blowout resulting in the third largest oil spill in history. The well was not capped for over 10 months, by which time over 140 million gallons of oil had had been spilled and had impacted over 162 miles of U.S. beaches. As a result, the U.S. Congress enacted a moratorium on offshore drilling.

Another ban on offshore oil drilling was issued by President George H.W. Bush following the Exxon/Valdes disaster in March, 1989. Because of the opposition of congressional Democrats to offshore drilling, that ban stayed in place until July 14, 2008, when, under pressure from the oil industry and congressional Republicans, President George W. Bush, whose background was that of an oil man, lifted his father’s ban. In his public announcement removing the ban, President Bush criticized the Democrats for their opposition to offshore drilling: Bush said: “For years, my administration has been calling on Congress to expand domestic oil production. Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal.” Bush called-on Congress to remove the ban issued by it following the Ixtoc disaster. He assured the American people that “Advances in technology have made it possible to conduct oil exploration in the OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) that is out of sight, protects coral reefs and habitats, and protects against oil spills.”

In September 2009, following President Bush’s lifting of the ban on offshore drilling, at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico, BP drilled the deepest offshore oil well in history at a vertical depth of 35,050 feet. This was over a mile below the surface, and at so remote a spot that unless there was a sound plan for dealing with any spill, an explosion of the rig would be catastrophic. But why worry? After all, President Bush, the Republicans in Congress, and the oil companies had assured us that deepwater drilling for oil was now safe thanks to “new technologies.” The problem was, there were no such technologies.

As we all now know, the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers, injuring 17 others, and setting off the worst oil spill in history. Documents obtained from BP reveal that the explosion could have been foreseen and prevented. Before the explosion, engineers of the company described the rig as a “nightmare” well with multiple problems. Higher-ups cut many corners in order to avoid spending the necessary funds to make the well safe.

As shown by the fumbling efforts of BP in the past few months, there was no plan on what to do in the event of an explosion. In their zeal to open-up further offshore drilling, and their greed for more oil profits, the oil companies, supported by their Republican allies in Congress, charged ahead with dangerous offshore drilling that has now fouled the Gulf Coast environment, destroyed the economy of Gulf Coast cities, ruined the lives of thousands of Gulf Coast residents, and damaged our nation’s economy.

Instead of being dismayed by these developments, the Republicans are jubilant. They see this harm to our nation and its citizens as an opportunity to gain a political advantage. And they criticize the President for showing a calm demeanor during the crisis instead of collapsing into open emotional turmoil.

This crisis is not the fault of President Obama or of the Democrats. It is the fault of the oil companies and of the Republicans in Congress who set-aside the welfare of our nation and encouraged the drilling for offshore oil without a solid plan for handling deepwater oil spills.

Health Care Reform and Repeal

2010-05-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

One frequently hears these days about how “angry” people are because of the passage of the health care reform bill. In reports I have recently heard, it has become clear to me that most of the people complaining about health care reform actually know nothing about it. Thus, they have been influenced by the dire predictions of health insurance companies, Republicans in Congress, and Tea Party activists. These complainers have not read the bill or any summary of the bill, or any newspaper, magazine, online news source, or other material about the bill. There is a great deal of material out there for people to read and become educated about health care. But most of the people who are complaining are not the kind of people who bother to become well informed about any subject before voicing their opinions.

These people believe that health care reform will bring about huge deficits and bankrupt the country. They are also convinced that because of its large cost the bill will require huge increases in taxes on the middle class. They are totally unaware of the fact that the law will actually lower deficits by $138 billion over the next decade, and by one trillion over the following decade. This has been certified by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

People objecting to the new law do not realize that there are no new taxes on the middle class, but that there are tax increases on people earning over $350,000. Moreover, the increased taxes on high earners are not so bad that they will do harm to the earners or the economy.

One complaint I have heard is that the law will bring-in millions of new patients and make it hard for ordinary people to get an appointment with the doctor. This is apparently what happened in Massachusetts when that state, under Mitch Romney, enacted its health care reform bill. While this may be a temporary problem, the complainers do not realize that the law also provides immediate new massive investment in training programs to increase the number of primary care doctors, nurses, and public health professionals.

The complainers fail to recognize that the big increase in people going to the doctor is a good thing, not a bad thing. It means that millions of people who couldn’t get insurance or couldn’t afford it will now be able to see a doctor. The 45,000 people who die each year because of lack of health insurance will now be able to be treated. Organizations like RAM, which go around the country treating people for free, will be able to return to their original mission of treating people in other countries.

The new rallying cry for Republicans is “Repeal!” They claim that they intend to repeal the health care reform law as soon as they get control of Congress. One wonders whether this slogan will appeal so strongly to voters in November after they have had a chance to understand some of the benefits that will accrue to them as a result of the legislation. It may be that the angry shouts of “repeal” will sound like an effort to take-away benefits that voters have come to like, just as some Republicans wanted to take-away Medicare and Social Security.

Would seniors, even strongly conservative seniors, really want to repeal the part of the bill that provides for gradual elimination of the coverage gap or “Doughnut Hole” in Medicare Part D coverage over the next ten years? The reduction of the Doughnut Hole will begin immediately.

Would people, even devout Republicans, who have been turned-down for health insurance because of preexisting conditions, really want repeal of the provision that forbids insurance companies from denying health insurance because of prior conditions? That is another provision that takes effect immediately.

Will anybody want to repeal the provisions of the new law that forbid insurance companies from canceling peoples’ insurance after they become sick, or after reaching an annual or lifetime cap?

Would parents, even right-wingers, who have children over 18, really want repeal of the provision of the law that requires insurance companies to continue carrying children on their parents’ health insurance, if the parents want to keep them on, until the children are 26? This is another provision that will begin right now.

Do business people want to repeal the provisions of the bill that offer tax credits to about 4 million small-business men and women to help them cover the cost of insurance for their employees?

Will people want the Republicans to repeal the provisions of the bill that require all new insurance plans to offer free preventive care, such as pap smears, colonoscopies, breast X-Rays, prostate exams, blood tests and many others?

Will people want to repeal the provisions of the bill that will immediately allow displaced workers to keep their COBRA coverage until the Exchange is in place and they can access affordable coverage.

It is probable that the great mass of people who have voiced opposition to this bill are doing so for reasons other than health care or under a set of mistaken assumptions. Such people may oppose the President Obama and the Democrats in Congress on political grounds. They may be motivated by things like abortion, same-sex marriage, guns, and immigration. They may actually have no direct opposition to health care reform itself.

People opposing health care reform are willing dupes when it comes to the myths being spread by the insurance companies, Republican leaders, and Tea Party zealots. A little bit of study would dispel such myths. Among the silliest myths are the following.

Death Panels

Sarah Palin, who ran for Vice President of the United States without having even the minimum amount of education or intelligence that one would expect in a Vice President, spread the falsehood that the new law would create “Death Panels” that would decide whether old and disabled people should live or die. There was no such provision or anything like it. The only thing the bill provided for was the right of a person in a terminal condition to get a free consultation with somebody who could advise them about end-of-life questions such as living wills etc.

Government Takeover

There will be no government take-over of health care. We will still have private health insurance, doctors, hospitals, and clinics. There will simply be a law in place that lowers the cost of health care and guarantees it to most Americans. As Paul Krugman pointed out: “If having the government regulate and subsidize health insurance is a ‘takeover,’ that takeover happened long ago. Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs already pay for almost half of American health care, while private insurance pays for barely more than a third (the rest is mostly out-of-pocket expenses). And the great bulk of that private insurance is provided via employee plans, which are both subsidized with tax exemptions and tightly regulated.”

Long Waits

One of the widely spread myths is that health care reform will lead to long waits for treatment in America just as there are long waits in Europe. In fact, the health care reform law will not lead to the kinds of problems they claim for countries with single-payer systems--longer waits for necessary procedures, rationing of health care, and bureaucratic meddling in health care decisions. Just as none of this has been true under Medicare, it will not be true under a health care reform. People who have put-off necessary medical treatment will now be able to go in before it is too late. It was never true that Canada and Europe had far longer waits than the United States. The only waits in those places were for elective surgeries. In Canada and Europe the wait for emergency surgeries is the same as if not better than the United States. The new health care reform law is not a single-payer system or even a public option. It is far different from the laws in Canada and Europe. Nevertheless, people in Canada and Europe love their single-payer health care systems, and we should adopt the single-payer model as soon as possible.

Rationing

Under the new health care law there will be no government-imposed rationing. The fact is that we now have rationing by private insurance companies. As Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent explained: "[P]eople always say, 'Is there going to be rationed care?' And I can tell you, as a practicing physician, as someone who deals with this on a daily basis, rationing does occur all the time.” Insurance companies ration care by rescinding coverage on the grounds that people had preexisting conditions. There will not be any rationing under the new law.

Illegal Immigrants

Another claim by anti-health care reform people is that it will cover undocumented aliens; not true! The law specifically states that those “not lawfully present” in the U.S, may note receive subsidies to purchase insurance.

Tax on Small Businesses

There is a claim that the law will cause staggering taxes on small businesses; not true. Only 4.1 percent of all small businesses will have tax increases. The legislation would establish a 1 percent tax on joint income exceeding $350,000 but not greater than $500,000 per year; a 1.5 percent tax on joint income exceeding $500,000 but not greater than $1 million per year; and a 5.4 percent tax on joint income exceeding $1 million per year. That would exclude 95.9 percent of all small businesses from the tax.

There is a solution to people’s problems with health care reform. It is called education. Knowing what you are talking about is a great advantage. If people studied the law and paid attention to all of the information available in papers, magazines, and the internet, they would not be “angry” about the law. They would pleased with it and hungry for more.

Death of a Liberal Column

2010-04-21T02:40:00.000-07:00

Word came in a hurriedly written e-mail from the editor of the Greene County Dailies: “After careful review of the newspapers we making some major changes to its content, therefore we have decided to discontinuing your column at this time…” I did not mind the grammatical problems with the notice. I assumed that as a new editor working for a new publisher she was in a hurry and didn’t proofread what she had written. I did mind that after seven years as the sole liberal voice of a newspaper in rock-solid Republican Greene County of Southwestern Ohio, my voice was being extinguished.

After spending most of my 60 years living in the Northeast, I had come out here from Connecticut to be with my college sweetheart. I had settled in Xenia, a friendly place surrounded by farms, where baseball caps, pickup trucks, and deep conservative beliefs predominate.

The intrepid publisher of the local paper was impressed with some of my letters to the editor and, knowing that I had written columns for papers in the East, said that the paper would gladly print my columns. He might have regretted this decision, even though he told everybody that I was the best writer he had. I started out writing in support of the rights to abortion and same-sex marriage. The publisher told me that he was getting lots of telephone calls complaining about me. I think that the readers had never seen anything in the local paper like my columns.

Things turned really ugly when I wrote a series of articles about evolution and the pseudo-science called “Intelligent Design.” Angry letters poured into the paper. As the volume of calls to the editor increased, the invective against me became more virulent. My columns in support of Barack Obama and against John McCain incensed people. I was told that the editor decided not to come in on the days my columns appeared because of the avalanche of complaining calls.

I discovered that many of the most hostile letters came from people in the extreme right-wing. The local leader of the John Birch Society excoriated me. When I wrote an article against guns, one writer opined that they might have to use their Second Amendment rights against me. Friends told me to watch my back. One writer, who objected to my column against militias and the Ku Klux Klan, said that I had “defiled” myself. A surprisingly large number of the letters were illiterate in tone and syntax.

The anger reached its zenith when I wrote a column making-fun of the Tea Parties. In my opening line I quoted from Alice in Wonderland: “`At any rate I'll never go there again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. `It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!’ ” I went on to compare Neil Cavuto of Fox News to the Dormouse, Sean Hannity to the March Hare, and Newt Gingrich to the Mad Hatter. The locals were furious!

People would often come-up to me at Kiwanis picnics, look furtively around, and whisper that they agreed with everything I wrote. But in seven years of writing columns, there was not one single letter supporting me. People were simply afraid of the ostracism they would experience if they came out in open support of this dirty, pinko, liberal writer.

Well, the kids will not be exposed to my subversive opinions anymore. Secure in the knowledge that they will no longer be challenged to critical thought, the people around here can sit-back and revert to their old ideas and comfortable prejudices.

Conservatism--A Default Position

2010-04-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

Conservatism is fundamentally a default position. It is the bedrock belief of millions of people in rural and small-town America who never lived in a big city, never went to college, never traveled abroad, and almost never even knew a liberal. It is the original default belief of the great mass of ordinary Americans.
People rarely become conservative. They start-out conservative. One almost never hears about somebody coming from a liberal family, going off to college, and coming back a conservative. One frequently hears the opposite. Young people go to college, are exposed to mind-opening ideas and bright fellow students, and come back with liberal thoughts that drive their conservative parents crazy. It happened to me.

For this reason, I believe that conservatism is not really a political philosophy. It is the absence of philosophy. It is the failure to imagine a better world, the failure to desire change, the unwillingness to examine one’s prejudices and limitations. Men like Edmund Burke did not propose any new way of thinking. They simply spoke-out against movements and ideas that altered the status quo. Burke’s greatest work was his critique of the French Revolution.

It is true that there has developed a group of so-called conservative intellectuals, men like William F. Buckley and George Will. But these people do not expound some new philosophy. They simply justify the regressive, recalcitrant, and reactionary positions created in response to the ideas developed by liberals. This is best exemplified by today’s Republicans in Congress. They have no program or plan. Their only position is one of opposition to virtually everything proposed by the liberal Democrats and the President.

This explains why conservatism is so popular with so many people. One of the two great political parties in America is built on conservatism, and frequently, as now, the more conservative the politicians of that party are the more popular they are. People are conservative because they do not like ideas that upset their picture of the world and how it should be. One example is the issue of same-sex marriage.
Most people over 50 years of age grew up in a world where marriage was solely between a man and a woman. That was the default position. Nobody ever questioned it. The majority of people believed that homosexuals were deviant people whom one avoided. Nobody spoke about homosexuals except to make jokes about them. It was unimaginable that such people would actually want to get married to one another. Suddenly, people saw on television that gays wanted to get married. It was a tearing-apart of the fabric of the cosmos, a violent challenge to all that is normal and accepted. It made conservatives deeply uncomfortable. Although they tried to think-up practical reasons why same-sex marriage would somehow harm the establishment of heterosexual marriage, their real opposition was simply based on the shocking newness of the idea. They felt that it was making a mockery of the sacred institution of marriage. They also believed that same-sex marriage would somehow legitimatize homosexuality which they had always been led to consider a moral deviation and a sin.

Liberalism is always a process of new thought. Liberals refuse to accept the old ways of thinking. They are the iconoclasts who question all of the old values, old beliefs, old religions, and old mores of society. True Liberalism is never a default philosophy. It is always an intellectual exploration and adventure. For this reason, it is mostly the philosophy of educated people, urban people, and broad-minded people. Because liberals support the rights of the poor, blue collar workers, union members, minorities, and immigrants, these people agree with the politics of liberals. But such people are, for the most part, acting out of self-interest, not on the basis of political ideology.

Conservative opposition to governmental programs to help the poor is not based on some carefully crafted ideology. It is based on reaction to the duty of paying taxes and upon animus toward poor people. It also has a strong racial or ethnic basis. Conservatives prefer all of the old ways of doing things, such as confining charity to private giving. There is no philosophy behind this way of thinking. Similarly, there is no theological thinking behind the fact that conservatives support religion and wish to see prayer in schools and religious images in public places. It is simply that they wish to retain the traditional way of permeating public life with religion as opposed to liberals’ preference for separating church and state.

Budget Reconciliation and Health Care Reform

2010-03-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

Despite the assumption by Republicans that they represent a majority of the American people, the Democrats hold a majority of the seats in Congress. Up until now, buoyed by the lavish spending of health insurance companies, the Senate Republicans have been able to stall health care reform. Lately, however, there has been a shift in the polls. The public is increasingly indicating support for health care reform and for President Obama.

One major distortion spread by the Republicans is that the bill will vastly increase budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office has ruled, however, that the Senate bill will actually reduce budget deficits. This is because the bill is essentially a budget bill. Due to Republican recalcitrance, the Democrats are now forced to use a procedure designed specifically for budget matters. It is called “Budget Reconciliation.” Now that they’ve passed a health care reform bill, the Senate Democrats plan to use budget reconciliation to pass the final changes to the bill.

Republicans threaten that if the Democrats use budget reconciliation to pass the health care reform bill it will be “all-out war.” I would like to know what they consider their wall-to-wall obstruction, distortion, and filibustering to be if not all-out war against President Obama and the Democrats.

Budget reconciliation is a legislative process of the Senate intended to allow consideration of a contentious budget bill without the threat of filibuster. Reconciliation generally involves legislation that changes the budget deficit. Any senator may raise a procedural objection to a treating a bill as a reconciliation bill. His objection will then be ruled upon by the Presiding Officer, who is officially the Vice President. The Presiding Officer customarily rules on the advice of the Senate Parliamentarian, but need not follow that advice. A vote of 60 senators is required to overturn the ruling of the Presiding Officer. Once the presiding officer rules that a bill is a budget reconciliation matter, the bill cannot be filibustered and requires only 51 votes of the full senate, or a majority of those present, to pass.

In case you question whether the health care reform bill is a budget measure, consider the fact that there are a large number of provisions in the bill dealing with revenue. There are several provisions imposing additional taxes on high-income individuals and couples, including Section 1905, which increases the Medicare tax on wages of individuals making in excess of $200,000 and married couples making over $250,000. There is an excise tax on voluntary cosmetic procedures, an increase in the adjusted gross income threshold for claiming an itemized deduction on medical costs, and a tax on the health insurance industry. These and other taxes will not only cover the cost of health care reform, but will actually reduce the overall deficit.

It is with ill grace that the Republicans object to the use of budget reconciliation to pass bills affecting the budget. They made repeated use of it when they were in power. Republicans used it to pass the 1996 Welfare Reform bill. They used it to pass the Jobs Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, in which Bush cut taxes for the rich and helped abolish the surpluses created during the Clinton years. Those tax cuts were strongly opposed by the Democrats, and by 450 economists, including 10 Nobel Prize Laureates. Another reconciliation bill by the Republicans was the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which slowed the growth in spending for Medicare and Medicaid, and changed formulas for student loans and other programs.

President Obama tried to change the environment in Washington and to work with the Republicans. He honestly believed that the relationship between the parties was far too poisonous and that this was bad for the country. The Republicans decided to rebuff his every effort. Now the Democrats have to act alone.

Senate Needs to Change Rules

2010-03-10T06:50:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Senate needs to change its rules. Although I have been critical of the abuse by Republicans of the filibuster, I can understand the protection it provides to a political minority. But recently, we have been treated to examples of how the tyranny of a solitary senator can gum-up the works of government.

Two weeks ago, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky single-handedly blocked a bill that would have extended unemployment benefits, along with Cobra health benefits, for over a million-and-a-half people. Bunning’s maneuver also, among other things, halted construction work across the country and cut Medicare payments to doctors.

Because of Republican filibusters, the spending bills needed to fund these essential programs were put-off until they were about to expire. It became necessary for the Democrats to use expedited procedures to continue the programs. Bunning’s objections denied the Senate the “unanimous consent” that Senate rules require for expedited procedures. Finally last week, under pressure from fellow Republicans, Bunning relented.

Bunning, who is retiring, has long been considered a loose cannon and a thorn in the side of the Republicans in Congress. Bunning’s frequent absences from important senate votes and numerous loony statements have led some to question his sanity. He attacked fellow Kentuckian, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, accusing him of being responsible for lost GOP seats in Congress. When Bunning learned that Republicans would not support his reelection bid, he threatened to resign and let the Democratic governor of Kentucky name his replacement.

This is the problem. One nutty senator has the power to block legislation, even bipartisan legislation, simply by refusing to agree to unanimous consent for the frequently used expedited procedures. The act of halting legislation has not, however, been confined to head-cases like Bunning. Lone senators routinely put holds on legislation and presidential appointments. Perhaps the most egregious case is the recent act of Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama.

Shelby placed a hold on all of President Obama’s nominees in an apparent protest over earmarks. This stopped Senate approval of 70 appointees nominated by the President, including a critical top Defense Department position overseeing deployments to the war in Afghanistan.

Shelby did not act on the basis of any conservative political principle or because he opposed the appointees. His objections were more basic. He believed that he wasn’t getting the amount of pork he deserved. He was frustrated over the Pentagon’s bidding process for air-to-air refueling tankers, which could lead to jobs in Mobile, Alabama. He was also “deeply concerned” that the Administration had not released funds already appropriated for a Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center to be built in Alabama.

As a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Shelby has built his career on steering earmarks to Alabama. He finally released his hold on most of the appointments. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "If you needed one example of what's wrong with this town, it might be that one senator can hold-up 70 qualified individuals to make government better because he didn't get his earmarks."

Senator Jim DeMint (R- S.C.) exercised his own form of protest by holding-up the nomination of the man nominated by President Obama to head the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). You would think that after the attempt to blow-up an airliner on Christmas day, appointment of an administrator for the TSA would be of paramount importance. Not to one demented senator. DeMint did not express any specific opposition to the nominee, a former FBI special agent and counterterrorism expert. He claimed that he needed further testimony to clarify the nominee’s stand on unionizing the TSA.

The Senate needs to change this strange rule that gives a single stubborn senator the power to bring the Senate and the government of the United States to its knees.

A Crack in Republican Obstruction

2010-03-03T06:58:00.000-08:00

You would think that the public would be on to the Republican program of total obstruction in Congress, but it isn’t. The Republicans have decided to oppose, and in the Senate, filibuster, every single initiative of the Obama Administration regardless of the merits of the initiative and regardless of whether the initiative would benefit the American people and help the economy. The Republican leadership has speculated that the result of all-out opposition to Democratic legislation would make it look like President Obama and the Democrats are accomplishing nothing. They have assumed that this would lead to public disillusionment with the President and a renewed support for the Republicans. They have been right. The results of recent elections seem to reflect a belief on the part of the public that Democrats are ineffective and that the President does not have what it takes to improve the economy and relieve unemployment.

Of course, this policy of the Republicans is the product of profound cynicism. They do not care if millions of people go on being unemployed, uninsured, without housing, shelter, or food. They do not care if our states and localities are without sufficient money to fund education, health care, construction, programs for the homeless, and many other urgently needed projects. All they care about is winning-back Congress and defeating President Obama in 2012. This is very sad. A once proud party has become the party of despair.

There may, however, be a crack in the monolithic unity of the Republican Party. Recently, the Republicans were able to elect one of their own, Senator Scott Brown, to the Senate seat long held by Ted Kennedy. There was much rejoicing by Republicans at this coup, and much predicting that the Democrats were on the decline. But there was also a little fact that Republicans ignored. Their handsome new senator is also a fairly liberal Republican. This will not sit well with the Tea Party types who were instrumental in his election. Apparently, he supports freedom of choice on abortion, says same-sex marriage is “settled law” in Massachusetts, and is independent of the lock-step thinking imposed by Republican congressional leadership on Republican members.

The crack in the Republican front first appeared in a vote on the $15 billion job-creation measure put forward by Democrats. Senator Scott Brown was the first member of his party to cast his vote for overcoming the Republican filibuster on the measure. He was followed by Senators George Voinovich of Ohio, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Christopher Bond of Missouri, all of whom voted after it became evident that the Democrats would prevail. Nevertheless, 29 Republican senators voted against the bill.

You would have thought that such legislation, in this time of wretched, desperate unemployment, would have garnered 100 votes in the Senate. You would have thought that every senator would have compassion for the plight of the unemployed. You would have thought such empathy would have overcome all political considerations. And you would have been wrong. Nevertheless, there are some Republican senators who are willing to risk their future with the Republican Party and buck the demands of Republican leadership. One of them is Scott Brown. Our senator, George Voinovich, who is retiring, appears to be another.

There are now pending some items of legislation critical to this nation. More help is needed to improve the economy and overcome unemployment. Health care reform is essential for the future of American business and of the American people. Climate change legislation is essential for the future of the planet. The question is whether some Republicans will step up to the plate and put the interests of their country first, or whether they will revert to the nay-saying culture that is tearing us apart.

Tea Parties and Militias

2010-02-24T09:13:00.000-08:00

Last May I noted the resurgence of the militia movement and the generous contribution they are making to the paranoia, fear, and stupidity of modern-day political dialogue. Now, it seems that militia types and their ideological allies have been inviting themselves to the Tea Parties.

The Tea Party movement represents a spectrum of ideas that runs from little old Republican ladies who enjoy tea cakes along with their politics to militia members who enjoy blasting effigies of President Obama with their AK47s. The resurgence of the militias and their crashing of the Tea Parties is a matter of some concern to civil rights organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
According to a recent report by the SPLC: “The situation has many authorities worried. Militiamen, white supremacists, anti-Semites, nativists, tax protesters and a range of other activists of the radical right are cross-pollinating and may even be coalescing" (under the Tea Party banner).

In the 1990s, when the last liberal Democratic president was in office, the militias thrived. These groups were under the impression that the federal government was planning a socialistic take-over of America. Their bogyman was a mythical “Black Helicopter” that was supposedly conducting surveillance of and preparing for war against the gun-toting patriots of America. The militias’ activities culminated in the bombing by two militia members, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City--killing 168 innocent adults and children.

Now, with liberals back in power, the militias, and organizations sharing their beliefs, are on the rise. The SPLC report noted that in Pensacola, Fla., a militia spokesman told a gathering of antigovernment “Patriots” that the federal government had set-up 1,000 internment camps across the country and was storing 30,000 guillotines and a half-million caskets in Atlanta. He averred that they are there for the day the government finally declares martial law and moves-in to round-up or kill American dissenters.

Outside Atlanta, a so-called "American Grand Jury" issued an "indictment" of President Obama for fraud and treason because, the panel concluded, he wasn't born in the United States and is illegally occupying the office of president. Other sham "grand juries" around the country have followed suit.

There is a new element to this second wave of militia revival. According to the SPLC report: “One big difference from the militia movement of the 1990s is that the face of the federal government — the enemy that almost all parts of the extreme right see as the primary threat to freedom — is now black. And the fact that the president is an African American has injected a strong racial element into even those parts of the radical right, like the militias, that in the past were not primarily motivated by race hate. Contributing to the racial animus have been fears on the far right about the consequences of Latino immigration.”

This racial hatred has popped-up in Tea Party gatherings where demonstrators have waived racist signs and posters showing President Obama as a witch doctor and saying things like “Obama’s plan--white slavery” and “Save white America from Obama.”

Needless to say, these militia groups, and those affiliated with them, are not in competition with MENSA for the best minds available. These groups are made-up of the most ignorant elements of white America. These are mostly losers whose resentment stems from the fact that they have achieved nothing in society while the leaders in this country are mostly intelligent, well-educated, sophisticated, elite individuals who look down on the militia types.

One hopes that the little old ladies and other Republican guests at the Tea Parties will look-around and be aware of the party crashers from the far-right who would rather slurp from the mug of conspiracy than sip from the teacup of sanity.

Republicans and the Census

2010-02-17T06:54:00.000-08:00

Republicans have always portrayed themselves as paragons of patriotism and devoted supporters of the Constitution. It has, therefore, been something of an anomaly to find that they dislike one of the fundamental principles of our nation—democracy. The idea behind true democracy is that every adult citizen in a nation has the right to vote regardless of his or her race, wealth, occupation, origin, education, religion, or political opinion.

Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution provides for a nationwide census every ten years in order to enumerate the population. The results are used to allocate Congressional seats (congressional apportionment), electoral votes, and the funding of governmental programs. Republicans are, at the very least, suspicious of, if not down right hostile to the census.

If the census counted only white, Anglo-Saxon, financially stable, Christian citizens, Republicans would have no problem with it. Unfortunately for them, it also counts minorities, immigrants, the poor, non-Christians, and the homeless. Many Republicans would prefer that these types were not even part of the American population, and feel strongly that they should not be considered part of the electorate. They are aware that many of these people have been overlooked and undercounted in past censuses and that a preponderance of these people tend to vote for Democrats. For that reason, they oppose any efforts to make the census more thorough and accurate.

Now, it seems, Republican leaders are making efforts to sabotage the census before it even gets started. Republicans are sending-out a fundraising form that looks a lot like the official census form. Census officials are afraid that the Republican mailings could make some Americans think that they are responding to the official census and therefore be less likely to respond to the real thing.

House Minority gasbag John Boehner sent out a fundraising mailing which says that recipients were specially chosen to receive "the enclosed CENSUS DOCUMENT containing your 2010 Census of America's Republican Leadership." Copies of the Republican mailings look very much like official census forms. In the upper right hand side of the document I have seen, in large bold capital letters, it says “2010 CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT CENSUS.” Then below, in tiny lower case letters it says: “Commissioned by the Republican Party.” The rest of the form looks like an official federal government form. It is very different from the usual fundraising type of letter sent-out by political parties.

The similarity of this form to official government census forms is no coincidence. The clear purpose of this deceptive and dishonest mailing is to confuse voters and lower the response to the official census mailings. Republicans seem to think that the fewer the number of people who answer the census, the better it is for them.

A former director of the U.S. Census Bureau, who was appointed by George H.W. Bush, said in a letter sent to RNC Chairman Michael S. Steele that she received a mailer called the "2010 Congressional District Census." It was delivered in an envelope marked with the words, "Do Not Destroy, Official Document." She said that the mailer is "blatantly attempting to interfere with the United States’ 2010 Census of the Population….The design of the mailing envelope and its enclosure is clearly intended to confuse recipients and, in doing so, affect response to the nation’s 23rd decennial census."

Why do Republicans feel it necessary to engage in such deceptive and misleading activity? Is it because they do not trust the strength of their political arguments? Is it because they do not trust the majority of the American people to make the right decisions? They have relied on falsehoods and scare tactics in an attempt to defeat the health care reform bills. Why can’t they let truth prevail and let Democracy do its work?

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party

2010-02-10T03:15:00.000-08:00

It is emblematic of the profound wisdom emanating from the Tea Party movement that its poster girl and favored presidential candidate is the ill-educated, unqualified, unintelligent quitter whom former McCain aids openly admit was too obtuse to accept coaching for her television appearances and too uneducated to know the answers to questions that any prospective vice president should master. Recent revelations of her husband’s emails show that with his impressive credentials as a snowmobile champion he was the brains behind Sarah’s truncated term as Alaska’s governor.

The State of Alaska recently released nearly 3,000 pages of e-mails that Todd Palin exchanged with state officials. They show a Palin administration in which the governor's husband got involved in judicial and state board appointments, contract negotiations with public employee unions, and other matters that should have been handled by his wife.

The Tea Party Convention was a profit-making enterprise which paid the ex-governor handsomely to be its keynote speaker. Other prospective speakers dropped out because of ethical considerations. Sarah, whose abandonment of the State of Alaska was inspired by a need for cash, had no such problems.

Sarah exposed her penetrating understanding of national economics in her address when she blasted the Obama Administration for "wasteful" stimulus spending, and urged Congress to kill the latest stimulus-style proposal. This attack on the stimulus spending--spending which most congressional Republicans opposed--is a favorite of right-wingers who have no idea of what it would have been like in America without it and haven’t the foggiest idea of what that spending has done to prevent a deep depression.

Palin fed her Convention guests with the usual right-wing Tea Party paranoia about taxes, deficits, and spending. Needless to say, Palin has no understanding of why it is necessary to provide stimulus and incur further deficits during an economic recession. She could find-out if she was to read some of the recent writings of leading economists, but that would be stretching her capacity beyond People Magazine.

There is a wide consensus among leading economists to the effect that the stimulus legislation greatly helped an economy that was in free-fall a year ago. It saved many jobs and created many more jobs. “It was worth doing — it’s made a difference,” said Nigel Gault, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, a financial forecasting and analysis group based in Lexington, Mass. Mr. Gault added: “I don’t think it’s right to look at it by saying, ‘Well, the economy is still doing extremely badly, therefore the stimulus didn’t work.’ I’m afraid the answer is, yes, we did badly but we would have done even worse without the stimulus.”

While Dim Sarah condemns the stimulus and inveighs against further stimulus spending, leading economists believe that the stimulus package may not have been enough. They understand that in order to stop a plunging recession, you have to pump money into the system.

What is it with these Tea Party people? They are angry, but they do not seem to know why they are angry. Their amorphous anger seems to be aimed at a poor economy which is the result of the recession caused by the Bush Administration. They seem to resent taxes (“Taxed Enough Already”), even though the Democrats are not going to raise their taxes. They seem to resent large deficits even though the current deficits were caused by Bush’s huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the Bush recession, and two Bush wars. They seem to resent health care reform that will lower their health care costs and make it more available.

I think that the root of Tea Party anger is that their team lost the Super Bowl of politics, the 2008 elections, and that a man who is part African American is now our Commander in Chief.

Limited Government and the Poor

2010-02-03T05:53:00.000-08:00

One constantly hears the claim by conservatives that the real issue between conservatives and liberals is the size and scope of government. Conservatives never tire of repeating the claim that they want smaller government, and that the present size of government is far beyond anything envisioned or authorized by the Constitution. They assert that the growth of government threatens their freedom and way of life. Nonsense! What they object to is taxes and the use of government funds to help the poor, especially minorities.

The primary source of conflict between liberals and conservatives has always been the issue of how to deal with the poor. Liberals have always supported and conservatives have always opposed governmental policies that provide for the amelioration of poverty through jobs, minimum wages, welfare, social security, health care, housing, and tax relief. Liberals look upon such legislation as humane justice. Conservatives see such programs as the redistribution of wealth.

If government programs constitute redistribution of wealth, why aren’t the poor people getting wealthy? A really good program redistributing wealth would, at the very least, provide every poor person with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why do poor people go on being poor, living in wretched housing conditions, and doing without food, and clothing?

In order for the government to provide welfare, Medicaid, housing programs, food stamps, unemployment benefits, jobs programs, and other relief for poor people, there have to be a number of governments departments administering such aid. This is what conservatives object to; the payment of taxes necessary to support those departments.

Conservatives do not oppose the expansion of governmental power or the expenditure of governmental funds for programs they favor. They approve of the use of taxes to augment military power and wage war, subsidize oil and gas companies in the search for fossil fuels, and enforce laws against illegal immigration, abortion, pornography, and the drug trade.

To many conservatives, poor people, especially minority people, are not deserving of any aid from the government. They believe that such people are lazy, ignorant, and inferior. Their attitude is best reflected in the remarks of the South Carolina Lieutenant Governor, Andre Bauer, who recently said: “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that." In other words, poor and minority people are like animals; all they are good for is eating and breeding.

Such thinking reveals a cold-hearted lack of compassion. Some people who share these beliefs call themselves “Christians.” Nothing could be more ironic. The Bible tells us that the man they worship as the Son of God was born poor and spent his life on earth wandering among, preaching to, and blessing the poor. He taught his followers how to see the face of God in the poorest and most wretched people. I wonder if Andre Bauer ever read these words: “...for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink...as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:35-40). I wonder why it is too much for the Andre Bauers of this world that some of their taxes are used to help the poor?

Private charity is simply not enough to provide for many of the needs of the poor. The provision of such necessities is more than a moral good. It benefits the nation and all of the people. It ennobles us and makes us a better people. It makes our nation stronger, safer, and happier.

Unsettling Developments--The Supreme Court Decision

2010-01-27T06:04:00.000-08:00

The election of a Republican in Massachusetts was not the most unsettling recent development. Massachusetts voters, who already have a public health insurance law, were terrified that the federal health care reform would eliminate their health care law. They were also scared silly by health insurance industry lies. No, the most unsettling development was the issuance of a decision by five Republican members of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.”

In Citizens United, the majority of the Court ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. The Court overruled prior decisions in which it had upheld parts of the McCain-Feingold law that restricted spending by corporations and labor unions in elections. The decision was based upon the premise that restrictions on corporate spending in elections are a violation of corporations’ First Amendment rights of free speech. In other words, corporations are “people” with the same free speech rights as you and me.

This, of course, was a purely political decision made by Republican justices appointed by Republican presidents. The Republican Party has long been the party of big business, and has long opposed most government regulation of business. Thus, the insurance industry has been able to weaken and possibly defeat health care reform that would benefit all Americans. The oil and gas, pharmaceutical, banking, securities, and other industries have been able to count on Republican support in Congress against any attempt to keep them from despoiling, polluting, overcharging, defrauding, and abusing the American people. Republicans have long opposed any legislation that would guarantee workers better working conditions, minimum wages, decent hours, the right to unionize and bargain, and other rights.

Now the Supreme Court has made it likely that Corporations will become directly involved in most elections, backing candidates that adhere to the corporate lust for profits and opposing candidates that call for any kind of laws benefiting workers, the environment, safety, and public welfare. Corporations will swamp the electoral process with money. President Obama called it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

While the Supreme Court made this decision ostensibly in the name of free speech, it had nothing to do with free speech. It was pure politics--like the 2000 election decision. Corporate spending is not free speech. Conservative Republicans have never been strong supporters of free speech. They have a history of opposing free speech, particularly the free speech of anti-war, anti-segregation, and anti-corporate demonstrators. Conservative Republicans approve of free speech only when they approve of the content. When speech involves political views they dislike or sexual material that offends them, the principle of freedom of speech disappears.

And corporations are not “people” entitled to the same rights of free speech as you and I. Their expenditure of money to sway public opinion and prevent the election of candidates who might support legislation affecting their profits is not “speech.” A corporation is an artificial construct, created for the purpose of protecting shareholders from liabilities. The McCain-Feingold and other laws never restricted the free speech rights of corporate officers, directors, employees, or shareholders. They merely restricted the use of corporate money to influence campaigns. Today’s giant corporations are faceless leviathans without consciences. Young executives get promoted for adding to the bottom line, not for their concern about the welfare of the community.

Any liberals who think that labor unions, environmental organizations, peace groups, civil rights organizations, and other groups devoted to the rights and protection of people will be able to offset the massive amount of money that will be spent by corporations are smoking something illegal.

The Causes of the Recession

2010-01-20T07:23:00.000-08:00

Several articles by leading economists and journalists, including Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman in The New York Times Magazine, Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz in Vanity Fair, and John Cassidy in The New Yorker, have identified the major causes of the Recession and have explained the collapse of conservative economic theory.

In his Times article, “How did Economists Get It So Wrong,” Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics at Princeton University, described how the profession of economics is divided between “saltwater” economists, located mainly in East Coast universities such as Harvard, M.I.T., and Princeton, and “freshwater” economists, located mainly in Midwestern schools like the University of Chicago.

The saltwater economists follow the teachings of John Maynard Keynes who, in his 1936masterwork, “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,” explained that markets do not always follow logical patterns of self-correction and that governmental regulation and intervention are often necessary to make the economy work properly.

The freshwater economists adhere to the teachings of men like Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago who developed the theory called “Monetarism.” Under Monetarism, the only governmental action necessary to prevent depressions is for central banks to keep the nation’s money supply (the sum of cash in circulation and bank deposits) growing on a steady path.

Freshwater economists believe that because markets are self-adjusting, there is little or no need for governmental regulation of and intervention in the economy. This concept is called the “Efficient Market Theory.” Under the Efficient Market Theory as propounded by University of Chicago economists like Robert Lucas, Eugene Fama, and John Cochrane, the prices of stocks and other financial assets accurately reflect all of the available information about economic fundamentals. Along with this, the freshwater economists believe in the “rational-expectations theory,” which posits that (Wall Street) individuals and firms are hyper-intelligent decision makers, and that the combined effect of their good decisions is a market that continuously adjusts to changing conditions and accurately reflects the state of the economy.

The big problem with the theories of the freshwater economists is that the recession proved them to be all wet. The adoption of their theories by the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress led to the recession. As stated by Paul Krugman: “They (the freshwater economists) turned a blind eye to the limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of markets — especially financial markets — that can cause the economy’s operating system to undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when regulators don’t believe in regulation.”

All three writers show how the recession was caused by the deregulation of the banks and securities markets. When the Republican Congress lifted the bans on predatory lending by banks, erased the strict separation of banks and securities houses, lowered the reserve requirements for financial institutions, and permitted Wall Street to engage in wildly speculative trading in derivatives, the entire structure that was supposed to be self-correcting came crashing down.

While a number of freshwater economists, such as Fama, Lucas, and Cochrane, refused to admit their mistakes, several others courageously admitted the failure of their theories. During hearings on Capitol Hill, Alan Greenspan, a freshwater conservative, acknowledged that his economic philosophy was flawed and that the embrace of this philosophy by America—and much of the rest of the world—made it inevitable that the economy would crash. Another conservative, Richard A. Posner, admitted that “The movement to deregulate the financial industry went too far by exaggerating the resilience—the self-healing powers—of laissez-faire capitalism.”

The nation is lucky that after the recession hit, President Obama and the Democrats took-over the economy, and by means of bailouts and stimulus were able to avert a major depression.

Dick Cheney on Terror

2010-01-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

What can you do with a lovable old curmudgeon like Dick Cheney? Put him in prison for war crimes? Nah. We need him out there spouting his imbecilities to help us forget all of the mistakes made by the Cheney/Bush Administration when it came to terrorism.

Cheney has repeatedly criticized the President Obama for laxity on terrorism. Part of this criticism has been Cheney’s effort to defend his own use of torture as an interrogation technique. He recently criticized the President for not responding quickly to the Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt (President Obama took three days to publicly address the incident-- Bush took six days to respond to an identical incident with the 2001 shoe bomber, Richard Reid). Cheney said that President Obama “seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war.” As we all now know, since Christmas President Obama has acted swiftly and resolutely to strengthen our defenses against terror.

Cheney contends that President Obama has hurt the image of the United States around the world by trying to engage in dialogue with Muslim nations! Funny, but the Nobel Prize Committee doesn’t seem to agree with him.

Cheney and the Republicans seem to think that President Obama should not have been vacationing in Hawaii at the time of the Christmas incident (George W. Bush holds the record for amount of time taken by a president on vacation--over 900 days). One Republican strategist, Kevin Madden, made the brainless remark that “Hawaii, to many Americans, seems like a foreign place.”

My guess is that Dick Cheney is suffering from that predicament we older people often experience--forgetfulness. He may or may not be able to distinguish his hunting companion from a quail, but he cannot remember the policies that resulted in the 9/11 attacks. He seems to forget the response of his administration in early 2001, before 9/11, when Richard A. Clarke, counter-terrorism advisor on the National Security Council, repeatedly warned of the danger of an attack from al Qaeda.

In January, 2001, Clarke made an urgent request for a meeting of the National Security Council's Principals Committee to discuss the growing al-Qaeda threat in the Middle East. Clarke also suggested strategies for combating al-Qaeda. The Cheney/Bush Administration rejected Clarke’s urgent warnings, and suggested that Clarke was exaggerating the danger and influence of Osama bin Laden.

In his book, “Against All Enemies,” Clarke charged that before and during the 9/11 crisis, Bush and Cheney were distracted from efforts against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda by a preoccupation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Clarke wrote that the day after the 9/11 attack, President Bush pulled him and a couple of aides aside and "testily" asked him to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the 9/11attacks. In response, Clarke wrote a report, signed by the FBI and the CIA, stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement. The paper was quickly returned by a White House deputy with a note saying "Please update and resubmit." Bush had no interest in going after al Qaeda. He wanted Saddam Hussein.

As a result of the neglect by the Cheney/Bush Administration, there was more than a failed attempt to blow-up some powder on an airplane. There was a massive, horrible attack on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93, with thousands of people killed. For some reason, this did not focus Bush and Cheney’s attention on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. For the next eight years Cheney and Bush pursued a wasteful, murderous war in Iraq, virtually ignoring the real terrorists in Afghanistan.

Now that he is an aged, blithering idiot, Cheney has forgotten all that.

Conspiracy Theories and Ockham's Razor

2010-01-06T11:06:00.000-08:00

Some people are going to be bothered by the following statement, but it is correct. There was no conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. The assassination of Kennedy was the work of only one man, Lee Harvey Oswald. If that statement makes some uncomfortable, it is a sign that they are persons who prefer conspiracy theories to sharp, rational, scientific evidence. There have been a number of studies proving conclusively that Oswald acted alone.

When I hear someone spouting conspiracy theories, I deduct 20 points from his or her IQ. People who believe in one conspiracy theory usually believe in others. That is because their weak minds are unable to deal with the kind of logic and precision needed to understand the modern world. Belief in a conspiracy theory is a form of mental laziness. It is a substitute for rational thought.

There are a lot of irrational conspiracy theories out there. One of them put out by people called “Birthers” is that President Obama was not born in America and therefore is not an American citizen qualified to be President. Now that the State of Hawaii has squelched this theory by producing a valid birth certificate, you would think that the Birthers would drop to matter. They haven’t. They think the birth certificate is part of a dark conspiracy.

Another theory being put-out by right-wing crazies is that illegal immigration is part of a conspiracy to return the southwestern United States to Mexico. They believe that it isn’t jobs or money that is luring those people across the border; it is a desire to make states like Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona part of Mexico again.

One foaming-at-the-mouth talk-show host named Alex Jones claims that 9/11 was a conspiracy by the military-industrial complex and "global elites" to bring-on totalitarian world government. Huh?

Another group of brain-damaged people believe that the moon landings never happened and were faked by the government to dupe the public.

Glenn Beck, who has established himself as a full-fledged paranoid psycho-moron, said on his radio show that the Obama Administration is going to use the automobile alert system, OnStar, to spy on Americans and enforce martial law.

There are lots of conspiracy theories about secret societies like the Masons, Yale’s Skull and Bones, and the Catholic order of Opus Dei. There are people who believe that the world is run by a secret group called “The Illuminati.” That is about as credible as believing that the world is run by the Xenia chapter of the Elks.

The murder of President Kennedy profoundly influenced my philosophy of life. I came to realize that much in life is the result of arbitrary forces for which there is no reason and no explanation. Things just happen. I developed a lawyer’s method of reasoning based on “Ockham’s Razor.”

Ockham's Razor (or Occam’s Razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem). In other words, the simplest explanation is almost always the best.

Why do people continue to have faith in conspiracy theories? Because people do not want to believe that the bad things that happen to us are arbitrary and have no real meaning. They want to believe that there is an explanation for everything, and that most of the bad things that happen can be attributed to some evil person, conspiracy, or spirit. Most such people are quite superstitious.

It is true that there are actual conspiracies out there; 9/11 was a conspiracy. But most conspiracy theories are bogus. The truth is that most bad things that happen are not the result of any conspiracy. They just happen.

Reform

2009-12-30T06:32:00.000-08:00

The history of western civilization is a story of the struggle by liberals against conservatives for the political liberation of mankind and the expansion of political and civil rights. It is a story of the struggle of common people against aristocracy and wealth for basic rights and freedoms. It is a story that continues today.

In 1832, at the instigation of Lord Grey and the Whig Party (later called the Liberal Party), the English Parliament passed the first great Reform Bill under which it began the process of making Great Britain a true democracy. Up until then, the parliament was controlled by the nobility and wealthy landowners who decided who was going to represent the various counties and boroughs. Big cities often had only one or two representatives while tiny little (rotten) boroughs were able to send two representatives to Parliament. Only men were allowed to vote, and they were required to own a certain amount of land or have a certain amount of wealth. The vast majority of people had no voting rights. The First Reform Bill abolished many rotten boroughs, enfranchised new boroughs, and expanded the qualifications for voters.

In 1867, the English Parliament passed the Second Reform Act which enfranchised the urban working class of England and Wales. Once again the act was pressed by the Liberal Party, although it was allowed to pass by the Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Subsequent reform bills in 1884 and 1885 further expanded the British electorate and set that nation on the course of democracy as it exists today. All of these bills were fiercely opposed by conservatives, particularly the nobility who saw them as diluting their power and influence.

In 1964, at the powerful insistence of President Lyndon Johnson, the United States Senate passed the Civil Rights Act. Here, almost 100 years after the end of the Civil War, the Act extended voting rights of African Americans and outlawed racial segregation in schools, at the workplace, and in public accommodations. The bill was filibustered by the same backward, right-wing forces that filibustered today’s health care reform bill (only today those forces call themselves Republicans, not Democrats as they did back then). The leader of the Southern Senators who filibustered the Civil Rights bill was Senator Richard Russell, who said: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states."

In 1965, the Democrats under Lyndon Johnson were able to pass the Medicare bill over the opposition of conservative Republicans. Ronald Reagan said: “[I]f you don’t [stop Medicare], and if I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” George H.W. Bush described Medicare as “Socialized Medicine.” Barry Goldwater said: “Having given our pensioners their medical care in kind, why not food baskets, why not public housing accommodations, why not vacation resorts, why not a ration of cigarettes for those who smoke and of beer for those who drink.” Doesn’t this all sound a little bit like the arguments of Republicans against health care reform today?

On December 24, 2009, the United States Senate took a step in the reform of our health care system. The Democrats in that body based their support for the bill on the belief that decent health care is a right of all people, and not just a privilege. For millions of Americans who have no health insurance, for the over 12,000 who lose their insurance every day, for the 45,000 a year who die from lack of health insurance, that right is a matter of life or death.

Health Care Reform Right Away

2009-12-25T10:27:00.000-08:00

In their fanatical efforts to stop the American people from getting low-cost, readily available health insurance, the Senate Republicans have resorted to many distortions of fact. One of them is that although the new taxes for wealthy people envisioned by the bill will take effect immediately, the benefits of health care reform will not begin until 2013. While it is true that some reforms will not take hold until 2013, there are a number of important benefits that will begin immediately when the bill that was supported by Senate is signed into law by President Obama

Senior citizens who are beneficiaries of the Medicare Part D drug program should be aware that the bill will immediately begin closing the “donut hole.” That is the period during which seniors have to pay the full cost of their prescriptions after they amass $2,700 in drug costs. After $2,700, Medicare does not resume paying for drug expenses until seniors reach $4,350 in out-of-pocket payments, a figure most seniors never reach in one year. The health care reform bill will immediately cut the donut hole by $500 and institute a 50 percent discount in brand-name drugs. It will eventually abolish the donut hole. For many seniors who simply cannot afford to buy their essential medications during the donut hole, that will be life saving.

The health care reform bill creates an insurance Exchange that begins in 2013 and will enable purchasers to search for the best and lowest-cost insurance. Until the Exchange is put in place, however, the bill will immediately create a temporary insurance program to help uninsured people or people who have been denied policies because of preexisting conditions.

The bill will immediately ban companies from placing lifetime caps on coverage, or (except in cases of fraud) rescinding a patient’s policy when he or she files a claim for benefits.

The bill will immediately allow displaced workers to keep their COBRA coverage until the Exchange is in place and they can access affordable coverage.

The bill immediately creates a long-term-care insurance program, financed by voluntary payroll deductions, to provide benefits to adults who become functionally disabled.

One of the problems that may arise when you add millions of new patients to the rolls of people who are covered by health insurance is that there will be insufficient numbers of doctors and health care workers to handle them. The health care reform bill provides immediate new massive investment in training programs to increase the number of primary care doctors, nurses, and public health professionals.

The bill will immediately require that health plans allow young people up to age 27 to remain on their parents’ insurance policies if their parents so choose.

The bill will immediately eliminate co-payments for preventative services and will exempt preventative services from deductibles under the Medicare program.

The bill will immediately provide protection in Medicare for low-income people in order to assure that more individuals are able to access Medicare assistance.

The bill will immediately prohibit Medicare Advantage (the private Medicare insurance program subsidized by the federal government) from charging enrollees higher cost-sharing for services in their private plan than is charged in traditional Medicare.

Insurance companies have threatened to raise premiums if the health care reform bill is passed. The bill will immediately take steps to discourage excessive price increases, including review and disclosure of insurance rates.

There are a number of other provisions of the bill that will take effect immediately. Perhaps that is the problem the Senate Republicans have with the bill. Their despicable masters in the health insurance industry are terrified that despite all of the millions they spent to grease the palms of Republican senators, this bill will begin to adversely affect their profits now. I hope it does.

Populism and the Republicans

2009-12-16T07:19:00.000-08:00

It has become customary for right-wing Republicans to assume the mantel of populism in their public pronouncements. Such people as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin have tapped-into the traditional resentment of less affluent, less educated, lower income people against those whom they perceive to be the elite, Eastern, intellectual liberals. The Republican senators in Congress are exploiting this anger in their opposition to the health care reform and other bills. Unfortunately for the rank-and-file Americans, this populist rhetoric is a cruel deception, and the Republicans are actually working against the interests of regular Joes.

The health care reform bill would dramatically lower the cost of health care for middle-class Americans, make it far more available to everybody, and guarantee them coverage no matter what their previous condition, current illness, or financial problems might be. It would immediately cut in-half the amount of the doughnut-hole for seniors on Medicare Part D and make medications far more affordable. It would cover all kinds of screening tests for a wide range of medical conditions. Despite this, and many other advantages for ordinary Americans, right-wing news people and Republican politicians have succeeded in encouraging many middle class Americans to cry-out against health care reform and against their own best interests.

The Republicans in Congress are not acting on behalf of ordinary Americans. They are acting on behalf of the fabulously wealthy health insurance industry which has contributed lavishly to their coffers, and on behalf of the fabulously wealthy American fat-cats who do not want to pay even the small amount of additional taxes they will incur for health care reform.

This pandering to working class resentment has been the program of the congressional Republicans for some time now. They complain loudly about the increases in taxes that health care reform will cause even though they know that the only rise in taxes will be for the wealthiest Americans. There will be no increase in taxes for middle class Americans. Congressional Republicans complain because their real constituency is not ordinary people, but rich people. It is wealthy companies and rich people that supply them with huge amounts of money, not ordinary people.

The Republicans scream about our country incurring deficits and burdening our children with debt even though the Congressional Budget Office says that the health care reform bill will actually lower the deficit. Republicans denounce the fact that the Democrats plan to allow the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire. The additional taxes to be paid by the wealthiest Americans will help defray the deficits.

One particularly obnoxious bit of populist rhetoric has been the hypocritical claim of senate Republicans that the health care reform bill will be taking money away from Medicare. These politicians care nothing about Medicare. They have tried to abolish it and replace it with private insurance. They know that under the health care reform bill there will be no reduction in Medicare benefits. What they have tried to rescue is the extremely wasteful Medicare Advantage (MA) program, a private insurance program subsidized by the federal government. MA is very profitable for the private health insurance industry, and that is why the Republican senators sought to preserve the government subsidies. It had nothing to do with helping Medicare recipients. Those on MA will lose nothing if it folds. They will be able to go on regular Medicare and obtain the additional services provided by MA for less money than they are now paying for MA.

Republican politicians always clothe their hypocrisies in the garb of populism, but when they oppose climate legislation, unions, minimum wages, unemployment benefits, stock market regulation, and health care reform, it is not because of concern for ordinary people. It is, rather, solicitude for big business, oil companies, big Wall Street brokerages, and health insurance companies.

Afghanistan

2009-12-09T06:43:00.000-08:00

After dithering in Afghanistan for over eight years, during which Dick Cheney and his assistant, George W. Bush, denied the necessary forces to achieve progress there, and during which they negligently let Osama bin Laden escape capture in Tora Bora, Cheney had the effrontery to criticize President Obama for carefully reviewing the strategic situation before ordering 30,000 additional troops to the area.
Instead of concentrating on Afghanistan where al Qaeda and the Taliban were located, the Cheney/Bush Administration attacked Iraq, where there were no al Qaeda, no Taliban, no Osama bin Laden, and no weapons of mass destruction. It was like the embarrassment of a police drug squad that mistakenly raids the wrong house only to find nothing there and to learn that the actual drug house is next door.

During the 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama claimed that we should get out of Iraq and concentrate on our real enemies in Afghanistan. His decision to augment troop levels in that country is consistent with his campaign rhetoric. Any delay in making a decision pales in comparison with the eight-year delay of the Cheney/Bush ditherers.

Contrary to the whining of Dick Cheney, President Obama acted within the framework of time suggested by the commanders on the ground. On December 1, 2009, in his speech at West Point, the President said: “Let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war.” The President assured the nation that “The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 — the fastest pace possible — so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers.”

The President also responded to the claims that we are escalating the fight in the same manner as was done in Viet Nam. He said: “Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border.”

The President could have added that this war in Afghanistan is completely unlike the Cheney/Bush war in Iraq. America was not attacked by Iraq. In fact, even under the vicious dictator Saddam Hussein, America was never in danger of attack by Iraq. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. The only reason we attacked Iraq was the bellicosity of Dick Cheney, the thirst for Iraqi oil, and the embarrassment of George W. Bush at his father’s failure to eliminate Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War.

President Obama has described an exit strategy for this nasty conflict in Afghanistan, something that was not done by Cheney and Bush in Iraq for over seven years. He will come under criticism by the Republicans for doing so. He has made clear, however, that getting our forces out of Afghanistan by 2011 will not be an abrupt abandonment of the people of Afghanistan: “Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground.”

The political Left will oppose the President’s plan, but I feel that his steps are necessary to protect America. I hate war of any kind. It is a monument to humanity’s failure to evolve from the instincts of lower animals. But we do not live in an ideal world. Some barbaric people in this world think that God wants them to fly airplanes into large structures and slaughter thousands of people. We must resist and fight such people, or surrender our civilization to the forces of chaos.

Libertarianism

2009-12-02T06:49:00.000-08:00

The phenomenon of Libertarianism is gaining some currency among right-wing conservatives due in part to the 2008 candidacy for president of Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas. Paul was a candidate for president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1988. The official candidate of the Libertarian Party in 2008 was the battered and discredited old hypocritical hack, Bob Barr, former congressman from Georgia.

In spite of fact that some libertarians oppose drug laws, right-to-life laws, and laws banning same-sex marriage, one should not confuse libertarianism with liberalism or with the ideology of the American Civil Liberties Union. Libertarians also oppose gun control, social programs, and most regulation of business. Their philosophy is widely embraced by elements of the tax resister movement, militias, the NRA, and motorcycle gangs.

It is difficult to describe the philosophy of Libertarianism because there are a number of different types of libertarians. Most libertarians believe that any restraint of liberty by government is improper, illegal, and unconstitutional. Libertarians believe in an absolute right to private property and that the owner of private property cannot be forced by government to in any way relinquish total control over that property.

That idea of economic liberty is reflected in the Libertarian Party Platform which states: “We oppose all controls on wages, prices, rents, profits, production, and interest rates. We advocate the repeal of all laws banning or restricting the advertising of prices, products, or services. We oppose all violations of the right to private property, liberty of contract, and freedom of trade.”

Unlike conservative Republicans who would reduce taxes, the Libertarian Party Platform says: “We call for the repeal of the income tax, the abolishment of the Internal Revenue Service and all federal programs and services not required under the U.S. Constitution.”

Although Ronald Reagan made libertarian noises when he declared that “Government is the problem, not the solution,” he did nothing to dismantle the elaborate structure of the federal government that had grown-up over the decades. Conservative Republicans like to proclaim the virtues of smaller government, but during the eight years of Bush rule they did nothing to advance that idea. Republican conservatism is something very different from Libertarianism.

One source of libertarian ideas is the philosophy of the late novelist, playwright, and screen-writer, Ayn Rand (pronounced ‘ain ‘raend), born in Russia under the name Alisa Rosenbaum. She wrote several novels, including “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead.” I read her books many years ago and found them to be mediocre literature and sophomoric philosophy--a judgment shared by most literary critics. Nevertheless, many college students are impressed by her political views which emphasize independence (from parents?), individual rights, limited government, and laissez-faire capitalism. One biographer recently dubbed her books: “part of the underground curriculum of American adolescence.” In her novels, the heroes, such as John Galt and Howard Roark, are independent-minded capitalists fighting against insipid, weak-kneed do-gooders.

To Ayn Rand, the cause of much of the evil in the world is “Altruism.” Rand said: “Even though altruism declares that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive,’ it does not work that way in practice. The givers are never blessed; the more they give, the more is demanded of them.” Rand’s philosophy leaned toward that of the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, even though she later repudiated him. Like Nietzsche, she was an atheist who rejected Judeo-Christian ethics which hold charity and altruism as the highest virtues. Rand held that the only moral social system is laissez-faire capitalism.

Unfortunately for Libertarians, Ayn Rand was not a very profound thinker. I found her to be shallow and, at times, silly. Western civilization has long recognized altruism, selflessness, and charity as noble qualities that enrich society and separate us from the animals.

When the Congress passed a law giving the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to regulate the tobacco industry, Libertarian/Republican Congressman Ron Paul was the leading critic denouncing the law. That kind of law is abhorrent to Libertarians. To them, if people want to smoke and contract cancer, that is their right, and government has no business deciding what is best for people’s health.

On the theory that government is the problem and not the solution, Libertarians would abolish many of the programs that define American civilization. They would eradicate Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They would block our current efforts to reduce global warming, reform health care, and regulate the food, pharmaceutical, energy, and other industries. They seem to be saying that government has no role in the advancement of human welfare or the alleviation of human suffering.

They oppose laws regulating the usury of payday loan and credit card companies. They oppose laws against false advertising. They oppose antitrust laws and laws controlling the prices that may be charged by public utilities. They oppose federal regulation of commerce, agriculture, labor, energy, housing, urban development, the environment, trade, health, transportation, and the airways.

They would, no doubt, abolish the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Federal Trade Commission, and all other governmental agencies that control the marketplace. They believe, as Michael Douglas said in the movie “Wall Street,” that “Greed is good.” They think that by doing away with all governmental regulatory agencies, they would free superior men to act creatively in the marketplace. Perhaps so, but they would also free the likes of Bernard Madoff, Michael Milkin, Ivan Boesky, Kenneth Kozlowski, Charles Keating, Bernard Ebbers, and R. Allen Stanford to engage in massive fraud, Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, and insider trading. To the Libertarian laissez faire capitalists, it is buyer beware no matter how crooked the seller.

There is an essential and dangerous error at the core of Libertarian philosophy.
They assume that if brilliant men are left alone to pursue their goals, they will accomplish great things and, in the process, benefit mankind. Now I recognize that great men have produced great advances in industry, and that they have often produced great wealth and jobs. However, there is a downside to the strivings of powerful men. Such men have often used their power to aggrandize themselves at the expense of their fellow men. They have promoted their commerce at the expense of slave labor, exploitation of workers, devastation of the environment, destruction of competition, and the promotion of dangerous, unsafe, and poisonous products.

I suppose that if you do not believe in altruism, you would have had no problem operating the IG Farben plant at Auschwitz concentration camp. IG Farben built a factory (named Buna Chemical Plant) for producing synthetic oil and rubber (from coal) in Auschwitz during the Nazi Holocaust. At its peak in 1944, this factory made use of 83,000 slave laborers. Many thousands of those laborers were annihilated in the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz. Someone with altruism, like Oskar Schindler, might have tried to ameliorate the conditions of those murdered masses, but not some laissez faire capitalist seeking only profit.

There are two sides to mankind. We are capable of great goodness and generosity as well as great evil. Government exists to promote civilization. Without government, we would have no civilization. Life would be as it was before civilization, when the condition of man was, as Thomas Hobbs described it: “a condition of war of everyone against everyone” and life was “nasty, brutish, and short.”

Accomplishments of the Obama Administration

2009-11-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

There was a funny skit on Saturday Night Live in which a performer who resembles President Obama recited programs promised during the election campaign and then, one-by-one, said something like “that hasn’t happened.” Republicans have been making the same point, but, of course, without any humor. It is with ill grace that a party that has filibustered almost every initiative introduced by the President in Congress, now complains that many of the initiatives have not been enacted.

The Obama Administration has, as I said in my last commentary, saved this country from total financial collapse. The Republicans in Congress could not care less. Their aim is not the economic recovery of their country, but rather, regaining control of Congress and the White House. Some right-wing Republicans, like that buffoon Rush Limbaugh, would actually welcome the failure of our economy.

Many people who do not understand the financial basis of the American Economy are critical of the large amounts of money spent to bail-out the banks and Wall Street financial institutions. Those bail-outs were actually begun under the Bush Administration, which deserves credit for creating the TARP program and supplying needed funds to keep the financial institutions going. This effort was furthered by the Obama Administration with the approval of all major economic experts in America. If it had not been done, American would be an economic wasteland today.

Promptly after his inauguration, President Obama secured enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, better known as the “Stimulus Bill.” It is thanks in part to this bill, and its effect of creating or saving over 640,000 jobs, that the recession is now ending and our economy is returning to robust activity.

There have been many other accomplishments. On January 29, 2009, the President signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which reversed an obnoxious Supreme Court decision and made it possible for working women to bring suit for long-standing pay discrimination.

On February 4, 2009, the President signed the Children’s Health Reauthorization Act which reinstituted a program providing health insurance for millions of children from lower-income families.

On May 20, 2009, the President signed the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery act, two pieces of legislation intended to ameliorate the effect of massive foreclosures around the country. The Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act gives the federal government tools to crack-down on the kind of fraud that put thousands of hardworking families at risk of losing their homes despite doing everything right to live within their means.

On May 22, 2009, the President signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009. Congress has taken action to move-up the effective date of this law due to the fact that the banks have tried to avoid it by hastily raising interest charges.

Among other major legislative accomplishments of the Obama Administration there are the Weapons System Acquisition Reform Act, the Cash for Clunkers Act, extensions of the Unemployment Insurance Program, The Hate Crimes Bill, and the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2010 (in which the President was able to cancel a number of programs and weapons systems unwanted by the Pentagon).

Aside from these and many other items of legislation, the President has accomplished a great deal by means of executive orders, including the outlaw of torture, the requirement that the federal government invest in energy efficiency, reversal of the Mexico City Policy, and reversal of many of Bush’s executive orders including one permitting a claim after an administration ends of executive privilege for presidential records. President Obama’s initiatives in foreign affairs have improved the standing of America throughout the world and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

If you think that the Obama Administration has no important accomplishments, think again.

The Economy?

2009-11-11T07:35:00.000-08:00

To my astonishment, one of the factors given for the Democratic losses in the November 3rd election of Republicans to the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey was the poor state of the economy. In surveys taken at polling places, 85 percent of voters in Virginia and 89 percent of voters in New Jersey said that they were worried about the economy. Apparently the high rate of unemployment is being blamed by some on President Obama, who has been in office for 10 months. It seems that people, egged-on by Republican leaders, blame the incumbents in office for the state of the economy even if it is not their fault. Moreover, Republican spin-doctors have tried to make the governors races a referendum, in part, on President Obama’s handling of the economy.

Let’s get a few things straight. President Obama inherited a disastrous recession from George W. Bush and the Republicans. The recession was largely the result of the Republican repeal of laws and regulations that would have prevented much of the predatory lending and Wall Street manipulation of derivatives that led to a national financial meltdown. The recession began in December, 2007, and by the time Obama was inaugurated in January, 2009, it was in full-swing. At its low point, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 6347. As of November 6, 2009, it stood at over 10,000. In January, 2009, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was down -6.2 percent. As of September, 2009, it was up +3.6 percent. That’s a 9.8 percent improvement in the GDP in just 9 months.

When President Obama took-over the government, America’s major banks and financial institutions were on the verge of total collapse. Such a collapse would have plunged this nation into depression and chaos. Over the objections of congressional Republicans, the President and his economic team were able to rescue the financial segment of our economy with TARP and other funds and were able to stem the tide of economic disaster with a major stimulus bill.

Those who accuse the Obama Administration of doing nothing should stop and think. All they have done to date is save this country from utter financial devastation. If you think we have high unemployment now, imagine what it would be like in a real depression. During the great depression of the 1930’s it was as much as 25 percent.

As of October, 2009, the stimulus had created or saved over 640,000 jobs. The U.S. manufacturing sector grew in August for the first time in 19 months. It continued to grow in September and October. According The Institute for Supply Management in its monthly Report on Business, the US manufacturing industry is hiring more aggressively than at any time since 2006. The Institute’s index for employment increased by 6.9 percentage points in October, 2009.

On November 2, 2009, The National Association of Realtors said pending home sales rose again, marking eight consecutive monthly gains – the longest streak since measurement began in 2001.

October, 2009, was far and away the best month American retailers have had since consumers put the brakes on spending last autumn. Major categories had robust sales growth for the first time in more than a year. In October, 2009, apparel sales increased 3.4 percent compared with the same period a year ago, luxury goods rose 6.5 percent, and jewelry increased 7.2 percent.

Despite the fact that there is still high unemployment, most leading economists have declared the recession to be over. It will take time to get back the jobs that were lost during the Bush recession, but they will come back—perhaps slowly. The absence of a genuine depression and the continued improvement in the economy is thanks to the steps taken by the Obama Administration and opposed by the Republicans.

More on Intelligence, Education, and Elitism

2009-11-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

A recent letter to the editor reminded me that there are still morons out there writing letters to the editor. Some letters are so illiterate you would think that the writers would be ashamed to send them in. This one was full of grammatical errors, but I will not repeat them all. The writer referred to my column as being filled with "miss-information," which I assume is information for unmarried women. The writer has no clue as to how to punctuate, constantly leaving his commas outside the quotation marks, and referring to me as "one of the 'State Controlled Media' wannabe's'." This moron has written many letters to the editor, and each one is filled with grammatical errors. He displays his ignorance without realizing that educated people are aware of his inability to write in the english language.

When I wrote a column discussing the lack of education found in conservative commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, and compared it with the educational accomplishments of liberal news people, the letters poured in calling me an “elitist.” I also contrasted the low educational achievements of Bush Administration officials with the extraordinary accomplishments of President Obama and his team. This seemed to outrage the right-wing people who responded to my column by saying that we would be far better-off in Washington with less educated people.

It seems that there is a kind of class hatred by conservatives toward liberals and toward the generally higher level of liberals’ education. Conservatives feel that they are looked down upon by more intellectual liberals. It is not unlike the deep resentment felt by lower class people toward wealthy and sophisticated people. That kind of resentment has fueled violent revolutions.

I probably am an elitist. I believe that when it comes to news commentators, the truth is more likely to be heard from highly educated people than from uneducated people. I believe that the best people to run a government are the most highly educated and intelligent people. I simply cannot understand people’s claim that we need uneducated people running this country. When G. Harrold Carswell was nominated by President Nixon to the Supreme Court, Democrats charged that he was a mediocre judge. In defense, Senator Hruska of Nebraska said: "Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they, and a little chance.” I don’t know if he was kidding or not.

The last thing you want on the Supreme Court is a mediocre judge. The most important attribute of any Supreme Court justice must be intelligence. If I am an elitist because I want my Supreme Court justices to be highly educated intellectuals, so be it. The same applies to the President and his Administration. I want the very brightest people running the country. If this is discrimination against not-so-bright people, so be it. I realize that highly educated people can make major mistakes. A good example would be the list of mistakes involving Viet Nam described in "The Best and The Brightest" by David Halberstam. I realize that all governments make mistakes, but I want those decisions being made by educated and intelligent people, not dunderheads.

I am firmly convinced that there is a wide gap in education and intelligence between liberals and conservatives. This is proven not only by the difference between liberal and conservative media commentators and the difference between liberal and conservative governmental officials, but also by the people one meets everyday. I realize that many poor minority people can be considered liberal, and that many of them do not have extensive education, but when I speak of liberals and conservatives, I am speaking of the middle and upper-class people of all races who do not suffer from the obstacles that confront the poor people.

My thesis is proven by the letters to the editor opposing my columns. It is surprising that people writing to the editor are willing to have such illiterate letters published for all the public to see. The letters are not only substantively stupid, but are filled with grammatical and spelling errors. In some cases it is almost as if the writer was a secret liberal trying to make conservative letter-writers look foolish.

The same letter-writer that I referred to above was incensed that I dared to criticize the far right-wing organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. He started a sentence, “The vitrol language you have used…” The remainder of his letter is long, ungrammatical, and unintelligible. His other letters are equally dumb. Another letter-writer penned the following brilliant remark about me: “It’s not hard to see nor read he truly doesn’t know what he is talking about nor does he speak for Americans.” The same writer recently wrote, and repeated, that President Barack Obama is a “Muslin.” I suggested to the editor of the paper that perhaps we should call President Obama the “Commander in sheets.”

I also notice that even the letters that are not illiterate show a high degree of stupidity. It is as if such writers did not actually read my column and are responding to some other commentary. I wrote a column carefully examining why some female voters who had supported Hillary Clinton refused to vote for Barack Obama, and suggested that some, not all, might be doing so because of racism. One writer complained that I was painting all people who switched from Clinton to John McCain as racists. In my column I had gone out of my way to say the opposite. In another column I expressed concern that vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin had once called the head librarian in town to inquire about censoring some books. I was careful to note that no books were actually removed. Nevertheless, one writer complained that I had accused Palin of book-burning. This kind of thing has happened repeatedly.

I recently wrote a column describing the stupidity of ultra right-wing organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. I did so hoping to draw some Klan sympathizers out of the woodwork. One of my frequent critics took the bait and wrote a letter to the editor in which he accused me of “defiling” myself. I assume that, unless he is a secret liberal trying to make conservatives look like idiots, he is a Klan or militia sympathizer. He has now walked into my trap and exposed his true beliefs for everybody to see.

I have noticed that southwest Ohio is heavily populated by far right-wing types. I assume that somehow, large numbers of Southern rednecks came up from the South and settled in this area. These are the least educated Americans. They are the most conservative, and in many cases, their conservatism spills over into extremism. When I use the term “redneck,” they complain because they identify with that term. They are proud to be gun-toting, rebel-flag-waving, Klan sympathizing, bigoted, uneducated, ignorant, repulsive rednecks. They know that they can never be intellectuals, so they wallow in their own ignorance.

The Hate Crimes Bill

2009-11-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

On October 28, 2009, President Obama signed into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The Act expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crimes law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability. This was the law that was so forcefully opposed by James Dobson and Focus on the Family. It has long been opposed by Republicans and supported by Democrats. Now, by tying it to a Defense appropriation bill, the Democrats were able to get it passed.

In signing the bill the President pointed-out why this law was a necessary addition to regular laws against violent attacks: “You understood that we must stand against crimes that are meant not only to break bones, but to break spirits -- not only to inflict harm, but to instill fear. You understand that the rights afforded every citizen under our Constitution mean nothing if we do not protect those rights -- both from unjust laws and violent acts. And you understand how necessary this law continues to be....we sense where such cruelty begins: the moment we fail to see in another our common humanity -- the very moment when we fail to recognize in a person the same fears and hopes, the same passions and imperfections, the same dreams that we all share.”

Thirty-five Senate Republicans voted against passage of the defense authorization bill because it also contained this hate crimes legislation. Only Senators George Voinovich, Dick Lugar, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins voted with Democrats to move the legislation to a final vote.

House Minority Leader, John Boehner, opposed the bill saying: "All violent crimes should be prosecuted vigorously, no matter what the circumstance. The Democrats' 'thought crimes' legislation, however, places a higher value on some lives than others.” The bill, however, does not prosecute “thought crimes.” It explicitly states that "Nothing in this Act...shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution."

Boehner and the right-wingers have not given the real reason for their opposition. The real reason is that they hate homosexuals and do not want to have laws protecting them from the army of homophobic bigots out there who would gladly attack and kill them. They think that gays are evil. They stupidly believe that gays have chosen their sexual orientation, and that such choice should be punished.

Boehner claims that the hate-crimes bill singles out one group and provides it with special protection. I wonder how he and his cohorts would feel if the law singled-out combat veterans and provided them with special protection against attack. They would be falling all-over each-other to support such a bill. But we all know that criminals do not attack veterans just because they are veterans. On the other hand, thousands of gays and transgender people have been deliberately attacked, injured, and murdered because of their sexual identity.

Matthew Shepard was tortured, tied to a fence, and murdered in 1998 near Laramie, Wyoming, because he was perceived to be gay. James Byrd, Jr. was an African-American man who was tied to a truck by two known white supremacists, dragged by it, and decapitated in Jasper, Texas in 1998. There were no applicable hate crime laws in Wyoming and Texas at the time of the murders.

Right-wingers like John Boehner use mealy-mouthed excuses for their prejudice against gays. All hatred of gays is unpardonable bigotry. All bigotry is ignorance. Organizations that claim to be religious, but cry-out against the rights of homosexuals, should be denounced. And the right-wingers in Congress, by catering to this barbarian segment of the populace, deserve to be condemned.

Sweat Lodges and Our Aching Need for Answers

2009-10-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

That was not a bunch of snake-handling hillbillies in the sweat lodge in Sedona Arizona. That was a group of well-heeled business and professional people seeking spiritual rebirth from a charismatic new-age guru named James Arthur Ray. They had paid over $9,600 each to be packed into an unlit tent-like structure covered with blankets and plastic and heated with fiery rocks in the hot Arizona desert.

A spiritual ceremony was conducted. Ray sat by the tent-flap door, which remained sealed except for pauses when additional rocks, which had been heated in an outdoor fire, were brought in. The heat became overwhelming. About 90 minutes into the ceremony, someone yelled in the darkness that a woman had passed-out. Dr. Beverley Bunn, 43, an orthodontist from Texas, who struggled to remain conscious in the sweat lodge, said that “there were people throwing-up everywhere.” Some of the people throwing-up had just completed a 36-hour “vision quest” in which they fasted alone in the desert.

By the end of the ordeal, emergency crews had taken 21 people to hospitals. Three died.

Mr. Ray’s company, James Ray International, made $9.4 million in 2008 from weekend seminars, videos, and books, including the 2008 best-seller: “Harmonic Wealth: The Secret of Attracting the Life You Want.”

Participants at the sweat lodge retreats described a game in which Mr. Ray wore white robes and played God, ordering some participants to commit mock suicide. It reminded me of the late protestant minister Jim Jones who took his congregation to Guyana and had them commit mass suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.

What is it about these charismatic spiritual leaders that they are able to motivate people to acts of insanity? Marshall Applewhite was able to convince 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult to commit suicide in order to join-up with a spacecraft which he said was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. David Koresh suceeded in persuading members of the Branch Davidian sect that he was the Son of God and that they should allow their wives and daughters to have sex with him. What is it?

Many if not most people are fragile and insecure, seeking answers to the big questions about how to be happy, assertive, serene, and successful. They are easy prey for the brash, daring few people who attract followers through the strength of their magnetic personalities. I do not know what it is that makes so many people self-doubting while a small number of others are supremely self-assured.

It is likely that those highly attractive, self-confident people learn as they grow-up that they have the power to influence people. I have known a few such people in my life, and have seen that many of them use their powerful personalities to manipulate others. They are often good public speakers and are drawn to occupations such as religious leaders or self-help gurus. Their gift for oratory is mistaken as knowledge of the truth. Many televangelists are great speakers, but if you listen closely, much of what they say is gibberish.

These charismatic types also learn early-on that they can parlay their personalities into wealth and power. James Arthur Ray has been able to earn millions of dollars encouraging people to do bizarre acts like suffer in packed, unlit furnaces in the desert. Televangelists, whose sole claim to spiritual prominence is the ability to glibly string words and sentences together, are able to gain fabulous wealth by encouraging watchers to contribute “seed” money which they assure their sheep-like listeners will be repaid a hundredfold by God. You can be sure it never is.

We have an aching need for answers, but too often the people who are most willing to supply those answers are smooth-talking, charismatic, money-hungry con-men whose answers empty our wallets and our souls.

The Health Insurance Industry Report

2009-10-21T07:07:00.000-07:00

When the health insurance executives met with President Obama earlier this year to assure him that they were going to take steps to lower health care costs, I warned that they were lying. Shortly after the meeting, they backed-out of their commitments and began preparing television ads attacking health care reform. Now they have come-out with a report prepared by flunkies which claims that health care reform as envisioned by the Senate Finance Committee bill will actually raise premiums for most Americans. Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now responded to the report, saying: "The idea that the insurance industry would complain about high premiums is like the Yankees complaining that they're hitting too many home runs. It's totally preposterous."

Senate Finance Committee spokesman Scott Mulhauser called the report "a health insurance company hatchet job -- plain and simple." The report has been ripped to shreds by experts. It deliberately ignores all of the provisions of the bill that will bring large savings to health care recipients. It ignores the proposed subsidies that would help millions of people to buy their own insurance. Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the health care program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, says that the Finance Committee plan will not raise premiums but will substantially lower the cost of health insurance.

The obvious purpose of the report is for the insurance industry to make a nasty threat to raise premiums if Congress reduces Medicare payments to hospitals and compels insurance companies to cover people who are ill or who have prior medical conditions. The answer to such a threat is to enact a public option.

The behavior of the health insurance industry during this fight over reform has been an example of American business at its most reprehensible. It is worse even than the behavior of the oil, pharmaceutical, and other miscreant industries. I previously quoted the figure of 18,000 people who die each year due to lack of health insurance. Now, because of the policies of the health insurance industry, the figure for those who die each year because of lack of health insurance has risen to 45,000. That is a national disgrace. The argument is no longer political. It is moral.

Wendell Potter, a former insurance company executive turned whistle-blower, said the report is aimed to shape reform "for their (insurance companies’) benefit and the benefit of Wall Street shareholders, more than Americans. This is a desperation move on the part of the insurance industry, because analysts are now somewhat concerned ... that the bill may not be absolutely everything that the industry wants”

The bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee is designed to lower, not raise, health insurance premiums. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office analysis shows that the bill will reduce the national deficit by more than $80 billion over the next decade, provide insurance to an additional 29 million people, and extend coverage to 94 percent of the country's non-elderly population.

The Senate Finance Committee bill is highly imperfect. It does not contain a public option. It weakens the mandate that individuals carry health insurance. That is not the end of the matter, however. That bill is likely to be combined with a bill that does have a public option. The individual mandate will probably be strengthened in a combined bill. If the public option is not in the final Senate bill, it will be in the final bill coming out of the Senate-House Conference. It will then be voted on by both the Senate and the House. If the Senate Republicans filibuster the final vote, the Democrats have the option of treating the legislation as budget reconciliation legislation requiring only 51 votes for passage.

The Life of the Mind

2009-10-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

People have often told me that I should not just sit around reading books. I should get out. My former wife used to criticize me for not having any outside activities. She said that I needed to get a life. I told her that I had a life of the mind. She would stare at me in mute incomprehension.

When you immerse yourself in books, you go through a door into a different world. It not only gives a kind of pleasure, it gives life. I cannot say that reading has brought me great happiness. By chemistry and disposition I am a less than cheerful person. I would like to be happier, but I would not give up reading to gain that end. Perhaps reading has deepened my melancholy. Profound research into the absence of God and the meaninglessness of life has not cheered my soul. But knowledge is its own reward.

Stanley Fish, a college professor, literary critic, and columnist for the New York Times, recently wrote a column on the question of whether the humanities do anything to help humanity. His conclusion was--no. He said: “To the question ‘of what use are the humanities?’ the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said ….diminishes the object of its supposed praise.”

I agree.

I have spent much of my life reading. It has given me knowledge of literature, history, philosophy, theology, psychology and other fields of learning. I do not have a brilliant mind. What I have that the average person does not have is a passion for learning. Since I graduated from college I have never stopped reading books. I am not a fast reader, but I am a constant reader. I am an autodidact, a self-educated person. I spent most of my high school years studying the parabolas of girls’ chests and most of my college education studying the trajectories of basketballs. When I graduated, I realized that I did not know very much. For some reason, I wanted to learn, so that is when I started reading in earnest.

Many years ago I wanted to understand the reason why civilizations, nations, and cultures developed the way they did. I decided to read history and other subjects in the humanities. I read many multi-volume books on the history of civilization. After a lifetime of reading, I still do not have the answers. But I do have some ideas, and I can converse about them. I have tried to learn about subjects beyond literature, history, philosophy, and theology; subjects like music, art, and science. I have only a layman’s knowledge of these fields, but I probably know far more than most people. As I’ve gotten older I find that I love listening to beautiful classical music. I also love reading books about art and looking up artists’ works on the computer. Almost every day I choose an artist and search for him or her online.

I discovered early in my marriage that my wife did not appreciate it if I went into the bedroom in the evening and started reading. She wanted me to watch television with her. This bothered me and probably contributed to the eventual downfall of our marriage. I looked upon the watching of television as a waste of time and a non-social event. We sat and stared blankly at the screen without engaging in any conversation. The material on television was pathetic. I hated watching, but felt that it was the only way to appease my wife. When children came along, they wanted their daddy to play with them. I loved playing with my children but it was impossible to read after coming home from work. In addition, my work was demanding and I often did not get home until later. By the time I got home I would be tired, too tired to read.

I started getting up very early in the morning. I discovered that if I arose around 5:30 a.m. I would be able to read for several hours without interference. Moreover, I would be awake and alert. I could read and understand the more difficult books without developing that sleepiness that accompanies most attempts to read recondite material.

Each morning I would get up and go make coffee. I would sit and luxuriate over the coffee while I began reading some book of history, philosophy, theology, literature or such. Sometimes I could not understand a word of what I was reading, but I did not give up. I would read and reread pages until I began to comprehend what the writer was saying. As I read more and more books, I understood more and more.

Sometimes I would be struck by what I was reading. Some writer would connect with my mind so deeply that chills would run down my spine. I have had the same experience with music and art. When I first saw Velazquez’s “Waterseller of Seville,” I was deeply moved and tears came to my eyes. I couldn’t comprehend the genius it must have taken to paint such a masterpiece! I have had the same experience when hearing some pieces of music. I felt a deep thrill when I first heard the slow movement of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. This has happened many times.

I would have liked to have had a consistently happy life. But I realize that for some people, like me, happiness consists of fleeting moments. Sometimes it is just time with my children and grandchildren, time with my sweet Julie, a great book, a beautiful day, beautiful scenery, magnificent music, wonderful art, a glorious poem, or a penetrating thought. It is through such things that I have experienced much of the happiness in my life.

Phony Ads Against the Public Option

2009-10-14T06:36:00.000-07:00

The television ads show a Canadian woman who claims to have had a brain tumor. She was told she would have to wait six months for treatment in Canada. She says that if she had waited for treatment in Canada she would have died. She mortgaged her home to pay for surgery at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. She then goes on to condemn the Canadian health care system, and implies that the Obama health care reform will lead to a Canadian style health care system. This ad is pure dishonest garbage. It is an example of the depths to which the despicable American health insurance industry is willing to stoop to try and defeat health care reform and a public option. Doesn’t is bother anybody that the whole case of the health insurance industry against health care reform has been built on lies?

The truth is that the woman, Shona Holmes, did not have a brain tumor. There was no emergency that required prompt surgery to save her life. According to the Mayo Clinic, the woman had a “Rathke's Cleft Cyst on her pituitary gland." Rathke's Cleft Cysts are not tumors; they are slow-growing benign cysts. The chair of neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., stated that such a cyst "is not typically life-threatening." Neurosurgeons in Montreal and Toronto described Holmes’ claims as exaggerated and stated that her condition was not a medical emergency. She certainly could have waited six months to have the cyst removed. I do not know why she came to the U.S. for treatment or if she was paid to make the fraudulent commercial.

People throughout Canada are outraged by this phony commercial criticizing Canadian health care. The Toronto Star published a letter to the editor from an Ontario resident who had a real brain tumor and who described the care she received in the Canadian health care system as being of "exceptional quality." Her letter concluded with the comment: "I know our health care system works and if Holmes didn't have a problem with her physician what exactly are her motives for taking part in this media spectacle?"

Aside from being untruthful and misleading, the commercial by Shona Holmes is irrelevant. President Obama’s health care reform plan does not envision a Canadian health care system. While many of us would prefer a single-payer system such as they have in Canada, that is not what the President and the Democrats in Congress are offering. They are proposing a plan which, along with a number of major reforms in the current system, offers a governmental form of health insurance as just one option among many. There will still be plenty of private insurance plans to choose from. If the public option drives private insurance options out of business, it will be because they have failed to offer something better.

One of the most disgusting things about the effort by the health insurance industry to defeat health care reform is their constant false claim that health care in Canada is slow, inefficient, and ineffective. In fact, health care in Canada is outstanding, and the people of Canada are very pleased with it. It is significantly better than health care in The United States.

A recent Canadian Press Harris-Decima Survey shows that 82 percent of Canadians are quite pleased with their health care and believe that their system is far better than American health care. The same is true of European countries with universal health care. According to an August 2009 Gallup Survey, 79 percent of people in European countries with universal health care are very satisfied with their high quality health care. The claim that Europeans are dissatisfied with their systems because of long waits for treatment is a lot of baloney.

Happy With Health Insurance?

2009-10-09T10:17:00.000-07:00

One hears repeatedly that 85 percent of Americans are “happy” with their health insurance. So why do we need health insurance reform? Well, the 85 percent figure is a phony, misleading statistic. It does not mean that 85 percent of all Americans are delighted with their health insurance and that a disgruntled 15 percent of the American people are the only ones who want to change our health insurance laws; far from it.

In the first place, the pollsters questioned only people covered by health insurance. The 85 percent of people who are happy does not include the 47 million people who have no health insurance. Those people certainly are not “happy” with their health insurance. Moreover, 15 percent of the people who have health insurance are not “happy” with their coverage. In addition, all of the polls giving the 85 percent figure include people on Medicare, Medicaid, and other government-run plans. According to Gallup, approximately 22-33 percent of the respondents in the polls are on Medicare or Medicaid. Of course those people are satisfied with their health insurance. The Census Bureau tells us that in 2008, only 66.7 percent of the people polled had private health insurance--and that number is going down rapidly because thousands of businesses are dropping it as a benefit of employment.

So it is not 85 percent of all Americans that are happy with their private health insurance. Do the math. When you subtract all of the people who are unhappy with their private health insurance, all of the people who have no insurance, and all of the people on Medicare etc., you come out with about 18 percent of Americans who are happy with their private health insurance. That is a long way from the dishonest figure of 85 percent.

If 85 percent of Americans were “happy” with health insurance, you can be sure that there would be no support for enactment of health insurance reform with a public option. But a new study by SurveyUSA finds that the public supports enactment of a public option by 77 percent. In a June 2009 survey, the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 76 percent of those questioned favored a public option. Why such high percentages if 85 percent are happy with their health insurance? Why such high percentages if the controversy over health care reform has supposedly destroyed President Obama’s approval ratings?

According to a new CBS News/New York Times poll out September 24, 2009, President Obama’s approval rating is 56 percent. An October 1, 2009, Gallup Poll gives the President a 54 percent approval rating. By my arithmetic, that is a majority. When you consider the fact that he was elected with only 52 percent, and when you consider the hammering he has taken from the health insurance industry, the Republicans in Congress, Fox News fanatics, talk radio morons, town hall screamers, and tea party lunatics, he is still doing pretty well.

Compare the President’s approval rating to the ratings given to House Minority Gasbag John Boehner, Senate Minority Claghorn, Mitch McConnell, and the Republicans in Congress. According to a September Harris Poll, Boehner and McConnell each received an 18 percent approval rating. The Republicans in Congress got a 27 percent approval rating, while 70 percent disapproved. In a September CBS News/New York Times Poll, the Republicans in Congress received a 30 percent approval rating.

It is, of course, no surprise that the vast majority of Americans disapprove of the Republicans in Congress. The Republicans are fighting on the side of health insurance companies to deny Americans any health care reform at all. The public knows that President Obama is trying to do something to improve health insurance and health care in America. They know that the Republicans are doing nothing.

Why Tax The Rich?

2009-10-01T21:03:00.000-07:00

Conservatives such as George Will complain that it is a reflex action by liberals in Congress to soak the rich in order to pay for health care reform. They point-out that the top 1 percent of income earners in America pays 45 percent of the income taxes. Conservatives claim that Congress is engaged in a Robin Hood form of class warfare which was never authorized by the constitution. They want to retain the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and prevent surcharges on the rich to pay for health care reform.

If I were making the tax laws, I would not simply repeal the Bush tax cuts. I would greatly increase taxes on the rich. Why? Because there is too much poverty, too much hunger, too much sickness, too much disparity between rich and poor here in America, the land of wealth and opportunity. I doubt that most people are aware of the enormous gap between the wealth of the top 1 percent of people in America and the rest of us. Those very wealthy people have excellent health insurance and health care. Perhaps that is why we hear so much drivel about how America has the best health care in the world. We don’t, but very wealthy Americans probably do.

What George Will and the right-wingers fail to mention is that according to the Census Bureau and a study by the Sociology Department of the University of California, as of 2004, the top 1 percent of Americans owned 42.2 percent of all privately held financial wealth in America, and the next 19 percent owned 50.3 percent, which means that just 20 percent of the people owned 85 percent of the wealth in America! Their wealth was 190 times greater than that of the median U.S. household. The top 10 percent had 85 to 90 percent of stock, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and over 75 percent of non-home real estate.

Conservatives have been trying to eliminate inheritance taxes, which they call “death taxes.” According to a study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, only 1.6 percent of Americans inherit more than $100,000. Another 1.1 percent inherit $50,000 to $100,000. On the other hand, 91.9 percent of the people in America inherit nothing.

Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in the 21-year-period between 1983 and 2004, 42 percent of it went to the top 1 percent. A whopping 94 percent went to the top 20 percent, which of course means that the bottom 80 percent received only 6 percent of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s.

A 2007 study by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that the top 1 percent of income earners in America nearly quadrupled their share of the nation's income between 1979 and 2005, while their effective income tax rate dropped by 15 percent.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, income growth in America Between 1979 and 2006 was starkly uneven. Real after-tax incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by 256 percent, or $863,000, compared to 21 percent, or $9,200, for households in the middle fifth, and 11 percent, or $1,600, for households in the bottom fifth. In 2006, the average household in the top 1 percent had an annual income of $1.2 million, up $63,000 just from the prior year.

Yes, the wealthy people in America suffered losses during the recession, but percentage-wise those losses were nothing compared to what the middle and lower income people suffered. Now that the stock market is rebounding, the rich are recouping their losses. Middle and lower income people will never recoup their losses from foreclosed homes, lost jobs, lost health insurance, and bankruptcies.

Deficit Neutral Health Care Reform

2009-09-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

I suspect that many of the people who oppose President Obama’s health care reform plan do so because the CBO has projected that the plan will cost $1 trillion over ten years. They see reform as bankrupting this nation. What they fail to realize is that there will be no bankrupting deficits from health care reform because reform is designed to be deficit neutral. That means that savings in other areas will pay for the cost of health care reform.

President Obama has pointed-out that failure to pass health care reform will be far more costly to America than any reform bill. Speaking before the American Medical Association's annual meeting, President Obama said: "(Failing) to reform our healthcare system in a way that genuinely reduces cost growth will cost us trillions of dollars more in lost economic growth and lower wages."

A study by the Urban Institute, a Washington D.C. think-tank that conducts policy research, has shown that if we fail to enact health care reform it will cause catastrophic financial devastation in America over the next decade and cost the government far more than anything caused by health care reform. There will be an increasing strain on business owners and their employees due to the rising cost of health care and health insurance. Businesses by the thousands will drop health insurance for their employees and tens of millions more people will become uninsured. There will be dramatic growth in Medicaid/CHIP enrollment and spending, and increased spending on uncompensated health care. There will be a tremendous increase in bankruptcies due to health care costs.

President Obama stressed that health care reform would be deficit-neutral over the next decade, explaining how the price tag would be covered. In his budget for fiscal year 2010 the President has already obtained $635 billion for the Health Reserve Fund to pay for health care reform over the next ten years. Most of that amount will come from revenue-raising efforts such as limiting tax deductions for the wealthiest Americans.

The President also explained other means by which the price tag for health care reform would be covered. Estimated savings over 10 years include: Removing subsidies and introducing competitive bidding into the Medical Advantage program, $177 billion; Using Medicare reimbursements to help reduce preventable re-admissions, $25 billion; Introducing generic drugs into the marketplace, $30 billion; more efficient purchasing of prescription drugs, $75 billion; "rooting out waste, abuse and fraud" throughout the healthcare system, $1 billion; adjusting Medicare payments to reflect advances and productivity gains in the economy, $109 billion.

The House health care reform bill provides that any public option will have to be self-sustaining through participants’ payment of premiums. This will be possible even if the premiums are substantially lower than those for private health insurance because a public option will not incur the gigantic administrative costs incurred by private insurance.

One huge benefit of cost savings built into the health care reform bill will be reduction and eventual elimination of the “doughnut hole” in the Medicare Part D drug benefit program. The “doughnut hole” was demanded by the health insurance industry when the Republicans in Congress knuckled-under and enacted Part D. Today, most seniors find that after six or more months their Part D benefits run-out and they have to pay the full cost of their medications. Those costs can be cruelly high, and for some, too high to pay. Now it will be possible for all medications to be covered by the program.

If you are worried about the cost of health care reform, you should be terrified at the prospect of no reform. I can assure you that without reform, you will eventually either lose your health insurance or wind-up paying far far more for less and less coverage.

What They Deserve

2009-09-16T06:14:00.000-07:00

All of those people who have been showing-up at town halls and tea parties in order to protest President Obama’s plan for health care reform deserve one thing—to win. I wish it was possible to enact health care reform with a public option and exclude from its benefits all of those screaming right-wingers who so vociferously oppose it.

I wish such people could be required to go on as before with higher and higher premiums, co-pays, and deductibles for private health insurance; continued rationing and denial of coverage for prior health conditions; continued withdrawal of coverage in the middle of serious medical emergencies; continued annual and lifetime limits on benefits; continued high costs for medication; and continuation of the huge “doughnut holes” for elderly Medicare recipients. Yes—it would be nice to let them continue in the morass we presently have, while the rest of us got decent coverage under a new national health care plan.

Unfortunately, it will not work that way. If health care reform goes down to defeat all of us, not just the screamers, will lose.

If health care reform with a public option is passed, the screamers will say: “We fought the good fight, but now that it is possible to get health insurance at lower cost, with coverage for prior conditions, no annual or lifetime limits, and preventive medical coverage for things like pap smears, colonoscopies, mammograms, chest X-Rays, PSA tests, and blood tests, why not take advantage of it”? They will break their necks signing-up for the public option, and a few years down the road they will fight to keep their new governmental health coverage from being diminished.

But sadly, if health care reform is defeated, thousands of people will continue to die from lack of health insurance. It is estimated that at least 18,000 people die every year because of lack of health insurance. Millions of people who have lost their jobs during the Bush recession will not be able to get health insurance coverage. Millions of seniors will continue to empty their little savings accounts to pay for medications during the “doughnut holes.” Millions of people who have prior medical conditions will be unable to get coverage.

On Wednesday, September 9, President Obama gave a ringing call to America to move ahead with health care reform. He noted that the same kind of people who oppose this reform also opposed Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. He demolished some of the outrageous distortions being put-out not only by talk radio and Fox News hosts, but also by Republican politicians.

While the President spoke, the Republicans sat stonily. Our local guy, House Minority Gasbag John Boehner, looked like a well-tanned corpse. The crude and ill mannered outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina represented not only the people of that state and its leaders, Senator DeMint and Governor Sanford, but also the attitude of the Republicans in Congress who have allowed their party to be seized by ultra conservatives

Meanwhile the Republican senators and congressmen who plan to vote against health care reform will go on living under the umbrella of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP); the finest health insurance benefits available anywhere. During President Obama’s speech on health care reform, he called for compromise, but those Republicans are not the least bit interested in compromise.

For the ordinary citizens who opposed health care reform because of their concern with other issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, guns, immigration, gay rights, and the president’s race, it is a case of biting off your nose to spite your face. They will get what they deserve if health care reform goes down to defeat. For the senators and congressmen who vote against health care reform, their health insurance should be taken away.

No Cuts in Medicare Benefits

2009-09-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

Mitch McConnell and the other Republican allies of the health insurance industry have been arguing that President Obama’s health care reform bill will cut benefits from Medicare in order to pay for reform. This lie is seriously scaring senior citizens. It is regrettable that politics drives these politicians to engage in such distortions. Why can’t they oppose health care reforms without lying?

The truth is that under the President’s plan for health care reform there will be no reduction in Medicare benefits and people will continue to have the same coverage that they have always had. The President has been repeatedly questioned about this at forums he has held around the country. People want to know how he is going to cut the cost of Medicare without cutting benefits. "Nobody is talking about trying to change Medicare benefits," he said. "What we do want is to eliminate some of the waste that is being paid for out of the Medicare trust fund." He cited $177 billion of government subsidies paid to insurance companies participating in Medicare Advantage, a Medicare benefits program run by private insurance companies.

Medicare Advantage is a hugely wasteful Medicare-type program of private insurance that is, for some reason, subsidized by the federal government. It was installed when the Republicans controlled congress. They did it in the belief that private enterprise could run Medicare better than the government. They turned-out to be dead wrong. It costs 17 percent more, on average, to cover a beneficiary under Medicare Advantage than under regular Medicare. Because the program is run by private insurance companies, nearly half of its excess payments go to administrative costs, marketing, and profits, rather than to additional health benefits to enrollees

If Medicare Advantage was eliminated, participants would lose nothing. They would simply go on regular Medicare which provides the same coverage for billions less in taxpayer funds. With an extra $177 billion, the government will be able to strengthen Medicare and its benefits, not cut it.

The House health care reform bill actually gives Medicare an additional $340 billion over the next decade to provide improved care so that seniors do not have to be readmitted to the hospital to correct mistakes. To save money, the bill lowers the amount of subsidies to hospitals for such readmissions and lowers the automatic annual increases to hospitals. None of this will result in cuts in benefits, and readmitted seniors will still receive full coverage, but it will provide better care to seniors while saving the Medicare Trust Fund billions of dollars.

Although the AARP has not specifically endorsed any of the health reform bills in Congress, one of AARP’s new print ads reads: “Special interest groups are trying to block progress on health care reform using myths and scare tactics. The opponents of reform will stop at nothing to derail the process and protect their own vested interests—even if it means misleading older Americans”

In a recent press release, the AARP said: “AARP’s advertising campaign will bust the myths some are spreading to frighten Americans, including false assertions that fixing the health care system will lead to rationed health care, a government takeover, or even euthanasia. We won’t stand idle when opponents of health care reform attempt to scare or mislead the American people—and older Americans in particular—about what fixing the system really means. The truth is we need to fix health care, whether it’s ensuring affordable coverage for Americans age 50 to 64 or improving benefits for people in Medicare. It’s time for the public to get the real facts.”

Shame on the insurance companies and congressional Republicans for trying to scare senior citizens! Shame on them for claiming that under health care reform there will be cuts in Medicare benefits.

Armed Idiots

2009-09-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

There is a new and growing tactic by right-wing thugs opposed to the policies of President Obama. They show-up at forums where the President is speaking and have guns strapped to their sides or slung over their shoulders. One idiot, with a 9 mm pistol strapped to his leg, held up a sign outside President Obama's health-care town hall in Portsmouth, N.H. The sign read, "It's time to water the tree of liberty." That's a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s declaration that the tree "must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." That was also a favorite slogan of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.

Although one’s first instinct might be to have Congress pass a law forbidding such display of guns in the vicinity of the President, it has been pointed out that the Secret Service has the power to expand the perimeter around the President in order to insure his safety. Moreover, although these pitiful exhibitionists may be intent on intimidating the President and those who come out to see him, they are actually exposing their own vulnerabilities, insecurities, and ignorance. If they ever tried to use their little guns to attack the President or his supporters, the Secret Service would squash them like annoying insects.

It seems to be popular among right-wing loonies to cite the language of Jefferson about “time to water the tree of liberty.” It would be somewhat more serious if these people knew anything about the ideas of Jefferson or the history of our nation. They are, however, a group of dunderheads who wouldn’t know a history book if it fell out of a library and hit them on the head.

People who show-up at Presidential forums with guns strapped to their legs may wish to intimidate, but they face an insurmountable problem. They are poorly armed. They are armed only with their little pop-guns, and not with ideas. Ideas are far more powerful than guns.

The neo-fascist militia types, who are threatening armed revolution because they do not like the policies of our democratically-elected president, are not to be feared. They are to be pitied. If they ever actually started an armed revolt, which is highly unlikely, they would be confronting a President who commands the most powerful armed forces in the world. They would be snuffed-out in a moment, most likely by local and state police. For some reason, the obviousness of this does not seem to stop them from mouthing some of the dumbest rhetoric imaginable.

If these people had some ideas, any ideas, they would be far more dangerous. Ideas have power. Democracy is an idea. It has enabled modern man to avoid the violence and bloodshed of usurpations to overthrow tyrants. It recognizes the inalienable right of people to decide their own fate by means of elections. It insures the right of the majority to rule. It grants to mankind dignity, power, and freedom. Mankind can rid the world of tyrants by going to local polling places and casting ballots. In a democracy there is no need to take-up arms against a tyrant.

President Barack Obama is a duly elected chief executive. He stands for the liberal doctrines long pursued by the Democratic Party, including civil rights, workers rights, minimum wages, protecting the environment, and universal health care. He is an idealistic and visionary individual. He does not seek tyranny. He does not seek a communistic takeover of our lives by government. He seeks justice, charity, and decency. He reflects a brilliant mind, a warm and compassionate personality, leadership, and a remarkably fine character. I realize that I am too partisan to see any defects in him, but for the life of me I cannot understand the reasoning of those who hate him.

Ted Kennedy

2009-08-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

I feel deep sadness about the death of Ted Kennedy.I have always admired Senator Kennedy. This news, though not unexpected, is a heavy blow.

I was not always a liberal. I grew up in a conservative Republican family. I rooted for Richard Nixon to be elected president in his campaign against John Kennedy. I was in Republican headquarters in Cincinnati on election night when Nixon won Ohio but lost the presidency.

When John Kennedy became president, the world changed.

It is hard to explain what John Kennedy meant to my generation. We suddenly had a feeling that there would be a new politics, a new type of government, a new America. Before John Kennedy, I had felt that the only party opposing racial segregation was the Republican Party. The Democrats in the South were all segregationists. Then John Kennedy and his brother Robert came along and declared that the government would fight against segregation. They changed the Democratic Party and they changed the direction of this country. I became a Democrat. The redneck Democrats of the South became Republicans.

The assassination of President Kennedy was one of the most stunningly terrible days in my life. I had invested all of my political hopes and dreams in this man, and now, through the forces of grim, meaningless misfortune, he was gone. I invested no hope in Lyndon Johnson. I was on the brink of surrendering to apathy and cynicism.

I soon found myself transferring my hopes to John’s younger brother, Robert Kennedy. Although Lyndon Johnson had pushed the Civil Rights Laws through Congress, he had also escalated the Vietnam insurgency into a full-blown war with thousands of American casualties. Robert Kennedy took up the mantel of his late brother and called for progressive politics and cessation of the war. He announced that he was running for president and I became one of his campaign managers for New York City. I organized meetings and canvassing on his behalf. One morning, as I got out of bed, I turned on the television and the announcer said that Robert Kennedy had been shot and killed. I sat on the bed in numb disbelief. For the second time I felt that a bullet had been shot through my heart.

There was still one brother left. I attended the funeral of Robert Kennedy in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and was very moved by the eulogy delivered by Ted Kennedy. I thought that perhaps Ted could become president and accomplish the unfinished work of John and Robert. There was still a faint glimmer of hope that Camelot could be brought back, that we could return to the idealism and promise inaugurated by the first Kennedy.

But it did not take another assassin to shoot Ted Kennedy. He shot himself at Chappaquiddick, driving my hopes and the hopes of millions of Americans off a bridge in a car with an attractive young woman not his wife. He lost the luster of Kennedy brilliance, and when he did run for president he was still weighted down in the murky waters of a channel between Chappaquiddick Island and Martha's Vineyard. He lost to a mediocrity named Jimmy Carter.

In the 1980 Democratic convention, Senator Kennedy gave the finest speech I have ever heard at a political convention. He called for Democratic idealists to keep the faith, to stand up for liberal values, to fight against the reactionary tide that was sweeping across the nation. He concluded his speech in a thundering voice: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

For 29 more years the work went on for Ted Kennedy. With all of his wealth, he could have retired to Hyannisport and lived a life of pure luxury. Instead he fought indefatigably for the ideals of his brothers and for all that is best in America. He pushed through legislation that embodied the great liberal causes dear to the Kennedys. He overcame all of the things in his life that had held him back and had caused questioning and scandal. He became the "Lion of the Senate," and in that role he stood for everything that I admire. Because of his work, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream has never died.

Misperceptions About Health Care Reform

2009-08-26T06:50:00.000-07:00

It is a tribute to the power and wealth of the health insurance lobby and its Republican friends in Congress that they have been able to influence many people by spreading misinformation about the President’s health care reform plan. It is discouraging to see that in a desperate effort to defeat and destroy President Obama and the Democrats the Republicans have abandoned a critical moral value called “truth.”

One of the main reasons why so many people oppose health care reform is because of glaring misperceptions about the President’s plan. Large numbers of misinformed people believe the plan would cut Medicare benefits, give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants, lead to a government takeover of the health care system, and use taxpayer dollars to pay for women to have abortions — all claims that have proven to be false.

One false rumor spread by congressional Republicans is that the government is going to require old people to have “mandatory” counseling sessions that will tell them how to end their lives sooner. This lie was promoted by our local hero and House Minority Gasbag, John Boehner, who said that the bill would encourage “euthanasia.” Even that quitter, Sarah Palin, whose rambling and grammatically challenged farewell speech became the laughingstock of late-night comedians, said on Facebook that she didn’t want to have her parents and down-syndrome baby face President Obama’s “death panel.” Death panel?

It is self-evident that dimwit Sarah, like most other right-wing opponents of health care reform, has no clue as to what is in the bills in Congress. There is nothing in the plan that could even remotely constitute a requirement of “mandatory” end-of-life counseling sessions, not to mention euthanasia or a death panel. I don’t expect people to read the over 1017 recondite pages of the proposed bills, but there are good summaries on the internet.

One claim made by Republicans is that health care reform will hurt small businessmen and make it impossible for them to cover their employees with health insurance. On the contrary, it will greatly help small businessmen. Small firms will be able to buy health insurance at substantially lower rates. Those that currently offer coverage often pay significantly more per worker than larger employers. Under the current bills, the smallest employers will gain quick access to new insurance exchanges — where plans will compete for their business with rates comparable to those enjoyed by large employers.

Another claim frequently heard is that the government will institute rationing. The truth is just the opposite. The health care reform bills will eliminate all forms of health insurance rationing, especially those now being used by private health insurance companies. The bills will forbid insurance companies from denying coverage for people who have had a previous medical condition. They will forbid dropping patients who have current medical problems. No American will ever again be subject to annual or lifetime limits on their coverage.

The health care bills will not cover illegal immigrants. Under the President’s plan, only citizens and legal residents will be covered.

The health care bills will not cover government funding of abortion. There will be no repeal of the Hyde Amendment which prohibits the government from funding abortion.

Republican senators have declared that the bills will cut benefits from Medicare. That is a deliberate lie. The bills will not cut any benefits from Medicare. (This will be the subject of a later commentary).

There will be no governmental take-over of the health care system. We will still have private doctors, hospitals, and health insurance.

It is unfortunate that people have swallowed so many lies put-out by the health insurance industry and Republican leaders. If you really care, now is the time to actually read the summaries of the bills on the internet.

The Public Option

2009-08-19T11:49:00.000-07:00

There are reports that as of the time I write this commentary the White House is ready to abandon the idea of a public option by which the public could buy health insurance from the government at prices competitive with those of private insurance companies. Apparently, the public option is a deal breaker with many of those Blue Dog Democrats who have taken so much money from the health insurance industry. Senator Kent Conrad says that there are not enough votes in Congress to pass health care with the public option.

Now is the time for the President and the Democrats in Congress to stand-up to the insurance companies and their congressional lackeys, the Republicans, and forge ahead with plans for a public option. If there are not enough votes to pass it, so be it, but don’t surrender before the battle begins. The public option is crucial to hopes of providing health insurance to the 47 million uninsured people in America.

One mindless remark frequently repeated by opponents of health care reform is that we do not want government running our health care because government makes a mess of everything it touches. The statement is simply not true. One need only look at Medicare, TRICARE, and The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Far from being poorly run, these governmental health programs are models of efficiency and provide excellent health service to millions of Americans. As a Medicare beneficiary I can testify to the excellence of this program. The truth is that for-profit insurance companies, because of their high administrative costs and their mission to make a profit, are the inefficient providers.

Medicare spends only 3 percent of its budget on administrative costs compared with up to 25 percent spent by private health insurers. The only reason Medicare is running low on money is that doctors and hospitals have for many years been gaming the system by making enormously wasteful charges for unnecessary tests, procedures, and even surgeries (I will cover that problem in a separate column).

At one raucous town hall meeting, a protestor got up and asked the crowd: “how many people are against having the federal government run their health care?” Most of the people raised their hands. The Congressman then asked: “How many people here are on Medicare?” Most of the same people raised their hands. Somehow, these people did not realize that Medicare is a federal government health care program. In one forum a woman said to President Obama: “I don’t want the government interfering with my Medicare.” Millions of obtuse people do not realize that the government runs Medicare, and does it quite well.

Another governmental health care program is TRICARE, the program that covers all military service personnel and veterans. TRICARE is a vitally important part of the national healthcare infrastructure. TRICARE provides world class health care to over 9.4 million beneficiaries who currently serve or have served this nation. In 2008, TRICARE was rated the best health care insurer in the nation according to the Wilson Health Information survey of customer satisfaction.

The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), which currently covers 8 million active and retired federal employees and their dependents, is the nation’s largest employer-sponsored health insurance plan. The program is routinely held up as a model for national health care reform.

The enormously profitable, wasteful, inefficient, deceitful health insurance industry wants people to think that enactment of a public option would mean a complete governmental take-over of health care in America. It would mean no such thing. It would just be another health insurance option. People would be able to keep their previous health insurance, private doctors, and private hospitals. Nothing would change except that there would be one more highly attractive alternative for health insurance.

What It's Really All About

2009-08-13T05:28:00.000-07:00

"If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Sen. Jim DeMint

It is not really about health care reform. It never has been. If the current health care reform bills had been presented by the Republicans in Congress instead of the Democrats, conservative Republicans would have greeted them enthusiastically. Everybody knows that we need health care reform. Everybody knows that the cost of health insurance is soaring out of reach for most people and businesses. Everybody knows that millions of people cannot get health insurance because of prior conditions, current conditions, or inability to pay. No, it’s not health care reform that has conservatives up in arms.

There are other issues that motivate the anger of right-wing conservatives against President Obama’s health care reform. Those people are fanatical about issues like abortion, same-sex marriage, gay rights, guns, and immigration. I am also convinced that for many of those people the issue is the President’s race. To them it is simply unbelievable that a biracial individual has taken-over in the White House. They read news stories saying that by 2042 white people will be a minority in the United States, and it makes them crazy. They don’t seem to realize that they do not have to wait until 2042. They already are a small minority.

The stone-cold businessmen who run the health insurance companies do not care about these issues. They just want to keep-on making billions of dollars by soaking the public. They are in a survival mode. It reminds me of the movie “The China Syndrome” where ordinary businessmen were willing to do anything, even kill, to keep people from revealing the facts about their malfeasance. I believe that the insurance companies are willing to do anything, ethical or unethical, legal or illegal, to destroy health care reform.

One thing they are willing and happy to do is tap into the ugly mood and anger of right-wingers against President Obama and the Democrats. Aside from the spreading of lies in all available media about the bills in Congress, they are organizing and paying for demonstrations against congressmen who favor reform.

Now that federal lawmakers are home for their summer recess, right-wing opponents are disrupting town-hall meetings about the health care reform. Screaming protesters have turned normally respectful meetings between representatives and their constituents into unruly scenes of chaos and violence. These demonstrations are not spontaneous. They are not grassroots. Democratic leaders have described them as “Astroturf”--the opposite of real grass. They have been carefully organized by health insurance companies and far-right organizations. People outside the congressional districts are being brought-in to demonstrate. Those demonstrators have no idea what is in the health care bills. They know only that they hate President Obama.

A strategy memo circulated by the Web site “Tea Party Patriots” instructed demonstrators to “Pack the hall” and “Yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.” “Get him off his prepared script and agenda.” The memo continued: “Stand up and shout and sit right back down.”

Congressmen have been receiving hundreds of calls demanding town-hall meetings on the health care proposal. They are becoming wary of such meetings because they now realize that the callers want to show-up and disrupt. A North Carolina congressman who supports health care reform had his life threatened by a caller upset that he was not holding a public forum on the proposal.

President Obama has said that this is not about him. This is about reforming the health care system. But for Senator DeMint and other right-wing extremists it is all about the President. They care nothing about health care. They want only to hobble this President and his party which have reduced them to a small, squealing minority.

Buying-Off the Blue Dogs

2009-08-05T12:43:00.000-07:00

For many years now it has been one of the primary goals of genuine Democrats to obtain broad health care reform through a governmental health insurance program. I do not understand how anybody can call himself a Democrat and not be in favor of a “public option” under which the government would provide health insurance for all Americans regardless of their financial situation, employment, current health, or prior condition. This has never been a desire for socialism or government take-over of the entire health-care system. It has been, rather, a yearning for fairness and equity. Many of us would have the Congress go much further and enact a single-payer system.

I realize that conservative Republicans do not want this to happen. Conservatives prefer to live with market economics even if poorer people have to suffer under such a system. It has always been at the core of disagreements between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. Republicans say: “If you want something, you have to work hard and earn it. The government should not be in the business of helping-out the needy.” Liberals say: “Helping the unfortunate should be one of the basic goals of government.”

Today, millions of people are suffering terribly because of the Recession. Many of those people are out of work and they or their children have terrible diseases and medical conditions. They cannot afford health insurance and they cannot afford to go to the doctor. They cannot afford necessary surgeries and treatments. Bush said that they can always go to the ER. That’s how thoughtless and numb some Republicans are to the problem. Many of those people are going to die as a result of their conditions. I believe that it is right and proper and moral for the government to help those people. A health care bill with governmental health insurance is what is needed.

Suddenly, one hears that it is not only conservative Republicans standing in the way of universal health coverage. One hears that there is a little club called “Blue Dog Democrats” who style themselves “Moderates.” I dislike such use of the term “moderate.” It implies that there is something immoderate about people fighting for humane, liberal values.

When you look at where these Blue Dog Democrats come from, it is mostly those backwaters of benightedness called “Red (neck?) States.” One would assume, therefore, that it is the local conservatism of their districts that govern their politics, but perhaps there is more to the story. Perhaps they are being bought by the health insurance and health care industries.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the health insurance industry and the health sector have, since 1989, given $62,650 more to the typical Blue Dog House Democrat than to the typical non-Blue Dog Democrat. A number of Blue Dog Democrats in the House have received close to $1 million from the insurance and health sector since 1989. Ohio Blue Dog Representatives Zachary T. Space and Charlie Wilson got $165,444 and $143,224 respectively.

Democracy for America says that Blue Dog Senator Max Baucus received over $3.9 million from the health and health insurance industries. Blue Dog Senators Kent Conrad ($2.54 million) and Ben Nelson ($2.21 million) were also well paid. What chance do legitimate Democrats have against such obscene spreading of wealth by the health industry?

The health insurance industry is engaged in a heavily financed campaign to stop the enactment of health care reform. It is much more sophisticated than the old “Harry and Louise” ads from the Clinton years. Today it includes phony, misleading news stories, columns, letters to the editor, e-mails and other items planted in the news media and internet. If health care reform goes down to defeat, it will be because of the raw power of health insurance company money.

Paying for Health Care Reform

2009-07-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

Republicans in Congress are complaining about the anticipated cost of health care. It is a political smokescreen. All they want is to make President Obama look bad. It will be easy to pay for health care reform if Democrats have the guts to impose necessary taxes on the rich and cut wasteful programs.

Last week Goldman Sachs, the financial firm that had to be bailed-out to survive, announced that it would be rewarding hundreds of its employees with multi-million dollar bonuses. Other banks and financial companies are paying-back bailout money so they can do the same. What can the government do? The answer is, give them a swift kick in their assets and tax them to pay for health care.

The House Ways and Means Committee has released a plan to introduce a surcharge with graduated rates from 1-3 percent on household incomes over $350,000 to help finance health care reform (I would make the surcharge higher). According to a report just released by Citizens for Tax Justice, it would raise approximately $540-550 billion over 10 years. There will also be a surcharge on companies that do not provide health care for their employees. That will provide tens of billions of dollars more to pay for health care reform. There is also a proposal to tax health insurance benefits for people earning over $1 million a year. Add all that to the premiums that will be paid by people getting governmental insurance, and you should be able to more than cover the cost of healthcare.

But if the surcharges, taxes, and premiums do not cover everything, where is the money going to come from? Well, a panel of 45 of the nation’s leading economists predicted for the National Association for Business Economics Outlook that the recession will be over by 2010. Tax revenue will rise dramatically. In addition, the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will expire in late 2010. According to the Brookings Institution, those tax cuts cost the government over $400 billion per year.

There are other ways the government can save money. Let’s start with one of the major boondoggles of out time, farm subsidies. The government pays about $16 billion a year to subsidize agriculture. The majority of these subsidies flow only to corporate farms. Farm income reached new highs in 2007 and 2008 with the USDA estimating an average farm household’s income in 2008 at almost $90,000. The government should simply abolish all farm subsidies.

As Iraq war winds down there will be large savings in military spending. In addition, the conservative Cato Institute has called for Congress to terminate or reduce procurement of a number of unneeded weapon systems, including the Air Force’s F-22 fighter (now voted-down by the Senate), the Navy’s F/A-18E/F aircraft, the Navy’s Virginia-class submarine, the Marine Corps’ V-22 transport aircraft, and the Army’s Comanche helicopter. Cato says that elimination or reduction of these items could save the government over $340 billion in the next ten years. Defense Secretary Gates also wants Congress to eliminate the presidential helicopter, the Air Force's C-17 cargo jet, the F-18 Super Hornet fighter jets, and an alternative F-35 engine (also voted-down by the Senate), saving more billions of dollars. There are many other military programs that can be eliminated.

There is no need for another trip to the moon which could cost $40 billion. And we do not need to subsidize the oil industry, which has reported gigantic profits the past few years, to the tune of $15 billion dollars a year. We should be taxing the windfall profits of the oil companies, not subsidizing them!

Through taxing policy and cuts in wasteful programs, we could not only pay for health care, but have large surpluses by the end of President Obama’s presidency.

Judge Sotomayor and the Republicans

2009-07-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

At the time of the 2008 elections, Hispanics represented 15 percent of the U.S. population. That number is growing rapidly. They are the largest minority group in America. They have sufficient numbers to determine the outcome of all national elections and of the elections in at least 20 states. In the years to come we will have to require all school children in America to learn Spanish. In the past they have supported Republican candidates, but in 2008 they voted overwhelmingly for President Obama. So what did a group of white male Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee do? They patronized, browbeat, and disrespected a distinguished female Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court. Nice going guys! I hope every Hispanic voter in America remembers this the next time they go to the polls.

In her 17 years on the U.S. district and circuit (appellate) courts, Judge Sotomayor has written over 1000 decisions. Because the Republicans were unable to find even one case where she was not fair and impartial, they dredged-up a non-judicial statement made in a speech in 2001 where she said: “"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who has not lived that life." Despite the fact that Judge Samuel Alito and other nominees to the Supreme Court have said that they would rely on similar experiences and background in deciding cases, the Republican members of the white male senators’ club were horrified that a Hispanic woman would make such a statement. God forbid that she should have any special feelings for Hispanic people! God forbid that she should have empathy!

What is wrong with having a little empathy for the poor and the downtrodden? As one who practiced law for 37 years in the state and federal courts of New York and Connecticut, I can tell you that the law is not and never has been impartial or equal. The law has always favored rich people, big corporations, wealthy institutions, and white people. When I practiced in New York City, the courthouses were a symbol of the law’s preference for the rich and powerful over the poor.

The richer the people and corporations whose cases appeared in court in New York, the better the courthouses, judges, and court personnel. The most beautiful courthouse in New York City was the Surrogates Court where issues regarding multi-million dollar estates were decided. It was like a Renaissance Palace. The next most beautiful courthouse was the federal court where all of the really big money cases were decided. As you went down the line of courts having lower and lower amounts of money jurisdiction, the courts became dingier and dingier, with less distinguished judges and less courteous court personnel.

Judge Sotomayor is an inspiring example of what a brilliant Hispanic woman can accomplish. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa at Princeton and graduated from that university summa cum laude. She went on to Yale Law School where she was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and Managing Editor of the Yale Journal of International Law. After Yale, she served as an assistant district attorney, litigator in a prestigious private law firm, and federal district and appeals court judge for 17 years. She has won honorary degrees and many awards.

What Judge Sotomayor showed me at her senate hearing was dignity and patience with those little men and their annoying little questions. She also exemplified the fact that Hispanics have become a major part of American life, and that Hispanic leaders, language, and culture will continue to increase and spread so as to strengthen and enrich America and make it a better nation.