Thursday, December 23, 2010
OVERKILL
Our society is a bit strange. We go from almost a laissez-faire attitude, or a benign admonition, to criminalizing or quite punitive measures against the pranks, exuberances, or peccadilloes of our people. Almost anything can set off political zanies with an overkill response. Senator Inhofe’s boycotting the “holiday” parade in Tulsa is overkill. So seems the $11million Christmas tree in Abu Dhabi.
Let us take for example the tripping case of the assistant coach for the New York Jets. That assistant coach was fined and suspended for tripping a player opponent who was running down the field out of bounds on the white strip so provocatively close to the Jets’ bench sideline that he was within inches of brushing them. It should be against the rules for a defensive player on the kick-off team to run up the field out of bounds. Evidently it is not. Nevertheless, the player is off the playing field and he is fair game if he passes so close to the opponents on the sideline as to make it possible for an almost undetectable extension of a foot to trip him.
We don’t have a dog or a favored team in that fight, but it seems that the league was grossly over reacting with throwing the book at that poor assistant coach who yielded to temptation under seductive circumstances. A slap on the wrist would have been sufficient for his indiscretion.
It seems to us that police and prosecutors have a way of over reacting to lesser drug offenses of juveniles and younger adults. That young lawyer in Ponca City may be an example. We don’t know all the facts of the case, of course, but for one ounce of cocaine in his pocket he had the book thrown at him. A later search of his car found a gun stowed away, so that added to the list of charges and the seriousness of the other charge. All that seems a bit much.
Lots of people carry guns in their cars. While we do not condone that, we have had acquaintances volunteer that they always carry guns in their car for safety. With some of our crazy state legislators wanting to legalize carrying guns everywhere, it hardly seems that it should be such a serious offense for an adult to have one in a car or pickup. That young lawyer needs a rehab program and time away from his profession, but we don’t see the need for that time to be spent in a jail at our expense.
Even our conservative state legislature is beginning to realize that our “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” mentality in Oklahoma is out of step with more progressive states and terribly expensive for a state budget to carry. We are depriving other state services in order to keep a bunch of people locked up who either did not need to be there or have been there too long. Since state facilities are full, county jails have had to warehouse their prisoners. This too has led to the expenses of over-crowding, bond issues to build new jails, and related tax costs.
Fox News has over-performed its function for the republican party to such an extent that it is no longer recognized as a legitimate news service, but rather accorded a shameful designation of propaganda machine. Recent mainstream news has revealed overkill memos from the head of Fox, admonishing all on-air people to use certain degrading, negative terms when referring to certain people and certain issues. They regularly issue their people talking points and terminology. Persistently they circulate stories contrary to facts already out.
This accounts for the findings of a research study reported this week which showed Fox viewers to be more misinformed, uninformed, and ignorant on a number of significant issues which have permeated the news stream during the past year. We have said repeatedly that if a person watches only Fox News and listens to Rush Limbaugh that explains their biases, misinformation, and weird political ideas. Of course, explaining is not excusing such cultivated ignorance. Nor does it excuse the boorish behavior of those full of confidence in their false information.
At this writing the House just killed a child marriage bill that passed the Senate almost unanimously. Some zany right-to-life republicans had circulated a memo which alleged the bill opened doors to federally subsidized abortions and other evils. A reading of the short bill of less than ten pages would have shown this memo to be false, but the bill protecting young girls from sexual exploitation failed. How sad!
Overkill can work both ways, of course. A recent law passed as part of the democratic agenda, loosed some onerous IRS requirements of red tape and paperwork on small businesses. This was a prime example of a fault for which the feds are frequently accused. But overkill can be corrected, and in this case it was a clean-up bill removing the more onerous red tape requirements.
We wish we could clean up other prime examples of overkill as easily, as new ones appear daily in our sight. But foibles of people will no doubt continue to abound, and the art of dirty politics will continue to soil hands, mouths, and minds.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Let us take for example the tripping case of the assistant coach for the New York Jets. That assistant coach was fined and suspended for tripping a player opponent who was running down the field out of bounds on the white strip so provocatively close to the Jets’ bench sideline that he was within inches of brushing them. It should be against the rules for a defensive player on the kick-off team to run up the field out of bounds. Evidently it is not. Nevertheless, the player is off the playing field and he is fair game if he passes so close to the opponents on the sideline as to make it possible for an almost undetectable extension of a foot to trip him.
We don’t have a dog or a favored team in that fight, but it seems that the league was grossly over reacting with throwing the book at that poor assistant coach who yielded to temptation under seductive circumstances. A slap on the wrist would have been sufficient for his indiscretion.
It seems to us that police and prosecutors have a way of over reacting to lesser drug offenses of juveniles and younger adults. That young lawyer in Ponca City may be an example. We don’t know all the facts of the case, of course, but for one ounce of cocaine in his pocket he had the book thrown at him. A later search of his car found a gun stowed away, so that added to the list of charges and the seriousness of the other charge. All that seems a bit much.
Lots of people carry guns in their cars. While we do not condone that, we have had acquaintances volunteer that they always carry guns in their car for safety. With some of our crazy state legislators wanting to legalize carrying guns everywhere, it hardly seems that it should be such a serious offense for an adult to have one in a car or pickup. That young lawyer needs a rehab program and time away from his profession, but we don’t see the need for that time to be spent in a jail at our expense.
Even our conservative state legislature is beginning to realize that our “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” mentality in Oklahoma is out of step with more progressive states and terribly expensive for a state budget to carry. We are depriving other state services in order to keep a bunch of people locked up who either did not need to be there or have been there too long. Since state facilities are full, county jails have had to warehouse their prisoners. This too has led to the expenses of over-crowding, bond issues to build new jails, and related tax costs.
Fox News has over-performed its function for the republican party to such an extent that it is no longer recognized as a legitimate news service, but rather accorded a shameful designation of propaganda machine. Recent mainstream news has revealed overkill memos from the head of Fox, admonishing all on-air people to use certain degrading, negative terms when referring to certain people and certain issues. They regularly issue their people talking points and terminology. Persistently they circulate stories contrary to facts already out.
This accounts for the findings of a research study reported this week which showed Fox viewers to be more misinformed, uninformed, and ignorant on a number of significant issues which have permeated the news stream during the past year. We have said repeatedly that if a person watches only Fox News and listens to Rush Limbaugh that explains their biases, misinformation, and weird political ideas. Of course, explaining is not excusing such cultivated ignorance. Nor does it excuse the boorish behavior of those full of confidence in their false information.
At this writing the House just killed a child marriage bill that passed the Senate almost unanimously. Some zany right-to-life republicans had circulated a memo which alleged the bill opened doors to federally subsidized abortions and other evils. A reading of the short bill of less than ten pages would have shown this memo to be false, but the bill protecting young girls from sexual exploitation failed. How sad!
Overkill can work both ways, of course. A recent law passed as part of the democratic agenda, loosed some onerous IRS requirements of red tape and paperwork on small businesses. This was a prime example of a fault for which the feds are frequently accused. But overkill can be corrected, and in this case it was a clean-up bill removing the more onerous red tape requirements.
We wish we could clean up other prime examples of overkill as easily, as new ones appear daily in our sight. But foibles of people will no doubt continue to abound, and the art of dirty politics will continue to soil hands, mouths, and minds.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
IRONIES, CONTRADICTIONS, AND "PLUTONOMICS"
We live in a world of inconsistencies, some of which have little logic and may reveal character flaws and ulterior designs. Our social and political environment seems full of such.
Two years ago Mr. Obama was swept into office on a popular agenda of change, and this year the republicans regained a share of power after saying “No” to all changes and obstructing any they could. The people spoke in 2008 saying that they wanted Washington to work in a bi-partisan fashion for the good of the people. Even though the republicans ran on a platform of “country first,” they immediately set out to defeat Obama on every front, make him look bad in every way they could, showing partisanship by attempting to block every move made. Now, the people’s voice is for a return of the harshest form of partisanship?
For the past two years the Obama administration has refused to respond to public clamor for investigations of the lies concocted inside the Bush administration to justify war and the approval of torture in violation of international treaties. Now, even prior to taking over the House, republican leaders are talking about investigating the Obama administration -- for what? We suppose over anything that comes to mind – perhaps his former church preacher or some guy in Chicago who sometimes attended the same local civic or political meetings. More Whitewater baloney?
Republicans are demanding tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% to 3% of the population, even though these same people have had increases in income of 10% a year the past decade while the incomes of middle class have decreased. S&P 500 corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, but they are refusing to expand operations and hire people. Corporations have just finished their most profitable year in history and stock markets are up, but unemployment is at 9% among common people. But the republicans want to lower corporate tax rates and cut off unemployment benefits.
During the last decade, republicans in power ran up trillions in debt with unnecessary wars and with unnecessary tax cuts for the rich, but now they have become deficit hawks demanding that every measure which might benefit ordinary citizens in stress be paid for in full by spending cuts somewhere else. Republicans are deficit hawks in rhetoric, but they consistently force the military to spend extra money to buy unneeded and unwanted weapon systems made in their home districts or by lobbyist campaign donor companies.
Republicans do not believe in global warming and they pooh-pooh scientific research, particularly that collected by Mr. Gore, yet some of their own constituents living on the eastern seashore are having to leave their cars parked on streets away from their homes because the rising level of high tides is now bringing water to their yards, driveways, and frontal streets. Although they have praised the first nuclear control treaty with Russia negotiated by their president, Mr. Reagan, republicans are now blocking ratification of an extension of that same treaty negotiated by their nemesis, Mr. Obama.
In 1985 the richest 1% held $8 trillion in wealth. In 2005 this same group held $40 trillion in wealth, a five-fold increase. During that same period the average American family found not its wealth, but its debt, increasing at an alarming rate. Some have referred to this as effects of “plutonomics.”
Republicans now support taxing worker health insurance benefits, home mortgage interest, and retirees’ Social Security checks, and then lowering tax rates for the rich and for corporations as solutions to deficit problems. Yes, really!
Republicans point to Reagan as their iconic conservative president, yet during his term of office the national debt increased more than under any president before or after until the second Bush presidency. Reagan’s “voodoo economics” claimed that when the wealthy were given tax cuts, prosperity would “trickle down” to the rest and that the result would be greater federal tax income and reduced deficits. Despite the opposite results for Mr. Reagan, the republicans are still claiming that very same voodoo: cut taxes for the wealthy, increase prosperity, and reduce the deficit. What is it they say about repeating the same failed action over and over compulsively being the sign of a fool?
President Obama has proposed continuing the tax cuts for everybody except the top 3% of our taxpayers (incomes over $250,000). This would reduce the projected deficit for 2011 by $400 billion, from $1.3 trillion to $900 billion, a sizeable reduction with no ill effects to the economy. Yet republicans totally reject this notion, and they are standing hard for that 3% who are the wealthiest among us.
Could all this have anything to do with the hundreds of millions of dollars in business and corporate donations to republican campaigns this fall? Why else? Why else would republicans want to continue the taxes of billionaires at lower rates than their secretaries?
With government tax policies that clearly favor the wealthy, the dynamics of a “plutonomy” have been clearly present for several decades. Is it any wonder that America is drifting from a democracy toward a plutocracy in the character of its government? The minions of money can be selfish and cruel, and their tentacles reach far, wide, and deep.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
Two years ago Mr. Obama was swept into office on a popular agenda of change, and this year the republicans regained a share of power after saying “No” to all changes and obstructing any they could. The people spoke in 2008 saying that they wanted Washington to work in a bi-partisan fashion for the good of the people. Even though the republicans ran on a platform of “country first,” they immediately set out to defeat Obama on every front, make him look bad in every way they could, showing partisanship by attempting to block every move made. Now, the people’s voice is for a return of the harshest form of partisanship?
For the past two years the Obama administration has refused to respond to public clamor for investigations of the lies concocted inside the Bush administration to justify war and the approval of torture in violation of international treaties. Now, even prior to taking over the House, republican leaders are talking about investigating the Obama administration -- for what? We suppose over anything that comes to mind – perhaps his former church preacher or some guy in Chicago who sometimes attended the same local civic or political meetings. More Whitewater baloney?
Republicans are demanding tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% to 3% of the population, even though these same people have had increases in income of 10% a year the past decade while the incomes of middle class have decreased. S&P 500 corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, but they are refusing to expand operations and hire people. Corporations have just finished their most profitable year in history and stock markets are up, but unemployment is at 9% among common people. But the republicans want to lower corporate tax rates and cut off unemployment benefits.
During the last decade, republicans in power ran up trillions in debt with unnecessary wars and with unnecessary tax cuts for the rich, but now they have become deficit hawks demanding that every measure which might benefit ordinary citizens in stress be paid for in full by spending cuts somewhere else. Republicans are deficit hawks in rhetoric, but they consistently force the military to spend extra money to buy unneeded and unwanted weapon systems made in their home districts or by lobbyist campaign donor companies.
Republicans do not believe in global warming and they pooh-pooh scientific research, particularly that collected by Mr. Gore, yet some of their own constituents living on the eastern seashore are having to leave their cars parked on streets away from their homes because the rising level of high tides is now bringing water to their yards, driveways, and frontal streets. Although they have praised the first nuclear control treaty with Russia negotiated by their president, Mr. Reagan, republicans are now blocking ratification of an extension of that same treaty negotiated by their nemesis, Mr. Obama.
In 1985 the richest 1% held $8 trillion in wealth. In 2005 this same group held $40 trillion in wealth, a five-fold increase. During that same period the average American family found not its wealth, but its debt, increasing at an alarming rate. Some have referred to this as effects of “plutonomics.”
Republicans now support taxing worker health insurance benefits, home mortgage interest, and retirees’ Social Security checks, and then lowering tax rates for the rich and for corporations as solutions to deficit problems. Yes, really!
Republicans point to Reagan as their iconic conservative president, yet during his term of office the national debt increased more than under any president before or after until the second Bush presidency. Reagan’s “voodoo economics” claimed that when the wealthy were given tax cuts, prosperity would “trickle down” to the rest and that the result would be greater federal tax income and reduced deficits. Despite the opposite results for Mr. Reagan, the republicans are still claiming that very same voodoo: cut taxes for the wealthy, increase prosperity, and reduce the deficit. What is it they say about repeating the same failed action over and over compulsively being the sign of a fool?
President Obama has proposed continuing the tax cuts for everybody except the top 3% of our taxpayers (incomes over $250,000). This would reduce the projected deficit for 2011 by $400 billion, from $1.3 trillion to $900 billion, a sizeable reduction with no ill effects to the economy. Yet republicans totally reject this notion, and they are standing hard for that 3% who are the wealthiest among us.
Could all this have anything to do with the hundreds of millions of dollars in business and corporate donations to republican campaigns this fall? Why else? Why else would republicans want to continue the taxes of billionaires at lower rates than their secretaries?
With government tax policies that clearly favor the wealthy, the dynamics of a “plutonomy” have been clearly present for several decades. Is it any wonder that America is drifting from a democracy toward a plutocracy in the character of its government? The minions of money can be selfish and cruel, and their tentacles reach far, wide, and deep.
Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate
