Come Home America - William Greider

Come Home, America

By William Greider



I have made it a point to read all of Mr. Greider’s Books. I find him to be an honest interpreter of current events. I consider him my civics teacher. He has been all over the world and has a big overview of what is happening. He knows banking. He knows economics. He knows Washington politics. He knows world trade. He knows people. And he knows and respects all of us “little” regular folks. Most important of all he has and is concerned with moral character – right and wrong; fair and unfair – what the old school once called “Social Justice.”

I was very surprised to read in this book that Mr. Greider was a product of a Republican upbringing. He states that if his back was put to the wall he would choose Democrat over Republican. I don’t have to have my back to the wall to make the same choice. Yet I find myself often as critical of both sides as Mr. Greider.

I think Mr. Greider has come to the age where he feels any beating around the bush to be a waste of his valuable time. In this book he is very open with regards to his motivation, his goals and his dreams for America.

He has covered the Washington political scene and found our elected representatives less than inspiring. He has covered lobbying and the moneyed interests and their hold on our system. He has written an exhausting book on the Federal Reserve. He has been hired to speak to bankers by the bankers. He has been warning of this economic and financial disaster for years. He has challenged the top economists on their principles – especially Free Trade and the Global Economy. He has found little hope anywhere in the established system but yet he remains strong to his commitment to a personal optimism. He compares his long and frustrating career to that of a bag lady standing on a corner somewhere in America, screeching to a crowd as they zoom by, unaware and unconcerned.

But who does he place his trust in if not the Fed, the president, the Senate, the Congress, the bankers, the CEOs and CFOs, the corporate giants, the international conglomerates, the boldest and brightest, the movers and shakers? Who is there left?

Mr. Greider places his faith in “we” the people – all the people and democracy. Democracy doesn’t scare him. He loves it – the more the better. He compares “we, the people” to an underground river, a river that rolls along beneath the surface. A river that is sometimes dry and sometimes a raging torrent. A river of people’s varying opinions and ideas, a river of support, outrage and often society changing currents. Mr. Greider sees that river rising in America today. He wants to see it flood its caverns and fill our country with hope, change and, most of all, action.

In this book Mr. Greider cheers for an American Democracy of the people, by the people and for the people. He doesn’t know how the people will do it. He doesn’t know what they will actually do but in true optimist tradition he is hoping that today’s underground river will swell into a deluge of change and moral economic character, true patriotism and social justice.

He wants to see a new focus on America and its people. Not isolationist but realistic and sensible – sensible to all of its citizens and not just the wealthy, the bankers, the stock brokers and all the pointy-headed intellectuals and international investors.

When Mr. Greider says “Come Home, America” that is exactly what he means – Come Home America! Come home all of you Americans and bring your ingenuity, your inventive spirit, your investment capital, your love of your own, and let’s rebuild this country into something that we all can be proud of as Americans.

What is Quantitative Easing?

What is Quantitative Easing?

(Sounds very much like my Noble Solution the The National Debt to me)



Central banks usually strengthen the economy through a single, vastly powerful tool — lowering interest rates. When the Federal Reserve makes it cheaper for banks to borrow money, that stimulus generally flows through the entire economy, as the banks make loans that in turn stimulate economic activity.

But when times are so dire that banks are reluctant to lend or borrowers to borrow whatever the cost, interest rate cuts lose their punch. That happened in Japan after the bursting of its real-estate bubble in 1991, and happened again in the wake of the credit crisis that upended Wall Street in the fall of 2008. In those circumstances, central banks turn to what economists call “quantitative easing’' — unorthodox methods of pumping money into an economy and working to lower the long-term interest rates that central bankers do not usually control.

The most usual approach is large-scale purchases of debt. The effect is the same as printing money in vast quantities, but without ever turning on the printing presses. The Fed buys government or other bonds and writes down that it has done so — what is called “expanding the balance sheet.” The bank then makes that money available for banks to borrow, thereby expanding the amount of money sloshing around the economy thereby, it hopes, reducing long-term interest rates.

And buying bonds drives down rates by increasing competition for the remaining bonds, forcing investors to accept a lower rate of return or move their money into other, riskier assets.

The Fed has engaged in several rounds of quantitative easing. The first round of bond purchases, known as QE1, aimed to arrest the financial crisis, in part by clearing room on bank balance sheets. The second round, called QE2, was started amid concerns that prices were increasing too slowly, raising the specter of deflation. This round, by contrast, is aimed squarely at the huge and persistent unemployment crisis.

Multiple Rounds

Between November 2008 and May 2010, the Fed bought $1.75 trillion in debt held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, mortgage-backed securities and Treasury notes between November 2008 and May 2010. A second round, dubbed QE2, involved an additional $600 billion in long-term Treasury securities purchased between November 2010 and June 2011.

In September 2011, the Fed began a variant that was called “Operation Twist.’' Instead of expanding its balance sheet by just buying more and more bonds, it sold $400 billion in short-term securities and used the proceeds to buy longer-term ones. In June 2012 the ban announced an extension worth $267 billion more.

In September 2012, the Fed announced a new round of bond purchases, QE3, but with an important difference. For the first time, it pledged to act until the economy improved, rather than creating another program with a fixed endpoint.

In announcing the new policy, the Fed sought to make clear that its decision reflected not only an increased concern about the health of the economy, but an increased determination to respond – in effect, an acknowledgment that its approach until now had been flawed.

The Fed said it would add $23 billion of mortgage bonds to its portfolio by the end of September, a pace of $40 billion in purchases each month. It will then announce a new target at the end of every month until the outlook for the labor market improves “substantially,” as long as inflation remains in check. The statement did not further explain either standard.

The Fed’s statement made clear, however, that it would continue to stimulate the economy even as the recovery strengthened, suggesting that it was now willing to tolerate somewhat higher inflation in the future to encourage growth in the present.

Debate Over Impact

There is broad disagreement among economists about the effects of the Fed’s actions. The Fed’s own research shows it may have raised economic output by 3 percent and created more than two million jobs. Most independent analyses have reached more modest conclusions, and some experts argue that there is little evidence of any meaningful economic impact.

The decision to focus on mortgage bonds reflects the Fed’s conviction that the housing market still needs help, and that lower rates on mortgage loans will produce broad economic benefits. Buying bonds drives down rates by increasing competition for the remaining bonds, forcing investors to accept a lower rate of return or move their money into other, riskier assets.

But many experts said that while the Fed program would help the housing recovery at the margins, even lower mortgage rates would not be enough in and of themselves to spur a strong turnaround, given the weakened financial state of many households.

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What's Wrong with Minimum wage?

WHAT’S WRONG
WITH MINIMUM WAGES?

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



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 Bitt Homney or Ronald Trumpet (fictitious names of two very rich people) 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 Bitt, or The Ronald 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 folks 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.

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 be forced 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 owners, sweatshop 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., must 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, our 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 that 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 kindhearted, generous employers are, of course, very good people. They are not criminals. 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 if they work for any less than one hundred dollars a minute, research in mental health will be abandoned and more nutty folks, like me, 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 had previously. 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 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 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 Republicans.

2nd Amendment

This link provides the current federal Supreme Court interpretation of the second amendment.

http://loc.gov/law/help/second-amendment.php

[According to the most receint decission in 2008 which at the moment only applies to the District of Columbia and is not yet Federal, a citizen has the right under the second amendment to have a gun for his personal protection BUT the type, kind, anount of amunition etc are all subject to government regulation. At this moment the 1939 interpretation is still the law.]

Overview
On June 26, 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller (PDF), the United States Supreme Court issued its first decision since 1939 interpreting the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Court ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution confers an individual right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense. It also ruled that two District of Columbia provisions, one that banned handguns and one that required lawful firearms in the home to be disassembled or trigger-locked, violate this right.

The Second Amendment, one of the ten amendments to the Constitution comprising the Bill of Rights, states: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The meaning of this sentence is not self-evident, and has given rise to much commentary but relatively few Supreme Court decisions.

In cases in the 19th Century, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment does not bar state regulation of firearms. For example, in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 553 (1875), the Court stated that the Second Amendment “has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government,” and in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (1886), the Court reiterated that the Second Amendment “is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the National government, and not upon that of the States.” Although most of the rights in the Bill of Rights have been selectively incorporated (PDF) into the rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and thus cannot be impaired by state governments, the Second Amendment has never been so incorporated.

Prior to District of Columbia v. Heller, the last time the Supreme Court interpreted the Second Amendment was in United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). In that case, Jack Miller and one other person were indicted for transporting an unregistered sawed-off shotgun across state lines in violation of the National Firearms Act of 1934. Miller argued, among other things, that the section of the National Firearms Act regulating the interstate transport of certain firearms violated the Second Amendment. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas agreed with Miller. The case was appealed directly to the Supreme Court, which reversed the district court. The Supreme Court read the Second Amendment in conjunction with the Militia Clause in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, and concluded that “[i]n the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a [sawed-off] shotgun . . . has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument.” 307 U.S. at 178. The Court concluded that the district court erred in holding the National Firearms Act provisions unconstitutional.

Since United States v. Miller, most federal court decisions considering the Second Amendment have interpreted it as preserving the authority of the states to maintain militias. Several of the post-Miller lower court opinions are discussed here (PDF).

The Supreme Court’s consideration of the Second Amendment this term was precipitated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s decision in Parker v. District of Columbia (PDF), 478 F.3d 370 (D.C. App. 2007). There, the D.C. Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, ruled that three District of Columbia laws regarding private gun ownership - namely a ban on new registration of handguns, a ban on carrying a pistol without a license, and a requirement that firearms be kept unloaded and locked - violated the Second Amendment. The court held that individuals have a right under the Second Amendment to own handguns for their own personal protection and keep them in their home without placing a trigger lock on them. This is the first decision since the Supreme Court decided Miller in which a federal court overturned a law regulating firearms based on the Second Amendment.

Following the D.C. Circuit’s decision not to rehear the case, the District of Columbia Government filed a petition for certiorari for review of the decision by the Supreme Court. The documents before the Supreme Court at the petition for certiorari stage have been collected here.

On November 20, 2007, the Supreme Court granted (PDF) the petition for certiorari. The Court framed the question for which it granted review as follows: “Whether the following provisions – D.C. Code §§ 7-2502.02(a)(4), 22-4504(a), and 7-2507.02 – violate the Second Amendment rights of individuals who are not affiliated with any state-regulated militia, but who wish to keep handguns and other firearms for private use in their homes?”

The briefs on the merits by the District of Columbia and respondent Dick Anthony Heller, as well as amicus briefs by some 67 “friends of the court,” have been collected here.

In its June 26 decision, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms, and that the D.C. provisions banning handguns and requiring firearms in the home disassembled or locked violate this right.

In the majority opinion authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court first conducted a textual analysis of the operative clause, "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The Court found that this language guarantees an individual right to possess and carry weapons. The Court examined historical evidence that it found consistent with its textual analysis. The Court then considered the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause, "[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," and determined that while this clause announces a purpose for recognizing an individual right to keep and bear arms, it does not limit the operative clause. The Court found that analogous contemporaneous provisions in state constitutions, the Second Amendment’s drafting history, and post-ratification interpretations were consistent with its interpretation of the amendment. The Court asserted that its prior precedent was not inconsistent with its interpretation.

The Court stated that the right to keep and bear arms is subject to regulation, such as concealed weapons prohibitions, limits on the rights of felons and the mentally ill, laws forbidding the carrying of weapons in certain locations, laws imposing conditions on commercial sales, and prohibitions on the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. It stated that this was not an exhaustive list of the regulatory measures that would be presumptively permissible under the Second Amendment.

The Court found that the D.C. ban on handgun possession violated the Second Amendment right because it prohibited an entire class of arms favored for the lawful purpose of self-defense in the home. It similarly found that the requirement that lawful firearms be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock made it impossible for citizens to effectively use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense, and therefore violated the Second Amendment right. The Court said it was unnecessary to address the constitutionality of the D.C. licensing requirement.

Four Justices dissented, each of which signed both of two dissenting opinions. One, by Justice Stevens, examined historical evidence on the meaning of the Second Amendment to conclude that the amendment protects militia-related interests. A second dissenting opinion, by Justice Breyer, stated that even if the Second Amendment protects a separate interest in individual self-defense, the District of Columbia provisions at issue are permissible forms of regulation.

The outcome of D.C. v. Heller leaves some issues unanswered, including whether the Second Amendment restricts state regulation of firearms, and the standard for evaluating the constitutionality of other laws and regulations that impact the Second Amendment right. These issues will be the subject of future litigation.

As background to the Court’s decision, the following is a selective bibliography listing only some of the substantial literature of books and journal articles on the Second Amendment.

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Books
Carl T. Bogus, ed., The Second Amendment in Law and History: Historians and Constitutional Scholars on the Right to Bear Arms. New York: New Press, 2000.

Saul Cornell, A Well-Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Lawrence Delbert Cress, Citizens in Arms: The Army and the Militia in American Society to the War of 1812. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

Exploring Gun Use in America. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004.

Stephen P. Halbrook, A Right to Bear Arms: State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.

Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.

Andrew J. McClurg, David B. Kopel, and Brannon P. Denning, eds., Gun Control and Gun Rights: A Reader and Guide. New York: New York University Press, 2002.

Robert J. Spitzer, The Politics of Gun Control. 4th ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2008.

Mark V. Tushnet, Out of Range: Why the Constitution Can’t End the Battle Over Guns. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

H. Richard Uviller and William G. Merkel, The Militia and the Right to Bear Arms, or, How the Second Amendment Fell Silent. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2002.

David C. Williams, The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment: Taming Political Violence in a ConstitutionalRepublic. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003.

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Articles
Akhil Reed Amar, The Second Amendment: A Case Study in Constitutional Interpretation, 2001 Utah L. Rev. 889 (2001).

Christopher A. Chrisman, Mind the Gap: The Missing Standard of Review Under the Second Amendment (and Where to Find It), 4 Geo. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 289 (2006).

Robert H. Churchill, Gun Regulation, the Police Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in Early America: The Legal Context of the Second Amendment, 25 Law & Hist. Rev. 139 (2007).

Saul Cornell, Commonplace or Anachronism: The Standard Model, the Second Amendment, and the Problem of History in Contemporary Constitutional Theory, 16 Const. Comment. 221 (1999).

Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, The Second Amendment: Towards an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration, 80 Geo. L. J. 309 (1991).

Lawrence Delbert Cress, An Armed Community: The Origin and Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms, 71 J. Am. Hist. 22 (1984).

Robert Dowlut, The Right To Keep And Bear Arms: A Right To Self-Defense Against Criminals And Despots, 8(1) Stan. L. & Pol’y Rev. 25 (Winter 1997).

Daniel A. Farber, Disarmed By Time: The Second Amendment and the Failure of Originalism, 76 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 167 (2000).

Paul Finkelman, “A Well-Regulated Militia”: The Second Amendment in Historical Perspective, 76 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 195 (2000).

Pratheepan Gulasekaram, Aliens With Guns: Equal Protection, Federal Power, and the Second Amendment, 92 Iowa L. Rev. 891 (2007).

Stephen P. Halbrook, What the Framers Intended: A Linguistic Analysis of the Right to “Bear Arms,” 49(1) Law & Contemp. Probs. 151 (Winter 1986).

R. Don Higginbotham, The Federalized Militia Debate: A Neglected Aspect of Second Amendment Scholarship, 55 Wm. & Mary Q. 39 (1998).

David Thomas Konig, The Second Amendment: A Missing Transatlantic Context for the Historical Meaning of “the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms,” 22 Law & Hist. Rev. 119 (2004).

Sanford Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L. J. 637 (1989).

Nelson Lund, Outsider Voices on Guns and the Constitution, 17 Const. Comment. 701 (2000) (reviewing Stephen P. Halbrook, Freedmen, The Fourteenth Amendment, and the Right to Bear Arms, 1866-1876, Westport, Ct.: Praeger Pubs. 1998).

Jack N. Rakove, The Second Amendment: The Highest Stage of Originalism, 76 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 103 (2000).

Glenn Harlan Reynolds & Brannon P. Denning, It Takes a Militia: A Communitarian Case for Compulsory Arms Bearing, 5 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 185 (1996).

William Van Alstyne, The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms, 43 Duke L. J. 1236 (1994).

Eugene Volokh, The Commonplace Second Amendment, 73 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 793 (1998).

David Yassky, The Second Amendment: Structure, History, and Constitutional Change, 99 Mich. L. Rev. 588 (2000).

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Last Updated: 08/08/2012

Labor History

Wow here is a great site for books that are about labor or labor related.

http://www.genordell.com/stores/spirit/labor.htm#hist

The Unfair Trade - Michael J. Casey

The Unfair Trade

How Our Broken Financial System Destroys the Middle Class

Michael J. Casey

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

Michael J. Casey is not an economist. He is a journalist. All through the book, I kept searching for his credentials. I could not believe that I was reading an economist. I looked him up again and I am very happy to confirm my notion that this fellow could not possibly be an economist. I don’t know where I ever got that idea.

Mr. Casey is a journalist and he works for the Wall Street Journal and something called the Dow Jones (Business and financial review, I presume.)

I looked him up before I requested this book. That should have been warning enough for the likes of my kind but I ordered the book nevertheless.

The title of the book “The Unfair Trade” and the subtitle “How Our Broken System Destroys the Middle Class” led me to believe that this book would defend the notion that Globalism is destroying the American middle class and explain the “how” of it all from the author’s perspective.

After reading this book, I did not find it to be a criticism of globalism. The author has found numerous problems with globalism but offers instead more, bigger and better, Globalism as the cure.

He had the same problem with the free market concept. He wants to tweak and adjust it to “level the playing field.” Well I don’t mean to be overly critical but if that is done, it is my understanding that we no longer have a free market utopian village, guided by the invisible hand of self regulation and automatic adjustment. We have a managed economy if not a totally communistic planned economy.

As for the middle class, I don’t feel that it is the American middle class that this author is concerned about, or the European middle class for that matter. It might be the middle class of Ethiopia or Paraguay but not America or Europe as far as I could tell.

Let me take you to the back of the book to Mr. Casey’s chapter on solutions.

“The United States’ long term fiscal challenges are indeed daunting. Future obligations of Medicare, Social Security and other retirement programs showed total unfunded liabilities of 62 trillion as of 2009, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, or $540,000 in claims per household. With baby boomers now leaving the workforce, these liabilities will inevitably precipitate a crisis if they aren’t reduced, an exercise that will weigh on growth for years, probably decades. Such is the price to be paid for the credit binge of the previous decade and for the transition the country must make from a financial economy to a productive one in which exports play a more fundamental role … My view: convince retirees, those with the most distorting electoral clout, of the counterintuitive but truthful notion that their long term interests lie in having their entitlements reduced. If the burden of paying for them is instead borne by the young, the productive generation on which our future depends and the groups hardest hit by the 2008 crisis all will be held back…”

Peter G. Peterson? The multi-billionaire who has had a long going campaign to destroy not only Medicare but Social Security, unemployment and any and all programs involving a safety net for any American, young or old? Is it from this man’s right wing, propaganda outlet that Mr. Casey is quoting?

Yes it is.

Neither the author nor Mr. Peterson seems to have heard that Social Security is an insurance program that is funded by contributions and has nothing to do with the deficit or the National Debt or the current fiscal crises. In fact, Social Security is solvent for a couple of decades and presents no immediate problems never mind a crisis.

It also has a very, very easy fix for the future. Remove the cap (another form of subsidy to the wealthy) and the future of our children is also secure … almost forever.

Medicare’s problem is with rising health care costs. Control the costs and extend the coverage – single payer universal care for everybody would be my preference.

I have this book filled with notes written in the margins and at the bottom of many pages.

I don’t really feel it will be worth my time or yours to quote more from this author’s text. Let me write here a few of my random notes, just for laughs.

1) Intermingled Contingent Liabilities: Brokers were allowed to make risky deals but yet cover their butts by betting against their own future success. This led to fraudulent transactions where deals were cut solely for the purpose of collecting on their counter bets.

2) The author gives a basic Republican explanation of economic collapse but does not credit here the corrupt financial and business practices. Instead he blames the Fed, Fannie and Freddie for allowing the theft and fraud to happen. Rather ridiculous. It is like blaming a bank for tempting bank robbers with their locked vaults full of money. Better education, better jobs and higher wages for the next generation will pick up and counter future tax increases – not cutting workers, firing people and lower salaries. Austerity is the wrong answer for a depressed economy. Wait until inflation becomes a problem. Now is the time for spending not cutting.

3) China must surrender Communism and become a Capitalist country in order to participate in the many benefits of the author’s suggested new and revised globalism? Is he nuts? And they say the liberals are the utopian dreamers.

4) Once again the author blames America and Americans for the problems, not the “system” or the rich investment community that corrupted it.

5) The author talks of the creation of new industries and improved technology in BRIC countries but does not mention the directly related losses in jobs and industries here at home. Author also forgets to mention that China, Brazil and Russia are making all these wonderful gains under Socialist rule … not capitalist.
And so it goes.

I regret that I wasted so much of my valuable time rehashing all this, for the most part, right wing dribble when I could have been reading something important.

If I regret reading this book myself, how can I recommend it to anyone else? Sorry.

Chomsky on Anarchism

Chomsky on Anarchism By Noam Chomsky

Selected and edited By Barry Pateman

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

Noam Chomsky, I would say, is our number one American dissident. He is obviously an extremely intelligent individual. Reading any of his works is an experience to say the least. He has been around forever but my personal exposure is fairly recent.

He is tough on governments … all governments.

Which brings this reader to ask, “He certainly can’t be against ‘government’ in itself, can he?”
Well, it seems that he can.

He refers to himself as an anarchist.

Before I started researching Unionism in America and around the world, I was like most. I associated Anarchism with the word anarchy. This is not the case.

Anarchism and anarchist have a range that swings from terrorist to “do gooder” moral reformers.
But what about Mr. Chomsky? Where did he fall into this range?

What does Chomsky believe he is?

He is such a bitter critic of the U.S. and Israel and the world at large he prompts one to ask what solutions he has to offer to all our world problems.

Finding or figuring out what Mr. Chomsky believes and what his answers are is not as easy as it is with some other authors.

Bertrand Russell, for example, wrote an essay entitled “What I Believe”

Now Bertrand Russell was also a very intelligent man. Many of his works are beyond my level of understanding. Yet, one can pick up Bertrand’s work on this subject and when finished reading, have an understanding of his personal beliefs.

It is rather simple and straightforward.

It is not so simple with Mr. Chomsky. As far as I know with all of his books he has not written a book specifically dedicated to his personal beliefs, political or religious.

This volume consists of a group of selected essays and interviews through which the editor, Barry Pateman, attempts to expose to the reader the personal political beliefs of Mr. Chomsky, specifically related to his declaration of anarchism.

It begins with a dissertation written in 1969 by Mr. Chomsky on what he calls “Liberal Scholarship.”
This lecture is almost one hundred pages long.

The first half of the lecture deals with some of the published attitudes of these Liberal Scholars towards the Vietnam War.

I found this presentation very interesting especially with regards to the liberal scholarship on how to deal with insurgencies. I must admit that after a while the liberal scholars began sounding like Dr. Josef Mengele and other intellectuals and scientists of the Nazi era. This is a bit scary, especially when Noam gets into the scholars and their understanding and applications of the school of behaviorism, reward and punishment being the approved method as opposed to the idea of “winning hearts and minds.” That the human subjects of the insurgency were to be looked at and treated as in the category of animals, rats and monkeys and not human beings, was shocking coming from American sources.

One quote from one of the Liberal Intelligencia of the period in this section:

“Science, as everyone knows, is responsible, moderate, unsentimental, and otherwise good. Behavioral science tells us that we can be concerned only with behavior and control of behavior. Therefore we should be concerned only with behavior, and it is responsible, moderate, unsentimental and otherwise good to control behavior by appropriately applied reward and punishment. Concern for loyalties and attitudes is emotional and unscientific. As rational men, believers in the scientific ethic we should be concerned with manipulating behavior in a desirable direction and not be deluded by mystical notions of freedom, individual needs, or popular will.”

And this was part of the logic used to support the massive carpet bombing in the North and elsewhere, napalm and Agent Orange.

Though interesting and enlightening, I found no connection in this part of the lecture to anarchism.

In the second half of the lecture Professor Chomsky takes on the Spanish Civil war in the 1936 and 1937.

This is one area of World War II that I have neglected and it always has me confused. Like who supported who and what was going on altogether.

Well, as I understand now, Franco was a Fascist. He was aided militarily and supportively by both the Germans under Hitler and the Italians under Mussolini.

Winston Churchill seems to be the only one in Europe who did not line up with Franco – one of his better decisions. He made some doozies. But Chamberlain and the British government did. They were more fearful of the spread of Russian Communism than fascism. At this time they looked at Hitler and his Nazi government as a possible future ally against Stalin and the Russians.

Roosevelt, in America, had much the same attitude.

So, consequently, we had the free world all lined up in support of another fascist in Europe.

There were Russian supported communists also participating in this mess. What was interesting for me to learn was that these Spanish communists had very dissimilar views from their Russian theoretical benefactors. It might be more accurate to state that the Russian Communists were no longer the saviors of the working class, if they ever were. In this conflict, the Spanish Communist and the Russians supported the established Republic, not the revolt of the workers as one might expect. The worker revolt in Spain at the time was the purview of Mr. Chomsky’s anarchists.
Professor Chomsky is no supporter of Russian Communism. He goes on at some length expressing his distaste for Lenin, Stalin and what they helped to evolve in the Russian Federation. Make no mistake; Chomsky is no fan of Russian Communism.

But in this half of the story the author gets into Anarchism and the several anarchist takeovers going on at this time as a part of this attempted overthrow of the Republic.

It is all very confusing, but Noam uses this part of his lecture to defend the anarchists and their attempts and successes against the Liberal Historical offerings of other experts.

Anarchism here, I interpret as “worker control” of whatever … an industry, a farm, a town or local government or all of the above.

The Lincoln Brigade and Earnest Hemmingway and “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by the way, were anti-fascist and supported the Republic.

An interview which begins on pages 133 and discusses “The Relevance of Anarcho-Syndicalism” makes it very plain to me that what the author refers to as Social Libertarianism offers no solutions to our present government addiction. In order for the dreams and aspirations of this group to become a possibility requires a fundamental transformation in human nature, “an inner spiritual awakening” of sorts is the aspiration of the author. I don’t see such a thing ever happening.

In the author’s anarchist world there is no need for militaries and “in a decent society everyone should have the opportunity to find interesting work.”

Yeah, that would be nice. “Miss, this toast is burnt. My check please and don’t expect a tip.”

The author says he is a Social Libertarian. This is to be distinguished from the popular right wing libertarians so prominent on the political scene today.

I have read mostly right wing libertarians and they have a similar problem. They have a lot of things they would like to do away with but have very few realistic solutions as to what these things might be replaced with where necessary.
We all have dreams but are they possible must be considered also.

There is one constant refrain throughout this book. It goes like this: I don’t know the answer to that question; I’m not trying to be evasive; We’ll just have to wait and see; We just don’t know; it will require time and experimentation.

Mr. Chomsky has a dream but even he has no picture of this dream to convey. In truth, he doesn’t know what it is himself. If he does, it didn’t come through to me.

In the meantime he has a whole world of criticisms and very good criticisms of what is going on around us under our very noses. He is always a champion against violence, needless killing and wars in general.

He is always worth reading. He sees things that most of us never notice and often aren’t even aware of.

He does admit in one interview in this work that he is not in favor of all revolutionary changes. For example he would rather support the status quo in America today and its present Obama Government than support right wing radicals, like the Tea Baggers, whose ideas would certainly make things worse, in his opinion.

I definitely agree with that.

One last criticism. The word “freedom” needs to be defined. Freedom is one of those words like justice, truth, and God. They can be defined a million ways by a million different people.

For example, if I say, “All people should speak the truth, seek and promote justice and live their lives according to the will of God,” what have I said?

This phrase could be cheered by Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Protestants, Skinhead Nazis, soldiers on both lines of most battlefields and the majority of even our present day Congress – Republican and Democrat. Even Atheists could support it depending on the definition of God.

I read a very good book by Eric Foner a while back entitled “The Story of American Freedom.” In this work Mr. Foner follows the word “freedom” throughout American history. As he points out, depending on the current definition, one man’s freedom can be another man’s slavery as was the exact case in the American Civil War.

The Hobo Philosopher, Richard Edward Noble, is a writer and author of: America On Strike.

Robert Reich

On debt ceiling and Republican obstruction.

Robert Reich

On Killing

On Killing

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

I was expecting this book to be an expose of the needless and barbaric, brutalization of American youth and their transformation from loving, innocent teenagers into conscienceless, military assassins.

This is not such a book.

This book written by a military officer is a basic description of military indoctrination practices, and an explanation of why they have been enacted. It is not only a defense of the military and its traditions but a declaration of why these practices are a just and moral necessity for the proper protection of the country, its citizens and the average teenage American soldier trainee.

From the peacenik’s point of view this book is an American horror story.
From the authoritarian, militarist perspective this book is a reasonable and logical explanation of the way things are the way they are and why they must be the way they are.

The author’s philosophy is simplistic and basic:
1) War is a fact.
2) That war is a fact necessitates the need for soldiers.
3) That it is a fact that soldiers are necessary, it is a moral imperative that the nation train and condition their soldiers to kill efficiently, expeditiously, without hesitation, guilt or remorse. Soldiers must be mentally prepared to kill the enemy. If proper training in killing is lacking the soldiers will be killed themselves and their country will not be protected.

And it is as simple as that.

But there are basic problems that result from the above necessities. These problems have very little to do with military practices according to this author. They are the problems of our civilian society and polity and its responsibility to its soldiering community.

I will simplify the author’s basic problem:

We begin with a young, wholesome, properly indoctrinated child. The child has been raised in our democratic society and has incorporated all the proper values. He/she has learned to be peace loving and to avoid conflict and aggressive entanglements: no fighting in the school yard, no biting, no kicking, no punching. He has been trained to be a good little boy or girl.

Now this properly, socially adjusted child reaches military age and volunteers to be a patriotic part of the national fabric serving in the necessary defense of the nation.

He/she must be transformed into a killer. A soldier must be a killer. It is necessary to their personal survival that they are given the equipment and the psychological skills to kill effectively and without hesitation.

The military knows how to do this. It has been learning and passing down these techniques and basic training practices for over 2000 years. These proper and morally necessitated techniques are learned in our traditional basic training practices and at our officers training academies.

All of this is proper, moral and acceptable to this author. The problem comes when our trained killer completes his military duty and attempts to rejoin a peaceful, democratic society once again. Now our conditioned, trained, soldier killer must be transformed back into a non-aggressive, social citizen.

This is the author’s scope of interest for the first 300 pages.

This transition has not been going all that well and it is primarily the fault of the citizenry. We were seriously lacking in this respect with our returning Vietnam veterans. We the general public must be made to understand what we have done to these children. Also the political system must be better informed. More money must be allocated to the reclamation and desensitization of our properly trained soldiers.
Not just wounded veterans but all our returning soldiers.

In effect, they must all be put in a psychological decompression chamber. The soldiers must be confirmed in the notion that they have done nothing wrong and that they have acted righteously. We, the public, must be warmer, more gracious, more approving and more supportive. We should have more parades honoring soldiers and soldering. We should give out more metals and ribbons honoring what they have done. We should celebrate our military more often and more elaborately. We should provide returning soldiers with more support groups, more clubs and easier access to more services whatever their problems may be. We need to supply to them more slaps on the back, more hugs and embraces, more TLC and national approval. After all we gave them the problems they are now experiencing. It is our fault. We have a moral obligation to do more and to do it better.

For this officer/author, America has acted correctly in all of its military encounters. America is and has been good; its enemies have been bad. This knowledge is all a soldier needs to proceed forward in America’s defense programs abroad.
For example, he dismisses all the debate over Vietnam in one paragraph. His argument is that history has now proven that the Viet Cong were Communists.

That’s it. Case closed.

Like the military tribunals assigned to make the judgments at Nuremberg this author/militarist has great trouble in distinguishing between an atrocity and proper, normal military, moral, necessary killing. What would appear to most of us as a clear and obvious distinction becomes a muddled mire of over simplistic misinterpretations, at least according the author’s authoritarian, militarist mindset.

I personally think that this officer/author is an interesting study in how the typical, average authoritarian, militarist mind operates. This guy is a study unto himself.

But once we get past page 300 we get into a little different twist. This final section of the book deals with the application of the killing technologies used so effectively in military indoctrination being made available to the general public and especially children in the form of video games, Hollywood movies and the desensitization of our children and the general population to blood, gore, unauthorized violence and killing.

It is the author’s contention in this section that, these killing techniques and processes of desensitizing of the individual warrior, though perfectly legitimate for the training and indoctrination of teenage soldiers, is a total horror when released indiscriminately onto our children and the general public. He would like to see certain video games, those recreating real humans being killed complete with blood and scattering brain and body parts, taken off the market. He would like to see violent movies censored or regulated. He sees problems with our new Hollywood anti-heroes and the basic notion that it is acceptable for civilians or even authorized police or investigators to take the law into their own hands.

Like the majority of Americans the author has a double standard. Most Americans are perfectly willing to abandon the Constitution, the Bill of Right and our entire freedom loving, democratic system in the stern face of Military necessity. This author takes that abandonment to an even higher level with his killing machine notions. Most Americans and this author are able to compartmentalize their value system and incorporate two acceptable systems. One that applies to military and war and another that applies to civilian life. This is the main reason, in my opinion, for all of our confusion on this subject. In one area the killing and murder of women, children, old men and non-combatants are considered warranted and necessary and in the other a slap in the face or even a spiteful remark are looked upon as possibly criminal and subject to legal sanction and prosecution.

I find most of my personal agreement with the author in this last small section of the book.

Overall, I think this book was a good experience. I think peaceniks and warmongers will both find lots of food for thought in this text.

The book is filled with facts and studies and with an equal number of the author’s personal opinions or insights. I would put the author’s insights in the 50/50 category. Half of them I can accept and half of them I find lacking in proper interpretation.

The author is fearful that without proper regulation of videos, movies, Hollywood and gun regulation we risk turning our country into a Nazi-like Germany. Yet he is not at all fearful that the very same technologies, indoctrination and techniques when applied to our young trainee soldiers will turn our military personnel into a Nazi-like SS or Einsatzguppen.

We must remember the defense of the committed Nazi, “We were only following orders.” This counters the author’s main defense of soldering and proper moral killing that in the military, soldiers must follow orders and therefore their actions are controlled and regulated.

Nazism is the most recent historical proof that “following orders” is far from an effective barrier in defense of an authoritarian military structure.

It is my opinion that the author will always have big problems with moral decisions because of his obvious acceptance of militarism and its dehumanizing aspects.

This author is first and foremost a soldier. As a soldier and militarist he must find a method for justifying killing. Once this adaptation is established all moral questions with regards to killing become obfuscated and confusing.

The value of this book, in my opinion, is not whether it is true or false. It is the psychological opportunity provided to the reader of a concise, rational, educated and unheated presentation of the American modern-day authoritarian/militarist outlook and overall justification for war and killing.

I have already dealt in great detail with this basic authoritarian/militarist point of view in my book “Mein Kampf – An Analysis of Book One.”

In Adolf’s book he justifies war and killing by claiming that it is all a part of Nature’s Divine Plan. Adolf taught that War is good.

This author starts his justification from what I would call the Winston Churchill position. Which is, like it or not, war is an unfortunate but necessary evil.

This author does not go as far as Winston in that he says simply that war and killing are necessary. He doesn’t mention evil in his basic justification. He states simply that war and the consequent killing are necessary – and he adds that the killing is not only necessary but moral. A country that didn’t train its soldiers to become conditioned killing experts would be acting immorally, the author claims.

I would also say that this is the accepted point of view of most Americans.
The author’s personal opinions and interpretations of the facts that he presents of what and how this acceptance of war and killing should be dealt with by America and its government is controversial to say the least. His basic moral acceptance of the methods used by the military to indoctrinate and fortify killing expertise in its soldiers should be evaluated by all Americans.

After all, his ideas and the practices that he describes and teaches ARE what your young adults are being taught presently in the American military.

Consumer Price Index - CPI

The Eastpointer

There is no Inflation.

By Richard E. Noble

I don't want to upset all you retired folks out there but I have found out that the Government has been lying to us about inflation.

I know ... I know, you are all shocked. You can't believe I could actually come right out and say the U. S. Government is lying. I am sure some of you think I should be charged with treason and sent to a foreign country to be tortured. I know to actually believe our government would lie is really hard to swallow. There must be some other explanation? Maybe it only appears that they are lying? Maybe I have misinterpreted the facts? Well, I'll let you be the judge.

Inflation is interpreted by the government as CPI. The CPI is the Consumer Price Index. This index was once calculated by comparing the prices of a certain group of goods and services from time to time and then estimating the increase or decrease in their costs. This task was performed by the BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As the cost of everything in this so called basket of goods and services kept rising, the government decided that something had to be done. Something had to be done because this method was costing the government too much money in cost of living adjustments to retirees, retired veteran’s pensions, Medicare payments, government employees, bond holders and whatever. So they appointed somebody named Boskin and instructed him to form a commission and study this problem.

If you are retired, receiving a pension, have your life's savings invested in government bonds, working under a government contract, or anything that is adjusted for inflation by somebody and you now find that you can only afford to buy half a tank of LP gas, or you can no longer afford to drive your car more than one block in any direction, or you are wondering if cat food can be consumed by humans, you can thank Michael Boskin and his Commission. He and his commission rearranged the methods for estimating the Consumer Price Index.

Mr. Boskin had some "overlooked" economic concepts that he brought into the CPI evaluation like; substitution, hedonics - quality estimations, geometric weighing, seasonal adjustments, along with the elimination of certain incalculable volatile variables like energy, food and local, state and federal taxes. So, for example, when the CPI was calculated without consideration for food, energy and taxes it was often found that there had been no inflation at all. Wow! Isn't that great?

So you ask; why is it that I don't have enough money to live on any more? Well, obviously you are still heating and cooling your home, eating food and paying your taxes. If you will just stop doing those things you will find that you have just as much money as you always had.

But just in case that wasn't enough to bail out the government, Mr. Boskin thought up a few other safety measures to guarantee that inflation didn't go up.

One of his measures he called "substitution." In other words if the price of beefsteak in our typical basket of goods went up from the last time that Mr. Boskin went shopping, he substituted hamburger; and if hamburger was too high he substituted chicken; and if all the meat was too high; he substituted vegetables; and if vegetables were too high one can imagine that Mr. Boskin would have us consumers check out the ingredients on a bag of Friskies. Then, of course, we don’t have to buy the name brand Friskies, we could buy Gritskies and we don’t have to buy Ritz Crackers we can buy Fritz or Blitz Crackers.

Next on Mr. Boskin's list of improvements was "hedonics" or quality compensations. Let's say that Mr. Boskin bought a TV for $329 on his previous expedition and then on his following survey the same model TV cost the exact same price. But the new TV had a better picture, was estimated to last 2 years longer, and due to improvements in technology it had a much better sound. Mr. Boskin figured that even though RCA chose not to charge us for these improvements the government had no obligation to be so generous. Mr. Boskin estimated, for example, that these improvements were worth in terms of quality enhancement, $135. He therefore calculated that a new TV didn't really cost the consumer $329 but only $194. As you can plainly see our CPI actually went down instead of remaining exactly the same.
But hedonics only seems to travel in one direction. If you personally don’t benefit from these new technological wonders because you have grown old and your vision and hearing have diminished or even if you didn’t need and don’t want the new and improved model, you still get billed by Boskin nonetheless.

I could explain to you Mr. Boskin's "geometric weighing" as opposed to the old antiquated arithmetic method and his seasonal adjustments but I don't really think it is necessary. I think that most of you out there will agree with me when I say that Mr. Boskin and the U.S. government who hired him are not simply spinning the truth but are really telling lies.

Are We Not Righteous Men

Are We Not Righteous Men

By Bill Osher

Book Review

By Richard Edward Noble

Bill Osher is an ordained Methodist Minister. He has his PhD in counseling psychology and has been employed as such at a college university.

Politically, Mr. Osher is clearly a Progressive. He helped found the Georgia Progressives. A very lonely endeavor, I would imagine. He now lives in New Mexico and is actively involved in the Democratic Party.

This book is a satirical, rephrasing of many popular Old Bible stories familiar to all Christians. One might say that Professor Bill has modernized and upgraded these tales and placed them in a modern-day, rightest format – telling us these tales as Newt Gingrish might interpret them.

Of course, anyone attempting to use the Bible as a stepping stone to humor is on very dangerous ground. But Mr. Osher manages quite well and makes his points with a laugh. Yet I have no doubt this book will be severely criticized when discovered by political pundits from the opposition.

Mr. Osher, as with many good Christians today, is obviously fed up with the hypocrisy being spewed out by the high volume Christian Right.

This is a short book, a mere 90 pages but I would imagine it took the author some time to put it together. Along with the sarcasm it is also very clever. It took some thought to accomplish.

This book reminds me of the Ferengi 286 Rules of Acquisicion. If you are a Star Wars Fan, you’ll know what I’m talking about. If not give it a Google. Lots of laughs.

A few poignant quotes from the book:

Blessed are the rich for they have labored mightily and thus enjoy God’s favor.
Blessed are the warmongers for they make the weapons industry flourish.
A hand up is a handout.
Charity beginneth and endeth at home.

I like best, though, this quote on the final page by Upton Sinclair:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.”

I found lots of food for thought in this little volume, though I doubt if any conservatives will feel likewise.

Khatyn - Book Review

Khatyn

By Ales Adamovich

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

This book is tragically exhausting, not just for the main characters but for the reader.

The pain and suffering are overwhelming. The physical effort is beyond endurance. And the reader feels it all, every step of the way, page after page.

I think that was probably the author’s focal point in writing the book.

The main characters are constantly on the go … trekking. They are starving. Their hardships are superhuman yet real and not doubted for a second.

It reads like nonfiction. The main characters are physically weak. They are exhausted. But they keep going … and going … and going … and going … and going.
They are involved in a cause in which they are outnumbered and overwhelmed. But they endure.

The cause is apparently the war but in truth, it is survival. They endure because they must.

The reader keeps asking himself how this man can keep going. How can all these people keep going. Why don’t they all just lay down and die?

And this was the Nazi’s psychological intent. Make the enemy want to die. Make him want to give up, quit the fight and surrender. But the persecuted were all too aware that to surrender was to die. They would be tortured and killed whatever choice they made.

So they must persist.

This is a horror story and you are there to witness it all. You see it through the very, cold, war weary eyes of the main characters in the partisan army and the suffering masses around them.

The account is almost devoid of passion. Instead it is filled with endurance.

Again, I think this is also part of the author’s intent. He wants the reader to witness it as he saw it … as they all saw it. He wants the reader to see the senseless persistence in the midst of hopelessness, accepted slaughter, murder and senseless human brutality.

This is the story of war and the atrocities that inevitably come with it. It is the story of burnt and destroyed villages, of tortured, unarmed men, women and children who are murdered in the most horrible, cruel and senseless manner.

There is a love story mixed in with this war of horror but it is secondary. It hardly deals with love. There is the involvement of one man and one woman but it is all mental. There is no sex or romance to it. But it helps to make the book human and tolerable.

The main story is the war and the shock and dehumanization of it all. The reader is torn between the conflicting emotions of wanting to put the book up and stop reading and the moral necessity to turn the next page.

In every war the soldiers’ bodies are tabulated but it is always the civilian population with the majority of casualties.

Belarus in Russia is the setting. The main characters are all a part of the partisan resistance. They are a small but dedicated group. But for every minor victory they achieve, the Nazis repay ten fold.

I’ve read many true historical accounts of this area and the treason, slaughter and massacres involved. The German Nazis and their killer extermination policies are behind everything but they get lots of help.

The Nazis are not just German but traitors and sycophants from the ranks of the local villagers who sold their souls to the devil for the opportunity to vent their hate on their neighbors.

The book does not elaborate on this treason. It concentrates on the actual war experiences of one man and one woman and the small band of partisan, anti-Nazi resisters they are a part of.

I’ve read more non-fiction accounts of the atrocities of World War II than I have novels and fiction. There is truly very little fiction involved here. The author elaborated on the plot and the details, but the facts of the slaughter of Khatyn and Belarus are all detailed and recorded in the historical archives of the war.

The actual history can be even more gruesome. But in a novel such as this, written by someone who was there and experienced it all firsthand, and then creatively fictionalized the events, a different dimension is added.

In my non-fiction reading, I never felt the hopelessness, or the raw spirit of survival or the exhaustion.

I was expecting the hero and the heroine to simply lie down and die at some point. What was the sense to it? Who was there to come to the rescue? Nobody. It was all on their shoulders.

This is one of those books that we would all rather not read but once we have finished it we feel a sense of achievement.

Read it and weep.

The reader will have to be the one to weep because the participants had reached a point where tears were impossible. They had none to offer.

They just stand and stare.

The High-Beta Rich

The High-Beta Rich

By Robert Frank

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

This book, written by a Wall Street Journal senior writer, consists of a small selection of super wealthy individuals who suffered substantially from the economic crash of 2008.

Some went from billionaires to millionaires, some multi- millionaires to lesser status millionaires, and some went bankrupt.

“The year 1982 marked the year of the high-beta wealth.
“For nearly thirty years after World War Two, the American wealthy were a small, quiet, financially conservative group … There was plenty of wealth created in America during the postwar years. But it didn’t pile up at the top the way it did after 1982. Wealth was more broadly shared, thanks to high taxes on the wealthy, strong unions, New Deal programs, protectionist trade policy and the nations manufacturing power … From the wealth perspective, 1947 to 1982 was a sturdy bridge built by the working class.”

Most of the millionaires and billionaires in this book were certainly not geniuses.

The author’s main thesis has to do with the rotation in the ranks of the top 1 percent and the perilous volatility created in a world or society dependent on this class for its revenue.

He accepts the inevitability of this scenario which is that our nation is and forever will be a country dependant on the erratic and extremely volatile income of a super wealthy class of gambling casino junkies.

At the conclusion of the book he offers possible alternative solutions available to the U.S. government and the state governments as well.

This book is, on the one hand, a political statement and on the other hand a presentation of entertaining stories. It is my opinion that the one has nothing to do with the other.

The stories are good. The political statement by the author is in my opinion confused.

The author makes reference to “The Gilded Age” throughout the book. I think it must be understood that the Gilded Age was a satirical phrase thought up by none other than Mark Twain. He coined it to describe a period in American history marked by deceit, corruption and exploitation of the poor and working class by the wealth mongers and greedy and “gilded” with a thin veneer of gold by the press, media and political propagandist of the time to give it the appearance of a proper and righteous prosperity.

The author’s political statement is:

“DON’T TAX THE RICH AND THE SUPER WEALTHY.”

The author never says this outright. In fact, he would deny it, I’m sure. But this is the basic message I get and it would be consistent with the general dogma preached by writers from the Wall Street Review.

I think his suggestions at the end of the book on how American government is to manage are tongue in cheek. If the author is truly sincere, he is clearly severely confused by his own research.

Let me make my case.

To deal with the author’s message, skip the stories about the lives of the rich and famous entirely. They are interesting and entertaining but have little to do with the author’s underlying message.

Read the introduction and then skip to the back of the book and start reading the chapter entitled “What’s Wrong with California.”

Before we do that let’s have a reality check:

Taxes are necessary.
Everyone must pay taxes.
The rich are required to pay taxes and they should.

Now we move onto the author’s elaborate contention.

The top 1% of America’s wealthiest people are no longer a consistent, stable group of people. There is rugged competition for the top earner positions and the names of those in the ranks of the top 1% change every year. The lives and incomes of these individuals are precarious and extremely “volatile.” Therefore the money coming from these individuals in taxes is also extremely “volatile.” An individual from this group may make a tax payment of 100 million dollars one year and be bankrupt the next year and send the government nothing. This puts the government in a boom or bust situation according to the author.

Well, it seems to me that if we are talking about consistent income changing hands in the upper 1%, the government’s income would remain stable and consistent. It would be collecting equal amounts of money but from different people each year. If this is not the case, then we are dealing with other factors here that must be analyzed. Money simply changing hands should not affect government revenue.

The volume of money that is changing hands must change to affect government revenues.

If it is the volume of money that is changing then we are looking at another problem.
If the volume is changing then money is disappearing.

The money could be disappearing for a number of different reasons. If the volume is disappearing then money is leaving the state or the country without being taxed or the money being taxed each year is from one time liquidations of capital goods, services or businesses.

In other words businesses are liquidating their assets and disappearing from the various states and the country.

We have known this has been happening for a long, long time. This is nothing new. Huge amounts of money are also being secreted out of the country and into offshore accounts or put into approved tax shelters with no taxes being paid.

The author does not address any of the above and concentrates on the “volatility” of the situation.

It may not really be all that volatile. The volatility may be a temporary factor resulting from the continuing abandonment of moneyed interests from American shores.

The solution would not be to adapt to the temporary volatility being created via the abandonment and liquidation of assets by more and more American companies, millionaires and conglomerates but to institute policies that take action against this ongoing bankrupting of American wealth and the American people.

In the beginning of this review I quote the author on his understanding of how we maintained prosperity and stable growth in the hands of a strong working class from 1947 until 1982.

The formula seems simple enough … why not work to reestablish that situation on those basic principles once again?

Rebuild our middle class, increase the wages and earnings of the poor, and the middle class, re-establish viable and futuristic industries that will supply the energy and material needs for us and the world, establish jobs with a future here in America and guarantee their longevity. As the middle and bottom earn more they will then pay more and be once again the breadwinners and the stability of our country and government.

Make the wealthy pay their dues but wean ourselves off a dependency on this group of spindly legged gambling casino junkies and put our burdens back onto the strong shoulders and burly arms of our stable working class. Improve our education system, retrain our workers and pay attention to the foundation of our home base. Rebuild America, its roads, highways, bridges, factories, and its working class.

Come on America there are choices here and good ones.

Lamcotec - Rick Anderson - Monson, MA.

Rick Anderson is one of the children of my old pal and chum, Richard Anderson Sr. I d

Monson company makes huge donation to Toys for Tots

The European Dream

The European Dream

By Jeremy Rifkin

Book Review

By Richard Edward Noble

The “European Dream” by Jeremy Rifkin was published in 2004, well before the Great Recession. I knew the book would be out of sync with the current world economy but I thought it would be interesting to see how Jeremy’s ideas held up through this trying period.

First, what is the European Dream and what is the American Dream for that matter?
The European Dream according to Jeremy Rifkin:

“The European Dream emphasizes community relationships over individual autonomy, cultural diversity over assimilation, quality of life over the accumulation of wealth, sustainable development over unlimited material growth, deep play over unrelenting toil, universal human rights and the rights of nature over property rights, and global cooperation over the unilateral exercise of power.”

And now for Jeremy’s interpretation of the American Dream:

“That dream emphasizes the unbridled opportunity of each individual to pursue success, which, in the American vernacular, has generally meant financial success. The American dream is far too centered on personal material advancement and too little concerned with the broader human welfare to be relevant in a world of increasing risk, diversity, and interdependence. It is an old dream, immersed in the frontier mentality that has long since become passé.”

Jeremy contends that the European Dream, sponsored and promoted by the EU (European Union), is extremely progressive. He is clearly an intellectual progressive.

So first the reader must ask if this is all Jeremy’s imagination or objective fact.
Jeremy supports his thesis with declaration after declaration from the EU coupled with policy notions and contentions that support his interpretation of the economic community. These declarations certainly support his thesis.

So it is contended and seems to be fact that the EU is/was a progressive economic organization up until the year 2004.

The idea is presented that the EU desired to become a sort of United States of Europe. As with the United States an immediate battle ensued between the sovereign rights of the individual nation states and the economic community. This battle the author admits is/was on going.

Unlike the United States the EU is a non-territorial community based on universal human rights and the sharing of their economic interests. Like the United States it is founded on an idea or philosophy and not one’s place of birth.

One goal, for those presenting this view, has been to promote the notion of nation state members thinking of themselves as being European as opposed to being a Frenchman or a German.

Another goal is the globalization of the community outlook in tune with their notion of universal humanitarian rights as opposed to individual nation states' rights – private property and other exclusionist notions.

Since the world economic collapse we have seen changes taking place and conflicts arising in both the U. S. and Europe.

In our last presidential election here in the U.S. we all witnessed a direct assault on progressive notions of any sort. The moneyed interest attacked and put forward a program of extreme regressive, conservative notions. They were supported by a large number of Americans but in the final tally they were defeated by a majority of American voters.

After reading Jeremy’s book it appears that a similar assault has been taking place in Europe.

The progressives, liberals and workers are rioting in the streets of one nation after another in Europe while the moneyed interest and the conservatives attempt to enforce their will from the main governments and the power positions.

It is very easy to see now after reading “the European Dream” why the power brokers, moneyed interests, conservatives and plutocrats would be so vehement in attacking liberalism and the spread of progressivism in Europe. These liberal and progressive notions were much more advanced in Europe than in the U.S. To turn Europe and the European Union around in its direction would be a major victory for the conservative and moneyed interests around the world.

The war between labor and capital interests has never been concluded. No truce or treaty has ever been signed. No laws or settlements have ever been arranged.

Consequently exploitation by capital management is strong in third world countries and the first world countries have closed their eyes to the goings-on in these poorer nations. They trade freely, ignoring humanitarian rights and violations to basic human dignity.

This has kept the capitalists fat, sassy, wealthy and powerful. Now they are making their bid for the re-establishedment of their basic dominance in mainstream industrial nations and all the old rivals are back at each other throats. We are witnessing a replay of the period from 1850 through 1950.

The fighting in the streets is also more advanced in Europe than the U.S. because the workers, middle class and the lesser-off have much more to lose in Europe than they did in the U.S.

Although I agree with much of what has been presented in this book in terms of goals and aspirations, once again, I find Mr. Rifkin far more advanced in his thinking than the world at this time is ready to accept.

I find Mr. Rifkin’s idea of a non-territorial, non-ethnic, global economic cooperative at least 100 years too soon. I even have doubts about such a possibility at all.

Nation state loyalty, pride, patriotism, competitive well-being and security may be more genetic than contrived as Mr. Rifkin contends.

The “I’m a citizen of the world” idea was presented a couple of centuries back by Tom Paine. The world was not ready for it then and is not ready for it now in my opinion.
There are more people claiming to be World Citizens today than there were in 1776 but it is still a very small minority. Those that speak in those terms are still looked upon as lonely voices screaming in the wilderness.

I doubt if any French or German citizens are contemplating disavowing their Nation State for a World Citizen birth certificate.

I don’t see any such thing happening here in the United States either.

The global economy is also losing ground. Americans are screaming for more products to be made and manufactured here in America and Europe seems to be heading in that direction also.

None of the workers of the Western advanced economies are looking forward to a lower standard of living. The wealthy, capitalists, and international conglomerates are saying they must and the laborers and workers are saying they will not.

I see Nation States here to stay and growing stronger and the global economy waning and getting weaker – not the reverse.

The European Dream is food for thought as are the other books that I have read by Mr. Rifkin.

I see Mr. Rifkin as ahead of his time and utopian in scope and flavor. He certainly has a dream. But to me his dream is more of a fantasy.

One interesting aside to me, as pointed out by the author but expressed in my words and not his, is how the American government and its love for war and imperialism has been instrumental in promoting the European Progressive Dream. If it were not for the American Government’s huge military spending in Europe a much greater portion of the European citizen’s tax money would have gone into their national defense programs and consequently their advanced progressive agenda would have been curtailed somewhat. If not curtailed, it would have taken a greater monetary commitment and sacrifice on the part of the Europeans to achieve these positive social goals.

As it turned out, the U.S., in the name of national security, financed a good portion of the better life for the European citizens while sacrificing a better life for its citizens here at home.

This was and is not a good bargain in my opinion.