American Coup d'état

In the plot of the film “Seven Days in May” authored by “Twilight Zone” creator, Rod Serling, the United States government faces an attempted Coup d'état; a takeover of our government by the military. Seem impossible? I suggest that this very thing is currently playing out in our country as we watch. However it is not the military who is orchestrating this coup – it is the power of money.

The Supreme Court poured gasoline on a smoldering fire of campaign finance reform in it’s “Citizens United” decision, affirming a decision made decades earlier that corporations be considered as having the same constitutional free speech rights as individuals. Money has become the voice for that speech.

In Wisconsin, the recall election of governor Scott Walker failed, in large part, due to the support of campaign spending amounting to seven times that of his opponents; this in spite of a monumental “get out the vote” initiative.[1]  In a nation where the population obtains the overwhelming balance of their political information from television advertising, where people vote their ‘gut’ over their head, the results are easy to predict.

Will this ever change; can it? It is doubtful. The powers of money and influence smell the blood in the water; they will use that same power to thwart any attempt to wrest their grip on control.

I personally fear that our 200-year old experiment in Democracy has come to an end – our economy, once the beacon of the free world, now revolves almost wholly upon using money to concentrate the acquisition of even more. Most of us stand powerless, like lowly surfs as modern day Genghis Khans sweep over our landscape pillaging and ravaging our Republic by those who equate freedom as no loftier a goal than to acquire personal financial gain.

I am Robert the Skeptic and I approve of this message.

References:

1.  "The Influence Industry: In Wisconsin recall, theside with most money won big", Washington Post, June 6, 2012

What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us?

Most folks would likely agree that few support the concept of “Big Government”. But what exactly does that phrase really mean? To some, Big Government implies restrictions on free exercise of commerce. To others, Big Government may have more personal implications, such as dictating what a woman chooses to do with her body. But whether we recognize it or not, we all need government at some level.

I fully support the entrepreneurial spirit of this nation. However I note that many individuals who tout the values of “free markets” often forget that their success may not be entirely attributed to their ego-driven self-made assertions. The fact is much of the business success by smart, motivated, innovative people, was achieved by standing on the shoulders of others who laid the groundwork before them – this includes significant benefactions made possible through government investment.

It is a fact that many successful commercial enterprises would not exist today without the initial investment of government projects. Some undertakings were simply too large, excessively complex or otherwise beyond the scope, abilities or resources of the private sector. Government instigated projects have been essential in fostering many private commercial industries existing today. Let me offer a few examples:

The Railroad System
In 1862 President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act (1) authorizing congress to issue to the privately held Southern Pacific and Central Pacific railroads, 6,400 acres of FREE land (later doubled to 12,800) and $48,000 in government bonds for every mile of track built. The railroads then sold portions of their land to arriving settlers at huge profits.

Today Congress still authorizes funds to support Amtrak passenger service, funding the upgrade of track and infrastructure to private railroad companies which also benefits the railroad’s primary source of income: freight revenues.

Interstate Highway System
The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways otherwise known as the Interstate Highway system, was authorized by the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. The cost of construction has been estimated at $425 billion (in 2006 dollars), making it the largest public works project in history.(2) Interstate commerce, in the form of commercial trucking, depends almost entirely on the highway system.

Dams and Irrigation
The Federal Power Commission in 1920 enabled construction of federal dams on the Colorado and Columbia rivers, leading directly to public/private competition for production and sale of power.(3) The Columbia Basin Project of irrigation canals and aqueducts which directly supports commercial agriculture is estimated to have cost $1,687,000,000 alone.

Space program
Far too risky for most private companies to venture, the US Space program has resulted in monumental economic, scientific and technological returns, far exceeding the initial investment. The space program represents significant revenue for American corporations such as Honeywell, Northrup, Locheed, Douglass and a long list of other technical and engineering companies. It is estimated that for every dollar spent on the space program, the U.S. economy receives about $8 of economic benefit.(5)

The Internet
The Internet we know today (not invented by Al Gore) started out as The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). The network was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense for use by its projects at universities and research laboratories in the US.(4) Today thousands of private companies, large and small, depend on the Internet for their existence.

Nuclear Power
Privately operated nuclear utility power plants would not have been able to develop the nuclear fuel in use today were it not for the Manhattan Project.

The list continues: the Panama Canal, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as well as government agencies which directly support commerce such as the National Weather Service, the U. S. Postal Service and the Federal Aviation Administration.

So when we ask, what has the government ever done for us? Well, there's the aqueduct...



References:
1. Wikipedia: Pacific Railroad Act
2. Wikipedia: Interstate Highway System
3. University of Washington Library: "Grand Coulee: Harnessing a Dream" (book excerpt)
4. Wikipedia: ARAPANET
5. Freakonomics.com: "Is space exploration worth the cost?"

Angry (or Fearful) White Men

I am always interested in why we humans perceive and respond to the world the way we do. How is it that our brains are comfortable with attaching significance to one set of facts, yet conversely be dismissive (or even ignorant) of contradictory information?

No where do these perceptual differences appear so pronounced (or have such effect directly on our lives) than in the political arena. Here we have candidate Rick Santorum stating with absolute certainty that Global Climate Change is a “hoax” or that a college education essentially amounts to nothing more than Liberal indoctrination. The latter a remarkably absurd statement coming from a religious adherent … religion quite literally wrote the Book on indoctrination!

Liberals certainly are not immune to thinking errors or political gaffs, but why do we associate the prevalence of apparent rational-less ideology so strongly with Conservatives? It sometimes seems that Conservatives are almost living in their own separate reality.

Recent research, it turns out, is revealing that this may indeed be the case. A multitude of psychological studies reveal that Conservatives tends to hold more of a “defensively based” ideology; or more to the point, Conservatives view political issues on an emotional level within a context of threat.

I recently read a news article suggesting that the GOP party establishment is attempting to encourage their candidates to shift the campaign focus less on threatening and fear-inducing commentary and instead more toward what the party visions as their platform for the future. Indeed, the 20-some odd public debates seem to be all about demonizing Obama and each other rather than laying a foundation for sound governance. The GOP's menacing portrayals regarding social issues such as gay marriage, access to contraceptives and religion in politics, appear to be running headlong into a wall not shared by most Americans... even among many other Conservative voters.

The data in these studies show that Conservatives tend to have strong adverse reactions when presented with negative images. "The aversive in life is more physiologically and cognitively tangible to some people and they tend to gravitate to the political right."^[1]

Liberals, on the other hand, appeal more to an open, exploratory philosophy; trying things out and seeking multiple and contradictory information in comparison. Liberals feel less visceral responses to stimuli because they question whether it is true or if there may be another different or more complex explanation. This philosophic approach has the effect of dispelling fear by considering other possible information.

I notice this fear-based response to topical issues is common among strong religious adherents as well. Evangelicals, who tend to view issues in stark black-and-white terms generally tend to also be Conservative in their thinking. For these folks, belief in god is based on fear of reprisal (hell) for not following the rules, fear of death, even fear of being ostracised by one's peers, all of which plays into acceptance of dogma, or comfortable rationalism, to assuage the threatening consequences.

Back on the political spectrum, this is probably why unsubstantiated, not clearly defined and scary adages such as “redistribution of the wealth”, “Socialism”, “entitlement society”, and “Big Government” to name but a few, seem to resonate as somehow meaningful to Conservative minds.

The down side of acknowledging this theory, regarding the psychology of fear and belief, has the discouraging implication that it may be difficult or impossible break through to minds which appear to be "hard wired" to view the world through the context of fear or threat.

To these folks, as Stephen Colbert has suggested: "The truth has a Liberal bias".

References:

1. "The Left and the Right: Physiology, Brain Structure and Function, and Attentional Differences", Chris Mooney, The Intersection (http://scienceprogressaction.org), Feb. 28, 2012

The End of a Long Road

My father-in-law, Melvin, was an accomplished scientist. He remains one of the more highly published researchers at the Oregon State University’s school of Agriculture. He has traveled the globe collecting rare plants and was instrumental in setting up the National Clonal Germplasm Repository network; a virtual Noah’s Arch of plant genetic material. The first was in Corvallis – there are now repositories all over the globe.

But this great mind at age 88 is being ravaged by the early stages of Alzheimer's. Mel can recall the intimate details of how he discovered the treatment for the plant disease “Pear Decline” but he cannot remember what he did yesterday… or even earlier that day.

Mel learned to drive his Dad’s Model-T as a kid. As he tells it, the old rig wouldn’t make it over Utah’s LaSalle mountains in one run. He and his brother would sit in the back of the truck with a big rock between them. As the T chugged up the hill and over-heated, steam boiling from the radiator, the brothers would jump out and put the rock behind the back wheel to keep it from rolling back down the hill. Once it had cooled down, they would grab the rock and chug up the hill as far as they could go, repeating the process chocking the tire of the overheated T with the rock until they reached the summit.

Two weeks ago while on his way back from his monthly Hort department coffee meeting with other retired professors and technicians, Mel was involved in a car accident. Fortunately for all involved, nobody was injured. But Mel’s car was totaled; too old to be repaired, it ended up being scrapped. Mel later received a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles – he would need to be tested for his continuing ability to drive or lose his license.

Mel recognizes his mental faculties are in decline so after a day of mulling it over, he decided the best thing to do was surrender his driver’s license. This decision was a monumental one for Mel; it marked a milestone in his life… and a blatant reminder that he doesn’t have many more milestones more to go.

In many ways the decision was an easy one for him. Mel's“world” has been rapidly shrinking; he could no longer see to drive at night and he only remembers how to get to a few places like his church or the university campus. He doesn’t remember how to get to our house or even to his wife’s grave site.

Despite the stereotypical metaphor of the DMV as an example of inefficient government bureaucracy, his business with the agency went smoothly and courteously. No long lines or horrendous wait. A few minutes later, when Mel handed the clerk his paperwork with the box checked that he was voluntarily giving up his driving privileges, he told her: “I’ve been driving for seventy-three years and four months.”

He will get his new color picture state ID card in the mail.

Shut It Down

My wife absolutely hates this joke, but I'm going to tell it anyway:

A guy is trying unsuccessfully to get a stubborn mule to move. He tries coaxing it with a carrot, he tries kicking it, he even lights a fire under it, but the stubborn mule doesn’t budge.

However the man’s friend comes by convincing the mule her can get the mule to move. “Okay, go head and try” the mule owner says. The friend picks up a 2 x 4 and smacks the mule in the head right between the eyes, stunning the mule.

“You didn’t get him to move", the mule owner decries. But his friend says, “Maybe not... but I got his attention.”

House speaker John Boehner often touts what he believes is the will of “The American People”. In Conservative minds this translates into the ideology of less government, specifically less government spending. So after the tax status for the richest 2% of the wealthiest Americans was secured, we set about the business of cutting back on those expensive “entitlement” programs… you know, the ones that represent about 14% of our national budget. (The hugely expensive wars in the Middle-east oddly appear nowhere in the equatinon.)

Now many of us laughed at the dolt in the town hall meeting back during the 2008 campaign who yelled he wanted the Government to keep your Government hands off his Medicare. Most just thought he was just an eccentric nut - but it turns out that there are huge percentages of Americans who have NO CLUE that they benefit DIRECTLY from their government!

Recently discovered: 44% of Social Security recipients don't think they are receiving any "Government" help. Likewise, 39% of Medicare recipients, 43% of Unemployment benefit recipients, 42% of Veterans… the list goes on.¹

There is an old Chinese curse that goes something like “I hope you get what you wish for”. So I am personally rooting for Congress to pull off the government shut down! I want millions of Tea Baggers and less-government morons to NOT get their Social Security checks, disability payments, VA benefits...²

Maybe... just MAYBE, it will get their attention.

~~~

1. “Keep Your Government Hands Off My Government Programs!” - NY Times, Febuary 11, 2011

2. Sadly, in actuality, the government we love-to-hate will nevertheless refrain from smacking our most intellectually limited citizens in the face with a 2 x 4 and send out SS and other benefit checks anyway, thereby further cementing their mental disconnect. See, ya just can't depend on that gol-dang gov-n-ment to do anything right.

Come Hell or High Water

Recently in the news:

UK - Britain's winter is the coldest since 1683 and close to being the chilliest in nearly 1,000 years

MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin harshly reprimanded officials Wednesday over a winter weather shutdown at Moscow airports that left thousands stranded for days, and he banned high-ranking officials from taking vacations until further notice. Icy rains covered runways and planes with a thick layer of ice over the weekend and caused a blackout at the capital's largest airport, Domodedovo, which halted all flights for a day. Domodedovo resumed operations Monday, but a backlog of delayed flights left thousands stuck.

New York, ... all three airports were closed for a time, ... thousands of flights canceled by the storm—and especially the difficulty the airlines experienced trying to rebook passengers—was at least partially a consequence of an overburdened air travel system, one that lacked the flexibility to deal with an extreme event.

NEW YORK — As many as 9,000 passengers were stuck on the tarmac from three to 12 hours at John F. Kennedy International Airport as a result of this week's blizzard, and blame shifting has already begun.... "It was so frustrating, just sitting there for hours, waiting for more bad news," Cathay passenger Gigi Godfrey, 24, told the Associated Press.

New York mayor Mayor Bloomberg apologized for snow screw-ups during blizzard of 2010.

I want the significance of this statement to sink in – the Mayor is apologizing for not having enough GOVERNMENT employees on hand to deal with city services.

The “entitlement attitude” in western society, and in America in particular, is extremely annoying to me. We seem to have this expectation that we should be immune to inconvenience, delays and acts of nature. By god, we have a right to build our condo on the beach and the government better damn well replace it after the storm surge wipes it into the surf… for the third time. How dare the airline cancel my flight due to unsafe flying conditions!

I am particularly bothered by the public's disconnect between their disdain for all things government yet the equally contradictory expectation that government insulate them from all the uncertainties of human existence. People often bring up the anecdote of their Department of Motor Vehicles – they chaff at the necessity to stand in a line every eight years; yet they are equally as certain that the damn DMV, and government in general, is over staffed.

I level my own accusatory finger toward the news media as purveyors of the entitlement expectation. Often in the aftermath of disaster, the first thing out of news is speculation about how the response could have been anticipated and handled better... followed by the question of who should be fired. In other words, regardless of the cause, SOMEONE is to blame.

Were I Mayor Bloomburg, rather than apologizing, I might ask the press corps how they think the snow plow drivers get to work? Or explain how difficult it is to plow a street choked by the abandoned cars of those idiots who believed they had a right to drive regardless of extreme conditions. Bloomburg should, in my opinion, be saying: “You people wanted less government; you have the government you deserve.”

It reminds me of a poem I heard years ago, titled “The Job”:

I'm not allowed to run the train
The whistle I can't blow
I'm not the one who designates
How far the train will go
I'm not allowed to blow the steam
Or even ring the bell
But let the damn thing jump the track
And see who catches hell.

The Myth of Internet Privacy

“Most people do not know they are being tracked, and they aren’t given a choice whether to be tracked or to have their online behavior and personal information shared with large networks of advertisers.” – Nancy King, associate professor of business law, Oregon State University

In my final article about the “hidden” internet I will uncover what most of us probably already know – that we are being watched and profiled, not by a nefarious Big Brother government but by private commercial interests. Our browsing, searching and purchasing habits are being tracked, tabulated and targeted.

Most of us know that “cookies” are placed on our computer hard drives when we visit a web site. These bits of code identify us as return visitors and record what we looked at and how long we dwelled on a particular site. This information is also sent to companies which compile this information and sell it to advertisers to target us for marketing pitches based on our purported interests.

Many of us believe that we can disable or delete cookies, but many sites require them enabled in order to use certain sites. And deleting them is of no protection when the information is passed on to a third party. Beyond cookies there are also “beacons” which run on some of the web sites we browse. Because the Beacons reside on the remote site rather than our hard drives, their information collection activities are beyond our reach or control.

Nancy King quoted above warns that there is little in the way of legal protections over our privacy and even scant less governmental oversight with respect to e-commerce and data collection. It is the Wild West out there and business interests seem limited by only what they can get away with.

In some cases this information can be good, sending information out way that we may not need to search for. But a vast majority of consumers do not realize they are being tracked, who is tracking them and what the information is used for. Recently one of my readers was unaware that their IP address can give away their geographic location. Try for yourself: http://www.ip2location.com/

Laws are scant, having not kept up with new technology. Government wire taping restrictions were written for the times when we all had telephones connected via wires to our homes and offices. It is a Brave New World out there and the laws regarding how technologies have not kept up. ⁽¹⁾Wireless connections themselves can open up more opportunities for surveillance and exploitation.

Unfortunately we cannot look to government to protect our interests with respect to Internet privacy; oversight has been recently undermined by the FCC recently adopting business recommendations allowing businesses to disregard ⁽²⁾Net Neutrality.

Instead of a rule to protect Internet users' freedom to choose, the Commission has opened the door for broadband payola - letting phone and cable companies charge steep tolls to favor the content and services of a select group of corporate partners, relegating everyone else to the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.~ Timothy Karr

Read Nancy King’s full article in the Corvallis Oregon Gazette Times, “A Matter of Privacy”

~~~

1. “ Google says mistakenly got wireless data.” – Reuters, May 15, 2010

2. “Net Neutrality is the freedom of speech, freedom of choice issue of the 21st century. It's the guarantee of a more open and democratic media system that was baked into the Internet at its founding.” ~ Obama FCC Caves on Net Neutrality -- Tuesday Betrayal Assured, Timothy Karr, Huffington Post, December 20, 2010.

We the People?

A while back an acquaintance of mine, a professor of Political Science at Oregon State University (no longer there) admitted to me that he doesn’t vote. I was taken aback; dumbstruck to hear such a statement from someone whose academic career was based on the study of the political process. He went on to explain that the real political forces are the lobbyists and Special Interest Groups which control an overwhelming majority of the policy making in Washington and state governments. Voting, he explained, was simply to lend an “air of legitimacy” to the perception of the democratic process. Elections are nothing more than political theater giving us the illusion of self-governance.

Likely many of us who yield to our cynicism have suspected such is the case; but we tend to hold at least some brief hope that our elected officials serve with some sense of the greater good. In our hearts we don’t REALLY want to believe that a “quid pro quo” exists between our elected officials and certain individuals, groups or businesses interests which grease their campaign machines.

But recently what glimmer of hope in the integrity of our political process was thoroughly extinguished after reading an interview with recently California governor-elect Jerry Brown by Skeptic Magazine.

Brown comes from a generational political family; his father was governor back in the days when my father was employed by the State of California. Jerry Brown, like Bill Clinton, is an extremely knowledgeable and astute practitioner of the gamesmanship which is this country’s the political game.

As my political science professor friend revealed to me, and as further confirmed through this interview with Jerry Brown, “The People” have little true participation in the governmental process. The mere 40% who turned out to vote in the recent elections appear to be essentially the willing pawns of powers they neither recognize nor understand. The Tea Baggers are the most obvious; but Brown’s revealing exposure of the truth behind who truly wields power over our republic is discouraging and revealing. But it likely confirms what many of us have suspected for some time.

Not just for American audiences, this expose’ I on American politics likely pertains to other Western parliamentary and constitutional democracies as well. The link is below – it’s a sobering read:

We the People?
Jerry Brown on Money, Politics,and Who Really Runs America
an interview by Frank Miele - Skeptic.com, e-Skeptic, Nov. 11, 2010