Category Archives: Governance

Culture, Governance, Trump

RIGHT PRINCIPLES and DISCERNMENT

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It doesn’t appear that the background belief that the “world” will be beautiful and peaceful if we just all learn to get along with everyone, is valid.  Even in the microcosm, arguing about “partisanship” and worrying ourselves about the lack of “bi-partisanship” fails to illuminate the real basis for disagreement: right principles.

Many of us have principles that we are, if not governed by, at least motivated by.  We used to call them our “conscience.”  We sort-of always know when what we are doing is “right” or “wrong.” Let’s hope.  Still, modern science and technology, and modern anti-religion trends, have brought us to a time of phenomenal toys and enjoyments simultaneous with a culture of drug use and abuse, and hyper-sexuality.  In the face of these multiple assaults on our “principles,” we have clung only to a couple of erstwhile “truths”:

  • The worst sin is “intolerance;” and,
  • Passing judgements is bad.

The automatic corollary, it appears, is that every culture is equally valid and we should not act as though our own were any better.  Nor, it seems, should we make too much of our exceptional comforts, cleanliness and safety, because it’s not “fair” that we have them and so many others don’t.  This leads to so-called “immigrant advocates” who are not advocating for “immigrants,” but for illegal entrants, and to college campuses hosting wild demonstrations fundamentally against the sovereignty and even the Constitution, of the United States.

Is there someone to blame for this?  How did so many citizens of this relatively free, universally educated country, replete with community colleges, colleges, universities, on-line courses and free public libraries in nearly every town and city, come to hate it?  How did a nation so successful and liberal with its anti-poverty and unemployment programs, peppered with Christian churches of many denominations, arrive at a public governance that is virtually at the point of persecuting Christians FOR THEIR BELIEFS?

How did a nation founded on the very highest principles, led by George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, come to despise these leaders because of their economics and practices common to the day?  How has so much ignorance and lack of discernment come to motivate large fractions of our citizens to discard every founding principal in favor of socialism, communism and hedonism?

Why are we spending Trillions of dollars on education when the product of that investment is antithetical to our culture, heritage and survival?  How did this, all, happen?

What does it matter, except that we understand how, so as to not continue practices that brought us to this point?  This premise will generate a lot of discussion, some quite heated, but few actual solutions.  Everyone not consumed by the new liberalism and anti-Americanism, will decry education, lack of religious instruction, rewarding mediocrity and even failure, excessive welfare, stupid politicians, high taxes and sugary beverages.  Oh, and drugs… definitely drugs, both bad and good, including too many analgesic pain killers for minor ailments.  All of the above.

But, so what?  Is there some piece of legislation that will “turn things around?”  Maybe it’s a result of too many immigrants or, at the very least, too many illegal entrants!  That must be it.  Just stop immigration for a while and get rid of these Hispanic gangs – and drugs!  Get rid of the drugs!  That’s the ticket.  Maybe we should be deporting these criminal aliens faster… and keep them out.  And the death penalty; bring back the death penalty and make people truly pay for their most heinous crimes.  We’ve got to get judges to stop being soft on criminals.

It’s also not right that so much wealth is concentrated in Wall Street banks and brokerages, and that there is so much collusion between them and federal agencies and politicians.  Look at how they move back and forth between Treasury and Goldman-Sachs.

Do we think we simple Americans are going to fix all of these things?  By voting?  For whom?  Is there one person we might elect who will carry all of our valid concerns forward and “fix” things?  William Jennings Bryan thought he was one such, and things were a Hell of a lot simpler in 1896 and on, until the first World War.

Donald Trump surely believes he is one such, too, as do a majority of States.  The unprecedented opposition to him shows the depth of socialist statism that he wants to confound and undo.  Believe him or not, we should all wish (and pray) for his success.  The sovereignty of the individual, ostensibly (and once) protected by our majestic Constitution, is OUR freedom and YOUR liberty, the two not synonymous.

If you do not understand the distinction, perhaps we can start fixing “things” by learning what it is.

Culture, Economics, Governance

When Robots are Rights

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We must, as thinking, contemplative beings at least somewhat concerned about the future, consider the implications of robotics and so-called artificial intelligence: machines that learn. It’s all a matter of large-enough databases and rapid-enough retrieval. So what? you might ask.

Civilization came to be built as it is through an economic reality that forces individual humans to strive for improvement – both personal and financial. That is, at one level or another, life has been tough for most of us, causing each to become stronger in order to be able to adjust one’s surroundings to greater comfort or safety… or both.

In the past century or so we have managed to elevate enough of ourselves to support elaborate industries designed only to entertain us due to growing levels of “leisure” time. That is, modern life for a large fraction of humankind (but not all, certainly) permits complete creation of safe and comfortable living conditions (standards) with about 40 hours of “labor” of very specialized kinds per week, or about 25% of available time.

In fact not even 25% is needed, as many forms of labor provide for weeks of non-work time each year in addition to “holidays,” storm-days, “personal” days, sick days and, increasingly, family and maternity “leave” periods. Politicians and other panderers – advocates and socialists of various stripes – are constant in their demands for more time off for ostensibly “civilized” and crucial purposes. Employers are, after all, mere thieves of workers time and comfort and must not be allowed to earn a profit from their labor, if such dis-allowance is at all possible.

In any case and by whatever fraction of productive employees’ time, businesses must find ways to produce the millions of products and services that they and others need or want in order to create and maintain the kind of safe, comfortable living conditions each desires. And those products must be profitable enough to justify all the investment, risk, work and education that goes in to producing them, delivering them and warranting their quality and usefulness, AND to permit sufficient taxation of both profits and of labor itself, to pay for all of the “public” works and subsidies that politicians think we need – including those that we truly do.

Together we, many of us, understand the multiple contracts and assumptions and personal costs that are enabling lives we like; and we understand, largely, the changes we must each choose to make to have “better” lives and proportions of leisure time. Robots are changing the “contracts” we have made between individuals, companies, governments and ourselves – and we are largely unprepared for the future that they are creating.

Right now the contracts of the economy depend upon parties who have striven to be part of the economy and who have striven to be “good” and “useful” people – most of us, anyway. What each has attained-to is the basis on which each of us judges the other as a qualified member of our society and culture, evaluates him or her as to qualities of charity, kindness and “fairness,” or lacks thereof, and on what his or her productive value is determined.

It is very important to us whether the person we are considering is one who “pulls his or her weight” or, barring genuine disability, “coasts on the work of others.” Is he or she “pulling the wagon” or just “riding?” Like it or not, every one of us needs to grasp these values for the current system to “work.” We understand and agree to abide by the hundreds and thousands of “contracts” that cause society, products, services, profit and pay to function with a net gain of living standards over time for the largest number of our fellow society members.

Are you with me so far?

Here and there, and in growing numbers, people who are employers, which is to say, producers in our economy (“job-creation” being simply a result of profitable productivity), are squeezed by governments – including their legal systems – through taxation and liabilities of increasing types. Customers demand redress and compensation from producers’ profits if anything goes wrong with a product, its delivery or its use, almost regardless of “fault.” Governments need more and more revenue to perform vital deeds and to buy votes from constituents.

To compensate for growing assaults on profits producers must steadily become more productive without raising costs… and this means reducing labor costs – employee costs. Given myriad labor laws protecting workers, insuring them, insuring their families and paying them at certain rates, producers are turning toward automating as many procedures as possible: ie. robots.

Robots don’t have to look like manufactured humanoids. They can be as unassuming as ATM machines and self-check-out lanes at Home Depot and a thousand other retailers. “Robots” can dispense prescriptions, take orders at fast-food restaurants and, soon, custom-tailor suits with nary a sales-clerk or store-manager needed. What do YOU do? What function are you compensated for? Maybe you build houses.

Robots make it possible to factory-manufacture modular homes that come with wiring, piping and alarm and computer circuits already in place. They’re delivered by truck and bolted together on site. Altogether there can be barely 20% as much labor needed to produce a single-family home. For modular multi-family buildings, there is even less per housing unit. What will all the tradesmen be doing?

Or, the counter workers, potato-fryers, and on, and on, and on… what will they be doing? Retailing is disappearing before our eyes, along with its jobs and buildings, janitors and re-decorators, security guards and on, and on, and on. There are very, very few jobs that are not threatened, except, temporarily, robot-maker.

Will this happen overnight? Not yet, but overnight began about 30 years ago and is accelerating as rapidly today, tomorrow and next week, as computing power and miniaturization permit. So what are the political and human consequences of the robotic devouring of what we now call “jobs?”

First, people who now control productive enterprises, from small to large, will be controlling larger and larger fractions of production generally, whether of precision-engineered parts or of sandwiches, and with fewer and fewer employees. This will concentrate productive surplus – which is to say: profits – and wealth as well, in those same hands or corporations. How, under the U. S. Constitution, will this wealth be “shared” among the soon-to-be jobless citizens? (“Soon” being in 20 years?)

Shall we raise taxes much, much higher? Should laws be passed that require producers to share remaining jobs among 4, 5 or 6 individuals (however inefficient that will be)? What happens to the essential right of private property? Will all hiring and profits become the purview of the least-efficient institutions on the planet: federal bureaucracies?

And how will individuals prove their worth? Not only to their friends, wives and children… but to themselves? If lots of humans don’t need to be very smart to survive, will more than the owners of production and the builders and programmers of robots, bother to become so? What happens to politics, then?

The stratification we have acquiesced to so far – stratification in which those elected deem themselves superior and entitled to office, ideas they have “sold” to relatively ignorant constituents – will become stricter and more calcified, virtually unassailable by the welfare-supported masses of citizens. Those will be they who never vote against wealth-sharing and at ever greater sharing rates. How will democracy or a republic or religiosity survive?

Just as large fractions of us, now, can’t find our ways without “GPS,” or feed ourselves without welfare, what will we become when there is no need to strive… and dependence upon robots approaches totality? What will civilization be? Constant leisure? A complete absence of sacrifice? SHALL WE ALL BECOME ENTERTAINERS? Shouldn’t we be thinking about these things?

Do you think of them? Fear them?

Foreign Policy, Politics 2017, Trump

RUMORS OF WAR

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There are wars and rumors of war. How pleasant the last year of Ronald Reagan’s term appears, looking back. The Soviet Union was falling apart, the economy was in good shape, there was no ISIS, the Middle East was relatively calm, commodity markets were “under control,” so to speak, Syria, Libya, Venezuela and even the East Coast of Africa, Iraq and Iran were comparatively un-troublesome. Nicaragua was yanked back from Communism, Chile restored free elections, casting off Pinochet’s military police state (CIA -created), and American ships were still welcome in the Philippines. Thankfully, the senior George Bush defeated Michael Dukakis for president. Desert Storm and Bill and Hillary Clinton were yet to burden the polity.

Read the history of the ‘80s and things were anything but calm and peaceful. Nelson Mandela was still in jail, Robert Mugabe was firmly installed as “president” of Zimbabwe, and Hosni Mubarak was in his first decade of his never-untroubled leadership of Egypt and rough alliance with the U. S. Africa was in turmoil and many were starving, there, while tribal racism threatened millions. Argentina barely functioned with double digit inflation, yet decided to invade the “Falklands/Malvinas” to “reclaim” its sovereignty, based as much on proximity as on history. The U. K. decided under Thatcher, to re-take them. Ronald Reagan easily subverted the Monroe Doctrine to help his friend, Maggie, sink the General Belgrano.

Typically we try to believe that politics creates war and the conditions for war, but we can’t quite succeed at that. While war may be a political tool, it rarely rewards the party or leader in power in the intended way. On the other side of the mirror, however, it can be observed that war often creates politics – in fact, not just often, but generally – in that militarism is easily equated with patriotism and tends to divide the body politic along patriotic lines. One cannot hide from the truth that neither the body politic nor the nations at war are generally benefited. Individual politicians or their party… maybe.

Now, what? A supposedly “America first” presidential candidate (meaning to a degree: America only) has been turned in the span of 5 months to a president willing to view the world like a so-called “neo-Con.” Abruptly, acts of war – missiles into Syria, super-bomb into Afghanistan, threats of hot responses to North Korean “provocations” – are deemed useful internationally. Supposedly, this turn-about and its apparent unpredictability of the new president, will move China to change its policies toward North Korea; will cause Russia to pull back from its prior stance in Syria, and possibly in Ukraine and Georgia. Even Iran’s theocrats will quake at the threats of Donald Trump since we have been willing to take some actions against people or things that have almost no chance of retaliation.

Perhaps we should bomb Venezuela because the government there is starving its people and being mean.

Sudan and Zimbabwe are worth at least some cruise missiles, aren’t they? How demeaning it is to choose Syria… Syria! Sudan has at least as crappy a government as Syria! We live in a strange nation growing stranger.

Americans think, many of us, that the U. S. is pure and well-intentioned and very misunderstood by all the nations or groups that distrust us and wish to kill us. Our global deployment of military activities: 156 countries in a recent estimate, is for humanitarian aid and economic development. Well, that’s right – economic development of somebody.

Maybe it’s necessary. Multiple administrations have thought so. The “Truman Doctrine” of containing Communism has morphed into the unspoken – dare we say, secret – doctrine of containing everybody. The World’s policeman, indeed.

Well, say the thoughtful ones, if not us, then who? China? Russia? God forbid! Believe us, they thoughtfully pronounce, you don’t want to live in a world that’s not “led” by the United States. Perhaps not.

Money talks. Our beneficial “Petro-dollar” scheme buttressed by Saudi Arabia has permitted the U. S. to borrow and spend in astronomical quantities, to the degree that our worldwide military adventures have been “free,” sort-of. We have outspent our income – the largest income in the world to boot – for 50 years, by creating unlimited debt. Maybe it is completely fair that we “protect” the world with its own money. After all, it costs us only the interest – and a few thousand of our very best men and women. At least during this election cycle.

So, Mr. President, what are we going to stir up? It’s one thing to risk your own people, quite another to risk most of South Korea. Or Japan. Attacking the North Koreans can never be done with clear knowledge of all of their capabilities. What if they have pre-positioned a couple of nukes next to the DMZ? Or just offshore of South Korea? How many “South” Koreans are really “North” Koreans? Some, for sure.

And, then, there ARE the 30,000 or so Americans watching the DMZ from the South who are some sort of “trip wire” in the event North Korea starts an invasion. That must be a comfort. Most likely, if the North does decide to make a move, it won’t start at the DMZ, it will start well behind it, in Seoul. Then what shall the 30,000 do? Invade the North? That’s not a plan, either. The North has many, many more troops and artillery arrayed on their side.

If the North moves it will be all or nothing – do or die. They must know that Hell will shortly find them if they start anything. By the same token, if the U. S. starts something, the North must either fold its tent and retreat or, again, go all out with everything they have – they’ve sort-of talked themselves into it.

Oh, Mr. Trump, what are you going to do? You risk the South at the very least. Recent endeavors show that there are not enough bombs to deliver victory without protracted ground action. Do you really think China will allow the decimation of its handy cat’s paw? Or will Russia, for that matter? Who will overnight become whose friend if things “go hot?”

Finally, like abused children, North Koreans will not abandon their homeland or their dear leader. I think you have not contemplated the potential of a new Asian war long enough, Mr. T. You’ve not been in office long enough: and there can be only two terms.

Governance, Politics 2017

Tipping Point

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We are, evidently, at a tipping point for the American experiment. For myriad reasons, we who have been so blessedly comfortable (borrowed comfort, but still…) and never devastated by conquerors, bombing raids or economic destruction, have, for fifty years, been inviting unusual immigration in huge numbers, many of which immigrants are our cultural, if not actual, enemies. Rational nations don’t do this, but the U. S. and Europe have convinced themselves that there is some “rightness” to doing so.

Some are already howling about xenophobia and worse. How did we get here?

The larger source of hatred for the United States – domestically – is decades of dishonesty in government. Sad, that. It took time to convert basic graft into nationwide political power. What is required to move large numbers of voters is some sort of “national” crisis or threat… like war and threats of war. World War I, for example, was played slickly by Woodrow Wilson, a visionary Progressive who was tired of democratic populism and nationalism. First he declared his opposition to getting involved in “Europe’s war,” but once re-elected, sent General Pershing and the “American Expeditionary Force” to France with the message: “Lafayette, we are here,” hearkening back to France’s vital role in defeating the British in the American Revolution.

Following hostilities, Wilson strove to create a “League of Nations,” a large first step toward one-world government. America wasn’t quite as devolutionary as Wilson was and Congress never accepted the treaty of membership. But the trail was blazed, while the largest effects of the war to end all wars were festering, having ensconced Communism in Russia and Fascism in Italy and Germany. Not long before the Great War, the U. S. had adopted the 16th Amendment establishing the Income Tax, and passed a law establishing the misleadingly named Federal Reserve Bank. They, together, installed another form of fascism, perhaps not recognized even now, that has inexorably destroyed American independence financially… freedom-wise, too.

But that was a slow method; another crisis was needed and the Great Depression served perfectly. Suddenly big government was not a handy, righteous expense burden. Now it was salvation, a source of food, employment and confidence… dare we say, hope? This was new: government had a role in growing numbers of people’s lives, a role many could not live without. Another trail was blazed.

After WW-II, the U. S. became the world’s policeman, first keeping Communism contained (Truman Doctrine) and the Korean War, then establishing a C.I.A. that acted in place of stated foreign policy, toppling governments and embroiling us in wars and skirmishes around the globe.

Under Johnson we took two trails: the spirit-sapping Viet-Nam War and the Great Society – both expensive, both yet to be fully paid-for. The American fifth column, led by the New York times, Washington Post and others, flexed its muscles and destroyed President Nixon and the results of a legal and voluminously overwhelming rejection of progressivism in the 1972 elections: 49 states to 1. Nixon was no more or less perfect than most of his predecessors, but he was a threat to what liberals believe was the inexorable direction of history: one-world elite paternalism and the equality of mass mediocrity.

That subsequent presidents have routinely committed actual crimes against the Constitution far greater than what Nixon was accused of, has no meaning on their planet. Every domestic condition has become a “crisis” or a “war,” and worthy of planetary indebtedness. The U. S., for a multitude of reasons, has had the power to increase DEBT without practical limit, since Nixon closed the “gold window.” And, so we have, to the point that we can barely afford to defend ourselves or to prevent riots in the streets if anything threatens welfare. Our highly-paid congressional “leaders” got us here – let’s re-elect them!

Every congressional move is now, by fifth column caterwauls, a threat to life as we know it. Every presidential tweet is simply proof of that threat. Americans voted clearly, in their 50 state elections, to not continue fatuous liberal government, but as in 1974, the fifth column is gearing up to reverse that shift: Trump is an highly obvious threat to a “progressive” future. Progressive jurists and bureaucrats – everywhere – are doing their damnedest to help bring the elected government down. Our Fifth Column is happy to help.

Could tip either way.

Governance, Representation, Responsibility

MASSACHUSETTS VAULTS INTO FIRST PLACE

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In January of 2017 the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, USA, Earth, known as “The Great and General Court,” implying some connection to legality and justice, collectively determined that their theft of monies from their subjects-taxpayers would have only an indiscernible impact on the rest of the Solar System, let alone the Universe. And so far, they appear to have calculated safely. Not even the orbit of the Moon has been perturbed.

Not ones to be caught without full justification, albeit besotted with partisanship, the august leaders of the aforementioned and veto-proof majority of both chambers of that vital legislative coven, all sworn to uphold the laws and constitution of the Commonwealth as well as the laws and Constitution of the United States of America, searched the Galaxy for comparative compensations that rendered said august leaders of the majority party (of which many members were likewise “leaders”) second-rate or, God forbid, third-rate, by comparison and therefore instantly deserving of sufficient added compensation as to restore primacy to the Great and General Court of Massachusetts’ leadership – every last friggin’ one of them.

Holding the balance of reason and probity was the tiny band of Republicans (also blessed with numerous “leaders”) numbering but 6 of 40 in the Senate – the “upper” chamber – and 34 of 160 in the House – the “lower” chamber. Observers and constituents have argued since which fits the latter designation, in fact, and which the former.
They seem, to all not so newly compensated, to be vying for the latter. There will surely be a study.

In 2014 the “Special Advisory Commission Regarding the Compensation of Public Officials” delivered itself of a remarkable document that purported to win over any doubters of the premise that the hard-working, frequent-vacationing leaders of the Democrat Party hegemony in Massachusetts’ state government, most particularly in the legislative offices, were, sadly, underpaid and just scraping by in their selfless service to the citizens of this great state. Of course, its effects, if converted into passable legislation, would be bipartisan, so there certainly was no self-service that might happen… none.

The study now extant became a Christmas present burning holes in the back pockets of Stanley Rosenberg, Robert DeLeo, nearly every member of the Great and General Court, every judge, magistrate, court officer and constitutional officer to boot. It simply needed the right Christmas to arrive for a quick, unobstructed delivery into their suffering hands. The anticipation must have been exquisite.

Finally, with ostensibly Republican governor Charlie Baker fully compromised, January 2017 saw delivery of the long-awaited financial orgasm. “Our royal thanks for the sacrifice and diligence of the Special Commission.”

What did the committee do during their months of service? And, it is worth asking, for whom? After all, the report IS neatly typed, carefully printed and edited for accuracy and timeliness, not to overlook well-peppered with charts and graphs, and plenty of margin space for easy gleaning. All of its authors are not only eminent, but well-regarded – a comfort, that.

There are fundamental premises that the report was created to make relevant, even justificatory of, the “need” to take more money from the Commonwealth’s tax-paying citizens and deliver it into the pockets of their “representatives” and many others. Somehow, we should now be convinced-of and, perhaps, relieved to grasp, the value of paying all these people more than most of said tax-payers, themselves, make.

Premise # 1: Higher, appropriately higher, compensation is needed to attract and retain the best talent – and presumed competency – for these crucial jobs.

Premise # 2: The relative pay of politicians in similar offices in the other 50 states is of some (arcane) value in our deciding how much to pay OUR politicians.

Premise # 3: The total compensation packages of huge private for-profit and not-for-profit CEO’s and other corporate officers form logical comparisons to what are held to be equivalent-responsibility public-sector positions.

The first premise can be challenged by the greater than 90% incumbency re-election rate in the House and Senate. Clearly the jobs are attractive enough to keep nearly every office holder vying to retain his or her seat – even during the dark days of insufficient compensation. Likewise, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Auditor, Attorney General and other executive offices are both sought after and clung-to like pregnancy-swollen breasts, despite the poor comparisons with other states’ office holders. Pregnancy? How did that happen?

And, not always poor. New Jersey, for example, has a similar GDP to that of Massachusetts, based on kinds of economic activity, port value and as GDP per capita. Mass., $485 billion; N. J., $570 billion, a difference of 15%. The cost of state government, however, IS VIRTUALLY IDENTICAL: $55.1 billion for Mass., $56 billion for N. J. New Jersey is almost 10% more efficient than Massachusetts in this regard. Political leaders must be better compensated there, no?

Well, no. New Jersey’s senators and reps are paid 18% LESS than the toiling servants of Massachusetts. Putting lip-gloss on it, the N. J. senate president and house speaker are paid 31% (!) LESS than our vital comparatives… for doing a better economic job. Taxes are high in both states, Democrats dominate in both states, taxpayers are restive/complacent in both states. We certainly can’t justify 40% pay increases looking at those bozos! It is good that we didn’t compare ourselves to Florida!

Still, there must be some cobbled-together set of statistics that will obscure our purposes more completely while appearing to justify this embezzlement. Ummm… aha! Let’s make a chart that compares and ranks the old (high) pay scale to ALL other states: premise # 2.

The assembled charts are wonderful, guaranteed to make a reader’s eyes glaze over. No one is going to pore over a list of fifty rates of pay for governors, lieutenant governors, attorneys general or anyone else. Presented with the two pages of six columns of small print, the concerned reader will find the numbers that pertain to Massachusetts officers and relax in the knowledge that this report includes extensive, thorough study.

Except for the nationwide self-aggrandizement of politicians, the fact that Mass. paid its governor MORE than 39 other states did and LESS than only 10 others is, in one important sense, meaningless. In another sense, the generous taxpayers of Massachusetts ought to have taken solace in the realization that we have well-compensated our governor in comparison to almost all other states. Doesn’t matter.

The big deal is Table B-7: nice big print, comparing the Senate President’s and House Speaker’s (equal) salaries with those of other full-time legislatures (11, all told), ranking 5th and 6th respectively. In 2014, this meant only $95 grand per year plus numerous benefits and stipends to ease the pain. Oh, the horror.

Legislators in Massachusetts receive raises every two years based on the calculated “Median” income in the state. Sounds fair. It’s a plan that was supposed to avoid the contentious process of legislators voting for their own raises! All of you who hate doing the same thing where you work, can appreciate the awkwardness.

Well, despite many legislators clinging to their sinecures for decades – and becoming wealthy somehow, and retiring with pleasant pensions and health-care benefits, the automatic (median income has and always will rise in this system) raises were not making legislators, especially their “leaders” (20 of them) rich quickly enough. You can see the problem: How on Earth can we slip a gigantic compensation package through the legislature and signed by a governor? Hmmmm…

Turns out, there’s nothing better than a mind-numbing report produced by a Commission – a commission: brilliant! – all of whose members are both eminent and highly regarded. That’s the ticket.

Still, facts on the ground comparing pay scales with other states really don’t quite carry the water for this hijack. What must be included is something ethereal, heavenly, mystical. Let’s compare our collective irresponsibilities and partisan claptrap with real leaders: top-paid CEO’s, COO’s, corporate treasurers and the like. Find a highly-paid corporate lawyer to help the Attorney General. This will make our grandees appear UNDER-paid even with this new bloat, and enhance our leadership status among the low-information voters.

Premise # 3: What top private-sector executives make is relevant to what political leaders make, and their responsibilities are roughly comparable. A fabulous, fantastic concept that can be made true in the hands of the right eminent and highly regarded Commissioners. Go for it.

In reality, where taxpayers actually live, there is no comparison – none. Private-sector (whether for-profit or not-for-profit, “business”) leaders operate in a different world: one where performance is measured intricately and specifically against economic results and targets, month-by-month, quarter-by-quarter and beyond. Highly paid people in business can be fired based on results. They answer to boards of directors or trustees. They are carefully regulated by governments, and taxed, fined and fee’d to a fare-thee-well and still required to show performance and results that meet goals.

Many of these goals involve COST-CUTTING(!), a miraculous process whereby profits increase and excess payroll is jettisoned. This leaves, over fairly short times, the BEST employees employed, and only as many of those as needed to achieve results for the share-holders. These are foreign concepts in state government, specifically in Massachusetts state government, where political “leaders” see their goals as met by INCREASING jobs, and not for the best of employees, but for the most loyal, politically.

Goals for legislators and officers in government are not lower costs, not better returns on investments or returns on assets; the goal is re-election and job-security – not to mention as much pay, compensation, expense reimbursement, pension and perks as possible while appearing heroic!

This is not to say that political leaders and functionaries don’t have POWER. That is the one quality they share with business leaders. What they don’t have is actual responsibility for performance or profit – things that get business people fired or bonused. They never work for bonuses based on meeting economic targets. Things can go to Hell in handbaskets in state economies and politicos are victims of world-wide conditions, same as the rest of us. But, not responsible. Nor is their pay cut because stock prices are down for bad performance or for poor vision for the immediate and long-term future.

Finally, NO OTHER STATE is trying to attract these captains of government to come run THEIR states because of a record of market-beating success. These people are LUCKY, in the main, to have the cushy jobs they have. When things go south they can raise taxes, by POLICE POWER. In business, leaders have to attract new revenue because they deliver what customers or donors actually WANT and will voluntarily pay for. And they want to compare themselves to corporate success-masters?

This isn’t a report on compensation delivered by eminent and highly regarded people, IT IS A FRAUD from the very start. This is Kabuki theater, designed to defraud the taxpayers of Massachusetts. With a series of impressive and MEANINGLESS charts and 50,000 words of palaver, the House and Senate justified grand theft.

And our God-damned governor let it go through! Oh, he vetoed it – that was his Kabuki role, but he didn’t fight it, he didn’t campaign against it, he didn’t use any of his power to stop this legal CRIME. The day after his “veto” was overridden, he was at a “time” for a Democrat in Fall River with Stan Rosenberg and Bob DeLeo. This isn’t the fox in charge of the hen-house, it’s the ROOSTER.

There was one big reform. To save senators and reps from cheating on their per-diems they now receive bloated flat-rates to reward these vital characters for showing up for “work.” Oh, thank goodness! There were maps and charts to justify them.
The ONLY reform that would justify this grandiose sleight-of-hand, is TERM LIMITS for all of these people, and the right to remove judges by plebescite. Did I mention that the AUTOMATIC biennial raises are still in effect? NO ONE who voted for this scam deserves another vote from any of us.

Economics, Governance

Borrowing for Welfare?

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Nearly every day there is some article or letter in the newspapers that decries the fact that the United States’ “defense” budget is larger than the next 7 nations’ defense budgets, combined. Moreover, that “bloated” defense budget could be reduced significantly so that the “savings” can be used to feed the hungry and house the homeless right here in our own country, for Heaven’s sake.

None of these heartfelt concerns is based on the right perspectives or even the right data. That’s the trouble with statistics.

For example, 65% of fiscal 2017’s Federal Budget is committed to entitlements, pensions, health-care and education. From a Constitutional standpoint, most of that 65% is not the business of the federal government, whereas defense, now 16% of the budget, categorically IS.

Years ago welfare was strictly local… and recipients were a little ashamed of having to ask for it. Many, your grandparents or great-grandparents, and many of your parents, would do the most menial jobs to AVOID being on welfare and to get “off” of it as quickly as possible. Children learned this reaction and revulsion. Welfare was a handout when you needed it, as temporarily as possible.

Soon after World War II, though, states took over welfare from cities and towns, mainly under pressure from cities, which were buckling under the northward migration of blacks from the deep south. Almost immediately, states began prevailing on Washington to take the burden off of their backs. After all, weren’t the new Northerners crossing state lines because of “national” conditions in the economy?

After 13 years of the “New Deal,” we could have seen where this was going. There were votes to be gained in the impassioned cries for better – federal – welfare: codified compassion.

Truman blazed integration trails, Eisenhower enforced anti-segregation in schools, Kennedy hemmed and hawed but crawled toward full integration and voting rights legislation, Johnson, riding a wave of sympathy for his murdered predecessor, got civil rights legislation done, and then carried on further to create some wildly expensive – reckless – new “rights”: federal, unaccountable, politically charged, easily defrauded, vote-attractive welfare.

Smartly, though, Johnson couched the new largesse to which people were now entitled – not ashamed-of, in wonderfully sympathetic terms and names. Names like: Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC), Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP, ie. Food Stamps), Pell Grants (free college), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Rental Voucher Program (Section 8), Federal National Mortgage Administration (“Fannie-Mae”), Child Nutrition (School lunch, breakfast, dinner!), Head Start (very, very expensive day-care), Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), and, the granddaddy of them all: MEDICAID.

Current spending on these and more than ONE HUNDRED other federal “anti-poverty” programs (who could be PRO-poverty?) is nearly 900 BILLION dollars. That means that our virtually bankrupt federal government is BORROWING money to provide welfare.
Well, say unionized federal social workers and sympathizers, our defense budget is larger than the next 7 nations’ combined, let’s cut that, first!

Except… it isn’t.

When China, for example, builds sand islands in the South China Sea, and puts military airstrips and naval “bases” on them, and claims 200-mile territorial waters around these extensions of “China,” it’s not a military expenditure, but something else. For example.

When Russia directs a manufacturer to produce engines for new IRBM’s and ICBM’s, they aren’t military expenditures – they’re developments in space exploration. All peaceful. And subterranean military bunkers for both armament manufacture and survival are certainly construction projects… and expensive, but military? Not so you’d know.

And no other country carries the degree of personnel costs and benefits that are packed into the “Defense” budget of the United States. Simple ledger numbers are not comparable with other nations’ budgets.

Actually, under the Obama administration, defense has been cut a few times. One of his first steps was to fold tens of billions of retirement costs into the Defense Department budget. Logically, the cost of military retirements should not be measured as part of the Pentagon’s war-fighting / force-projection budget, should they? They certainly don’t threaten anyone but us.

Next, Obama forced the Congress into the “sequester” process, of which a large fraction of restrictions were imposed on defense – to be “fair.” Big cuts.

Finally, he walked out of Iraq, abandoning the very bloody, very costly gains we had made there. We are now paying to regain what had been won. His frothy, fraudulent Iran anti-nuclear “agreement” (cunningly not a treaty), will cost us many billions going forward – billions that need not have been spent had there been a different foreign policy.

The new president sees significant weakness that exists now or very shortly will, as normal refitting and reconditioning of hardware takes larger and larger fractions of critical military systems out of service. Warplanes are becoming antiques as our most experienced pilots are retiring; it is our phenomenal pilots who keep last-generation fighters useful in their 30th year of service. Now our latest fighter platform is too expensive to buy enough of!

If anyone thinks that McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried chicken are going to convince our potential enemies to not work – and fight – to destroy us, it is time for him or her to wake up. Maybe unrestricted immigration will make everybody love one another, but so far it is weakening the “West” and confusing our Constitutional rights with national suicide.

Governance

Don’t Feed the Beast

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There’s an old admonition about feeding the beast: it starts to hang around and won’t leave when you try to shoo it away. Even if you scream really loud and wave your hands – or ballots – it won’t leave if the food trough is still where it always was. That’s how liberalism / progressivism is. While we weren’t looking it was building thousands of troughs and passing laws and regulations that make it illegal, or something, to NOT fill the troughs… and not with just the normal rations, but ever larger ones.

Donald Trump is a pretty canny guy and has a good eye for talent. He also can recognize problems for what they are and, better, envision a path to solutions. What he never understood was how tightly, ferociously and viciously the progressive beasts are prepared to cling to their “food” troughs.

They’ve had a good run, our progressive saviours – about a hundred years or so, constantly finding reasons that freedom was a problem, as is free-will and any religion that preaches the concept of free will and personal salvation. And they became very good at stifling freedom and when that didn’t work, stealing it.

How can politicians steal freedom? Let us count the ways. A key measure of freedom is private property. The Constitution enshrines the concepts of private property, private thoughts and beliefs, and of security within one’s private realm. That is, that one is free to live as one pleases in his or her pursuit of “happiness.” The government – the locus of political action – exists to assure your freedom from threats to your privacy.

Just saying the previous five sentences is to laugh at our precarious position in modern America. There is barely an activity left that is no longer truly “private.” Try to think of one:

• Sex? What kind of sex? Surely the federal government has nothing to say about sex, right? Except that they do. All kinds of sexual function and dysfunction have gained the status of “protected minority” with rights and enforcement.

• Business, private, owner-operated business? Should be a “piece of cake,” but, please…

• Raising your children? Punishing them? Teaching them your values? You are so suspect that every teacher and school administrator has been placed on notice to observe and report any ways you handle your child that the state disagrees with. Worse, you are often the last person to know about the mind-numbing, values-warping content of many lessons and courses. Do you know how to use a condom? Or what “gay” sex is? Your eighth grader does.

• Driving? If you pay enough, it’s a privilege. If you are deemed “suspicious,” such as driving where you – or your car – don’t belong, you can be stopped, identified, and your personal property searched on the basis of some articulable “suspicion.”

• Do you work? Earn an income? Well, it’s certainly not really yours, is it? Numerous of others’ needs must be addressed by “your” pay before you get a share. Many of these are “benefits,” so-called, but they are benefiting someone else. Things like FICA, your Social Security “contribution.” Then there is the bonus deduction for Medicare and the so-called “income tax withheld” that pays a Hell of a lot of people to do things you never heard of, probably don’t like and probably can’t afford for yourself! It must also pay interest on debts you have not incurred but which were incurred in your name, long before you were born, most likely. How free is that?

• Private property? From local “zoning” boards to the EPA, how you use your own property is abridged in, literally, hundreds of ways. God forbid you’ll be found to own a “habitat” for an “endangered” specie of gnats or centipedes. No one wants to be responsible for killing the last right-handed beige centipede, but the concept of “threatened” or “endangered” life forms carries great power to push humans around. So-called progressives love doing that. They are those who know what’s wrong with most humans and why what they tend to do is flawed. Want to build a shed for your garden tools? Better get permission from the town and all your neighbors.

• Your own health? I mean of YOUR OWN BODY? Well, you can’t buy the care you want because the doctor you want to buy it from can’t sell it to you. “Free” enterprise, indeed. Congress, that bastion of good sense and careful budgeting, is cobbling together how the last frontier of control will dictate how and, eventually, whether you will live, at all, if your life will burden the federal deficit. Ye Gods!

• And self-defense? Immigration and the world-wide movement of peoples have changed the need for personal self-defense. Add drugs to the mix of cross-cultural peoples and it is a more dangerous world – and neighborhood – today than it was a hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago. Yet our progressive neighbors, who place little value on the United States’ cultural norms, or its borders, are the same who demonstrate AGAINST your inherent, inalienable right to defend yourself and your family. You are rendered more free to die for their principles.

Finally, consider that when a new American is born, he or she has a debt of $155,000! And the government, that benign behemoth we all depend upon to protect our “rights,” is adding to that debt for all 330 Million of us at the rate of $5 a day. That’s $150 a month ON TOP OF the taxes we already pay. With about half of us NOT PAYING federal taxes, it’s more like $300 a month for every family that has a worker/ breadwinner.
The problem is, rather than figuring out how to reduce that burden, congress works overtime to INCREASE it. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Let’s keep in mind that every dollar of tax is a loss of freedom; every dollar of DEBT is a growing ball-and-chain that now inhibits our collective ability to defend ourselves.

Mr. President, I haven’t heard much about this…

Foreign Policy

The UN, or something better?

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We’ve been part of the United Nations for 72 years, nearly a third of our national history. At the end of World War II the U. S. stood astride the globe, stronger than any other nation or even groups of nations. We were so rich that we financed several countries’ rebuilding after dramatic devastation, both militarily and politically. The globalists, led by Averell Harriman, David Rockefeller, Henry Luce, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, himself, and a host of left-leaning FDR advisers and academics, saw a unique opportunity to dilute American sovereignty and independence.

The UN’s purpose was to “end” war and provide “prosperity” and the ability for everyone to “live free.” Grand, grand ideas that never would have been the topic of worldwide planning had it not been for the external and internal success of the British and American empires. Like most benign, centralized efforts, the “UN” attracted – and still attracts – many globally-minded Unitarian types. These are they who believe the words of Pope John Lennon: “…no Hell below us; above us only sky…” because “Love is all you need, love is all you need, love is all you need…,” songs best appreciated with a toke.

Free sex, seed-free weed and the UN and to Hell …oops, to oblivion, then, with the United States, Christianity and the requirements of citizenship. “Nothing to kill or die for; the brotherhood of man…”

One of the first, and greatest acts of the U. N. was to create the nation of Israel in 1948. Hitler’s allies, the hard-rock Muslims who have been fighting the Hebrews for millennia, were not happy with this tiny piece of land’s becoming a home for the most oppressed of oppressed people, and they caused two things to happen: first, the “Palestinians” separated themselves from “Israel,” and then Arab League militias and mercenaries attacked cities in the Israeli portion of the Resolution 181-partitioned land. Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq attacked the fledgling nation, including with air strikes and even forces from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. By 1949 the Israeli’s had defeated the uncoordinated forces arrayed against them. In the process they gained the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. More wars followed and still Israel stands.

Israel made the desert bloom and planted, as well, a democratic republic amidst a dozen dictatorial, theocratic, tribal and royal countries, sworn to it’s destruction. In the Muslim view, once land is possessed by Muslims it becomes sacred, never to be stained by the presence of infidels. Their habit is to erect mosques on “conquered” land, often directly upon infidels’ religious sites. For such land and sites there can be no future negotiation – only discussions about how to remove all other infidels.

Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel has been a target of hatred in the UN, the high-minded body that had created it 22 years earlier. As the United States became more intimately connected with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq and Iran, attempting to eliminate Soviet influence and build however shaky alliances in tolerance of Israel, the hatred of fundamental Islamists, particularly since the installation of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, has been concentrated on the “Great Satan,” America at least as much as on the “Little Satan,” Israel. And so it continues.

Aside from the near-total corruption of the UN Secretariat and its multiple “missions,” the UN has become a forum of hatred and opposition for the United States, reinforcing the self-hatred, fifth-column actions of many Americans, themselves, and interfering with foreign policies of the U. S., England and most of the industrialized “First” World.

Things are changing. The European Union has shown its inability to resolve its finances as sovereign countries fail to adhere to dictates of the Über bureaucrats serving the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Europe is a “nation” of rules… rules that require the steady erosion of sovereignty from its member states. Britain voted to withdraw, not to form a competing “nation,” but to reform itself. The United States elected Donald Trump for much the same reason.

I believe we should take the next, logical step: form, with the U. K. and others, an international Association of Representative Republics. And have it stand for some things. Things like honest government, honest courts and honest contracting and trade; things like democratic elections, representative legislatures, parliaments and councils; things like free speech and the rest of the Bill of Rights.

Except for a handful of charitable works, the U. S. could divest itself of U.N. influence and interference. Membership in the A. R. R. would be open to every sovereign nation that governs itself according to principles that we believe in, including religious tolerance and non-theocratic governance.

As I perceive it, member-states of the Association of Representative Republics would maintain their treaty relationships, including trade agreements, but agree to somewhat better terms with other A. R. R. members. Military treaties should remain bilateral, but with a general agreement to continue working toward non-aggression toward every other member. But there is no reason to subject ourselves to constant attack and calumny while we erode our own sovereignty at the U. N. Better to expend our efforts and treasure among nations that have roughly equal goals of freedom, prosperity and security for every member nation, and in helping other nations to qualify under those principles.

Funding various terrorist nations and sub-groups who wish to destroy us and our allies, is not foreign policy – it is foreign folly.

Responsibility

THE BELIEFS OF LEADERSHIP

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There are lessons to be learned from the reactions of his opponents to the campaign and election of Donald Trump. Those same opponents seem deaf to them… and blind. As history often provides, the lessons will be made clearer, oddly enough, as the lens of time becomes thicker, longer and, in fact, cooler. Are these lessons so earth-shattering? Well, yes, probably.

Some nation is going to lead all nations, like it or not. Since its founding, in a sense, the United States has been that nation. Why? Much derives from the sacrifices of George Washington, a quite spiritual man. Unlike all the kings of history, Washington finished his second term as president and went back to his farm. He could have been president for life; he could have dictated who the next president would be. Instead, he surrendered a power the extent of which he may not have realized. In many ways he was the key man, launching our ship of state with faith in the inherent goodness of the people of America… and little else.

That “goodness” was primarily Judeo-Christian, filtered through all of Europe and the British Isles. Whether steady attendees at churches or not, most “Americans” were Christian – an inconvenient truth. When Franklin answered that the Constitutional Convention had delivered a “…republic, if you can keep it(.)” he expressed his recognition of the need for a morally straight citizenry in order for a representative democracy to function and survive.

Only morally raised children would grow up to live in honesty. Only a moral people would demand and sustain a legal structure of honest jurisprudence, honest, enforceable contracts, written and verbal, and honest money, trusted by every seller and buyer. Only an honest people would allow, even encourage, the least among us to excel, grow and succeed. Our many flaws grew from wrong beliefs and our regret is justified. But, our basic honesty and the strength of our institutions enabled us to change flawed beliefs.

Which is not to say that changing all beliefs is a good thing – our forbears were right about most of it.

Those of us old farts who have worried about the upset changes of the 1960’s, are being proven right, too. That was a decade that saw socialism become a “solution” through the “Great Society,” and indulgence of every youthful abandon begin the erosion of moral institutions, education as a moral institution, and every sort of drug and sexual thrill gain “rights.”
These changes are bearing their fruits… and nuts.

Daily we are challenged over every institution’s role as modern politicians – liberal ones, anyway, and fearful non-liberals – bow to every new idea about how individuals are not responsible for building their own lives and economics. Unfortunately, in a whirlpool of new “rights,” the lives of those citizens who don’t agree with or don’t care about the new licentiousness, the power of government has been turned against the majority of those who give it power in the first place. What are the new beliefs?

A growing minority believe that every form of sexual expression is as valid as all the others. These same believe that resistance to the disappearance of procreative sacredness is the equivalent of Hitler’s incomprehensible pathologies. This same group decries all rules of personal behavior not invented by them, and they are quick to hate while castigating haters. What sort of leaders will they be? With no social norming at work, will nations, in their view, become irrelevant, too?

The ungoverned seem quick to demand that “government” destroy the lives and rights of the traditionalist majority, and there are sufficient psychologists and lawyers to twist their ideas into effective arguments against… whatever. Screams for diversity – whatever that is – turn into screams of rage when diversity of beliefs is placed before them. Technology cannot mask that divide, nor, apparently, can elections. Majority rule is hateful until the disenchanted are in a majority position, however briefly. Since it will be brief, court rulings are sought to make their beliefs permanent policy.

Drugs are becoming mainstream, which might have some positive value if they calmed the hateful. They don’t, evidently. Drugs are a subject for belief and not necessarily truth, or reality. Besides, there are tax revenues to be realized, the purest calcimine that ever touched a brush. Soon we’ll be crime-free. Let’s hope the lights come on and the water flows on that day.

Governance

CABINETS AND BUREAUS

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President Barack Obama holds a Cabinet meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Jan. 31, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
It’s not easy… changing the course of the ship of state, that is. Building a Great Pyramid, that’s easy. Transitioning from communism to capitalism – not so much. Worse, every move a newly elected president must make is nit-picked, criticized, undermined, called fascist and/or racist by the dominant media.

The real threat of the incoming Trump administration is that the new president may keep even some of his campaign promises. How dare he?

Those of us who were willing to overlook Trump’s several lacks of finesse and glibness, thought we could discern his visceral messages that mattered, “MTM’s.” One MTM is stopping illegal immigration. Viscerally, Americans recognize that inviting millions of very different people into our midst – people with different cultures, beliefs and languages who neither wish to adopt our culture and language nor are forced to for personal or economic survival, MAKES NO SENSE. What folly such a policy would be. What a treason it would represent.

We are transitioning from an administration whose intention it was to change, literally, the color of America. Mr. Obama is governed by a number of hatreds, among which are hatred of colonialism, hatred of white “supremacy” and hatred of capitalism. One might also discern a hatred of the Constitution in there, somewhere. What an odd person for Americans to elect.

Mr. Trump has been sounding like he may not be as concerned about the illegal entrants already here as are we who voted for his promised change. Let’s monitor what happens to the border control he also promised, very carefully. No matter how “big” we think we are in the U. S., having escaped full-scale attacks or invasion – so far – our culture is under assault, largely from confused domestic enemies who find it satisfying to hate America’s imperfections while celebrating the imperfections of others. It’s perverse. For too long we have relinquished power, including power over education, to those who hate the premises of America. Importing people of vastly different ethics – particularly Muslims – whose belief structures are antithetical to our constitution, is pretty stupid policy.

Another big MTM is about re-energizing the American manufacturing and jobs engine. Can a president actually do this? Maybe. Like most of Washington – a construct of creative bullshit – (sorry, sort-of) “managing” the economy is mostly wishes and hope. Tax cuts can surely help as lower taxes will, for a while, encourage the PRIVATE economy to make good domestic decisions and investments. Production, productivity and employment should improve. But Trump’s choices for Treasury and Chairman of The Council of Economic Advisors (White House) are from Goldman Sachs, a mendacious Wall Street behemoth, and this exposes a serious flaw in Trump’s economic courage.

Between the Federal Reserve (neither federal nor a reserve) and the Wall Street financial manipulators like Goldman Sachs, the United States has been led into astronomical debt. Trump, and all of us, need to recognize that just as every dollar of taxes is a loss of citizens’ freedom, every dollar of federal debt is a loss of national sovereignty… and loss of flexibility to manage our own domestic, foreign and military affairs. What’s a president – or a people – to do when they are stuck in a box of perpetual servility to banks?

One of the changes, perhaps the most significant of changes, that Americans tried to bring about in November, 2016, is the upside-down relationship between our supposedly sovereign nation and these blood-sucking banks. For shame. Trump has already proven to be deaf to our outcry and he’s not even in office yet. Usually newly elected presidents don’t start giving us the finger until around April first. So, many people’s concerns about Trump’s impact on – or proximity to – conservatism have some validity. We’ll see.

Finally, naming Rex Tillerson to head the State Department. Feelings are mixed, obviously, but there are positives. On the face of it there is an element of putting oligarchs in public charge of “the world.” Trump’s a business mogul and must believe that only business moguls are smart enough to manage big systems like the U. S. government. For everyone who has gained the impression that businessmen are inherently dishonest – as popular media consistently portray – giving one political power is the worst possible outcome. “They’re all crooks!”

Even worse, Tillerson is in the OIL business, helping to scourge the earth while stealing money from everyone. Woe is us. Some perspective is required.

Exxon-Mobil is certainly huge, deals in global commodities and must negotiate with virtually every country in order to maintain stable supplies and stable markets. Well, it’s time Americans admit – or recognize – that most of what foreign policy comprises is maintaining and defending global commerce, free access to the seas and stable markets and prices. It is rarely a pretty business, but undeniably vital.

And, it’s not simply oil. Oil is the current (for a hundred years) leading commodity against which almost every other commodity (corn, wheat, soybeans, beef, pork, gold, uranium and… on and on) is valued. The U. S. dollar is how oil is valued and oil is how the dollar is propped up in the face of unbelievable debt. There may be more sense behind having this particular mogul in charge at State than first appears. Exxon-Mobil is pretty-well run, after all.