Thoughts on a Supreme Court Justice

In fairness, I did not want to malign this man (whose opinions I usually disagreed with), but to note his importance to America.  Yet, I had to choose a picture whose tone best fit what people thought of the man - for better and worse. So I chose a monochrome image of Scalia, as he tended to see things in Black or White, and not with the conflicting nuances that many people live with.

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This justice was a devout Catholic, a person who took 6 day creation as real (from what I've heard - which may or may not be entirely accurate). His life and his court decisions were influenced by his lack of doubt about anything.  And this is where I fault the late justice.

One of the things I learned in Grad School was the idea of "Transformative Learning".  This process involved a person doubting one of his/her core beliefs, and developing a completely different world view after examining the facts and testing his/her beliefs.  From what I can tell, Scalia never had a transformative learning experience, as none of the reports I've recently read note that he had doubts about his beliefs.

Please note that I am not out to trash this man or his legacy.  I have much to criticize about his believe in "Originalism" - it lends itself to the same intellectual stagnation found in many ultra-orthodox followers of religious faiths.  They tend to argue over minor points, but never question whether the big answers provided to them are really indicative of a true right or wrong. Dogma is more important than what any law is supposed to provide for a society - a way to determine what is the right or wrong thing to do for the average person who has no time to learn all the details....

Why is this important?

As much as I dislike what Scalia stood for, I have to grant him credit for being consistent in the application of his core beliefs. But I fear having another person without doubt in any position of power. I'd have wanted for Truman to question whether dropping the A-Bomb on Hiroshima was the right thing to do, and then justify it to himself by the number of lives s shortened war would have saved.  Can we afford to have another dogmatic person on the Supreme Court?  I doubt it.

At the time I write this entry, the president hasn't nominated a successor to Scalia, nor has the Senate indicated any willingness to hold a vote on any nominated candidate. The GOP has signaled a desire to roll the dice and wait until the next president is in charge, where there will be a 50-50 possibility of the GOP putting in a radical judge.  However, Obama could make a recess appointment (which I find doubtful for the time remaining in the week of 2/15-2/21) of an extreme liberal - who would be on the court until the end of the term, and be a deciding vote in the more divisive of potential decisions.  Or, he could nominate a moderate, and let the GOP take the heat for not giving the person a quick vote. Either way, the public is now aware of how important the Supreme Court is to America.

Would we be better had Scalia lived?

The answer to this question depends on which political party you belong to, and what your core values are.  I want the court stacked with social moderates - people beholding to neither political party, and who will check and balance the extremes of our elected leadership.  Do I think this will happen? Maybe - if we're lucky....

Eisenhower warned us of the Military-Industrial Complex....

What does it take to abandon a project?  The basics of good project management teaches us that some projects fail, and the best thing to do is to kill those projects early, before they take on lives of their own.  In the case of the F-35 jet, the idea of a fighter jet that could be used by all services sounded good, but failed miserably in practice.

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The first mistake was to assume that one plane could be used by all services.  Ideally, there would be a significant percentage of parts that could be used in planes built for each of the services.  But the final configurations would be very different - customization on a small scale, and not "one size fits all".  No one thought of the trade-offs to use a single plane.  No one thought - too many stake holders make a project fail.

The next mistake was to get the plane up and flying, and then apply continuous modifications to the jest in the field.  We saw this in the automobile industry years ago with recalls - where bad design made it to the customers' driveways, and then the cars had to be fixed by the local dealerships at much greater cost.  "Agile" project management techniques ares inappropriate for a fighter jet, yet some people are using the principle to "save money and time" - when it is totally inappropriate.

The A-10 jet is very good at what it does, and will be kept flying until the F-35 is retrofitted enough to do the job the A-10 does as well as the A-10 does it.  The B-52 bomber also does its job better than any of the replacements designed to take its place - and there are no plans to retire this work horse of our air fleet.  In fact, there are father/sons who have flown the same plane, and there may soon be a grandfather/father/son combination as well.

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So where am I going?

As I write this, New Hampshire has just had its Presidential primary, and the two "anti establishment" leaders (Trump and Sanders) won.  Americans are totally pissed off at a government which no longer functions as needed, and they are giving our ruling elite a vote of no confidence.  Using examples such as the F-35 jet (whose parts are made all across the country to give as many congressmen as possible a stake in preserving the project), it is obvious that the elite is no longer able to make the hard decisions needed to keep this country healthy. We need leaders who could scuttle projects like the F-35 jet, even though people would be put out of work nationwide by these actions.

Our problem as Americans is simple - how do we determine who we can trust?  The uneducated people in this country are largely supporting Trump, as his "toughness" is being taken as if he'd be a strong, decisive leader. But this is all bluster.  If we want a country run as if it were a business, one can do much better than choosing a leader who has had his businesses go into bankruptcy 4 times.

Yet, the educated people also have a problem by choosing Sanders.  He is an avowed Socialist in a country that looks skeptically at Socialism.  (His policies would be in the middle of the road in Europe or Canada.  But this is not Europe or even Canada.)  Could he get anything through a GOP controlled congress?  It looks doubtful at best.

One of the TV pundits noted that we're seeing a seismic shift in politics, where one (or both) of the major political parties may fail to survive the next 20 years.  And I think this is a strong possibility. The era at the beginning of the 1900's was very similar to that we have today.  There were financial crises in 1907 and 2008 that business and government were ill-equipped to handle, there were political elites out of touch with the general public, and there were people strongly motivated for radical political change. The election of 1912 is the closest analogy we have to this year's election, and America then had 4 viable candidates who could have been elected President: Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, and Debs. This year, we have the "establishment" represented by Bush and Clinton, and "revolutionaries" represented by Trump and Sanders.  Will we retreat from this revolution as we did in 1912 when Wilson was elected? Or will we choose that political revolution by voting our elite out of power?  That is the big question to be answered in November - and I hope we choose wisely....

Beware of the politics of bullying

Melissa Harris-Perry, a weekend talk show host on MSNBC, who could have the victim of the politics of bullying.  Recently, some cretin approached her at the Iowa caucuses and started acting in a threatening way. Although the situation had a "happy ending", one can easily understand why people live in fear when they are in the minority. (And in this case, I do not refer to color, as much as I refer to being in ANY minority.)  Bullying people is a tactic which has been used since time immemorial, and will continue to be used until potential victims have ALL the tools to resist bullying.

Compare today's positions of the two major political parties. The Democrats are the more pacifistic party, seeking greater "gun control'.  The GOP is the more bellicose party, defending "gun rights" every chance they get.  So the supporters of our political left and its positions that are more likely to be bullied by people who are a few french fries short of a "Happy Meal".  And, for the most part, we tolerate that.  

Why do potential victims tolerate bullying?  There are many reasons.  For some, they do not wish to stoop to the level of the intellectually incompetent.  For others, they are afraid of being chosen to be sacrificial lambs for the sake of social cohesion.  As I said, there are many reasons, none of them good. It would make more sense for people to stand up to bullies and "go 'all in'".  Yet, this goes against a primal instinct to run in the face of danger.

Recently, a different cretin barged into the offices of a Texas state legislator.  Texas has both open carry and concealed carry. And there are no provisions to keep firearms out of the state capitol, where a few deranged madmen could take down the entire legislative branch of government, as well as its executive, if done at the right time.  As much as I believe that the people must preserve the right and ability to rebel against a tyrannical government, this was hardly the time and place where that right was needed.  This lawmaker had real reason to fear for his life.  And all Texas is doing in response is to put "panic buttons" in legislators' offices - a potential case of "too little, too late."

Sadly, it looks like we're letting the bullies control us.  Hopefully, we won't go down without a good fight....

What if these people were rich and white?

Flint, Michigan.  Not a place you'll hear mentioned in the "Pure Michigan" tourism spots. And it sickens me to hear that a Republican Governor who appointed Republican cronies to run a bankrupt city is still in office after poisoning the water of a city of 100,000 people by use of untreated Flint River water.

Would this disaster have happened if the people affected were rich and white?  Probably not.  One of the mantras of the GOP is mindless cost cutting - if one breaks with the orthodoxy of "no new taxes".  They have no compassion for the poor, and months after the water mains were contaminated by leached lead, neither the governor nor the government of which he is in charge has any plan on how to fix this problem.

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The other day, I had the privilege of having a conversation with a "person of color" who is in my circle of acquaintances. I noted that thanks to the internet and our mass media, it is now impossible for an intelligent person to ignore the racism that has been built into the structure of society.  (Before we go too far here, I have to note that "racism" is only a partially correct word here.  Although these problems mostly affect people of color, they also affect poor whites in similar ways.)  We've seen how Ferguson, Missouri's law enforcement policies hurt the predominantly Black community.  We've seen how Chicago's police department has had a "hall pass" for many years, where police could easily get away with killing innocent people of color because of a "Blue code of silence" and institutionalized corruption in the police department. And now we're seeing the poisoning of the people of Flint - with no one having a clue about what to do next, because of the size, complexity, and cost of fixing this major problem.

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I don't like using the word "Racism", because it only talks about the problems that affect people of color.  The word doesn't talk about the structural problems that affect isolated poor whites in places such as Appalachia, many of which are associated only with people of color. For example, in many states, when a person is convicted of a felony (and has served his/her time), that person is disenfranchised for life - no longer is he/she able to vote in public elections. Many rights and privileges are never restored to the felon - even when none of them were abused in the act of committing the crime for which he/she was convicted.

Structural problems beset both the rural poor (who are predominantly white) and the urban poor (who are predominantly people of color). Jobs that pay a livable wage have left their communities. In Appalachia, coal mines have shut down, leaving large numbers of isolated towns to live on the government dole.  In the inner cities, the manufacturing jobs that once provided a leg up for the urban poor are gone, leaving only those service jobs that have salaries well below the poverty line for those lower skilled people looking to work.  (In both cases, higher education is unavailable to them, as both the local schools leave them unprepared for college work, and that the effective price of college (even with grants and loans) is way too high for many to afford college.  This leaves many of the poor (in both rural and urban settings) to do business in the "shadow economy".

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The "Shadow Economy" is one of great risk.  For some, it is turning what were once "Food Stamps" into cash by trading "food stuffs" (which in some states include sugary, carbonated beverages) for cash, goods, and services.  In one online article I read, the effective price of sexual favors in a rural shadow economy (net cash, after translation from food stamps) was as little at $13.50.  That's much cheaper than the price of legally provided sexual services in a Nevada bordello, where oral sex costs roughly $100, and Coitus costs roughly $200 - as of 2002. For others, it is the ability to participate in the drug trade - where one's criminal record has no standing on whether one gets hired or not.  With the exception of the drug kingpins, people on the low end of the drug trade (e.g.: street dealers) make less money per hour (according to the people who wrote "Freakonomics") than they would if they flipped burgers at the local McDonald's.

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So where do we go to fix this problem?  The rural poor see the people in the "big city" as the enemy.  How else could Ted Cruz have gotten away with slandering Donald Trump for having "New York Values"?  But one has to contrast this with the Reverend Al Sharpton's knee jerk defense of Tawana Brawley - even though her claims were discredited later on. His constituency has just as much disdain for rural areas of this country, as the rural areas help to perpetuate the racist myth that the poverty in urban poor areas is caused by the poor alone.

To me, the only way to answer this question is the way LBJ answered it.  Remove color from the equation and look at the problem as an issue of both socially and physically isolated communities which have been effectively alienated from the larger society.  My question becomes: How do we integrate both rural and urban poor back into the larger society. Hopefully, we can answer this question sooner, rather than later....

P.S.:  It looks like the Flint Water Poisonings may now be treated as a criminal matter.

You can't make this shit up!

As the title of this entry says - You can't make this shit up!  We have an admiral in charge of US Navy intelligence who has not been able to see military secrets for years.  Politics and institutional inertia has made it impossible to replace someone in his position, as a replacement must be confirmed by the Senate ....And the GOP isn't approving any of Obama's nominees these days.

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I'm a person who says that the larger the organization, the more inefficient it becomes. There are positions that must be filled - not because the person does that much real work, but is there to be nominally in charge of things.  In short, this position is the interface between the political side of the organization and the side that is responsible for the day to day operation of the organization.

In the case of the Admiral mentioned in the article, he is under suspicion because of a corruption investigation involving a foreign defense contractor and Navy personnel. The Navy had to suspend his access to classified material, but no one would expect that he wouldn't be cleared or indicted over two years later.  So the Navy has had to have a Kafkaesque situation of having this man perform the administrative responsibilities of his job, but have subordinates and colleagues perform ALL the tasks requiring classified information.

Given that we have deadlock between the Executive and Legislative branches of government, there is virtually no chance that we could get a replacement nominated by the President and approved by the Senate in today's toxic environment. So, we have a situation where politics is getting in the way of the Navy doing its job in keeping this country safe.

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What could we do to prevent situations like this from happening?  First, we could have a process developed where certain backup personnel would already be nominated and approved in advance to take over these responsibility while the person nominally in charge is indisposed.  We already have a constitutional amendment which provides for the temporary disability of a president, and who is in power and able to act when he or she is unable to perform his or her duties.  Why not do the same thing for many of these critical positions?

This doesn't address the underlying problem - Political Gridlock.  We are electing leaders in the Executive and Legislative branches who check and balance each others' actions. We are afraid of either party doing anything, so we do not let them do anything.  Neither political party is trustworthy. The success of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump in the 2016 POTUS election cycle is a reflection of the public's disgust for the two political parties who promise the world to their bases, but do not deliver anything - except to the plutocrats who fund their political campaigns.

How can we change this situation?  To me, people have to stop "drinking the toxic Kool-Aid." When Ted Cruz's father, Raphael, says that Obamacare is a plot to bring ISIS terrorists over to the US as Doctors, why aren't the GOP loyalists shouting this lunatic down?  (One could have had many of the same criticisms of leftist extremists, but they have been mostly muted and ignored by the press during this election cycle.) That's because the political elite in the party no longer have much power to keep things in line.  They gave a seat at the table to extremists, and the extremists have since been allowed to bully everyone into submission.

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We have to stop giving the Wingnuts power, and force both political parties to again represent the center. When only one party represents the political center, we run a major risk that our political system will fail totally.  It happened in Central Europe in the 1930's. Can we risk having it happen here?

Thank god that she's now in the kiddie table debates

I have no problems with "Honest Conservatives".  People like William Buckley more than had my respect.  Their views were well thought out, and yet, were flexible enough to reflect the realities of the current day.  But most important, people like Buckley had a certain form of integrity - unlike today's crop of wingnut politicians.

Early in this campaign, I felt like Carly Fiorina had a good chance of being in the top tier of GOP politicians running for president. She was not the kind of person I'd have wanted in charge of our country, because if she were to run this country like the business she once ran, we'd have thrown her out of office in the middle of her term.

Recently, I had the misfortune of hearing about Fiorina's latest gaffe.  Children who were touring an Iowa Botanical Garden as part of a class tour made it into the background of Fiorina's anti-abortion event. Although the first amendment to the US Constitution protects speech, who protects the children from being used as political pawns?  Their parents did not authorize the use of their children's images in Fiorina's political event.  Who was looking out for the children?

If I felt that Fiorina had some qualifications to be president before, I have none now.  She has no respect for anyone but herself.  She does not make sure that she has the right to use others for her own purposes - and when she uses children without permission, she crosses over an ethical line as well of one of taste.... 

Thankfully, at the time I wrote this, Trump is in the GOP lead and not Fiorina....

Is Bernie for real, or does he just represent our need for real change?

Bernie Sanders - the "Independent" senator from Vermont who caucuses with the Democrats.  The big question for many is - Is his candidacy for real, or is he, like Elizabeth Warren from the sides, trying to pull Hillary Clinton to the left?

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There is one key element in play that benefits both Sanders and the Democratic party. By running on the Democratic ticket, he prevents a three way race (GOP Wingnut, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders as an independent) that would give the presidency to the GOP. Since Bernie plays nice with the Democrats (look at his debates with Hillary for example), the Democrats are more than happy to let him play in their sandbox.  Even if he loses to Hillary, he has done his job - keeping the Democratic contender for the office of the president from going too far to the right to win votes.

However, Bernie's candidacy throws a monkey wrench into the expected coronation of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic Party's candidate.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz is an avowed Hillary supporter, and has gamed the Democratic Party debate schedule to prevent Bernie from getting name recognition. And yet, he may just yet win both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.  Can you imagine if Hillary is doomed to lose before the real campaign starts?

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As I see it, the important differences between Hillary's platform and Bernie's platform focuses on two areas: Regulation of the Banking Industry and Healthcare.  Hillary has said that Wall Street needs greater regulation, but falls short of a restoration of Glass-Steagall. She is also pragmatic, and says that any attempt to change the healthcare system, Obamacare, with a Republican congress might make things worse.  On the other hand Bernie says that restoring Glass-Steagall and Medicare for All is absolutely needed.

Bernie has yet to issue a detailed plan on how America can afford "Medicare for All", but his logic does make sense.  A recent estimate from people unconnected with Bernie's campaign estimates that the average family savings under his plan would roughly be between $500-$1,800/year.  Given the GOP and its willingness to repeal Obamacare, does Bernie really think that he could implement his plan?

However, I think that the reregulation of Wall Street is possible, as even the wingnuts of the GOP right wing hate the banking industry.  But could Bernie unite enough people to dislodge some of Wall Street's corrupting influence on Washington politics?  I'm not so sure of this.

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In the past, I have noted that both Sanders' and Trump's candidacies have been propelled by the same fuel - the ruling elite of both parties has betrayed the public, and that public is mad as hell and won't take it any more.  At this point of time, I still predict a November election with Trump and Sanders being their parties' candidates. And it will be very interesting.

But the big question is - Does Bernie have a real chance to win?  And if so, will the Democrats (other than Debbie Wasserman Schultz) try to scuttle him before he wins too many delegates?