Tuesday, August 28, 2007
GOING TO THE DOGS
After this appears, the Militant Moderate will no doubt have more redneck types aligned as enemies, joined by nice people who love dogs and other animals. It is not that I don’t like dogs, in their place, or anything like that. Nor do I suborn the mistreatment of animals. It’s just that I don’t get carried away with that issue.
The Moderate had two dogs as a child. Both of them hurt him terribly by doing dumb things and getting themselves killed. When MM was 8 years old our dog Spot began chasing the few cars who passed by our rural farm house. Then the mail carrier ran over him, much to his chagrin and our grief.
Our dog Shag, very important to the MM at age 10, took to running around the countryside in search of females and adventures, and we found him dead by the side of the railroad track. This ended my emotional attachment to dogs.
The MM became negative after being attacked by a pit bull on a chain while walking down a public sidewalk close to a house. The dog tore open my pants and a part of my leg, which still bears the scar. The occupants of the home became angry because of insistence that they remove the dog to some place where children and others would not be attacked while passing by.
We have been bombarded by news stories and TV coverage with sordid pictures of animal neglect over and over again. The announcers warn that these pictures may be disturbing, and it is darn sure disturbing and irritating that they cover such stuff visually. We’ve seen starving horses, cats running all over filthy homes, dogs penned up in the heat, and now – dog fights – over and over. Enough is enough.
As a child, the Militant Moderate saw horses beaten with whips and dogs kicked and beaten with sticks. Those experiences were quite disconcerting. As a young adult, he observed a farmer across the way at a distance lashing his two boys with a horsewhip in his back yard. The police responded, but said they had no authority across the road and out of the city limits. But it stopped.
Outright cruelty to children, starving children, and children going without medical care are much more disturbing to the Militant Moderate than stories of animal mistreatment.
It seems that the world would certainly be better off without the pit bulls some treasure. Those are vicious animals. We wonder about people who value animal owners’ rights over safety of children.
While the practice of dog fighting is abhorrent, the Militant Moderate finds it difficult to get so worked up over that as to attack Michael Vick personally or others for those dastardly deeds. In fact, we’d like to see him play football again. There is talk of “making an example out of Vick.” As a celebrity, he would receive harsher punishment as an object lesson for others.
It is hard to justify the fairness of celebrity justice when it is either unduly harsh or more lenient. I suspect that dog fighting, training, or breeding are rarely prosecuted. If punishment is either harsh or lenient, then it is unfair and wrong. Every person should be equal before the law, whether he/she is a football star, a Hollywood icon, a congressman, or a minority kid from the wrong side of town.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
The Moderate had two dogs as a child. Both of them hurt him terribly by doing dumb things and getting themselves killed. When MM was 8 years old our dog Spot began chasing the few cars who passed by our rural farm house. Then the mail carrier ran over him, much to his chagrin and our grief.
Our dog Shag, very important to the MM at age 10, took to running around the countryside in search of females and adventures, and we found him dead by the side of the railroad track. This ended my emotional attachment to dogs.
The MM became negative after being attacked by a pit bull on a chain while walking down a public sidewalk close to a house. The dog tore open my pants and a part of my leg, which still bears the scar. The occupants of the home became angry because of insistence that they remove the dog to some place where children and others would not be attacked while passing by.
We have been bombarded by news stories and TV coverage with sordid pictures of animal neglect over and over again. The announcers warn that these pictures may be disturbing, and it is darn sure disturbing and irritating that they cover such stuff visually. We’ve seen starving horses, cats running all over filthy homes, dogs penned up in the heat, and now – dog fights – over and over. Enough is enough.
As a child, the Militant Moderate saw horses beaten with whips and dogs kicked and beaten with sticks. Those experiences were quite disconcerting. As a young adult, he observed a farmer across the way at a distance lashing his two boys with a horsewhip in his back yard. The police responded, but said they had no authority across the road and out of the city limits. But it stopped.
Outright cruelty to children, starving children, and children going without medical care are much more disturbing to the Militant Moderate than stories of animal mistreatment.
It seems that the world would certainly be better off without the pit bulls some treasure. Those are vicious animals. We wonder about people who value animal owners’ rights over safety of children.
While the practice of dog fighting is abhorrent, the Militant Moderate finds it difficult to get so worked up over that as to attack Michael Vick personally or others for those dastardly deeds. In fact, we’d like to see him play football again. There is talk of “making an example out of Vick.” As a celebrity, he would receive harsher punishment as an object lesson for others.
It is hard to justify the fairness of celebrity justice when it is either unduly harsh or more lenient. I suspect that dog fighting, training, or breeding are rarely prosecuted. If punishment is either harsh or lenient, then it is unfair and wrong. Every person should be equal before the law, whether he/she is a football star, a Hollywood icon, a congressman, or a minority kid from the wrong side of town.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
A GOOD WAR?
We notice some republican pundits and columnists making claims that a few positive signs from one province in Iraq will soon make their democrat adversaries terribly embarrassed for having criticized the war at all. Quite optimistically they say that making the war a political issue will backfire on the democrats by 2008.
That raises an appropriate question. Should the “surge” yield some further positive results in some parts of Iraq, and if troop death rates would drop below the almost three-a-day average from hostile activity there, would this have been a good war? If, within the next year, Iraqis would manage to get together and settle their political and sectarian differences so that civil violence is diminished, would this become a good war? Would taking out Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11, then prove better than going after Ben Laden as the focus of our response?
The questions and the answers become a bit deeper than the right wing pundits would like us to believe. Is a pre-emptive war, based upon what some other national leader might do and not what they have done, really a good national policy? When a war is justified to Americans and to the world by false interpretation of faulty intelligence, can it really turn out good? When our publicly declared reasons for war and our strategic goals constantly shift, will redefined “success” make a good war?
The question arises as to who has carried the burden of the war, and who has profited from it. We have had nearly 4,000 young men and women killed in Iraq and more than 25,000 maimed. The war has been fought mainly, and sacrifices made primarily, by lower and middle income citizens. With no draft, there is no egalitarian war burden. Citizen reserves and families have paid a high price.
There has been little war sacrifice from higher income groups, either in sons or in wealth. There has been no war tax. In fact, higher income persons have had tax reductions, while the burden of war debt has been incurred by the whole population. Some corporations have profited from the war. There has been a “war prosperity” at the top, not shared at the worker level.
Reasoning that this has somehow been a “good war” is specious, regardless of any shift in the degree of “success” toward some ever-changing goals. America has wasted her soldiers and her substance on an unnecessary war, while neglecting other problems at home and abroad. Military experts say that our armed forces and reserves have been shattered by repeated tours of duty in a hostile and unpleasant environment. Homes and lives of military reserve personnel have been disrupted, sometimes torn asunder. The war issue has divided the nation, making us increasingly angry with one another.
This war has turned our reputation from positive to negative throughout the world. We are less able to do good, less able to forge peace compacts, and less able to exert moral influence in critical areas. We have less military or economic strength to meet other threats posed in the world.
If next year, next month, or tomorrow, conditions were to change suddenly, if “victory” were declared again, and if we began withdrawing all forces from Iraq -- this four-year war would still be a disaster for us.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
That raises an appropriate question. Should the “surge” yield some further positive results in some parts of Iraq, and if troop death rates would drop below the almost three-a-day average from hostile activity there, would this have been a good war? If, within the next year, Iraqis would manage to get together and settle their political and sectarian differences so that civil violence is diminished, would this become a good war? Would taking out Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with 9/11, then prove better than going after Ben Laden as the focus of our response?
The questions and the answers become a bit deeper than the right wing pundits would like us to believe. Is a pre-emptive war, based upon what some other national leader might do and not what they have done, really a good national policy? When a war is justified to Americans and to the world by false interpretation of faulty intelligence, can it really turn out good? When our publicly declared reasons for war and our strategic goals constantly shift, will redefined “success” make a good war?
The question arises as to who has carried the burden of the war, and who has profited from it. We have had nearly 4,000 young men and women killed in Iraq and more than 25,000 maimed. The war has been fought mainly, and sacrifices made primarily, by lower and middle income citizens. With no draft, there is no egalitarian war burden. Citizen reserves and families have paid a high price.
There has been little war sacrifice from higher income groups, either in sons or in wealth. There has been no war tax. In fact, higher income persons have had tax reductions, while the burden of war debt has been incurred by the whole population. Some corporations have profited from the war. There has been a “war prosperity” at the top, not shared at the worker level.
Reasoning that this has somehow been a “good war” is specious, regardless of any shift in the degree of “success” toward some ever-changing goals. America has wasted her soldiers and her substance on an unnecessary war, while neglecting other problems at home and abroad. Military experts say that our armed forces and reserves have been shattered by repeated tours of duty in a hostile and unpleasant environment. Homes and lives of military reserve personnel have been disrupted, sometimes torn asunder. The war issue has divided the nation, making us increasingly angry with one another.
This war has turned our reputation from positive to negative throughout the world. We are less able to do good, less able to forge peace compacts, and less able to exert moral influence in critical areas. We have less military or economic strength to meet other threats posed in the world.
If next year, next month, or tomorrow, conditions were to change suddenly, if “victory” were declared again, and if we began withdrawing all forces from Iraq -- this four-year war would still be a disaster for us.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Sunday, August 05, 2007
LOW TAX MYOPIA
Our shortsightedness in public policy becomes evident to some of us only when it rises up to strike us in the face, as it has now done with our failure to tax ourselves to pay for maintenance of bridges all across the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in Oklahoma where 27% of our bridges are classified as structurally deficient.
This should not be surprising, since Oklahoma has made tax limiting and tax cutting priorities for years. This self-destructive trend has been exacerbated by the republicans now in control of the House and the legislative process.
But it is the people of Oklahoma who are to blame. We elect representatives who will vote to contain or reduce taxes. We vote for those who promise to cut expenditures. We allow special interest campaign donors and lobbyists to control our legislators, as well as our congresspersons, in order to keep their tax breaks and lower tax rates. When any business mentions “new jobs,” we jump to give them a tax break.
Rather than raise “road user” (gas) taxes to finance roads and bridges, our legislature resorted to questionable mortgaging of future federal aid dollars to finance state bonds for road building. These payments now come off the top of current monies. When Oklahoma voters had an opportunity to vote for an increase in gas taxes to bring those up just below surrounding states, stupidly we voted the tax down.
Oklahoma tax policy is myopic. It is “penny-wise and pound-foolish.”
Our legislature voted a generous, state financed program of scholarships for high school students who take a college-prep curriculum -- without enacting a tax to cover its cost. So, this has been taken out of monies that should have gone to support college budgets, while regents have had to turn around and keep raising fees students pay.
The legislature authorized highly questionable bonds to pay for $500 million in new or remodeled facilities without enacting a tax to retire them as the constitution requires. Now payments for those bonds are being taken out of budget money which should be going for college operations.
We are financing new prisons in much the same fashion. Our prison crisis is brought about mostly by failure to enact sensible sentencing laws and to allow parole authorities to do their job. If people had to vote a tax on bonds to finance public facilities, as our state’s constitution dictates, then we might re-examine our penal laws.
Oklahoma cannot continue to be so myopic in its tax policies. We have to pay for what we use. We have to pay for public services. We must pay for infrastructure improvements as we go. Everybody should pay. We must limit the exemptions and privileges which are rampant in our tax laws.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
This should not be surprising, since Oklahoma has made tax limiting and tax cutting priorities for years. This self-destructive trend has been exacerbated by the republicans now in control of the House and the legislative process.
But it is the people of Oklahoma who are to blame. We elect representatives who will vote to contain or reduce taxes. We vote for those who promise to cut expenditures. We allow special interest campaign donors and lobbyists to control our legislators, as well as our congresspersons, in order to keep their tax breaks and lower tax rates. When any business mentions “new jobs,” we jump to give them a tax break.
Rather than raise “road user” (gas) taxes to finance roads and bridges, our legislature resorted to questionable mortgaging of future federal aid dollars to finance state bonds for road building. These payments now come off the top of current monies. When Oklahoma voters had an opportunity to vote for an increase in gas taxes to bring those up just below surrounding states, stupidly we voted the tax down.
Oklahoma tax policy is myopic. It is “penny-wise and pound-foolish.”
Our legislature voted a generous, state financed program of scholarships for high school students who take a college-prep curriculum -- without enacting a tax to cover its cost. So, this has been taken out of monies that should have gone to support college budgets, while regents have had to turn around and keep raising fees students pay.
The legislature authorized highly questionable bonds to pay for $500 million in new or remodeled facilities without enacting a tax to retire them as the constitution requires. Now payments for those bonds are being taken out of budget money which should be going for college operations.
We are financing new prisons in much the same fashion. Our prison crisis is brought about mostly by failure to enact sensible sentencing laws and to allow parole authorities to do their job. If people had to vote a tax on bonds to finance public facilities, as our state’s constitution dictates, then we might re-examine our penal laws.
Oklahoma cannot continue to be so myopic in its tax policies. We have to pay for what we use. We have to pay for public services. We must pay for infrastructure improvements as we go. Everybody should pay. We must limit the exemptions and privileges which are rampant in our tax laws.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
