Category Archives: Government

The Man Who Saved Nukes.

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In 1986, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev asked for a meeting with President Ronald Reagan. When they met in October of that year, Gorbachev surprised Reagan by offering what may have been the greatest gift in history. He proposed a realistic path that would lead to total nuclear disarmament. It would have resulted in the mutual destruction of all nuclear warheads over a period of 10 years and the elimination of all such weapons worldwide. It called for ongoing inspections to make certain that such weapons would never exist again. And it would have forever removed the very real threat of the annihilation of our species.

The offer was no trick. No attempt to gain military advantage over the United States. It was a sincere attempt to end the madness of the Cold War.

There was only one condition – that the US would agree to limit the testing of Reagan’s pet project, the Strategic Defense Initiative otherwise known as the “Star Wars” defense system. The US would be allowed to continue to develop SDI, but testing would be limited to laboratories and it could not be deployed. This was not an onerous condition since the project was still in the early days of development. It likely would never have been ready for deployment within the 10 year period. And after nuclear disarmament, it would no longer have been needed anyway.

Of course, Reagan refused.

Reagan’s neocon advisers, especially Richard Perle, convinced Reagan that Gorbachev was asking too much. They felt that restricting SDI to laboratory testing would not be accepted by the conservatives back home. They demanded atmospheric testing. As a result, we missed the best chance to rid the world of nuclear weapons in a lifetime – maybe forever. So the next time you hear someone like George W. Bush trying to create fear by pointing to the threat of nuclear weapons, remember who is truly responsible for the continuing threat.

Reagan is the man who was credited with ending the Cold War, but the real credit belongs to Gorbachev. It’s thanks to Reagan that we still live under the threat of nuclear weapons and the very real chance that they might fall into the hands of someone crazy enough to use them.

Source: The Untold History of the United States

Guns In The Neighborhood.

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I live in a small development near several tourist destinations in Arizona. There’s absolutely nothing remarkable about the neighborhood other than it is primarily populated by retirees from California and snowbirds from New England and the Midwest. The neighborhood has virtually no crime and has never experienced a home invasion. Despite this, I have to assume the majority of my neighbors are gun owners. Arizona, after all, is a gun-friendly state. Many people come here to get their cowboy on. And it seems that our legislature values guns more than people.

If that sounds crazy, I assure you that it’s not as crazy as some of our laws.

In Arizona, you can carry a gun virtually anywhere…in your car, to the shopping mall, to your church, even to the bar. The state has even made it illegal for cities to destroy guns that have been confiscated from felons or used in crimes. The cities are mandated to sell them.

As a result of our gun-crazy culture, Arizona has more than its share of gun hoarders…those who have convinced themselves that the government and/or the UN is coming to take their guns. There is also a large number of so-called “sovereign citizens”…those who refuse to accept the rule of government.

I have no idea how many of my neighbors fit into these categories, but I do know of two. One is a retired electrical engineer who owned a large collection of handguns, shotguns and assault rifles until he got drunk one afternoon and threatened to kill his wife and himself. The sheriff;s deputies confiscated the weapons and the neighbor is now serving time in prison for that and a variety of senseless crimes associated with his drinking. Another arsenal of handguns and assault weapons belongs to a neighbor whose love of high-powered weaponry is exceeded only by his love of alcohol.

How comforting!

Knowing that a few yards away there is a large arsenal in the possession of such an individual does not make me feel more secure. Neither does knowing that there are dozens more who have guns at the ready. These people are exemplified by a neighbor who was convinced to purchase a handgun by one of his gun-loving paranoid friends. He told me the first time he fired it, the slide nearly amputated his thumb. He’s still uncomfortable with it, but that doesn’t prevent him from keeping the loaded weapon on the nightstand next to his bed. Even more disturbing is the fact that he keeps a round in the chamber, which means he is more likely to accidentally shoot himself or a friend than any potential intruder.

Rather than make our neighborhood more secure, all of these guns make it more dangerous; more likely that there will be an accidental shooting; more likely that the guns will be used in a shootout between neighbors than to shoot an intruder. But most suggested changes for gun control would fail to weed out these people. They all passed background checks. They all supposedly took at least one firearm safety class. Yet they are all armed and dangerous to themselves, their families and their neighbors.

These people clearly demonstrate that the only thing that can reduce the number of nincompoops who own guns is to reduce the number of guns. Period.

Worse Than Iraq.

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This past Saturday, the United Nations reported that at least 733 Iraqis had been killed and at least 1,229 wounded in January as the result of violence. Worse, the UN said that the numbers did not include Anbar province due to problems verifying the numbers killed. Those numbers are startling and they justifiably made headlines in newspapers throughout the US.

But there was one nation that experienced even more violence last month – the United States of America.

As I noted in a recent post, there are more than 11,000 gun homicides in the US each year. That means that, on average, there are more than 916 gun homicides in the US each month…nearly 200 more than the deaths that occurred last month in Iraq! And, if you include those killed by other means, the US likely experienced more than 1,330 homicides last month…nearly double the number killed by violence in Iraq!

Looking at it another way, the US experiences nearly one-third the number of violent deaths each month as Syria, which is immersed in a cruel civil war. Yet I don’t recall seeing any headlines decrying the violence in the US. I don’t see humanitarian groups running to the aid of those in our most violent neighborhoods. I don’t hear conservative politicians calling for military intervention to help curb our violence.

Are conservative politicians so afraid of the National Rifle Association, that they have become willing to ignore our own violence? Have ordinary citizens become so accustomed to mass murders, gang violence, revenge killings, road rage and domestic violence that we no longer notice it? Or worse, yet, no longer care?

A Memorial To Gun Victims?

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A new study by Dr. John Leventhal, professor of pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine, found that firearms kill more than 3,000 children each year in the US.  Another 7,000 are wounded badly enough to be hospitalized, most from assaults. And those are just the statistics for children! Overall, there are more than 11,000 homicides per year in the US involving a firearm and more than 19,000 suicides involving a gun according to statistics from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

No other advanced nation comes close.

To put these statistics into perspective, the number of children killed by guns in the US in a single year exceeds the 2,977 people who died in the attacks on 9/11. The 4,486 US soldiers killed during the 6 years of the Iraq War is less than half the number of gun homicides that occur in the US in a single year. And the 2,287 US soldiers who have been killed during the 10 years we have been engaged in the Afghan War is roughly equivalent to two and a half months of gun homicides in the US!

Put another way, as of May 2011, there were 58,272 names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, representing the number of US soldiers killed during our 14 years of military involvement in Vietnam. The number of gun homocides in the US would exceed that number in approximately 5 years. And, if you included gun suicides, the number would be exceeded in just 3 years!

Do you still think we don’t have a gun problem in this country?

Yet despite the overwhelming reality of these statistics, American politicians refuse to act. The shooting of a US Congresswoman and the mass murder in Tucson, Arizona wasn’t enough to force common sense gun control. The mass murder in an Aurora, Colorado movie theater wasn’t enough. Even the slaughter of 26 children in Newtown, Connecticut wasn’t enough to prompt Congress to act. They couldn’t even pass a measure calling for universal background checks of gun purchasers when polls showed that a vast majority of Americans supported it.

It makes one wonder what it will take to bring Americans to our senses.

I would suggest that we create a memorial to gun victims listing all of their names. Make the memorial as visible and as powerful as possible, something similar to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Add the names of gun victims week by week; month by month; year by year. It may take a while, but eventually most sane people will realize exactly what our lax gun laws are costing us.

At least I would certainly hope so.

The Real Cost Of Fossil Fuels.

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The chemical spill in West Virginia that polluted the drinking water of more than 300,000 people should remind everyone of the real cost of fossil fuels. As you know, conservatives are fond of saying that subsidies for research and the expansion of alternative energy are unfair; that they disguise the true cost of solar, wind and other forms of clean, renewable energy. Of course, they never mention the massive direct subsidies our government gives to the coal, oil and gas industries (estimated at $14 billion to $51 billion per year) or the indirect subsidies (the cost of damage to our environment; the cost of health problems that result from breathing polluted air and drinking polluted water; the cost of clean ups of spills; the cost of regulation).

If all of the indirect costs were added, the total subsidies for the fossil fuel industries are almost incalcuable and they’re certain to grow as we deal with the damages caused by climate change.

By comparison, the indirect costs of renewable energy are almost negligible. Wind generators require materials for manufacture and fossil fuels to transport them to their eventual sites. They also reportedly cause the deaths of some birds. But those deaths are dwarfed by the number of birds killed and endangered by oil spills and from drinking chemical pollutants. Solar panels also require manufacture and transportation. But that’s it.

Once in operation, neither add CO2 to the atmosphere. Neither can cause toxic spills. Wind and solar generation is decentralized so there’s less chance of widespread power outages. Both eliminate the need for daily trainloads of fuels. They require no pipelines. There is no need to remove entire mountaintops. No need to pump toxic chemicals into the earth in order to extract wind or sun. And there is no need for waste disposal. When the wind generators and solar panels become obsolete, most of their materials can be recycled.

Best of all, they create jobs in the US, and they would create a lot more if Congress would provide manufacturers with the incentives and protections needed to fend off state-sponsored manufacturers in China. They also reduce the need for fossil fuels, which should make our reserves of oil and gas last well into the future.

So why do Congressional Republicans continue to rubber stamp subsidies for oil, gas and coal while denying much smaller subsidies for alternative energy? The answer, as always, is money.

The majority of fossil fuels are extracted from red states, such as Alaska, Louisiana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming. Most refineries are also located in red states – Kansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Oil, gas and coal companies have very deep pockets from decades of favored political status and profiteering. They have one of the largest lobbying groups in Washington. The companies and their billionaire owners are willing to spend whatever it takes to retain their monopolies. Moreover, the Citizens United ruling by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court made it possible for corporations to offer large donations to political campaigns. And politicians are more than willing to accept them.

The Politics Of Division And Deception.

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For many years, the GOP has used so-called “social” issues, such as proposed anti-abortion legislation and “sanctity of marriage” laws to divide the voting populace and fire up their base. The Democratic Party has focused on issues like social safety nets, minimum wages and availability of health care. And the debate has left our government largely paralyzed.

In some ways, arguing about the issues that divide the rank and file of the two political parties is akin to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s not that the issues aren’t important. But compared to other issues, they are mere distractions…the political equivalent of a con artist bumping your shoulder while picking your pocket.

The con artists are working for large, multinational corporations and the very wealthy. In order to grow and thrive, these companies need two things: A plentiful supply of natural resources and cheap labor. Over the course of history, those needs have led the wealthy to finance exploration, nations to build wide-ranging empires, and corporations to destroy collective bargaining movements.

Following World War II, the desire for access to oil, rubber, timber, tin and other resources led the British, the US and the Soviet Union to attempt to divide much of the world culminating in the Cold War. The desire to acquire resources led us into conflicts in the Caribbean, Central America, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It was the cause of the Spanish-American War, the war with Japan, the war in Vietnam, and the war in Iraq. It led our CIA to orchestrate the overthrow of elected leaders in Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua and elsewhere.

Similarly, the need for cheap labor led mining companies to create company stores and to build entire towns designed to trap workers into becoming hopelessly obligated to the owners. It caused companies to hire thugs to brutally beat striking workers. It led to shooting wars between corporate interests and labor unions. More recently, it led corporations to move factories to Southern “right-to-work” states then on to Mexico to China to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The executives behind these actions aren’t evil. They’re just doing business. They claim that it’s not their responsibility to worry about social or environmental problems. They believe that their only responsibility is to increase the return on investment for shareholders by decreasing costs and increasing productivity. To them, picturesque mountains merely cover the precious minerals they covet. Pristine forests are merely the lumber needed for construction. Impoverished people in distant lands are simply motivated laborers.

And so it goes.

While we argue over the debt ceiling, corporations and billionaires quietly park their profits in off-shore tax havens then lobby for a tax “holiday” that will allow them to bring the money home at greatly reduced tax rates. While we argue over extending unemployment benefits, corporations lobby for more subsidies and government giveaways. While we argue over food stamps, corporate agribusinesses pocket billions in taxpayer funds. While we argue over Social Security retirement benefits, too-big-to-fail financial institutions steal trillions from 401ks, IRAs, pension funds and foreclosed homes. At the same time, all of these corporations continue to lobby for reduced government regulation and oversight.

It is because of our inattention that a mere 85 individuals now own as much wealth as half of the world’s population…the equivalent of the populations of China, India, the United States, Indonesia and Brazil combined. It’s why unemployment has grown and why most salaries have not. It’s why a few corporations now control most of our food supply. It’s why those same corporations are able to poison the food supply in search of ever larger profits. It’s why the incidence of chronic disease has skyrocketed despite government-funded technology and research that give us the ability to end it. It’s why our climate is rapidly changing while we continue to subsidize the companies responsible for changing it.

As long as we focus on the distractions instead of the actions, things will only get worse.

Congress Versus The American People.

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Politicians, especially Republicans, are fond of saying that they have faith that the American people will always do the right thing. Hmmm…that raises a number of questions.

If politicians believe the American people are so smart, why don’t they do what the people want them to? Why have they refused to vote for universal background checks on all gun purchases when more than 90 percent of Americans demand them? Why has the House refused to support bills that would create the jobs Americans want? Why has the House delayed action on immigration reform supported by more than 70 percent of Americans? Why has the House refused to vote for equal pay for women? Why has it refused to raise the minimum wage? Why do Republicans refuse to vote for gay marriage? Why do they refuse to decriminalize marijuana? Why have they failed to vote for tax reform and equal enforcement?

Why do more than 80 percent of Americans despise Congress?

At least we have an answer for one of those questions.

Senatorial Amnesia?

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It is well-known that there were more filibusters during Obama’s first term than in the entire previous history of the Senate, forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to resort to the extraordinary measure of changing Senate rules. As a result of the GOP obstruction of presidential appointments, federal judicial offices are grossly understaffed and overworked.

Yet GOP senators Marco Rubio and Richard Burr recently blocked two more judicial nominations. What’s shocking and somewhat amusing about their GOP-stopping moves is that both of the nominees were recommended to President Obama by the very same GOP senators who blocked them!

Come again?

You read that correctly. Senators Marco Rubio and Richard Burr each recommended a judge then took the extraordinary step of “blue slipping” the candidates after President Obama nominated them. One of the nominees, William Thomas, would have become the first openly gay black man to serve as a federal judge. He had been awaiting confirmation since late 2012 until the president finally withdrew the nomination.

That, of course, raises a few questions. Did Rubio not know that Thomas was gay when he recommended him to the White House? What possible impact could Thomas’ sexual orientation have on his ability to perform as a competent judge?

And what of Burr’s recommendation? He refuses to say why he blocked Jennifer May-Parker. Did he learn of something that would disqualify her as a federal judge? Did he contract amnesia or dementia forgetting that he had made the recommendation? Did he nominate her only because he secretly disliked her and wanted to torture her by leaving her nomination twisting in the wind? Or is he blocking her nomination simply as the result of his Teapublican anti-Obama fever?

These are all fair questions.

Whatever the answers, such behavior is worse than bad politics. It’s outright nincompoopery! And now Rubio expects us to take him seriously as a potential presidential nominee? More important, given the behavior of the GOP for the past decade, why would voters take any of their candidates seriously?

The Slavery We Ignore.

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Despite the emancipation of African-American slaves, slavery in the US is not over. Not by a long shot.

Today’s slaves are African-Americans, Caucasions, Asians, Latinos…even children. And instead of working on plantations, they work in hotels, bedrooms and massage parlors. I’m referring, of course, to the sex trade in which thousands of people…mostly women…are held against their will for the financial benefit of their “owners.”

Most of these people were captured from street corners and malls. They were enticed by on-line predators. They were lured into the “modeling” business with the promise of fame and money. They were neglected children who were sweet-talked then brutalized until they submitted to their pimps. They were hopeful immigrants who were promised transportation and green cards then held against their will until they pay off their captors’ investments. Of course, they never can. As soon as they come close, they are sold or traded to other pimps. They are held captive in cubicles in the basements of massage parlors and illegal brothels. Many are moved from city to city to prevent them from getting too close to their customers and establishing contacts that may help free them. Their services are advertised for sale in newspaper classifieds and on the Internet.

All of this is a crime…a despicable, horrible crime. Yet an even worse crime is that many people actually know about this slavery but, because it’s centered on prostitution, few people seem to care. They either condemn everyone involved…pimps, “johns” and victims alike…or they hold to the belief that all prostitution is a victimless crime. Public officials say that this form of slavery is difficult to prosecute. In reality, many in law enforcement and city governments actually participate in the crime, either as customers or as the recipients of bribes. Customers claim not to know about the circumstances of the women. They want to believe that all of the women serve willingly, and undoubtedly many do. But far too many are victimized over and over and over again.

Often the victims have been subjugated and victimized for so long they remember little else. They need help and support in order to survive even after they’re freed. And they’re often much too frightened to testify against their abusers.

But the situation is not hopeless. All that’s required for it to change is for the public to demand change and elect government officials who are determined to act. It would help if the more puritanical among us would recognize that prostitution has been around since the beginning of time and that it’s not going away. Indeed, there are women who see the sex trade as a way to improve their financial futures. And there are a seemingly endless number of customers. Legalizing prostitution would take the profit out of illegal prostitution. It would allow governments to regulate, license and control it in an open, transparent and safe manner. It would turn the women into business entrepreneurs instead of victims. More important, it would eliminate the pimps and “owners.”

Ask yourself which is preferrable? An open and controlled sex trade? Or the continuation of slavery and the victimization of women and children?

Why Teapublicans Are Wrong About Government.

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After all of the GOP talk of “freeing businesses from government regulation” and “shrinking government down to a size small enough to fit in a bathtub,” it’s time to force a dose of reality down their loudmouth throats. No matter how much they rant about the “evils” of government, we need government to do a variety of things the private sector can’t or won’t.

We need government funding and oversight to build and maintain infrastructure – roads, highways, airports, seaports, and more. We need government to protect our borders; to control our monetary system; to negotiate treaties. And, although we live in a nation built on capitalism, government has always been needed to prevent private businesses from taking advantage of our citizens. Whenever new industries are created by business, government eventually has to regulate them in order to keep them from running amok.

For example, before Ralph Nader and his book, Unsafe At Any Speed, American automakers paid little attention to safety. There were no seat belts, no air bags, no crumple zones, no crash tests…no safety standards at all.

Before the Food & Drug Administration, there was no labeling of ingredients for packaged foods ; no bans or warnings for ingredients known to cause harm. Before the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), large corporations felt free to dump toxic chemicals in our streams and in our drinking water. Before the EPA, large corporations spewed tons of toxins into the air we breathe. Before the Securities Exchange Commission, financial institutions could engage in insider trading and sell any junk securities people could be bamboozled into buying. Before the Mine Safety Act, most miners died from tunnel collapses and black lung disease. Before the US Department of Agriculture and the US Forest Service, lumber companies felt free to clear cut our forests destroying critical habitat for many species and mortgaging our future. Before the Department of Labor, businesses thrived on child and slave labor.

Do you really want to go back to the days of allowing corporations to regulate themselves?

Would you buy meat for your family that had not been inspected? Would you drink water that hadn’t been tested for bacteria and other contaminents? Would you give your child pharamceuticals that were untested? Would you strap your child into a car that had not passed basic safety tests? Would you place your life savings in a bank that did not insure your deposits?

We already know what happens when you replace government functions with private companies. We have abundant evidence that contracting with corporations to operate prisons costs more than publicly-operated prisons. Private prisons have also proven to be less secure. We also know that, on the whole, students in private schools perform no better, and often worse, than those in public schools.

Contrary to President Reagan, government isn’t the problem. Often it’s the solution. Instead of trying to reduce government to some arbitrary size, we should be trying to improve it. Apparently, Teapublicans have never considered that.