A Time for Peace

Discussion about the necessity or advisability of George W Bush's elective Iraqi War has become a news worthy topic again. I am grateful, but wonder why it took so long. Perhaps the large burden paid by a small percentage of the population and the deferral of costs now coming due are salient points.

Sustaining a war effort is difficult in many ways. Among those is the financial burden. Maybe it was the realization that we spent trillions of dollars with little to show for it. For whatever reason, this  this particular chapter in recent American history is being re-examined.

Citizens have the duty to question war-making. It is patriotic in the best sense of the word to question our country's war making efforts, especially when they are being used to gain political advantage. It is now clear to many that the Iraqi war was a multi-dimensional failure. Even if you don't accept the idea that invading Iraq was a strategic failure, it is hard to accept the necessity of unleashing so much death and destruction on hundreds of thousands of innocent people for the purpose of removing a single dictator. American taxpayers were duped accomplices in Bush's Iraqi misadventure. Yet, the silence from the right on this issue is deafening to this day.

Besides devastating human and financial costs, there is another terrible legacy we must confront. Our government lied to us. Bush's people lied deliberately and repeatedly about reasons for the war, torture, and contractor fraud. Some people still in power continue to believe the Bush era lies regarding weapons of mass destruction. Others feel that these particular lies were justifiable in this case due to the evil nature of Saddam. Those lies should never be allowed to stand.

The casualty here is the truth and our own credibility in the world. We started a pre-emptive war based on lies, and continued it for years. Will we be trusted in the future when legitimate threats emerge and we need help?

So what are our priorities? I would hope one would be the explicit aspiration to achieve a real and lasting peace. It is long past time to embrace a peace first mentality. This is hard given the combative nature of our political processes. Our national tolerance of incarceration driven by for-profit prison growth and the celebration of gun culture are sad commentaries on our national priorities. 

It is also long past time to rebuild our decaying infrastructure & put ourselves back to work. We need to refocus on education, clean energy and affordable health care. It would serve us well to disarm and take care of people first. A decade of War is a decade wasted in so many ways. We can do better. We need to try harder to create the Peace we all crave.

Let's enact rational gun ownership reform now!

The day of reckoning has finally come. When innocent men, women, and children are regularly gunned down in our shopping malls, schools and places of worship, something must be done. Gun violence in this country must be stopped for the protection of the most basic right we all must defend: the right to life itself. It’s time to transform our ideas about gun ownership from dystopic fantasy to righteous pragmatism.

In the minds of some, ownership of a firearm is sacrosanct and uniquely defines what it means to be an American. This notion is not universally held, but those who believe it have shut down both debate and any meaningful policy response to related bloodshed. Our problem is not just about the idea of gun ownership. It’s about unregulated, unlimited ownership of the ability to kill large amounts of innocent people.  As a society we need to act smartly and decisively to protect ourselves and our children.

The time has long since passed for more effective, stringent gun control.  The question is how we can effectively remove the threat of innocents being murdered by nefarious, angry, or crazy people with unchecked access to efficient deadly force. Alarmingly, we still hear the argument made that any limitation on ownership of firearms should be considered a threat on civil liberties.

There are some basic questions we should be asking ourselves. Should American society be defined by our citizens’ ability to kill each other? Should Americans who choose not to arm themselves or  who can’t arm themselves have their rights protected by the rule of law? Is it time to separate gun safety education from gun advocacy and gun manufacture lobbying?

America’s love affair with guns must seem strange to other civilized affluent democratic societies. For over 20 years we have allowed unregulated gun ownership and gun deaths to proliferate unchecked. We have failed to effectively deal with an explosion of gun ownership and gun-related death. This phenomenon is uniquely American. It is a shameful chapter in our history

There are many legitimate, practical measures that can and must be taken to limit access to assault rifles and similar guns as soon as possible. This needs to happen even if it means profit-killing regulations for US gun manufacturers and even if it means some weapons and ammunition will be impossible for enthusiasts, hobbyists, and self-styled defenders of freedom to own.

The time for soul searching has come. Those who own guns should consider how many and for what purposes. Keeping guns out of public places should be the norm. We can learn much from the rest of the world. Our unique first place status in gun manufacture, ownership and violent death demonstrate our gun depravity and illustrate our need to grow up as a country. We should study what works elsewhere and apply it in the US. How about abandoning America the murderous for America the beautiful?

Disarming completely is an option to be considered seriously by individuals. The love of guns has become a uniquely American obsession. This tragic obsession is killing too many of us. We can do something about it. Let’s at least try.

There is no Fiscal Cliff!
Deciding who pays for war debt is the real problem!

Fiscal Cliff is a particularly inappropriate and ultimately useless metaphor for the the US debt crisis. For starters the crisis is man made. The specific men who should get most credit for creating our current crisis are George Bush and his self-righteous enablers. Dick Cheney famously declared that deficits don't matter.

Cheney meant that running up gargantuan debts didn't have political consequences in his experience. That type of political rationalization is the problem. Fighting expensive, elective wars and leaving it to future generations to pay for them is immoral. Dick Cheney made a political calculation about what he could get away with and made it happen. Despite his assertion, there was a huge political price to be paid both by Cheney and by Republicans following his sorry example.

Republican fiscal sabotage goes well beyond war funding. The Bush administration made it illegal for the federal government to negotiate drug prices paid by Medicare. They also forced the Post Office to over-fund it's pension program. Both of these were deliberate attempts to fatten up well functioning public services so that they could be replaced by privately funded alternatives. Both schemes are still in force today despite the unmistakeable message sent by the electorate on November 6.

Republicans had been counting on a disengaged, short-attention span electorate who would not connect the dots and blame the Republican instigators of the problem. So far that strategy has been a miserable failure. We all need to be sure that this flavor of anti-populism is contained within the dystopic fantasy world of right wing think tanks.

Fortunately for all of us, President Obama is masterful in playing the long game. That strategy won him the White House a second time, strengthened Democratic power in the Senate and weakened Republican mischief potential in the House. The Supreme Court will likely swing in a more populist direction as well.

If we're going to choose a metaphor, let's talk about the Amercian Bus ending up in the ditch. That image was first invoked by President Obama during the 2008 campaign. When the bus is in the ditch there are only so many ways to get it out.

Like the passengers in that metaphorical bus, all Americans are riding through our crisis together. The burden of getting out has not been shared equitably. Going forward the burden must be shared. We currently have record corporate profits and historically low American wages. Raising taxes on wealthy folks is what most Americans want. Now is the time for the President to put his vision in gear.

Republicans can make this crisis better in the short run or they can obstinately stick to their guns. They will do so at their own peril. It is now gut check time for American Democracy. Having defeated the candidate of privilege it is now time to take back the country. I'm confident we can get the bus out of the ditch if we all sacrifice to make it happen.

Proven in November: We're all in this together!

The re-election of Barack Obama was amazing feat to behold. Populism won out over greed and disingenuous attempts to equate wealth and financial success with business acumen and righteousness. One would think the religious right component of the Republican Party and hardcore Tea Party auxiliary would look to the Bible for guidance. Yet it doesn't seem to occur to right wing pundits that every day people deserve to access the American dream. The voices of the least among us simply don't matter much to lobbyist driven Republicans.

Avarice is a deadly sin. Thousands of scripture passages point to the virtue of helping the poor. Yet the prevailing right wing wisdom blames the poor and glorifies greed as necessary to ensure the economic future of society. America has already gone too far down the road of confusing exploitation with healthy economic growth. The Cato Institute and a legion of other misnamed self-serving apologists comprise an entire dystopic infrastructure. Their mission is nothing more than helping rich bastards take even more of what they don't deserve.

To his credit, the President made a common sense case based on obvious truths abandoned by the right wing greed elite. Sensible tax rates and regulation are absolutely critical to making the American Dream a reality. "Re-distribution" and "Class warfare" have been accusations leveled at Progressives seeking to ensure a fair chance for everyone. In reality, we have had 30 years of reverse Robin Hood wealth re-distribution coupled with erosion of environmental and labor protecting regulations.

As a result the gap between rich and poor is historically large. Upward mobility is behind that of most of Western Europe and Canada. All of this is happening while rich folks are making out like bandits. Cutting taxes has indeed made the situation worse. Job creation and tax rates were higher under both Reagan and Clinton.

Children growing up must learn to get along with others. They may learn to collaborate, cooperate and pursue solutions that work everyone. Alternatively they may pursue a me-first agenda. Parents, teachers and other role models play a pivotal role in shaping development during these formative years.

Billionaires like the Koch brothers seem to have missed some key lessons in their socialization. Playing the capitalist game better than everyone else or inheriting wealth from a rich parent ought not entitle you to deny opportunity to anyone. If equal opportunity every succumbs to greed we will have lost our soul as a nation.  The election of November 6, 2012 was a solid victory for everyone trying to access the American Dream. We need to make sure that the cost of opportunity is not dictated by those fortunate enough to have the wealth necessary to buy our government.

Voting Should be easy and consistent for everyone.

I voted today. It was easy. After arriving at the polls when they opened at 7am, I waited in line for 15 minutes and voted. I was number 90 at Marquette Middle School Madison Wisconsin. The atmosphere was energetic, organized and positive. This is what Democracy should look like everywhere. Too bad it just doesn't.

Unfortunately, voter suppression is alive and well in many places- especially where folks are poor and especially where there are efforts from state and local governments to make voting difficult. This is typically done to maintain power for those already in positions of dominance.

The biggest canard by those suppressing the vote is that we should take drastic steps to prevent fraud. There simply are very few cases of voter fraud that have ever been prosecuted. There is very little incentive to risk severe penalties including imprisonment.

Counting votes is really a simple thing. It does not require complicated hardware running proprietary algorithms. It should be a non-profit proposition. If there's one thing we as a society ought to subsidize, it's a consistent fair vote.

This is where the parallel universe that defines Right Wing World becomes a real menace. The so-called free-marketers actually claim that proprietary voting machines are necessary. In practice we have unverifiable vote totals being tabulated by machines owned by folks who have a vested interest in the outcome.

We need transparency and consistency if we are to have a credible voting process. Perhaps what we really need is a healthy dose of humility. We used to teach the rest of the world the fundamentals of democracy. Yet voting in Canada, the UK and elsewhere is demonstrably better in terms of participation and credibility with the general population. We should take a lesson!

Everybody Needs Some Taxing Sometime!
Foolish myths trump common sense in Plutocracy USA

Is it ever the right time to increase taxes for any group of Americans? If we believe in pay as you go, the answer must be an unqualified "Yes". The economic success experienced by most Americans during the Clinton years bears this out. Yet now we are told by rich conservative profiteers that tax cuts for rich folks are the only hope for job creation and a secure future.

Future generations will be paying for George W Bush's war-driven spending spree for some time. Yet the source of that debt gets glossed over repeatedly in our political discourse. Ryan-Romney continue to endorse Grover Norquist's approved nostrum of tax cuts always, under every circumstance, forever, amen.

Those who are not über-rich have been getting an increasingly rawer deal ever since the no-tax increase pledge became the price of admission to the Republican Party. Wealth hoarding and denial of opportunity to those who are down is the current state of right wing depravity. These are prime platform timbers.

Today, even maintaining a middle class life style has become increasingly difficult. Those below über-rich status are currently facing unprecedented barriers to upward mobility thanks to the no-tax increase doctrine even for super wealthy folks and even in the midst of the current debt crisis. To be clear, the insistence on perpetual tax cuts is fueling the debt crisis, not solving it!

That "debt crisis" was of course deliberately engineered by Republicans to provide extremely wealthy folks with even more opportunities to get richer. That's why their lobbyists get the big bucks. For those not paying attention, George W Bush did the real heavy lifting to move us to the financial cliff we are facing. Trillion dollar wars, Medicare forbidden from negotiating with drug companies, and debt interest due to abandonment of pay as you go are the major culprits. The Tea Party fiscal insurgents did their part as well, causing a downgrade of US debt. Tea Party debt zealots are enemies of the American republic, not defenders of it.

Mitt Romney and the boy wonder take great pains to distance themselves from George Bush. Yet they are running plays from the same Karl Rove playbook. They have bet everything on the electorate overlooking unprecedented, record filibustering from Congressional Republicans.

The folks who most deserve to be fired from public service are Tea Party members. They are responsible for the downgrade of US debt and the continued imperilment of the working Americans.

The final Presidential Debate should erase the idea in anybody's mind that Mitt Romney is a fiscal conservative. He is absolutely in favor of unrestrained defense spending even as he's slashing social spending. Romney favors spending WAY above levels requested by the military and necessary for national defense. A lean military is something Romney will never embrace. There is too much political capital at stake.

If elected, Mitt Romney would be the Defense Lobbyist in Chief. We as a country must reject Romney and his 5 point plan. We have a too much military-industrial spending now and our infrastructure needs modernization if America is to remain competitive and continue our recovery. The best course of action is to remove Tea Party obstructionists and their enablers from Congress.

Cheap Labor - Lessons from the Gridiron

It's crunch time in the US when it comes to valuing the labor of American workers. It seems that cheap labor is corporate America's game plan week in and week out. That theory has been put through repeated rigorous testing in many labor markets in the US in recent months. Workers across the US are hurting from the constant threat of outsourcing their labor to anyone who will do it cheaper. One obvious example is now playing out in the 2012 National Football League season.

Pre-season NFL games were different this year. In addition to out-of-practice teams and inexperienced rookies, there were incompetent referees to contend with. NFL management seemed to view referees as interchangeable parts. After a few games and a short learning curve, no one would even notice or even care any more.

Bazinga! The entertainment value of NFL football has been compromised. Every game has been co-opted by a sideshow of incompetent replacement officials. Games have turned into long, tedious affairs where play-by-pay announcers have turned into critics of the lame officiating we get with each and every game.

Monday night's Packers vs Seahawks fiasco the latest and worst example greed trumping everything else. The outcome of that game was decided wrongly by incompetent, inexperienced officials. It would have been easily affordable to have experienced, competent referees on the field. Apparently the NFL management moguls could not spare a slightly larger fraction of their profits to ensure the integrity of the game.

There are many management-labor and life lessons to be learned:

• You get what you pay for. Quality costs money.
• Short-term profits based on cheap labor can lead to long-term problems with compromised product quality.
• Compromised product quality can alienate and shrink your customer base.
• A shrinking customer base generates less profits in the long run.

Football and working life have become increasingly complicated. If we expect excellence from those doing difficult high-stakes jobs, we need to pay them. Greed and outsourcing have become the enemies of quality in America. Respect for workers and the resulting quality of what they produce and the integrity of their experience are hard to quantify. Yet we sure do notice when they are gone.

I'm not sure how NFL football affects things like presidential elections. It seems clear we have gone too far down the path of producing cheap stuff by not valuing workers. If we really want to value people we need to value what they do and honor their work.

The value of work is a powerful subtext to the current race for the White House. Presidential attitudes toward outsourcing matter and hold powerful consequences for American workers. Mitt Romney would probably have hired replacement refs. I doubt Barack Obama would have. We might all think about how we value our work and the work of others when we vote on November 6th.