Banking and Money

The Hobo Philosopher

Banking and Money

By Richard E. Noble

Despite comments to the contrary by John Kenneth Galbraith in his book,” Money: Whence it Came and Where it Went,” I have found Money And Banking very perplexing. Mr. Gaibraith said that money was very simple and that anyone could understand it. I don’t think so. Not only that, I have come to the conclusion that the whole Banking thing was a scam, almost, from the beginning. Let me explain my confusion.
In the beginning, there came about the first Bank. This first bank was basically a vault. People who had accumulated large amounts of gold, and silver got tired of trying to hide it under the floor boards of their cabins, or in a secret place behind the fireplace. So, when they heard that some guy had opened up a Bank where they could put their gold and silver and have it guarded and protected, they were very pleased.

These wealthy people with surplus gold and silver took their money down to this Bank and “deposited” it. The Bank owner gave these people a receipt. This receipt was a certificate of deposit. It affirmed that “So and So” had “X” amount of gold or silver stored in this Bank. The depositors payed the back for providing this service. Up until this point everything seems to be on the up and up.

The people who had the receipts began to trade these receipts as if they were actually gold or silver. This became accepted as legal and legitimate by most people. To have this certificate of deposit in your possession was as good as having the actual gold or silver. Up to this point I think everything is still legitimate. This next evolution is where things begin to go haywire.

The man who owns the Bank has a bright idea. He thinks that it is a shame to have all this gold and silver sitting in his vault when there are so many good, trustworthy people out there in the world who could put it to good use – and would be willing to pay for that opportunity. He talks with his certificate of deposit holders and suggests to them that if they would be willing to loan out their accumulated assets, instead of paying a service charge for the privilege of having their gold and silver protected in his vault, they could actually receive a dividend.

This is, in my opinion, where everything goes coo-coo. Without getting into the obvious problems involved in the recording of assets and debits and who has what, and just sticking to the basic principles involved, I see a big problem here.

The problem stated simply is this: Mr. Jones has deposited, $1,000 in gold. He has a certificate to prove it. Mr. Smith has borrowed Mr. Jones’ $1,000 and he has a loan contract to prove it. But the Bank now has nothing in its vault but a promise. Now this all would have been okay if Mr. Jones understood that until his loan was paid back by Mr. Smith, he didn’t have access to his $1,000 anymore. But as we all know, this did not turn out to be the eventual case.

So, as time rolled on and people deposited money and others borrowed that money, the Bank recorded assets into the millions, and all the while it could really not have a cent or an once of gold in its vault. The Bank could have nothing but a ledger full of promises and no gold at all. When you think about all of this it begins to sound like that old Abbot and Costello routine – quick here’s two tens, gimme a five.
So, was all of this legal?

Well, legal or not legal, most people didn’t really understand what was going on. And because of this lack of understanding, we had Jimmy Stewart standing on the top of the counter at his local bank trying to explain to the bank customers that there was nothing wrong in the fact that the bank had no money to give to its depositors.
In the movie everyone understood what Jimmy was saying, but in real America nobody got it. They called this phenomena “The Bank Run.”

The Bankers tried everything that their cleaver little imaginations could come up with, but nothing seemed to work – the people still didn’t get it – and one might ask: What was there to get?

Banks got together and formed coalitions. They each kept a percentage of their deposits in reserve and if one of their coalition experienced a run – they ran to its rescue with bags of money in temporary loans. This worked for awhile for small runs, but when large numbers of people began to panic about the whereabouts of their life’s savings, whole coalitions were “bank-rupted.”

So, at this point, we have a good many problems with Banks. This problem could have been solved by not allowing banks to loan out other people’s money; or by turning a bank into some sort of investment fund – like the stock market – where the risks were explained to the depositors and they were given the choice to participate or not participate. I would have to say that what the banks were doing if not illegal, it was certainly morally suspect. They were promoting the unsubstantiated notion that they had people’s money when, in truth, they did not. This is similar to the well known Ponzi scam today. There was another guy by the name of Say – but he was not as obvious as Ponzi.

Ponzi’s idea was to get people to invest in him today on the promise of a large return on their investment tomorrow. The fact is that he had no investment program whatsoever and he simply manipulated the large sums of money coming in with staggered payments going out. As long as more money was coming in than was going out, Ponzi was rich and his investors were happy. The whole thing became a matter of bookkeeping.

Now you might say that the bank is not a Ponzi scam because it has legitimate investments. This is true, but if those legitimate investments prove to be unreliable then you have the same situation as with Ponzi, nevertheless. Then we have borderline elaborations on Ponzi – gold mines out west, swamp land in Florida, the Panama Canal fiasco, and last year’s failed corn crop, the Tulip Bubble.

Banks have gone out of business, over the years, because they were outright Ponzi scams with no investments at all; because they made false claims about their investments; because they made legitimate investments that failed. But the problem that bothered bankers was not the morality of their initial idea but what to do about banks that made good investments but were driven out of business by a sudden lack of confidence on the part of their depositors – the bank run. How they could have their cake and eat it too. Clearly a bank could not loan out its money to entrepreneurs and still have it on hand to return to its depositors on demand.
Now, it is at this point that the system has become an impossibility. It clearly and simply does not work, and there is no solution. You can not loan out the money and still have that money readily on demand for the depositors. This is impossible. One thing can not be in two places at the same time.

But, this slight-of-hand idea was so advantageous to society because it provided money for investment, expansion and growth, that those involved in profiting from this idea wanted to devise an acceptable method for promoting what was clearly an impossibility. And thus has evolved today what we call the central banking system – and here in the U.S. – “The Federal Reserve.”

So far this system has served to perpetuate an impossible idea. For example, if when Mr. Ponzi had run into his short fall – the point at which his payments going out were greater than his payments coming in – J. P. Morgan or the Rothchilds saw in his scam enormous long term potential and therefore decided to loan him money to carry him over his temporary cash flow problem, the Ponzi scam may have continued indefinitely. But, it would have finally collapsed when Ponzi had finally reached the saturation point. That point being when there was just not enough money available in the world to make the interest payments on all of his promises. In effect Ponzi’s system was a “Designed to Fail” system.

The Central Banking System is similar but much more sophisticated and self-perpetuating. The Central Banking System does not create money from nothing as many people suggest. If it did then this system would self-destruct when the supply of money exceeded the world’s ability to absorb the funding. Would this ever take place considering expanding populations and expanding economic growth throughout the world, and product diversification and artificial demand creation for “wants” in addition to needs? Maybe not ... especially with sensible management.

Inflation is simply the release valve on this money generating steam boiler. If the supply of money comes onto the world faster than the population and the various demand growth factors – you will have inflation. If inflation is allowed to grow too fast or without proper regulation then the bubble of public confidence could burst and economic collapse would be the result.

But this is not the situation which exists with the Central Banking System concept. This present system is based on debt creation. Governments borrow via a system of notes and bonds which are handled for a fee by their Central Banking systems. The central banks collect the vigorish. They handle the sales for the government for a fee – vigorish. [The vigorish is not the problem when we talk of the National Debt. The problem with the National Debt is the interest being collected by the Bond purchaser. The Federal Reserve Bank is just the salesman for the government bonds. It charges and small “commission” which is negligible.]

As I see it this system has more potential points of destruction than does the politically unappealing Creating-Money-from-Nothing System. This system can also destruct from the same causes stated in the non-debt creating system mentioned above. But in addition to this possibility this debt system can also self-destruct from other factors.

It can also self-destruct when and if the interest payment on the created debt obligations becomes greater than the government’s money supply sources. This would be much the same as if your basic payment on your credit card exceeded your income.

Will that ever happen? I don’t know. The inflation safety valve would compensate or, as above, explode due to lack of public confidence. And, of course, there is that same notion of infinite world economic expansion as mentioned above. And then, of course, the government can simply keep creating more and more debt even to pay impossible debt.

How long could such a process go on?

I don’t know. But paying debt with added debt can only go on for so long, before something negative would happen.

The vigorish could also become a problem. In other words the Central Banking fee could become so bloated as to create a debt problem in itself. In other words, the cost of the loan transaction could eventually outweigh any gain from creating the debt in the first place. Right now that fee is 7% as I understand it. If due to inflation that cost were to escalate to 20% or 30% the system would be in big trouble. But by that time the monetary system would probably have already collapsed due to inflation. So maybe that is a specious argument.

An added problem with the Central Banking System is that it has been partnered by the various national governments of the countries who have such systems – which may be every country in the world as far as I know. So instead of the banking system backing itself up via a conglomerate of banking institutions and becoming the bank of last resort for all banks – as is the claim – the government becomes the bank of last resort. The problem here is that in such a system if the bankers decide that they are tired of making money “the old fashioned” way and they would rather do it the easy way. They can simply steal their depositor’s funds, and loan them out by fraudulent and deceptive transactions and then petition the treasury to fund them out of their financial difficulties.

To put this simply, if an unscrupulous banker or group of bankers can figure out a method of divesting their banks of its capital yet still create what appears to be a legitimate paper trail of investments, they can double their personal wealth rather cleverly, simply by ripping-off their Federal or National Government.

The same thing can be done on an international basis via the IMF and the World Banking System. And I am of the opinion that this type of thing has already been done several times over – not only in the historical past, but in the recent past. And it can work both ways in a world system. Not only is it possible for the world banking system to bankrupt individual nations if it so chooses; it is equally possible that cleaver national bankers can swindle the world system. [I think that this technique was used in the U.S. S&L failure and the Commercial bank failure; and in the recent stock market crash; and most recently in the real estate boom and bubble. It is my personal opinion that this is the current method for bankrupting the U.S. Treasury. It began seriously under Reagan and has been escalating under every succeeding Republican administration.

And what is the answer to all of this?

I don’t know.

Brother Kenneth Robert

Lawrence – My Hometown

Brother Kenneth Robert

By Richard E. Noble

In this life we are constantly making judgments about one another. Does he or doesn’t he? Will she or won’t she?
We are forever choosing whether to make a friend of someone or let them pass by.
Being raised in Lawrence brought these day to day decisions to a higher level. Growing up in Lawrence, I asked questions like: Is this person “safe” to know? If we were out drinking together and I go to the bathroom, will this person steal any money that I have left on the bar? Is this person “tough” or is he actually violent and physically dangerous? Insanity being a given in Lawrence, is this person simply ha-ha, hee-hee crazy or is he “criminally” insane? Would he eat a live pigeon while sitting on a park bench at the Common? If I disagree with this person will he become violent and try to kill me or throw me out a second or third floor window? Does this person have a “trigger mechanism”? For example if I say the word “mother” or “sex” or “gawumpki” does saliva begin to dribble from a lower lip or does mucus start seeping from this person’s nose. If I date this Lawrence girl and then decide I’m not interested, will she bring her father’s police revolver to Mass on Sunday and clean it in a pew where I must watch?
Lawrence was different. After I left Lawrence it took a year or two for me to realize that most other males will not kill you just because your back is turned. When out to eat or on the town, it isn’t absolutely necessary to sit with your back to a wall. Which brings me to the story of Brother Kenneth Robert.
Brother Kenneth Robert was sick. This Marist Brother was the overseer of my freshman or sophomore year homeroom. He appeared basically normal but he had a “thing” about food.
Being my homeroom teacher, he also supervised “study” period. Study period came before lunch period. Many children in my homeroom class were hungry by the time study period rolled around and could not wait for lunch period to begin eating their lunch. If Brother Kenneth witnessed anyone nibbling a baloney sandwich, or gobbling a slab of chocolate cake during study period, he went bonkers.
Who would have known? Most other brothers could care less but Brother Kenneth was another story.
I did my homework during study period. I was busy scribbling out my geometry when I witnessed Brother Kenneth having his first “episode.”
I looked up and there he was steaming down the row of desks next to mine. He stopped at the kid sitting aside from me. “Are you eating?” he demanded.
“No Brother. I’m not,” blubbered Nicolas Lippoli. Nicolas’ mouth was full and even saying these few words spattered particles of chocolate cake all over the front of Brother Kenneth’s tunic. Brother Kenneth immediately shifted into “nutty” and began beating poor Nicolas. This first seizure culminated with Brother Kenneth demanding that Nicolas spit the remainder of his cake out of his mouth. Nicolas puked up his cake into the napkin his mother had wrapped it in. He then followed Brother Kenneth’s mandate and deposited his semi-digested cake into a nearby trash can.
Well, that was a little strange, but not completely insane. As the year progressed Brother Kenneth evolved from a basic neurotic with violent tendencies to a definite psychotic with psychopathic seizures and blackouts. When he attacked John Peligrosi for eating his tuna on pumpernickel during study period, I thought he was going to kill the poor kid. He slapped him; he punched him; he kneed him. He knocked his desk over and then punched and kicked him while the kid was trying to squirm away along the classroom floor.
Now other than watching mom and dad at home, I had never seen people act this way in a public setting. This brother was auditioning for One Flew Over the Coo-Coo’s Nest.
When John Peligrosi came to school that next day, he had a shiner and several band aides here and there. I remember thinking at that time about the spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child notion. Certainly one should not be eating a pumpernickel on rye during study period but should a grown adult be punching, kicking and scratching a medium sized boy for such an offence?
Finding such questions beyond my ethical evaluations at that stage, I decided to move on.
Christmas break was on the way and to my shock and disbelief there was John Peligrosi at my desk with an envelope. “Hey, we’re all chipping in a quarter to buy Brother Kenneth a Christmas present. Do you want to chip in?”
I must admit, I found John’s attitude surprising. “You’re collecting quarters to buy Brother Kenneth a Christmas present?” I asked dubiously.
“Well,” he smirked. “It’s going to be a joke. We’re getting him a wallet.”
“A wallet?”
“Yeah. Brothers take a vow of poverty, you know. They can’t have any money. We’re getting him a wallet to break his chops.”
“In that case count me in. Here you go.” I gave him my quarter.
The day before our Christmas vacation, Peligrosi slipped up to Brother Kenneth’s desk before study period began. He dropped a long thin package onto the desk. The package was all decked out in Christmas paper with Santa stickers and a bright red ribbon and bow. The whole class sat clandestinely, smirking but trying to act normal.
Brother Kenneth came into the room sporting his usual grumpy, warden’s face. He stepped up onto the platform where his desk was located. Immediately he spotted the gift. There was an envelope with a card attached. He reached hesitantly for the card. He removed the card from the envelope and read it. He stood frozen, captured by the sentiment. When he looked up at the class tears were streaming down his cheeks. He started bawling like a baby. He turned his back to the class and fumbled inside his tunic searching for a hanky. He blew his nose and wiped his eyes. He took a few minutes to compose himself then walked around to the front of his desk. He sat on the edge of the desk. The room was quiet. We were all shocked. Everyone was rolling their eyes and shrugging their shoulders in disbelief.
“You know,” said Brother Kenneth turning the package over in his hands. “All this time I thought that you guys didn’t even like me.” Everybody laughed and looked cross-eyed at one another. “No really,” Brother Kenneth continued. “Some of the other brothers told me that they had received gifts from their students but I never thought in my wildest dreams that you guys would buy me something.” He choked up and started crying again. “I don’t know what to say,” he bawled.
After an awkward silence, Peligrosi yelled, “Open up your present, Brother.” And then Peligrosi snickered. The rest of us sat there dismayed and guilty. Brother Kenneth would open it up; see that it was a wallet and then realize that the whole thing was a joke. What would he do then?
He fumbled like a two year old ripping off the bow and the ribbon and then the Santa Christmas paper. When he saw that it was a wallet, he beamed. “Oh my gosh, what a beautiful wallet! I know that you guys probably don’t realize this but as a Marist Brother we all take a vow of poverty, so I don’t have any money to put into this wallet. But I have family pictures of my brothers and sisters and my mom and dad that I can put in here. You guys have made the best Christmas I have ever had. This is the first year that I won’t be seeing my family at Christams time and you’re my first homeroom class ever. My dad passed away last year and my brothers and sisters are all grown and off on their own. But now – thanks to you guys – I can have everybody right here in my very own wallet. I’ll never forget you guys and this kindness.” He put his head down and rushed out of the classroom overcome and weeping.
We were all stunned. We sat there staring up at the desk where Brother Kenneth had been standing. Then, just as if someone had given a cue or pulled a string, we all turned and stared at Peligrosi. He stared back roaming from one stern face to the next. He then threw his arms up in the air. “How the hell would I know?” he grumbled apologetically. “I didn’t even think the big pr–k had a mother and father.”

Richard E. Noble was raised in Lawrence, Ma. and is now a freelance writer. He has published 7 books. Two of them have Lawrence as their setting, A Summer with Charlie and Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother. A Little Something is a book of poetry with portions inspired by life in Lawrence. Hobo-ing America, is an unusual workingman’s tour of the U.S.A. The Eastpointer is selected pieces from his award winning column about life in a sleepy fishing village in the Florida Panhandle.

The Hobo Philosopher

On Economics

Obama and the Federal Reserve

President Obama has both the Right and the Left in a state of confusion over his economic solutions. Who is correct, the Right, the Left, or president Obama?
The extreme Right basically is advocating what they have always advocated – inaction. Their historical answer in times of economic stress has always been Prayer, Poverty and Providence. Let the banks fail, let Detroit fail, let people lose their homes, let unemployment soar, let charities and soup kitchens take care of the poor and unemployed, let God’s invisible hand inspire and guide the system – Laissez-faire. Despite the general acceptance on the Right that this is a credible answer, history says otherwise and morality and ethics will challenge any movement in that direction.

This conservative notion is a good idea if the goal is to vanquish government and foment a revolution. As the critics of this policy state, “The less we do the worse we will all fair.”

Both the Left and the Right bring up the 1929 Great Depression and the role of the Federal Reserve. Both sides somehow credit the Federal Reserve with wrong doing.
The Right claims that it was the Federal Reserve that caused the 1929 Depression. This is false.

We can argue until the cows come home about what caused the 1929 Depression but the basic arguments are not so complicated.

Some claim that excessive negative competition and overproduction in the marketplace, lead to a negative spiral and thus to the downfall of the general economy. This amounts to a general lack of any controls or regulation on business, labor and production and substantiates the inadequacy of the Lessez-faire policy.
Others claim that the super wealthy fearing a worker revolution pulled their money from industry and investment in an attempt to stifle worker organization and cooperation. This was due to a fear of the spread of the communist and socialist philosophy on the part of the wealthy capitalists. This also negates the Lessez-Faire notion.

Another answer is that this is just the way the capitalist economic system works or that the whole thing was just an accident and couldn’t be helped. This is consistent with the Lessez-faire notion but not consistent with reason, logic history or common sense.

The stock market collapse, most agree, was due to over speculation. A speculative bubble was created. Many contend that this was done by accident in 1929. But other more radical voices of that era claim that the market crashed due to greed and chicanery on the part of the “best, brightest and wealthiest.” When the bubble burst and the smart money pulled out and ran, everything collapsed.

In evaluating today’s stock market crash the radical Right is once again claiming “accident” or at least mass complicity. Others contend that just as in 1929 it was the greed and selfishness of the best, brightest and wealthiest.
The Right goes on to claim that the government is spending too much. This has also been proved wrong by the historical facts and even by their own past evaluations of history.

Both the Right and the Left blame the Federal Reserve in the 1929 fiasco, but what did the Federal Reserve do to warrant this criticism?
Basically it didn’t do anything. It did what the Right is recommending today. Today’s Right blames the Fed for their inaction in 1929 but yet recommends that they do the same today.

Today’s Left agrees that the Fed didn’t do enough in 1929 and that is what they fear is going to happen again today.

The Right says that all of FDR’s social recovery spending was unsuccessful and that it was World War II that cured the Depression.

Well, what happened in World War II that was so influential in curing the Depression?
It was massive government spending for the war effort that made the difference - spending of up to 120 percent of the GDP. So then if there were no World War II what should have been done in 1929?

Obviously FDR should have increased Government social spending instead of cutting spending as was demanded by the Right in 1938 and as is being demanded by the Right in 2009.

After the war Truman, fearing an inevitable post war economic collapse, initiated a continuation of massive war time spending, as preparation for the impending and inevitable war with Russia (cold war) and massive government spending on the Marshall Plan (redistribution of American wealth).

The Korean Conflict then justified more military spending and it has gone on and on – but it is all “government spending.” It could have been medical and health care spending, education spending, infrastructure spending, disease research spending or aid to the impoverished spending.

What is Obama doing? He is recommending massive government spending. This is what was done by FDR in financing World War II. This is what both, the Right and the Left, Galbraith and Milton Friedman, economists past and present and the bulk of historians have analyzed as what should have been done and what was eventually done in the depression years (spending on the war). Only the extreme, radical Right claim that a massive depression is better than government intervention. No Republicans have yet to recommend World War III as a possible solution – but we’ll have to wait and see.

Today many of our Republicans are pushing for depression and a federal government collapse. They are offering the do nothing Rightwing radical response. They would rather have no government than what they term as a socialist government.
By Rightwing standards it is “socialist” if the government money goes to the American people or for social spending but if the government money goes to subsidize or support corporations, big business, banks or war and the pentagon it is “capitalism.” The only big businesses they don’t want to support are those that have labor unions. Money spent to help labor is the equivalent of “social spending” and is therefore socialistic.

They are basically anarchists. But rather than have rule by the aggregate masses, they advocate rule by the aggregate capitalists. In the past it was demanded by rightwing conservatives that anarchists be deported or put in prison.
The less than radical Right wants the government to spend but they want it to spend less and via convoluted methods like tax cuts for the wealthy or even for the middle class, and investments overseas. These policies are what brought us to this present sad state of affairs.

Spending less is not the answer. The answer is creating jobs and employment. Hitler brought Germany out of the Great Depression with no advanced knowledge of economics or the stock market. He simply believed in putting people back to work – 100% employment. He was successful. Once World War II arrived, the U.S. then achieved 100% employment via massive government war spending and our depression ended also.
The answer is spending and creating jobs – any kind of jobs. As far as government jobs versus private sector jobs, it doesn’t matter. One collects taxes off the backs of the masses and the other collects profits off the back of the masses. This is a political argument not an economic argument. It is a political preference as to who saps up the excess. From the “what stimulates the economy” point of view, it is inconsequential. It doesn’t matter - either public sector or private sector jobs will do the trick. The bulk of jobs that saved us from the Great Depression via World War II were public sector jobs – soldiers and military production, procurement, research and development. All the money was coming from the government. Some of it was filtered through private enterprise, but for the most part it was federal taxpayer’s money. And both sectors were loaded with graft, theft, and corruption but not the majority. This is always the case, but it too is inconsequential. The country as a whole would be better off without this human corruptive reality and a more positive and prosperous society would result but it isn’t necessary.

The Right wants anarchism and the Left wants Socialism. Obama is advocating a middle of the road path.

The Left wants a more powerful Federal Reserve. Some want the Federal Reserve to move into hedge funds, insurance companies and credit cards as well as banking. Obama policy is doing this but via a cooperation of responsibility of government and government agencies. Obama is enabling the Federal Reserve but holding back the power for the government and the law makers. This is safer and smarter and much more in tune with American tradition and popular opinion.

The Left wants a take over of banking and financial institutions. Obama is asking for cooperation and voluntary compliance along with new stricter rules and regulations. This is the safe road once again. If it doesn’t work the harsh road of complete takeover is still available.

The left and much of the public want to see some arrests. The administration’s answer to this has been that they must put out the fire before they can go after the arsons. This sounds reasonable unless the arsons continue to light more fires.
Again Obama is taking the middle of the road approach. If this whole problem on the part of banking and finance was just a matter of lax rules or sanctioned misbehavior then it can be corrected by new rules and sanctioned good behavior. If this has been a criminal conspiracy then the fire will continue and some heads will have to roll – jail and no bail for the bad guys and total government control, at least for a limited time.

If Obama goes to the Left he will totally alienate the Right and possibly some of the middle. If he goes to the Right, he will undermine his base and possibly lose the majority. If he continues down the middle, progress may be slower but he will maintain the majority, keep both sides hopeful, though dubious, give the guilty a chance to redeem themselves, and possibly turn the ship in an acceptable direction. All Obama has to do is show a change in direction to be considered successful. He doesn’t have to cure or revamp the entire system.

What’s Wrong with Minimum Wages?

Why Don’t We Just Leave the Well-off Alone?

By Richard E. Noble

I have worked for minimum wage or below for the majority of my employment career - which started when I was about ten years old. I have always known that it is because of me that the world, at large, and the U.S. in particular, has been going to hell in a handbag. My bosses have explained this to me over and over.
You see, it is because of my demanding this exorbitant minimum wage that we have inflation, constantly escalating prices, unemployment, teenagers idling on street corners and a vanishing industrial and manufacturing base.
Strangely enough, people who make exorbitant paychecks and profits as owners of businesses and CEOs and CFOs, and Doctors, Lawyers, Dentists, Stock brokers, people receiving dividends from their stock portfolios and Indian chiefs who own gambling casinos in Miami have just the opposite effect on the economy. Their pay increases do not cause inflation or increase prices; instead their extra money acts as a stimulus to the economy, promotes investment at home and abroad, creates jobs everywhere and, in general, makes the world a better place for everybody to live.
It goes like this: if you give Michael Jordan or some such wealthy person another billion dollars a week, as opposed to giving another dollar a week to each employee at the Nike factory in Slumbovia, or Bumslavia, or Weallstarvingistan - nothing negative, economically, occurs. Prices do not go up because Michael Jordan or another among the minority of the rich has more money. They already have everything they ever wanted. They don’t need to buy anything. How many Hummers, BMWs, yachts, and diamond rings can one person have? Besides if the price of a quarter mile long yacht goes from 147 million to 150 million who would notice. This increase wouldn’t even make it into the pages of Money Magazine.
You can give all the money you want to rich people and nothing in the economic world will change. This is an economic fact that was proven in the laboratory of real life economic science in 1929 by that great American monetary savant, Herbert Hoover. And in recent times this miracle was duplicated by G.W. Bush – another economic genius.
On the other hand, an extra dollar in the pockets of a bunch of poor people automatically throws any economy into a tailspin. Right off, the price of M-D 20-20 skyrockets along with bread, peanut butter, and Chevrolet automobiles. This hits the commodity and retail markets immediately. The price of grain and legumes all over the world goes nuts. Farmers instantly begin double cropping, planting in-between the rows, and doubling up on fertilizers and polluting pesticides; government subsidies go through the roof, while profits to the farmers go down and the price of a tomato at the IGA in Wisconsin goes to a buck-fifty apiece. General Motors has to increase production, but the cost of labor in the U.S. is bankrupting them; so their new plant in China gets the contract while the DuPont family sells off all of their shares in Aunt Jemima Pancakes. It’s chaos.
If I, and those of my ilk, were willing to work for half or one third of minimum wage, my boss then could hire two or three more morons like me and, of course, the unemployment problem would vanish. This would also, more than likely, solve the illegal immigrant problem besides.
You see, if I were willing to pick tomatoes and sleep in an abandon building or old slave cottage or a farmer’s barn or root cellar while defecating in the woods or orchards or behind the hedges of better-off people in the San Bernardino mountains like illegal immigrants do, then the farmers would not have to encourage Coyotes to smuggle poor Mexicans and Central Americans across the Rio Grande and into Miami, Seattle, New York, New Jersey and Kalamazoo Michigan. Nor would they have to continue to falsify their labor and Social Security reports.
But because I, and others like me, are unwilling to do this, these poor farmers and packing house owners, and cottage-garment industry sweat-shop owners, and restaurant and construction company owners and landscapers, and concrete company and gas station owners, and grocery stores, and chicken and beef processing houses, and home cleaning and domestic services, and large chain department stores etc., all have to do all of these illegal, immoral things.
We minimum wage earners are like the pornographic video and bookstores in Holyoake, Missouri – we are the evil temptresses that lure the Jimmy Swaggarts and Tammy Faye Bakers into the snake pit of moral depravity; we are the Chunky Cheeses to the video game addict; we are the irresistible impulse luring the unsuspecting all over the world – we are the ones who are ruining the economic world. It is us, with our benign satisfaction with mediocrity, or unwillingness to achieve, and our ignorant and obstinate choice to remain unsuccessful.
Why is it that we continually choose to work at JR stores, and wash dishes in greasy-spoon type restaurants who provide no health insurance? Why do we continually take up residence in crime ridden ghettoes? Why the heck don’t we just move; why don’t we make application to better universities; why do we accept advice and principles from parents who are even dumber than we are?
All of our kind hearted, generous employers are, of course, very good people; they are not criminals. They are as responsible and as civic minded as any banker, for god’s sake – it’s us; it’s me. And, you know, I don’t know what is wrong with me. I don’t know why I act like this. I have tried to get help for this problem but I have been unable to find any psychiatrists who are willing to work for minimum wage. They feel that if they work for any less than one hundred dollars a minute, research in mental health will be abandoned and more nutty folks, like myself, will be put out onto the sidewalks and alleyways of the American inner cities. This, of course, will increase the perv quotient, promote crime, juvenile delinquency and the threat of terrorism everywhere.
It was because of people like me, way back when, demanding their pays to be raised to a minimum that forced the textile mills to leave New England. It was the same type of ugly Americans in the Midwest and eventually in the South that forced these poor, patriotic hard working mill owners to go to South America, India and Asia where now, unfortunately, they are forced to deal with the same type ungrateful breed over there. We minimum wage earners keep breeding like flies – there seems to be no end to our kind.
What is the matter with us minimum wage workers? When will we ever learn?
If we continually ask for more money, this just makes the prices of things rise; and after the prices go up, we still don’t have any more money than we used to have. So what is the sense to it? What will it take for us to learn that we must figure out how to live on whatever it is that the boss is willing to pay us?
We certainly can’t ask the bosses to take less money. Why just look around, they are barely getting by on what they have now. And besides, there are so few of them and so many of us. I mean, if we took all the money from the 10% who own and control everything – all the rich people in the world – and divided it up among all the poor in the world, the price of peanut butter and jelly in the U.S. would be a thousand dollars a jar. M-D 20-20 would only be served at fine restaurants. Golf courses would disappear and America would become one huge bowling alley. Yes, every other cardboard house that the poor have built in the garbage dumps of the world might get a new tin roof – big deal.
Poor people just don’t seem to understand, if God wanted poor people to be better off, He wouldn’t have created Conservatives.

A Short History - Bill Bryson

A Short History of Nearly Everything

By Bill Bryson

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

Unfortunately this sort of thing happens to me every now and then but not very often. The author of this work starts off with a premise that I can not accept and consequently I have no desire to continue reading the book. Even though the author apologizes for his lack of expertise in science and admits to be making the attempt to present science in a humorous and entertaining fashion, the error to me is so serious that I really don’t want to sift through any more of the author’s convoluted notions.
I didn’t get very far along either. I only managed to finish chapter one. On page two of the introduction the author states: “There needn’t actually be a universe at all. For the longest time there wasn’t. There were no atoms and no universe for them to float about in. There was nothing – nothing at all anywhere.”
This is a grossly unscientific statement. In fact, I would call it a theological statement. It is primarily a Christian theological statement. If the author had qualified this statement with a “there are those who believe” or something to the like, I might have gone along. But the author persists in this very unscientific notion.
I am sorry but I don’t believe in “nothing.” I consider nothing to be impossible. If there was ever a time that there was nothing, there would still be nothing today. The fact that there is something today establishes my point.
This is a philosophical argument that goes back to the days of Lucretius who also believed in the impossibility of nothing.
On page 4 the author continues: “This is a book about how it happened – in particular how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something.” Once again I must disagree. We didn’t go from being nothing to be being something … we went from being something to being something else possibly but no scientist can trace back the universe by any scientific method and return us to a time when there was “nothing.” It is impossible. It is religion to state such a phenomenon or state of impossibly … not science.
On page 10 the author continues: “…outside the singularity there is no where. When the universe begins to expand, it won’t be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. The only space that exists is the space that it creates as it goes … The singularity has no “around” around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be. We can’t even ask how long it has been there – whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there forever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn’t exist. There is no past for it to emerge from.
“And so from nothing our universe begins.”
Really? What happened to the “singularity”? Was it not something? And to say that time does not exist is to say that there were “events” that were not preceded or followed by other events. This is theological “speak” not science talk.
Now we have the author trying to establish “nothing” from something. This is total gobbledygook.
And he goes on: “…that introduced a measure of instability into the nothingness that was. It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can.”
The “fact” that there was once nothing? What fact? That the author has said so, makes it a fact? I don’t think so. The fact that there is now a universe is proof that there has always been something and that there has never been “nothing” not the reverse.
This is religion not science. If I want to read religion, I’ll order a Bible. I don’t need Bill Bryson teaching me the fundamentals of Christian Theology under the guise of presenting science ... or trying to be funny.
Sorry Bill but I’m not into wasting my time. I figure if you can make such a glaring affront to scientific inquiry in the first few pages how far into dumbville will I be forced to travel if I attempt to finish this joke? I have a sense of humor but I’m just not into totally stupid … just yet.
As it has so often been said by others much wiser than me, A house built on a weak foundation will not stand. There can be no weaker foundation in scientific thought than the mystical notion that “something” can come about from “nothing.” This is Alice in Wonderland and Tinkerbell. This is magic and voodoo. This is not science.
Philosophical definition of non-being or nothing: The state of no innate potential to be actualized, and no innate tendencies to actualize itself.
To state that something can come from nothing is simply a contradiction in terms. By definition it is logically impossible. And as far as has been determined from scientific inquiry – laws of conservation of matter and energy – the notion in impossible both actually and theoretically.
The goal behind this gobbledygook is obfuscation. It is the attempt to establish “creationism” into the big bang scientific theory notion and thus establish the religious platitude of God and Creator as being the mysterious source of the universe. Other than via “faith” and “revelation” there is still no way to postulate the notion of creation or a Creator.
The universe on the other hand is scientifically substantiated. It is; it always was; and it will always be as far as it can be determined and has been established scientifically. In relation to God and science, it is still as Mr. La Place once replied to the emperor Napoleon when asked why he had not mentioned God, the Creator in any of his many scientific books. “I have no need for that hypothesis,” replied the eminent scientist. And that remains to be the case today. When one steps out of the rational, reasonable, logical, and scientific, he steps into the never-never land of mythology, mysticism, fantasy, faith and religion. I have nothing against “faith” and religion but it has never mixed well with science. The two are better dealt with separately.

DuPont

The Hobo Philosopher

DuPont, Gunpowder and World War I

“Old Hickory” Tennessee

By Richard E. Noble

The DuPont family is an American saga but it’s the World War I gunpowder factory established in Tennessee that has caught my interest at the moment; but before we go there let’s briefly hit on the DuPonts.
As you have probably guessed the DuPonts were from France. The old man was a supporter of the American Revolution and democracy but when “revolution” hit France he and the wife and kids had to blow Dodge. They landed in the Colonies and settled in Delaware.
Papa DuPont had one boy who had a pretty good job in France before the hasty departure. E. I. DuPont was working with Lavoisier, known today as the Father of Chemistry, at the national arsenal making gunpowder for the French government. Lavoisier knew his stuff and E. I. DuPont learned all the details. Thomas Jefferson was actually the one who put the bug in DuPont’s ear about a gunpowder plant. And in 1802 E. I. DuPont started to manufacture black powder in Delaware. Lavosier who had been moonlighting as a government tax collector on the side got his head chopped off.
The gunpowder business had its ups and downs – not to mention an explosion every now and then but there was one industry that helped this business along considerably – war.
The War of 1812 was good for the DuPonts and then the Mexican War in 1842 moved things right along. The Civil War was just what the Doctor ordered and the Spanish American War put the frosting on the cake.
But by the time World War I came rolling along the gunpowder business is “exploding.” Gunpowder is being used everywhere; in mining, in bridge building in railroad construction – the gold rush and the 49ers didn’t hurt anything either. Then there was the Panama Canal and dams and whatever. By this time the DuPont gunpowder business didn’t really need World War I. But World War I needed the DuPonts.
When the European Allies had exhausted and pushed all their powder manufactures to capacity they came to the DuPonts. But the DuPonts had learned about the trials and tribulations of the warring business. War was good business but it also had its problems. There are two big problems with war; wars often start without much notice and they stop in the same manner. As a business you can’t afford to stock up for a possible future war and then stop production on a dime. Having steady business with consistent sales and a predictable growth rate is better than the boom and bust of a war economy. And by this time the DuPont civilian business was great – lots of money, good steady growth. The DuPonts were fat and happy.
So when the Allies came along and asked them to increase there plant and production by about ten to thirteen times – and do it now – the DuPonts were hesitant. The DuPonts told the Allies that they didn’t have the money to expand their facilities to about thirteen times their present capacity. Colonel Buckner, DuPont vice president, said; “We can produce the explosives you need and we think that we can produce them in time, but only if you assume the financial risks of an emergency expansion. You are asking us to build costly plants that will have value only as scrap when the war ends. You are asking us to contract, on your behalf, for raw materials that may not be needed next month, or even next week, and which may never reach the stage of finished goods. I repeat, it’s your war and the risks must be yours.”
The Allies had no choice. They started loading the DuPonts’ treasury up with money. They paid a fifty percent advance on powder and agreed to pay a price per pound that would cover the cost of building new plants.
DuPont then really started rolling. Engineering and construction employees went rapidly from 800 to 45,000 and then to 100,000; 8 million pounds of explosives went in one year to 200 million pounds and by the war’s end they were producing 893 million pounds of explosives. In the four years of war nearly 7 million was destroyed in accidental explosions and 347 men lost their lives.
But in 1917 the United States wants to get in on the action. The U.S. doesn’t have a single world scale munitions plant in the country. They contact DuPont. They want the DuPonts to build a plant that can produce 900,000 pounds of powder per day. The DuPonts really, really don’t need any more business. Colonel Buckner was at it again; “The Ordnance Department of the Army has already asked to reserve for the Army our entire unsold capacity, and we feel confident that the Allied Governments will require large additional quantities of powder ... How this large amount of powder is going to be supplied to the United States and their Allied Governments we do not know, unless all the Allied Governments confer upon the subject and determine upon a plan of procedure which will involve the construction of increased capacity.”
On Oct 3, 1917 the U.S government asked the DuPont Company to submit a proposal. Five days later the proposal was in the hands of Major-General William Crozier, Army Chief of Ordnance. The estimated construction costs were for 90 million and the operating costs for a twelve month period were approximately 180 million. This was the largest project the War Department had ever considered.
The government agreed to pay for the whole works. The plant would be in Tennessee and it would be called Old Hickory. But then Pierre DuPont received a telegram from Newton D. Baker, secretary of War, “Have just had presented to me the details of the proposed contract with regards to increased capacity for powder production. The matter is large, intricate and important. Do nothing until you hear further from me. Stay all action under the order until I can acquaint myself thoroughly with all features of the matter.”
Robert S. Brookings, a member of the War Board, had been looking over the contract and had decided that the DuPonts were making too much money on the deal. The DuPonts agreed to step aside. The War Board then appointed D.C Jackling of San Francisco to handle the operation. The first thing Mr. Jackling tried to do was hire the DuPonts’ chief engineer, Harry M. Pierce. Harry said; “You can’t do it that way, Mr. Jackling. You need an organization of trained men, not just one man.” He told Jackling that they had to hire the DuPont Company and their whole shebang or do it themselves. Jackling tried here and there and was then back at DuPont Company.
The DuPont Company then said that they would and could do the job but only if the government agreed to stay out! The government agreed.
In ten months they built Old Hickory from miles of vacant fields. It was a city of 30,000 people. It contained 3,867 buildings – homes restaurants, schools etc. During the ten month building period DuPont hired over 250,000 workers. They built seven and a half miles of single track railroad; they built a 540 foot suspension bridge and the whole works cost two and a half times the maximum rate of expenditure for any year on the Panama Canal – a total of 85 million.
When the war ended tens of thousands of employees had to be let go, whole factories were immediately shut down, wages cut, and economic unrest swamped the nation. All over the world investigations were opened by governments and newspapers into Arms profiteering. The bookstores were flooded with accusations against “The Merchants of Death.” DuPont and Old Hickory were not immune. A story in a Tennessee newspaper accused the DuPont Company of as much as $100,000,000 in fraud and overcharging of the government. An investigation ensued that went on for years. DuPont was finally cleared of any profiteering.
But that was not the end of it. There were those who thought that DuPont and others had been let off the hook by the unscrupulous politics of the time. Investigations into the Munitions Industry were reopened in 1934. The committee was headed by Senator Gerald P. Nye a Republican from North Dakota. It is interesting to note historically that one of the examiners on that committee was none other than Alger Hiss of future Cold War fame. The World War I veterans were one group who were very upset after learning about the enormous profits earned by munitions companies during World War I. The emphasis of the committee was on – How to take the profits out of War. Much of the New Deal’s ardor was prompted by resentment of the corporate greed that had preceded and in part precipitated the Depression,” says Mr. Hiss.
It is interesting to note that Alger Hiss was the Senate Committee’s examiner on the Nye committee. “... it was normal practice for an aviation salesman to use actual or potential purchases of warplanes by one South American country to impress upon its neighbors their need to make matching or superior purchases so as not to be faced with an arms “gap.” Use of the fear factor proved to be an effective way of bringing about spiraling military budgets. Bribery copiously supported the implanting of fear. The resulting picture was of American business stirring up tensions in an already unstable area and corrupting friendly governments in our hemisphere. One salesman’s letter complained of a U.S. Foreign Service officer as “fomenting peace.”
In the Committees vigorous attempt to regulate the arms and munitions industries one big question kept returning; “Who will regulate the regulators?”
The Committee turned it focus to the DuPont Company and the Old Hickory plant. “This factory (Old Hickory Plant) was paid for by the government on the basis of contracts that called for payment of the costs, plus a percentage of those costs as a fee to repay the company for its efforts. Contracts of this kind provided little incentive for keeping costs low – the higher the costs, the bigger the fee. The urgency of wartime need adds to the mood of prodigality and greed that seems always to accompany such contracts. These twin specters haunt all military procurement. The monopoly position of DuPont played a large part in its ability to demand huge amounts either as costs or as compensations. The company was, to be sure, not alone in its insistence on being paid what it wanted. The government had no alternative. At times the threat was clear: Pay what we demand, or we won’t produce. The Nye Committee likened this to a strike by capital, noting that, in wartime, strikes by labor were forbidden. The issue of wartime profiteering was the one that most concerned labor as well as veterans, who felt their contributions to the war effort had been inadequately reimbursed when compared with corporate profits.”
Alger Hiss did not make any friends on this job – including the DuPont brothers and Bernard Baruch – and it may serve to explain somewhat what happened to him in later years. But he continues: “Examination of the extensive records of the board (Nye Committee) including its voluminous minutes led the committee to discern that the general public’s impression of profiteering during World War I was correct.”
Hiss also states that the acclaimed Bernard Baruch and the War Board of which he was a member had not really done much to protect the interests of the “people” in supervising the actions of the arms and munitions industries. “Not long after Baruch’s appearance, the committee issued its report on wartime profiteering, emphasizing that the imperatives of wartime demand made control of profits impossible. In other words, Baruch’s efforts were ineffective in preventing “the strike of capital.” In the committee’s parlance, the only way to take the profit out of war was to avoid war ... Not surprising, therefore, the Nye Committee switched its main interest to ways to stay out of war.
“Pursuing this tract, the committee after some months, devoted its hearings to the huge American loans made to the Allied Powers before our entry into the First World War. These loans by J. P. Morgan and other bankers had enabled the Allies to purchase from us, armaments and other vital goods. In the committee’s view the loans gave the American bankers a vested interest in seeing the Allies emerge victorious and able to pay their debts, even if this required our entry into the war. And, they reasoned further, the huge, profitable trade with the Allies tilted our economy towards their side. The hearings on our economic ties to the Allies furthered the prompt passage of the Neutrality Act of 1935.”
Interestingly enough the FDR administration did take steps to curb the profits during World War II. FDR put enormous taxes onto the super wealthy and placed extreme excess war profit taxes onto the business community who would all benefit from the war.
These tactics did not prevent World War II nor did they stop greed and selfishness or profiteering but they certainly spread the wealth created from the war around a little more equitably.
These tactics during the war did not endear the rich and wealthy to the FDR administration – the DuPonts in particular. I read one account where it is alleged that the DuPonts actually fomented attempts on Roosevelt’s life along with a domestic revolution to overthrow the U.S. government.
So much for all of those who believe that the country was “united” during World War II.

Books used in this essay include: “DuPont – One Hundred and Forty Years” William S. Dutton; “Alger Hiss – Recollections of a Life” Alger Hiss; “The Rich and the Super Rich” Ferdinand Lundberg; “Great American Fortunes” Gustavus Myers; “Merchants of Death” H.C. Englelbrecht and F.C. Hanighen.

Michael Parenti

Dirty Truths

By Michael Parenti

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

I would call this book a Michael Parenti sampler. It provides one or two chapters on some aspect of Professor Parenti teachings and criticisms. From looking at the long list of books Michael Parenti has to offer one can find the particular topic that is of most concern to them in this volume and then order a more detailed, focused endeavor. Being especially interested in economics and history, my first choices will be along those lines. It is clear that the Professor knows his history, so I am looking forward to my next selection.
This is my second Michael Parenti book and I intend to read a good sampling if not all of his works. I have read reviews comparing Mr. Parenti to other radical writers and proffering the notion that he is simply more of the same. That is hardly accurate. I have read no one, living today, who I would put in Mr. Parenti’s category.
His writing style is very clear, understandable and direct. I have not yet asked, “I wonder what he meant by that?” Michael says what he has to say – rather fearlessly. I would say that his fearlessness is to a degree that I find not only refreshing but a little frightening. I am not frightened for myself by what Mr. Parenti has to say, I am frightened for Mr. Parenti. Knowing what I already know, I realize that speaking out as candidly as Mr. Paranti is inclined to do can be dangerous.
In the first chapter the Professor writes of a hidden Holocaust in the U.S.A.
“Conservatives are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this is … To their ears the anguished cries of the dispossessed sound like the peevish whines of malcontents … but the Dirty Truth is that there exists a startling amount of hardship, abuse, affliction, illness, violence and pathology in this country.”
The Professor then goes on for the next seven pages with a list of statistical information to support his point. It is rather shocking and eye opening.
Lucky for the reader though, the author does have a sense of humor. I don’t like the term “dark humor.” I would describe him as more Jonathan Swift-like.
In this volume we also get a peek at the person and not just his ideas. In Struggles in Academe the reader gets a real insight into where Mr. Parenti is coming from. We learn about his involvement at the University of Illinois in the anti-Vietnam War struggles, and the consequent loss of his right to “practice education.” A very interesting tale.
I very much enjoyed his La Famiglia and The Blessings of Private Enterprise.
In La Famiglia he talks of his ethnic heritage. He gets very personal.
Being raised in an ethnic neighborhood and having many Italian friends, I had the inclination to copy the chapter and send it to some of my buddies. But once again, the Professor’s frankness might be too much Dirty Truth for my old buddies who are all of the Frank Sinatra “Maggio” inclination. For example: “The ordinary recruits in the Italian army had no desire to fight Il Duce’s battles. Rather they manifested a decided inclination to flee or surrender the moment they realized the other side was using live ammunition.” Oh my god, I can hear my buddies screaming now.
The Blessings of Private Enterprise is about his dad’s homemade Italian bread delivery business. Being a small businessman and small business manager, for most of my career, I could see and feel it all very clearly.
I’ve also watched some of the Professor’s videos available free on the Internet. I don’t see why the Professor doesn’t have his own national radio or TV show. He explains his disappointing experiences with the press and the media. But, nevertheless, he would certainly provide the counterpoint to folks like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly. His command for factually supported liberal opinions would be challenging to any conservative opponents.
I remember when Bill Buckley had his TV show. Buckley, in those days, was also considered an extremist. He often challenged the most radical leftwing opponents. Some of the exchanges were classic. I think Mr. Parenti could provide the same honest dialogue but, of course, he would be coming from the other direction.
This was a great book Mr. Parenti. Keep up the fight and the best of luck to you.

Karl Marx - On Economics

The Hobo Philosopher

Karl Marx on Economics 1818-1883

Commentary

By Richard E. Noble

Karl Marx was not a positive step in the line of thinkers like Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill who were seeking positive solutions to what they saw around them. Marx said the system was corrupt, didn't work, and couldn't be fixed. He was an academic. He should have been a college professor. He was really a journalist, but his rhetoric was so inflammatory that he was put out of business wherever he went. Near the end of his life he stated that he was no Marxist. He really didn't seem to agree with anybody.
Engels, after Marx's death claimed that Marx's was not an Anarchist, but his own words in the Communist Manifesto state otherwise. He was in favor of revolution. He was in favor of the use of violence in that revolution. Although he predicted Communism as a natural evolution, he acknowledged the need of an interim totalitarian government of the wise and faithful to push things along until a condition where no state was necessary finally existed. I think truthfully, the man just liked to argue, and felt that he was intellectually superior to anyone else in the world. He got trapped in the political arguments of his day. That is always enough to drive anybody wacky. He wanted to be intelligent. He wanted to go down in history as a genius, like his idle Darwin, or like Isaac Newton or even Hegel. If he had been alive in the Russian heyday or even today in Communist China, he would not like it. He would be writing his criticisms of the conditions of the poor and underprivileged in those societies and calling their leadership a bunch of swine and parasitic excreta. They would throw his butt out, or kill him. He would have to escape once again to Jolly old England or the United States where he could babble and research to his heart's content, and maybe even get onto Hardball once and awhile.
He wrote a 2000 page book he entitled This Is Capitalism. In it he describes Capitalism, points out its flaws, and predicts its downfall. He is like the religious clerics of today who try to convince us that life on this planet is impossible. It couldn't have happened. But when you say that it obviously is, so it must have happened, they supply you with an even more preposterous explanation of how that came about.
I think Karl was not as smart as he thought he was. He saw moral injustice in the world, and suggested more of the same, or twice as much as before as a solution. As Adam Smith so wisely pointed out ... virtue, unlike vice is not tempered by the pangs and limits of moral conscience...
It is interesting to note that Karl Marx never worked in a factory. His compadre, Engels, was the wealthy son of a rich factory owner. Engels ended up living in wealth, happiness, and comfort from the legacy of his Capitalistic, private property, and inherited birthright. If it were not for the insanely immoral conditions of so many of the poor and hard working of that day, Marx and Engels would have been but a ripple in a sea of the illogical, misdirected rhetoric of every era and epoch.
Marx said that Malthus' theory was an insult to the integrity of Mankind. I agree. Marx’s mother is quoted as having said that she wished that her son had taken a greater interest in making Capitol, than in criticizing it. According to Engels, Marx discovered the historic significance of the “class struggle" and the "motion of Capitalism." I don't know about all of that, but he certainly discovered how to get people all pissed off.
Marx, for some strange reason, is always placed aside Adolf Hitler. There really isn’t much comparison. They were more opposite than they were similar.
Karl Marx’s sympathies were with the workingman. Adolf Hitler was an elitist who supported, and was supported by, capitalists.
Karl Marx was a family man. The story of his lifelong love affair and marriage with the daughter of a wealthy Prussian baron, Jenny von Westphalen, is a tale of devotion, loyalty and commitment that would bring even Ronnie and Nancy to tears. His children, the few who survived their poverty, loved him and wrote glowingly of their parents and their devotion.
Adolf was “strange.” He may have been a pervert. He may have murdered his half-niece, Geli Raubal, with whom he had a very weird relationship. He had a mistress, Eva Braun, who seemed to be about as nutty as he was. He had lots of strange male pals, Ernst Rohm, maybe the most notable. He may have killed Ernst, a best friend and staunch political ally, with his own hand.
Karl never killed anybody. Karl wanted to save mankind and devise a system that would make the world a better place. He thought Capitalism to be an exploitive curse on the poor workingman and the world. Where did he ever get such an idea?
Aldof wanted to murder everybody. Lucky for all of us he ended up murdering himself.
Actually Karl Marx was a rather nice man, somewhat argumentative, but very bright, studious and diligent in the pursuit of learning, understanding and spreading what he believed to be the truth. He left some major literary works, the most notable being Das Capital, that are still being debated and studied to this day.
Das Capital was basically a critical and very involved economic evaluation of the Capitalist system. It was Karl’s opinion that this system was immoral and corrupt but more important, self-destructive. Karl attempted to logically and economically prove that Capitalism would eventually collapse and destroy itself. Whether he was successful or not is still being debated.
Adolf Hitler was a murder and killer who believed in the slaughter of mankind and not its salvation. He was bigoted, prejudiced, and mean spirited. He left behind a book called, Mein Kampf, that is the bible of psychopathic hate and vitriol. In it he preaches the righteousness of evil and selfishness, the glory of war, and the necessity of genocide and mass murder. He is rarely referred to as a “nice man.”

Hooked On Books - Democracy for the Few

Democracy for the Few

By Michael Parenti

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

On page 295 of Democracy for the Few the author, Michael Parenti, political scientist and historian, states: “More than half a century ago the great sociologist Max Weber wrote: ‘The question is: How are freedom and democracy in the long run at all possible under the domination of highly developed capitalism.’ That question is still with us. And the answer suggested in this book is that freedom and democracy have at best a highly tenuous and marginal existence in capitalist society.
“In a democratic socialist social system the factories, mills, mines, offices, educational institutions, newspapers, hospitals, etc. will not be privately owned for private gain but will be controlled by and for their clients and workers. That is the goal towards which our efforts should be directed ... This commitment is, or should be, towards communal, collective and responsible decision making …”
Okeydokey! Now where have I read that before? I think it was in a book called Das Capital by some obscure writer whose name slips my mind at the moment.
But this does not bother me. The greatest champions for the rights of the working class in American history have come from the American Communist and Socialist Party. This fact has been credited by famous labor leaders from the AFL, CIO and documented by labor historians. It is an historical fact.
But regardless of the author’s conclusions, remedies and recommendations, I think this book is an invaluable read for anyone interested in the problems that face both capitalism and democracy.
This book was published in 1974 and the author’s analyses of the problems of our democratic system are as prevalent in today’s American democratic system as they were back in the 70s. Not much has changed. In fact, any changes that have taken place have only served to enhance Mr. Parenti’s analysis.
This same book could have the publication date 2010 and with a few name changes and an update here and there it would be on time and on the money. It is amazing to me how Mr. Parenti was able to achieve this. Few social critics have mastered this talent. Most political analyses become obsolete after months. Very few hang around for years and only the greatest for decades. The superstars are the ones we are still reading centuries later.
Democracy for the Few is packed with rather shocking facts and comparisons. For example on page 282 we have this interesting juxtaposition of random information: “… by the end of the 1960s upper income Americans were spending 2 billion a year on jewelry – more than was spent on housing for the poor – and no less than $3 billion on pleasure boating – half a billion more than what the fifty states spend on welfare. Over the years greater sums have been budgeted by the government for the development of the Navy’s submarine rescue vehicle than for occupational safety, public libraries and daycare centers combined.
“The total expenses of the entire legislative branch and the judiciary branch and all the regulatory commissions combined constitute a little more than one half of 1 percent of the Pentagon’s budget.”
This book is filled with such information.
As the title, Democracy for the Few, implies, we have a contradiction in terms with regards to our understanding of American democracy says Michael Parenti, college professor and educator. The gap between the democracy that most of us think we have and the democracy that is our national reality is Grand Canyon-like.
In light of the author’s detailed critical analysis can we seriously claim that we have a democracy – even a representative one, or a democratic republic for that matter?
The author points out every scam, every trick, and every deception. He explains why our democracy isn’t a democracy – with footnotes and easily understood facts and figures.
He tells us why our legislature isn’t working; how our executive and judicial branches have failed us; how our free press has turned news into propaganda; how our freedoms and constitutional rights have been undermined; how our legal system and our prisons have been diverted from the cause of true justice to protective institutions for the criminal wealthy; how our military has been twisted from defensive to aggressive – boarding on the fascist … Well, actually he doesn’t explain how the “system” has been diverted; he explains how it was designed that way from the very beginning. He shows us the Forefathers’ intentions and how our government of the rich, for the rich and by the rich has evolved according to plan.
Mr. Parenti does not think that “the system” can be tweaked. He sees our problems as endemic to our capitalist, corporate state. The old solution of switching corporate controlled Democrats for corporate controlled Republicans will not bring viable change nor will it institute true representative democracy.
This does seem to be the case, but Mr. Parenti, as with others who espouse his solution to these “endemic” problems, seems to be of the opinion that only the wealthy, elitist, current ruling class is capable of deceit and corruption. My question to Mr. Parenti would be, Are these problems endemic to capitalism and its ruling class or endemic to human nature. If capitalists, rich and poor alike, could be injected with a strong dose of the good old, Christian Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – could this not be a more apt and suitable solution? I would even support laws being enacted along the Golden Rule line of thinking. The Golden Rule solution may be naïve but I find it more acceptable than bombs, bullets and a blood stained revolution in the streets of the U.S.A. Revolutions don’t seem to be working all that well either. Look at what ours has wrought, Mr. Parenti – reed your own book!
Republicans and Democrats alike should read this book. I doubt that either group will enjoy it.
This book by itself could easily serve as the text for a two semester college graduate course in American Democratic Government.
Buy it. Read it and weep.

My Name's Tucker

Lawrence – My Hometown

My Name’s Tucker and I’m a mean Mother F…..

By Richard E. Noble

I was casually strolling down Center St. heading towards Nell’s Variety, when these three little squirts came running out from the yard next to Jack Sheehy’s house. One of the little buggars tossed a rock at me. “Hey watch it you little punk or I’ll come over there and teach the whole bunch of you squirts a lesson.”
The little kids were about 6 or 7 years of age and I was about 10 or 12.
“Oh yeah? My big brother and his gang will kill you, man.”
“Oh really? Well I have a gang too and anytime your big brother and his dumb gang wants a fight, tell them to come on down to Nell’s Variety. And tell them to pack a lunch because it will be an all day affair.”
“Oh yeah! My brother is Danny Tucker and he is a mean mother f----r.”
“Well tell your brother Danny Tucker the mean mother f---r that Rich Noble thinks that Danny Tucker is an all day sucker.”
The kids went running off and I continued on down the road to Nell’s. When I got there several of the guys were sitting on the steps of the tenement adjacent to the store. “Any of you guys know some punk by the name of Tucker, Danny Tucker?”
“Danny Tucker? Yeah I know him. He hangs around up at Perrault’s Diner,” said Jack Sheehy.
“No kidding?”
Perrault’s Diner was a bad place. A lot of bad guys hung out there. It was second only to Frank’s Diner on Lawrence St. for having the meanest bunch of pre-adult potential murders, killers, thieves, drug addicts and homicidal maniacs in town. The real bad guys hung out at these diners. These type diners were where bad younger guys auditioned for their future membership at adult bad places like the Brass Rail and Pinky’s. Of course, compared to us guys at Nell’s everybody was mean and dangerous.
“I think I just made a big mistake. Some little kid threw a rock at me and I yelled at him and he said he was going to get his big brother after me. He said his brother was Danny Tucker the mean mother f----r.”
“Oh God, you did make a big mistake. I think Danny Tucker just got out of the Pen for raping his mother and sister after he killed and ate a neighbor’s pet bulldog. He is about 30 years old for criss sake. He’s dangerous. I think he is a druggie too. You are in big trouble Nobes,” explained my buddy Willie, laughing all the while.
“Well, I’m afraid there are more than just me in trouble. I also told the little shit that if his big brother, Danny Tucker the mean mother f---r, and his gang were looking for a fight they ought to come down to Nell’s. I said my gang could whip his brother’s gang and that his brother and his buddies better pack a lunch because it would be an all day affair.”
“WHAT! You are KIDDING? You didn’t say that. Tell me you didn’t say that?” petitioned my buddy Willie ... now a bit more concerned.
“No that’s pretty much what I said. I also said that I thought that Danny Tucker the mean mother f----r was really Danny Tucker the all day sucker.”
“I think we had better get the hell out of here,” offered Ray Dolan.
“What are we going to do?” Willie yelled.
“Hide man. We better find a place to hide and quick.”
“I wouldn’t really worry about it,” said Jack Sheehy reaching rather nervously into his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes.
“Why not?” asked Willie.
“Because those guys are way too big for us. I mean those guys are all like a hundred years old man. They all drive cars. Some of them are married and have kids who have already been in and out of prison.”
“Really?”
“Really, if they came down here and beat up us little guys they would be the laughing stock of the whole city. I mean what kind of big tough guys beat up a bunch of little kids? They ain’t goin’ to bother us,” Jack assured as he lit his cigarette.
“Why the hell is your hand shaking like that then?” I asked.
“My hand ain’t shaken’,” Jack said. “Look, I’m as steady as a rock.” He held his hand out in front of him and it was wiggling like a leaf in the wind. This was worse than any of us could imagine. Jack was the toughest one of our bunch. He lifted my 110 pound barbell set right up over his head on the first try. If Jack was scared, we were dead meat.
Well, there we were, we had Joe Lewis after us – we couldn’t run and we couldn’t hide. What should we do? We sat on the steps at Nell’s thinking seriously and wringing our hands until it started to get dark and the streetlight came on.
All of a sudden a hotrod pulled up and screeched to a halt right in front of Alma Meter’s house across the street from Nell’s. There were two older teenagers in the front seat. “You guys better run. The gang from Perrault’s is all riled up and they are on their way down here to kick the crap out of you guys.” The car then peeled out from in front of Alma Meter’s and then skidded around the corner at Hampshire Street. We were barely off our butts when cars filled with the Perrault’s gangsters began skidding around every corner. They were coming to get us from every direction. We didn’t have a chance but we all ran anyway. We had no exit strategy – a few of us headed up Exchange St, a couple headed towards the Arlington Club and me and Willie ran down Exchange St. towards St. Rita’s school.
Halfway down Exchange St., there was a field on the right. At the back of the field there was a tall chainlink fence with barbed wire on the top. We had cut through that field and climbed that barbed wire fence a million times. We knew just how to do it. I was in the lead and Willie was about five or ten yards behind me. I leaped up the chainlink fence, placed one foot onto the barbed wire and then leaped clear to the ground. I scrambled to my feet and I was off and running.
I didn’t get ten yards before I heard my buddy Willie screaming. “Nobes, Nobes! Help me I’m stuck.”
I turned around and there was my little chum hanging upside-down. He leaped but didn’t clear the barbed wire. He got one of the rolled up cuffs on his blue jeans hooked onto a barb. Twenty million times we leaped this fence with no problem, now when it counts, my pal screws up.
To be quit honest, I was mighty scared. These guys from Perrault’s were big and mean. They would like nothing better than to bust a few arms and legs – maybe worse than that.
Willie is trying like hell to get his cuff loose but he can’t. He is trying to twist himself like a pretzel and climb back up the fence, but no luck.
I make a move to run back to the fence and get my buddy unhooked. I take no more than two steps and a Perrault’s Diner car screeches and skids to a halt out on the road at Exchange St.
“There’s two of the little bastards, let’s get ‘em.”
All the doors on the car fly open and about six of the Perrault gang start running towards us – knuckles and chains dragging.
Willie is still upside-down but he can see them coming. He twists his head and looks at me cockeyed. I can still see the desperate look in his upside-down eyeballs to this day. He was scared out of his wits. I looked at the Perrault’s guys coming through the field. I looked at Willie hanging there helplessly. And instantly, without the slightest hesitation, I decided to do the right thing – the only thing.
I turned and started running away from Willie for my life. But just as I got boogieing on down that road toward abandonment of “the Willie,” I heard him cry out. His wail reminded me of a cow being bludgeoned to death on the cement slab of a slaughter house floor. It was horrifying. I looked at him hanging there upside-down and I just started laughing.
“Stop laughing you butthead and get me off this fence,” he screamed, humorlessly.
I scurried back to the fence, grabbed Willie around the middle and heaved him up and down until I ripped his pant leg loose. The bad guys were right there. They were RIGHT THERE! Two of them made a running leap up the other side of the fence. Me and Willie were off and running for our lives.
I’m running and I’m scared to death but I can’t stop laughing. Willie is running next to me and he starts laughing because he is listening to me laugh. But we are both still running like crazy. I take a quick gander over my shoulder and there’s two of the Perrault guys hanging upside-down with their pant legs tangled in the barbed wire and the rest of them are still on the wrong side of the fence peeling their bananas and hooting, grunting and scratching under their armpits.
Willie and I stopped to catch our breath and then we got brave.
“You big dumb screw-ups. Don’t you even know how to get over a barbed wire fence? All you clowns should be back in jail where you belong; you’re too stupid to be free.”
“Yeah right! You’re a bunch of clowns and you’re all stupid. If brains were an elevator, you dopes couldn’t get out of the basement and …”
“We better get truckin’ before one of them boneheads gets loose.”
We were off and running for our lives once again. We cut through several yards and over a few garbage can sheds and eventually worked our way to safety. We stopped under a streetlight up on Arlington St.
“What the hell were you laughing at?” Willie panted while bent over and leaning on his thighs.
“I saw you hanging there upside-down and you looked so funny.”
“Yeah really!”
“But the funniest part was, here come the bad guys and I looked at you and I said to myself, ‘Screw him. When the Perrault guys get him they will all start beating him up and I can get enough time to get away.’”
“Nobes, that is not funny. That is not something to laugh about. You could have got me killed.”
“Yeah, but I would have got away.”
“Well, my God, you’re a good buddy.”
“What do you mean, I came back and got you didn’t I?”
“Yeah but you had to think about it.”
“I know. That’s what was so funny. I had to think about it.”
“Well, I hope you have thought about it enough this time so that if there is a next time you will know exactly what to do.”
“I have. I definitely know what to do next time. Next time you are going to be left hanging on the damn fence and I am going to get away clean. Did you see how close those guys were? Man, I almost got myself killed tryin’ to save your dumb butt. I must have been delirious or something.”
“You’re delirious all right, pal. Take it from me, delirious has nothing on you.”

Richard Edward Noble is a freelance writer and columnist. His local column, the Eastpointer, won the first place 2007 humor award from the Florida Press Association. He has published several books. All of his books can be viewed and purchased on Amazon. Contact him at richardedwardnoble@gtcom.net for bookstore discounts and volume sales.

Just Hangin' Out, Ma - Kennedy

Lawrence – My Hometown

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

A Memoir

By Richard E. Noble

The phone rang in our little kitchen. We lived in a tiny apartment in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I spent the first twenty seven years of my life there. It was a mill town with layer after layer of blue collar tenement houses. My mother rarely answered the phone. It was usually never for her but someone calling for one of us kids. We all rushed to her side, ready to grab the phone when she said for whom the call was actually intended. But we were all stopped short, as she hung onto the receiver and began to speak;

“Yes, I know who you are, Bobby. Yes, I know that it is your brother, John, who is running for president.”

“What the ...? Who are you talking to Ma?”

“She’s talking to Bobby; you know Johnny’s brother.” We all laughed, as she went on as if she were talking to one of our school chums.

“Yes, I realize that tomorrow is Election Day ... Oh yes, I certainly intend to vote for your brother. I understand ... Yes, I certainly will ... I will ... I will! I’m going to be there the first thing in the morning. I wish you and your brother the best of luck ... Oh, don’t you worry Bobby; you have my vote.”

Bobby Kennedy had called our house the night before his brother was elected President of the United States.

J.F.K was one of us.

An Irish Catholic, Massachusetts boy, was going for the presidency. This was as close to home as it could get; our little State, our maligned faith, our dumpy neighborhood, our blue collar apartment in the inner-city slum, and our telephone. It was unbelievable. My mother was talking to Bobby about the election; my mother who was probably the least political person that I have ever known. But, that next morning she donned her winter coat and hat and went prancing off with her pocketbook hanging on her arm. I ran out on the porch. I didn’t know whether to cheer, applaud or what. She looked like a miniature Eleanor Roosevelt parading down Chelmsford St. to the corner where they were all lined up at the voting station.

She had received her orders and was marching to her destiny which was to personally elect John F. Kennedy president. And she did it. It was the closest election of the twentieth century thus far.

Johnny won by slightly more than 100,000 votes. He was the youngest man yet to be elected president - the first Catholic president. And though I was just slightly too young to vote for him myself, he was my president also.

He was the president of all the young people. He was as sharp as a tack. He knew his ABC’s. He had all the answers. The press was no match for him. He was smarter than they were. He smiled, had a huge grin and told jokes about his dad and his wife and brothers and sisters. He was a big tease, just like an older brother, or your own dad. He was a hero during the war. I went to see the movie PT-109 at the local movie theater. I bought his book, Profiles in Courage. I still have a copy. It was a real book.

Profiles in Courage was no political biography book about how I was born in a log cabin. It was not about himself. It was about men in history who had acted courageously, even if it meant their political careers. John F. Kennedy was more than another pretty face.

Profiles in Courage was a book about ideals, about principles. It became a TV series. I can remember lying on the parlor floor with my head up against a hassock watching this week’s excerpt with the whole family. At the end of each episode there was somebody crediting John F. Kennedy, and some bit of his personal idealistic inspiration. If I’m not mistaken, he introduced the show, or signed it off – or something.

John F. Kennedy, the war hero, who had saved his buddies; the intellectual and Harvard graduate, the journalist, the TV show writer, the first Catholic president, the youngest elected president, the family man with a picture book wife and regular kids hiding under his desk at the White House, the little rich boy who had a feeling for the working stiff. John F. Kennedy, the man who was going to bring peace to the world at last.

By the time I got to Merrimack College everybody was enrolling in the Kennedy Army for Peace. They called it the Peace Corps. They say that it was really Hubert Humphrey’s idea, but it was Kennedy who pushed and promoted it. Every student that I talked to was joining the Peace Corps. They were all making me feel guilty and hypocritical. Finally we had a president who stopped the tradition of talking about peace while making war; a president who was going to turn it all upside-down. He was going to actively make peace and try to keep the war mongers talking. The whole world got his message and everybody was cheering – except the Russians and Fidel Castro.
Then suddenly it was eyeball to eyeball. The end of the world was on the horizon. But this was O.K. It was all for one and one for all. It was no pull-a-name-out-of-a-hat deal. If we were going to die, we were all going to die at once - BOOM! And who gives a damn. It was a relief. No more hiding under the desks, or looking for a designated bomb shelter, or storing up supplies in the cellar, or contemplating a slow death by some kind of horrid radiation poisoning. If the world really couldn’t be saved, then let’s end it, once and for all. We would prove T. S. Eliot wrong. The world wouldn’t end with a whimper but a BANG! We finally got this chicken-chicken stuff over with.

Khrushchev pushed, and Kennedy pushed back – the Cuban Missile Crisis.
When it was over Khrushchev had blinked. Russian ships were on the TV loading up their ships and heading home with their bombs and missiles. Kennedy had stood up to the bullies and they were tucking their missiles between their legs and heading back to their own school yard. If there was anybody who doubted Kennedy’s policy at that time, I don’t remember that they had time to voice their opinion. The missiles were there; we were on the brink of destruction, and then it was over. It was scary, but we all went through it together – holding our breath.

I have heard many say that Kennedy did it all wrong, we should have invaded Cuba and put Castro to rest. But information from the Russian Archives has since proved that Mr. Kennedy and his brother were more than correct. The Russians had tactical nuclear weapons on Cuban soil and submarines off the East Coast of the U.S. with orders to fire if the U.S. had attacked. And due to problems in the Russian communications system the order to retaliate had been given by Khrushchev and couldn’t have been changed in time to stay a holocaust. The East Coast of the United States from Washington D.C. to Tampa Florida would have been gone – along with a heck of a lot more. The incident scared the heck out of both Kennedy and Khrushchev and they consequently had the infamous hot lines installed.

But, Kennedy was a president to whom the presidency wasn’t the culmination of his life and career. He was too young. He was just starting. He was going to really be something special. He would write history or be a movie star, or teach at Harvard. The presidency was just a stop on his way to bigger and better things and everybody knew it.

I was in my college History class at Northern Essex Community College. It was a renovated Haverhill grammar school. It cost me one hundred and fifty bucks a semester. I had a 1946 Desoto, fluid drive that had to be jump-started every day. I parked it on a hill outside the school and everybody watched and laughed each day as, my buddies and I, all pushed it down the hill to get it rolling and then jumped in when I popped it to a start. It was bright yellow, and we called it the Banana Boat. A phrase made popular a few years earlier by Harry Belafonte. This new junior college and the state-wide junior college program was one of Kennedy’s new ideas. A kid of my social class, and my finances, and my academic background had very little hope of getting a college education.

A young office worker stepped into our classroom, unannounced, walked up to the teacher’s desk and handed him a piece of paper. The teacher read the note, silently.
Then he looked up at the class, and spoke:

“The president of the United States has just been shot in Dallas, Texas. The class is dismissed.”

A boy in the back of the class jumped up and started mumbling something about his tuition and that he was paying that teacher’s salary and he wanted the class to continue. The teacher repeated; “Class dismissed.” Then he turned and started gathering things up from his desk. The mouthy boy kept grumbling. He grumbled all the way down the corridor and out into the school yard. In a matter of seconds he had a crowd around him and was in a fist fight.

In the cellar of the grammar school we had a small make-shift cafeteria. It was just vending machines, a small bookstore and a couple of TV’s. We were glued to the TV’s. The girls were all in tears and sobbing. Their eyes were all wet and raw and their noses red from the constant use of tissues and table napkins.

My father had died suddenly and without warning a few years earlier. This assassination was the exact same experience all over again. Once again I was waiting for the doctors to announce that everything would be all right and that he would live, but just as with my dad, this wasn’t to be the case.

I was stunned in the same way as I had been with my dad when they announced that the president was dead. But, I was steeled to the concept of death now. I had no tears. I had no “whys.” Death has no explanation. The Nation would go on as it did after Lincoln, after Garrison, after McKinley. It would go on as it has after all the different presidents who had been killed or who had died in office. We had a system, and the system would go on; just as my life had gone on after my father’s death. Just as everyone’s life continues and goes on after the death of any loved one. You have no choice.

But a lot of dreams would now die and be forgotten.

At my father’s funeral, they kept saying that he was so young. And I thought, silently, does death have an age limit? Is anyone too young or not old enough to die? Hardly. Here was the hope of the world and he had just had his head blown off in Dallas, Texas.

Watching the funeral on the TV was tragic. Little John-John being prodded forward by his mother and saluting the coffin; the horse with no rider; the hauntingly slow, and penetrating cadence of the drums – a whole nation in mourning. The memories of those days never seem to die.

Maybe they’re not supposed to.

John F. Kennedy holds the unique distinction of being the only president to be assassinated more than once.

He was first assassinated on November 22, 1963 when he had his head blown off in Dallas, Texas. Since that initial assassination, John F. Kennedy has been slowly assassinated, day by day, by the written word in newspapers, periodicals, books, and documentary films in what seems to me to be an attempt to prove to us, the American people, that John F. Kennedy was such a terrible man that he really deserved to be killed in the first place.

I view this with the same attitude that I have learned to view rape. It doesn’t matter if she looks like a whore, acts like a whore, or even if she is a whore, no man has the right to take her without her voluntary consent.

John F. Kennedy, no matter what his character faults, did not deserve to be murdered. He may have been an S.O.B., but, as someone has said before me, he was our S.O.B. And if our government knows and has more information on what happened, it is time that we were informed and the information, at least, made available to our historians. I feel that I have a right to know the truth before I die. The time is here.

The suspects in the murder of J.F.K. include nearly everyone. The only prominent person or group not yet accused of the crime, I think, is the Pope.

Things we know: The Warren Commission Report was a blatant cover-up. The autopsy was fudged. There was more than one gunman. It now seems that there were so many bullets fired, one wonders how innocent by-standers weren’t hit – Oswald’s nest, the grassy knoll on the right; the grassy knoll on the left; somewhere from the front; somewhere from the back; from the sewers. Assassins seem to have been all over the place.

Shoplifters got better police protection than Oswald received walking up that ramp to his death at the hands of Jack Ruby. Who are they kidding! They had better security at the Lawrence police station, for god sakes.
To me, one thing does seem to be certain here. A whole bunch of prominent people have been lying on this matter. Why?

Americans have the right to know their own history. Open up all this secret stuff and, at least, let the academics in. Most everybody involved is probably dead by now. It won’t change anything, but it should be important to a people who keep making claim to be living in – the land of the free and the home of the brave.