On the Contrary

There are three items in the news that we ought to pay attention to.  The first is the California budget mess.  Why should other states care about California, the home of gays and liberals?  Because the stalemate is a microcosm of the Republican approach to our nation in general.  The second is the pundit’s trashing of Caroline Kennedy’s possible appointment to Hilary Clinton’s Senate seat, and the third are some thoughts on Governor Blagojevich’s guilt and the rush to judgment.

Let’s look at California first.  Here in the Golden State we are going broke rapidly.  The legislature has been stalemated for years on solving the insolvency of the State.  The Republican’s, true to their dogma, will not approve anything that smacks of a tax increase.  The Democrats and our Republican Governor offered them a compromise that had a package of new taxes and spending cuts, but true to form and stuck in their dogma, they vetoed the deal because they will approve no new taxes.  Well today they released their own plan.  Here are some details:
•    Cut $10.6 billion from K-12 schools
•    Cut $1.3 billion from care for the elderly, blind and disabled
•    Cut $ 1 billion from the University of  California and California State University systems
•    Cut another $9 billion from services to poor and elderly like medical care, junior college aid, and mass transit

Do you get the drift?  In a time when those most needy need help, they turn away.  After all aren’t the young, old, or helpless worthless anyway, unless of course the young, the old, or the helpless are part of their family.  Here we have the basic difference between Republicans and Democrats.  Republican conservative ideology is basically selfish, self-serving, and insular.  Democrats believe we can all give up a little to help those less fortunate.  As some Democrats have pointed out, cutting the schools could wreak long term havoc on our future economy.  They don’t care because they got theirs and after all, aren’t all the rest just selfish, lazy people or they would be rich, right?  In California it truly is the party of fat old white men and thank god, they will soon be outnumbered and a minority.  That is when I will object to programs for minorities.  They have been gouging us for years as they have made themselves richer with an ideology that justified their selfish pursuits.  These are the same conservatives who will go after Obama’s attempt to pull us out of the coming depression.  Beware.  They may totally wreck the country before they are done.

Meanwhile in “we haven’t a clue” pundit land, the pundits are criticizing Caroline Kennedy’s potential appointment to the Senate to replace Hilary because she is too soft and what does she know of hardball politics to be successful.  Let’s see if I have this right.  They have complained bitterly about partisan politics for years and now someone who may not play that game is unfit?  Most of us have recognized that the political process of moving up the ladder from city council politics to national politics has not produced us a bumper crop of geniuses to legislate for us in Congress.  Now someone who may actually still have their values firmly in tact comes along and you think she is too naive?  I would just remind you of several facts about her.  She grew up in a family that knows the rough and tumble of the game.  The first book I read from her (”In Our Defense”) was about the cases that defined the Bill of Rights as we know it today.  She carried on and chaired the “Profiles in Courage” awards each year to recognize those people who went against the grain of politics to do the right thing, sometimes ending their careers.  If she is appointed, she will only serve till 2010 and then she will have to run.  Get a grip people.  For once could we put somebody up there who actually understands the difference between the politically expedient and what is right?

Finally we have the case of Governor Blagojevich and the “crime” he committed.  Now we all are appalled at selling of an office, but it goes on all the time.  Start with your local supervisors in your own jurisdiction that sell out to the high bidder for funds to win their election. I agree, no crime, but it is about the money.  Then there are the “big” contributors who get an ambassadorship somewhere.  We don’t think they bought the office?

Politicians routinely get contributions from supporters for their decisions.  We have let this go on way too long and now it is harder and harder to see the line between business as usual and crime.  Okay, I will give that a real transaction of cash for an office is a crime and it is clearly across the line.  But when did it become a crime?  When he thought about it?  When he talked about it? When he proposed an actual deal? Or was it a crime when money actually changed hands.  I think about crimes all the time.  I plan the perfect robbery, I think about blowing up other cars in traffic, and once in a while I think about running over a pedestrian who is sauntering slowly in the cross walk.  But it doesn’t become a crime until I do it.  You cannot arrest a prostitute or a john until money changes hands.

It is a slippery slope when we arrest someone for talking.  Patrick Fitzgerald said he had to move fast to protect the political process.  But what if after all the talk, Blagojevich did the right thing?  It is kind of like arresting some of the suspected terrorists in this country because they shot paint balls at each other and planned some terrorist act.  Until they actually do something illegal, like procure explosives, the crime will most probably never occur.  I really don’t want to think that in this country we can’t say stupid things and then regret them later instead of spending major time in the big house.

One last thought.  Those of you who want quick justice in Illinois should think carefully about what quick justice means:  Sloppy police work, a rush to judge, and many more miscarriages of justice where innocent lives are ruined.  Let’s take our time and get this right.

I watched some of the news shows on Sunday as I returned from my consulting trip this last Sunday afternoon, and I was amazed to see how the Press is once again focused on the wrong thing.  This is the play for pay scandal in Illinois.  One reporter on CNN basically said that Obama should get the facts out as quick as possible to prevent being tarnished in this scandal.  I listened to Rick Sanchez on Monday repeat President-Elect Obama’s statement that he had reviewed the interactions between his staff and Blagojevich and found no evidence of “inappropriate discussions”.  Mr. Sanchez then questioned what inappropriate meant.  One paper said, “The “pay-to-play” scandal threatens to dog Mr. Obama through the opening months of his administration and undermine his campaign message of change.”

It will only dog him if the press doesn’t stop trying to create what isn’t there and there is no evidence anything is there.  I hate to break it to them, but nobody cares about this other than the press hoping for some titillation and ratings raising disclosures, and Republicans who are still focused on winning in 2008.  The rest of us want him to succeed, we believe Patrick Fitzgerald when he said there was no evidence that Barrack was involved.  Blagojevich himself, in taped conversations cited by prosecutors, suggested that Obama wouldn’t be helpful to him. Even if the governor were to appoint a candidate favored by the Obama team, Blagojevich said, “They’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation.”  It is a soap opera and the press is once again running amuck.  Let the Attorney do his job.  In the meantime, the rest of us are really worried about keeping ours.  Could we focus on our problems?

Here are some things that were in the news this week that are much more important about our way forward and help us learn from our mistakes:

• First there was the report, “Hard Lessons:  The Iraq Reconstruction Experience”  which was leaked to the press.  It quoted Colin Powell as saying the Department of Defense was making up numbers on Iraqi security forces to show progress, basic services are now back to the level before the war, but no better, and the finding that as the US started down this road to the largest rebuilding program since the Marshall Plan in Europe with no real plan, policies, or technical capacity to perform it.  Now does this surprise anybody in the mental world of Republicans who think any planning smacks of big government?  We have entered a world where we worship the military and we forget the lessons of Viet Nam:  They all lie.
• We all have heard about the shoe throw in Baghdad (YouTube).  If only our own press had the courage to stand up to the King like a poor Iraqi.  Actually what is sad is that most of the press has once again missed a golden opportunity to explore just exactly what was accomplished and at what cost.  According to the gentleman who threw the shoe, not much at way too high a price.
• In the New York Times it was reported in a report by issued jointly by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the panel, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican, “that top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers.”  No fooling.  Yet many of our good Republican friends continue to blame it on a few bad apples and live in total denial.  This was a failure of the moral leadership of George Bush and Republicans who could not see that they became the enemy.
• But probably the best summary was Sunday from Frank Rich in the New York Times where he said about Governor Blagojevich, “Blagojevich’s alleged crimes pale next to the larger scandals of Washington and Wall Street. Yet those who promoted and condoned the twin national catastrophes of reckless war in Iraq and reckless gambling in our markets have largely escaped the accountability that now seems to await the Chicago punk nabbed by the United States attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald.”  His point is that Blagojevich is a small town crook and fool compared to where those “Giants of Wall Street”, and the arrogant Neocons have taken us.

What is the thread through all of this?  It is that we check our brains at the door over the last eight years and now there is a piper to pay.  Small town values are nice, but if they don’t stand up to reason, they need to be tossed.  Economic theories that promise us free rides (lower taxes and the world will be saved) need to be jettisoned also.  Government only does bad when the men and women who lead them do bad things and they need to be held accountable.  We can’t just push this behind us as though it did not happen.  We need to face what we have become before we can begin to become what we can.  Probably our saving grace is that through all of this there were some who were raising red flags.  What we need to find out is why didn’t we listen to them.

Last night the Republicans in the Senate scuttled the auto bail out plan.  Now one can raise many doubts about the bailout, but it was and is worth a try.  If nothing else it would allow us a chance to continue jobs and build a restructuring plan.  These things don’t come out of thin air and it would take time to really see if a workable plan could be put in place.  But the Republicans bent on their ideological warpath were trying to gut the unions and they just couldn’t get enough bash for their buck.  The problem with Detroit is not union wages, it’s so much more complex.  It involves building cars people will buy.  It involves management that has not evolved with changing business climate.  It involves costs such as healthcare that have to be addressed in other ways.  In other words it is a complicated package that defies simple-minded conservative solutions.

What is more ominous is we are seeing our future.  Most of us understanding that to change our course and to get ready for our future, we need to turn this ship around. What we saw from the Republicans was more of the same small-minded thinking that has got us where we are today.  When President Obama puts forth his stimulus package in 2009, there can be honest disagreement about where and how the money is spent most effectively.  But what I fear is the same Republican do nothing approach we have seen in the car bailout.  “It cost too much; government is bad; do nothing, let the market place work its magic.”  The magic the market place will work is bread lines.  But working people in their mind, are not important.

Today’s challenges are going to require new thinking.  These people are not equipped for new thinking.  As I noted yesterday in my blog, when you flush away all of the high sounded moral principle babble they have thrown out there, what is left is States (primarily in the south) that have provided massive subsidies to foreign automakers to locate and employ their people.  They have kept unions out because in their view unions are evil.  They care about corporate profits, not the well being of the worker.  Unions have been excessive, but many of the problems that workers face are because we don’t have a national healthcare system.  But unions know we are all in this together and are willing to deal, but not the Republicans.  Ask yourself this:  Have wages been rising for the average worker?  Of course not, but wages for banking friends have never been better and that is who these Republicans care about.

To move forward we are going to have to find a way to counter these people.  The way out of our morass is to spend our way out and then deal with the deficit later when the economy is strong enough to withstand some reining-in in the form of taxes or reduced spending (or both).  But my fear is that these fools will tells we have to cut spending and lower taxes to save ourselves.  If we let them be successful at doing what they do best, blocking progress, we are all doomed.  Here is their bottomline:  THEY HAVE NO PLAN, JUST THE ABILITY TO BLOCK YOUR PLAN.

Get ready for the big fight.  Of course I could be wrong.  Things could go into the dumper much faster than I imagined, and these guys may finally get the thrashing they deserve in public opinion.  Here in California, the ideologues walked out on the Governor yesterday with no plan in sight for our growing deficit problem.  Note the ideologues are Republicans, and they walked out on a Republican Governor trying to talk sense.  Maybe it is time the Govenator disband the legislature.  Note that the President this morning is considering using some of the $750 billion to aid the car manufactures.  Sooner or later even this President has to face the reality of what those fat white men in the Senate have wrought.  So maybe the reckoning really is coming faster than I think.  If we are going to move forward, we have to find away to push these old fat white men out of the way.

First I need to apologize for being missing in action.  I am finishing up a consulting job and it has taxed my writing skills so that all I want to do in the evening is go back to my hotel room, watch Rachel Maddow, dream about her announcing my “wonderful” blog on her show, and then being interviewed on all the important issues. Actually I would just like to meet her sometime because she is just so darn nice, smart, and lovely. There is also “Chuck” where we can suspend our disbelief and believe a babe like Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski), would really go for a nowhere nerd like Chuck (played by Zachary Levi).  It gives all us nowhere guys hope. So much for an active fantasy life, but back to the topic at hand

Fat old white men, unless you haven’t figured it out, are the establishment in the Republican Party.  As I like to say, it takes one to know one, and I am a fat old white guy.  That is all we have in common.  But they were out in force yesterday and all I could think of was, are they all auditioning for the part of Scrooge?  First there was Senator Richard Shelby from Alabama looking like the Grinch who stole Christmas as he threatens to filibuster any auto bailout deal.  One thing that is always consistent about Republicans, they are all about punishment.  The auto executives have sinned and they should be damned to Chapter 11 hell.  Senator Shelby is not going to reward poor management by throwing our tax dollars at those bums.

One has step back a minute to understand the glaring hypocrisy here.  Senator Shelby’s state has a very protected auto manufacturing base, albeit, foreign manufactures, all of which have gotten billions is tax subsidies to locate there.  Tax subsidies; isn’t that taxpayer money?  Now I will grant you that the auto executives are morons.  Remember that the guy leading the development of hybrid cars doesn’t believe in global warming.  But this is not what this is about.  It is about the jobs of millions of Americans.  From Shelby’s point of view, Merry Christmas, you are all fired.  What he misses here is that the money they earn is the money that fuels the economy that allows enough income so that others can buy the cars produced in his own state.

But typical of Republican thought, this is all about punishment and he doesn’t get the concept that we are all in this together.  It’s not my state against your state, they all have to thrive for us to prosper.  Republican ideology is about selfishness, not about shared interests.  Personally I don’t like the bailout very much either.  I hate the fact that the other fat white person (George “the moron” Bush) wants to appoint the car czar and will not support the Democrats requirement that the auto industry quit fighting environmental regulations in states like California.  I mean after all, we have seen Republican “management and leadership” for the last 8 years and if they had produced greener cars instead of filing lawsuits, they might not be in as deep a hole as they are in.  To save the jobs, the Demos will have to cave for now, but they had better have a plan on 20 January to undo this moron’s “leadership”.  I think we ought to get them through to the new Administration, and then see if a structured Chapter 11 with the government loaning them reorganization money and a real plan for the future would work.  It’s certainly worth a try.

The other fat guy that got my attention yesterday was the Chairman of the Republican Party, Mike Duncan.  He was on MSNBC being interviewed by Nora O’Donnell (I got all this while working out in the gym at lunch) demanding that Barrack Obama explain any and all ties he has with Governor Rod Blagojevich of Illinois (of how much is that Senator in the window fame).  He said something like, “I wish the President-Elect well, but he needs to come out and make a clear statement about his involvement in this affair.”  Now to Nora O’Donnell’s credit she asked him what involvement since the U.S. Attorney (Fitzpatrick) stated that they had no evidence of any involvement and played Barrack Obama’s statement that he had no knowledge of a “pay to play scheme”.  That didn’t faze Duncan who continued to try to somehow link Obama with this scandal.  Nothing has changed.  These guys are still playing gutter politics (it is all they know) instead of looking at ways to face our looming economic disaster.  Duncan wants Obama to fail so bad he can’t stand it.  Republicans have no answers for the future they just want to sling mud so they can get back in power.

In this day where I think the looming financial crisis has only been felt at the margins so far, Republicans are still in denial and have one simple approach:  Punish evil doers and say no.  Herbert Hoover did basically the same thing after the crash of the stock market in 1929, brought on the Great Depression.  They are at it again because their psychological make-up is about power, authority, and punishment, not about looking forward and working together in a cooperative way to solve our problems.  Hopefully they are a dying bred.

By the way, just to let you know how much in denial we are in about our financial crisis and possible depression, the Yankees signed a $161 million contract with ace left-hander C. C. Sabathia.  I don’t think many people are going to be able to pay the price of a ticket for the next few years.  I wonder how many jobs could be created if even half the money was invested in infrastructure?

I was clicking through the news shows and I picked up this snippet:  “Our problem is that we have overspent and have too much debt.”  This will be mantra of the talking heads who will advise us on what we are to do to fix our problems.  It is the conventional wisdom gone extreme.  Ask yourself this:  If we have spent too much and borrowed too much then is our fix to quit spending and don’t borrow anymore?  Only if you want to see the Great Depression repeated.

Republicans will take the political lead on this saying that the reason they failed and are out of favor is that they lost their way.  They allowed spending to get out of hand while they let government grow.  This is the same problem said another way.  By spending and not taxing, they had to borrow.  But once again, is this the root cause of our problems?  I don’t think so.  Let’s look at some of the underlying assumptions.

If your deficit gets too large and you have to continue borrowing, the theory is that you are taking too much money out of the economy for government use and you force the raising of interest values and shrinking of the economy.  Is that what is happening.  Credit dried up because banks were holding on to worthless paper that the mortgage bankers sold them, and they are holding on to their money because they don’t know who holds the rest of this paper and don’t want to incur any further losses by making bad loans.  Interest rates are quite low and the rest of the world is quite willing to buy our treasury bonds at historically low interest rates.  So much for that theory.

In reality conservative economic theory just doesn’t address the real issues: out of control and unregulated greed that put our whole financial system at risk with worthless investments in search of ever higher rates of return.  There was plenty of innovation, but it was in tricking ourselves that this bubble of increasing profit would not bust.  What the Republicans did was pretty much in line with their beliefs; they reduce regulation and lowered taxes to historically low rates and still we are facing a depression.  All the deficit spending did was give us less a pad to spend our way out of this problem.

So if you believe these hysterical pundits of old thinking, then our fix is to cut spending and pay off our deficit.  Yet almost every economist will tell you that what we really need is massive spending to get the economy rolling again.  Secretary of Treasury Paulson has been throwing money at the banks with no effect.  His classic mistake is conservative thinking:  If markets have liquidity, they will use the money in ways that will benefit all of us.  Instead they are all taking the money, backing up their bad bets, and hunkering down.  Adam Smith, the father of capitalist thought (Wealth of Nations) would have recognized this behavior:  self-interest and selfishness.  Conservatives will never bring themselves to actually planning and directing in the market place because they still believe in that magic hand and in these times that is their fatal flaw.  That is why during the Presidential election John McCain could not come up with some economic plan for our future.  Tax cuts and less regulation have run their course.  Cutting government now would be the death Nell for our economy.

I think everyone, except for conservatives who learned nothing from Herbert Hoover’s mistake in 1929, understands that President-Elect Obama’s call for a massive investment in infrastructure is a long overdue way to stimulate the economy and to start our recover.  It will require spending and borrowing to sustain it.  That is just the opposite from what the conventional wisdom is telling people.  We as a people have an important role to play in how our economy develops in the future if want a better life for our children.  So we as a people must decide where we want the market place and competition to go.  The past has been the assumption that the market place will find our path.  The new approach is that we will decide the destination and then let the market place operate within those constraints.  A simple example is alternate energy.  Right now the price of gas has gone down, and without guidance the market place is taking us back to oil dependence.  That is not where we want to go again so government will have to guide the market place by raising taxes on gas and then let the market place operate.

It really is no longer your father’s economy and whole new assumptions and understandings need to enter into our public discourse.  James Galbraith, in his book “The Pedator State”, has started that discussion, but you don’t see him on the cable news shows as they continue to spout the old slogans and reinforce the old beliefs that got us where we are today.  It is kind of like the Salem Witch Trails.  We still believe in the old voodoo and we are burning suspected heretics at the stake.  Our hope is that our new President has a brain and he is practical, not dogmatic.  He may just see this new truth.  Hopefully he can educate the rest of us.  At least I can hope.

David Brooks made a valid point the other day when he wrote (Who will he Choose?)  that Barack has a tough choice to make in selecting the secretary of Education:

“On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers’ unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.”

Reformers, superficial reforms?  I think we know where Mr. Brooks stands.  What I love about these discussions is that it does not come from seasoned teachers who know the real problems, but from intellectualizing administrators and policy people who remember their experiences in school and generalize them to the problem.  My claim to special knowledge?  I am married to a high school English teacher who has worked for over 30 as a teacher and who this year took on the worst of the worst (failed everything in their freshman year) to try to bring them back.  Her stories are heart wrenching and they don’t fit neat little conceptualizations like charter schools and tougher accountability.

Let’s just start with the idea of merit pay that the conservatives are so in love with.  It may work or may become a real counterforce for good education.  Ask your self this:  Who gets the good kids and who gets the bad ones?  How do you level the playing field when your raw material may come from an inferior source?  Will teachers begin to maneuver to get the cream of the crop so to enhance their ability to earn their merit pay at the expense of others?  I hate to break it to some of you arm chair quarterbacks, but many already do that without the merit pay.  So the real question is how do you set up a system that is fair and really does reward merit?  I believe the Denver schools have tried and it would be interesting to see how they have faired.

Then there is the issue of accountability.  It is as if the problem in our schools is poor performing teachers and if we just held them to tough standards, everything would be peachy.  There are a few problems with this assumption.  First and foremost while you can find bad teachers, they are the exception, not the rule.  Most enter the profession because they want to help and teach kids.  What they find is a wasteland of kids who don’t want help.  Once again that is an over generalization, but that is the root problem.  We used to have a society in that getting an education was the key to everything.  But many children come to school with a sense of entitlement and little inclination for the hard work to achieve.  So let’s test more and hold more teachers accountable is an easy fix that does not really address the real problem:  Parents.

Charter schools are another take on the market place (like merit pay) approach to the problem.  It sets up schools that have more flexibility to rid themselves of problem kids.  It is another form of skimming and still doesn’t address the real issue.  It is very similar to the health care plan of conservatives that allows the private insures to skim off the healthy, leaves the poor and sick to be taken care of by the government, and decries new taxes to pay for them.  Charter schools have their place, but we have to decide now whether we really mean no child left behind because that is what they do.

So back to the root problem, truly troubled children.  In my wife’s class she tells me that little teaching goes on because it is a discipline problem every other minute.  So just throw them out you say?  What about no child left behind?  She is trying to reach them and engage them and there is just not enough of her to go around.  These children have been abused, none have a two-parent family, most are living with relatives, a sister, a brother, in a car.  They are angry and they don’t care.  What happened to these kids is that they were born in miserable circumstances and they have never been wanted.  Now they are angry and troubled.  Yes she is having some success, but with more help she could have had more.  These kids require almost one-on-one attention to reach them and we simply don’t allocate these types of resources.

So as we go through all the pontifying about how to fix the schools, maybe we ought to think about what will fix the kids.  I read an interesting story the other day about how Florida has taken an aggressive approach to kids living in bad circumstances by intervening early.  Here in Sacramento there is a recent case where a child was found starving and they took her out of the home but left the other kids.  They are all dead now.  What it is going to take is to hold parents accountable for raising responsible children that are ready to learn, and early intervention where there is neglect and abuse.  Nobody is talking about any of that.  They all think that schools can save what we have neglected.  It doesn’t work that way.  Maybe for a few if there are enough resources….

Okay, I have been complaining about how the lowest common denominator is driving our train in this country and resisting change.  Since I am forced almost every day to listen to their babble and half baked ideas, I thought turn about is fair play. So here is my babble and half baked  out ideas about turning George Bush’s ship around:

• Outlaw torture even for the CIA.  It is simply not who we are and the ends do not justify the means.
• End rendition, close Guantanamo and live with the consequences that we have tainted the evidence so bad with our treatment that bad people are going to have to be let go.
• End the Patriot Act and restore private citizens right to privacy.
• Undo many of the regulations he has put in place that destroy our environment, health or welfare.
• Etcetra

Etcetera?  Well you get the gist.  That is the easy stuff and obvious stuff.  Here comes the hard stuff and some would say half baked.  But since this world has never tried it my way why not?:

• Join the World Court and get over the idea that we are special.  Whenever I hear objections to being judged by foreigners, I think of moving this nation from a confederation in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.  It is the same thing.
• End the “War on Drugs” and start helping to reduce consumption through education and treatment.  Attacking the supply is a waste of time.  Decriminalize non-violent drug use.  Quit wasting your time chasing marijuana growers.  It just keeps the prices up.
• I like to go to Cuba and lie on the beach so can we stop the criminally insane and counter productive policy we have had with Cuba for the last 50 years.  It’s worked well hasn’t it?
• End the abortion thing once and for all.  Nobody likes them so why don’t we spend half the time trying to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.  Oh no, we would much rather see some truly unfit mother raise some kid to be a truly unfit parent.  On and on….
• Realize that power is limited and military power is an oxymoron.  Sure we can level a nation, but then you have to tame the population and shouldn’t the Russians have taught us a lesson in Afghanistan.  Oh I see, that’s different because we are freedom-loving occupiers instead of commie occupiers.  The end result will be the same.  I think occupier is the operative word here.
• Did you ever ask yourself why we are the only large industrialized nations that does not have high speed rail?  For God’s sake, Mexico has one.  Government has a major role to play in planning our transportation future and it is not in moving around in individual steel boxes.
• Did I mention that the price of gas is way too cheap in this country?  Anything below $4/gallon and we once again fritter away a chance to move away from gas guzzles or encourage alternate energy research.  Slap that old tax on there right now and never again will we ever pay less than $4/gallon for fuel.
• This one is a shocker.  TAXES ARE GOOD if they help pay for our investments in the future.  It is time to pony up.
• On the health care front, give me a break.  Private insurance is the most inefficient way to provide health care.  Any of you geniuses out there ever done a business plan.  Well do one for health care.  Bottom line:  Lots of people paying premiums and no pay outs for sick people.  Having a no-duh moment?  Skim the healthy, deny claims, and screw the poor or sick.  It is what we have today.  Single payer, single payer, single payer.  Or we can just continue our moronic dance trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.
• Why do we pay more than all other nations combined for our military?  Time to rethink how much bang we get for our buck with all those fancy toys when we are fighting Stone Age people in the Middle East.
• Speaking of the Middle East, why do we support any country who denies women’s rights.  Pakistan comes to mind.  Muslims have a lot to answer for here.  Mormons run a close second.  Real change will come when we finally decide to walk our talk.  Respect for other cultures can never be an excuse for enslavement. All value systems are not equal.
• Can we get over the gay thing?  Can we finally stop having a homophobic attack and call it religious righteousness?   I will never lose my interest in women and even when I was two, the choice has always been obvious for me.  What the hell are you people afraid of really?  Real change will happen when nobody cares anymore.  Our children may save us on this one.  They seem to be a lot more secure in their sexuality than us old farts.
• Here is one most of you will disagree with me on:  Just because you serve in the military does not make you a hero, and hero worship of the military just enables them to suck in more kids who pay the ultimate price. Sometimes it is more honorable not to serve.  Honor is being true to your values, not conforming your values to public adulation.  Real change will come when our youth have more than one choice for upward mobility and employment that doesn’t involves killing and maiming.
• Deficit spending is bad when we are making fat white people fatter and richer, and it is good when we are building an infrastructure that helps all of us.  Real change will come when we let go of market place ideas that have failed us miserably
• Conservatives are selfish self-centered people who have used their marketplace religion to justify screwing the rest of us.  Behind every high sounding value of self-restraint and discipline hides one more justification why they should get your piece of the pie too.  The real reason they hate taxes is because they got theirs and they feel no empathy to help their fellow man and they justify that by saying everyone else is just lazy.  Real change will come when we throw their whole ideology into the trash heap.

But if you really want to know what I think would make the biggest change in our world think about this:  There are some truly sorry ass people in this world.  But once they were just little kids, but they had sorry ass parents.  If I have learned anything in this life of mine, it is parents who hold the key to their children’s future.  And so many of them should never have been allowed to procreate.  The next time you see some human being performing some despicable act, think about who they were at two and wonder what happened.    Parenting is the most important thing we do in life and we rarely hold parents accountable.  We love to blame teachers, but we never hold parents accountable.  Where the rubber meets the road….

Just some random babbling before I go back to trying to be rational.

Most Americans will tell you we were on the wrong path and we need to change.  But when it comes to actually embracing change, well it will take a depression.  As I write this, Georgia is putting a man back in the Senate who is a throwback to the conservative philosophy that has got us in the horrible shape this country is in.  People say they want change, but when they are confronted with actually changing, they just can’t seem to help themselves.  There are three things that tell me we have a long way to go to turn this ship around.

It is important that the press embrace change because they are the ones who educate us about possibilities.  But what I have seen as President-Elect Obama is appointing people who are known for their pragmatism and not their ideology, is our press wanting to evaluate those picks on their ideology, or said another way, in terms of the old politics of the election instead of the politics of what is possible.  Will Hillary be able to take orders from Barrack?  Not what are the challenges that face this new Secretary of State and how can we take advantage of her talents.

Probably the biggest piece of evidence for this lack change of focus in the media is that we are not hearing from subject experts on the economy or an economic stimulus program, an energy program, foreign relations, or possibilities in healthcare.  When the Detroit Executives came to Washington looking for a bailout, it was easy to point out their failures and arrogance, but when did you hear any discussions of what they might do to save their business and help America?

What you hear are the same political pundits discussing the politics of the issues and the appointments.  The first change we need to embrace is to shift our focus from campaign type coverage to evaluating what will move us forward.  No more interviews with political hacks, but interviews with subject matter experts to layout the options and debate the consequences.  First we have to come to a consensus on what will work, then we can attack the politics to get it instituted.  Said another way, we have to learn to start thinking about what is possible, not about the soup opera to get it done.  There are two exceptions, Bill Moyers’ Journal and Fareed Zakaria’s GPS.  But the rest of it is a vast wasteland of yesterday’s politics and tomorrow’s soap operas.

But my next example is closer to home.    The county I live in is redder than a red delicious apple, but there was hope.  Out going and soon to be disgraced (many think he might be indicted in the Abramoff scandal) Congressman John Dolittle, staunch conservative Mormon, left an opening for people who were tired of the conservative mantra and getting nowhere.  But alas, the fools up here elected Tom McClintock, by a very slim margin.  Some are very slow learners.  McClintock claimed to have halted the “liberal wave”.  Now McClintock is moving up from the State legislature where he was a vociferous critic of big government, passed few pieces of legislation in his 22 years living off the government dole, and voted against every state budget.  California is in the red and getting close to imploding and the fools in this county elected a buffoon who has had a major hand in bankrupting their state.  But they expect him to do big things in Washington. More of the same.  Change is hard isn’t it?

Speaking of State government, my last example is California itself.  The state needs to close about a $12 billion dollar gap for next year that could grow to $17 billion in 2010.  The legislature is deadlocked because the morons in the Republican Party have stuck to no new taxes.  When the Governor, a Republican, and the Democrats offered a compromise that included large spending cuts and new taxes, the “no new taxes” cult voted it down.  We have a stupid law in California that 1/3 of the legislature can block any budget.

But these guys are so out of touch they actually believe their own B.S.  They claim we can cut out waste and solve the whole problem.  Well one of my favorite local columnists, Peter Schrag for the Sacramento Bee, put it in focus.  He points out that it is simple to balance the budget without tax increases.  “Stop funding the University of California and the California State University, and shut down the prisons until June, Not a few of them but all of the them.  Alternatively, you could shut down the public schools sometime in March, or you could cut all the state’s health and human services programs by about two-thirds, assuming the feds would let you.”

I am sorry, but I can’t be kind.  These people and those who continue to believe we can cut our way out of this mess are morons.  They want change but they don’t want to pay for it.  They still want their free ride and they won’t sacrifice anything.  It will take a real depression to make them face reality.  If they get their way and continue to block things, they are going to get that Depression with a capital “D”.  Then they will wonder what happen and then try to blame it on the Democrats.  Nothing ever changes.

President Moron can’t just go quietly.  He must once again stir up a hornet’s nest in the guise of “morals”.  His band of numbnuts are issuing regulations called “right of conscience” rules that allows doctors do opt out of procedures they morally object to.  Sounds reasonable, but doctors have always been able to opt out of performing abortions legally for the last 30 years.  What this is really aimed at is artificial insemination, the morning after pill, and birth control.

Once again the Bush Administration is politicizing woman’s health and trying to let religion control our country.  Oh, but you say, what can the harm be with letting people who have moral objections to birth control, morning after pill, or the miracle of artificial insemination opt out?  The answer is probably none if you live in New York City or San Francisco where we have a diverse population that tolerates dissenting points of view.  But in small communities where one religion prevails, what happens is that perfectly legal and acceptable medical procedures are no longer available.  Think that doesn’t happen?  Consider:

“In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused a prescription of emergency contraception.  In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple, and in Nebraska, a 19-year-old woman with a life –threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital.” (Los Angeles Times)

Note that most of our scientific agencies are against this regulation including the American Medical Association, and the American Hospital Association.  Those pushing it are religious organizations like the Christian Medical Association and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.  Note what they are doing.  They are asserting their rights through regulation to usurp your rights.  The real issue here is that if you accept federal money, you cannot deny accepted and legal medical procedures.  These people are putting your health and well being at risk in order to force you to conform to their religious/moral beliefs.  It is simply not acceptable in this country.  If Walmart, as an organization, can say we won’t sell birth control and that is your only access, you are being terrorized by Walmart.  It will happen all across the country if this is allowed to stand.

I do, however, have a compromise.  I would agree that they can deny these services based upon their moral convictions if and only if they pay consequences.  If the patient has an unwanted child, you have to raise it.  If the person suffers medical complications because you denied them medical treatment, you pay damages.  If they die, you go to jail.  Now that would be an even bargain.  But the religious never want to be responsible for their beliefs, they want you to be responsible for them.