1436 The Real State of the Union

Okay, maybe you heard the presidential spiel, maybe you didn’t. But you don’t need this space for a recounting.  The president touched on many important points.  But he never quite got to the actual state of the union.

Let’s do that little chore for him.

It’s pathetic. It’s twisted out of shape. It’s under attack from the outside and suicidal from within.  We’re a nation of liars.  We lie to ourselves and to others.  

We lie about the weather. We lie about the economy. We lie about race relations. We lie about health.

And we lie about what once made us a great country. It was smokestacks and farms and mines. It was a government that knew when to meddle and when not to. All with a well paid and productive (usually unionized) workforce, now called the “middle class.”

It was a nation that didn’t put a higher value on paper pushing Wall Streeters than people who actually produced  something.

Who makes the big bucks today?  Trust fund babies, financial finaglers, the hedge funds, the private equity funds, the banks, the pharmaceutical makers and the oil tycoons.

We talk a great deal about these types “paying their fair share,” and income redistribution.  No present or former wage earner cares how much the Koch brothers or members of the Walton family have.  They just want an honest buck for an honest day’s work.  

But they should care. Not because they lust for part of those fortunes, but because so much money and power in so few hands means the average person has no control of his own life, present or future.  Maybe the Oxfam report on wealth distribution will light a fire under some of us.  Maybe.

Factories don’t have to pollute.  But they have to make things and people have to be able to buy them.  Even Henry Ford recognized that. He understood that his production workers needed a living wage, else “...who will buy my cars?”

Ford was anti-union and wanted to be seen as a great benefactor who could set the tone for the lives of his workers.  But he understood there were limits.

To some extent, the rest of the 19th century robber barons understood that, too.  And when they forgot, there was always the United Whatever Workers to remind them.

Megafarms don’t need GMOs to supply more wheat and oats and tomatoes and potatoes and guava melons to feed the nation and half the rest of the world.

Mines don’t have to be minefields. Mine safety has been an oxymoron since the first Hopi tripped over the first chunk of coal more than a thousand years ago.

It’s right to ask “do we still need coal?” The answer is yes.  Even in an age of wind power and solar power coal still does much of the heavy lifting behind the scenes.  Can we make it pollution-free?  Probably, eventually.  In small steps.  And we must.  

Are we going to continue to needlessly lose lives underground and spit out miners with bad lungs? Yes, but we can reduce the number. And keep reducing it.

We lie about the weather, or more properly, the climate.  There no longer is any doubt about climate change.  We can’t stop it. We can’t reverse it and we really don’t know what part of it is man made.   But SOME part of it is and we have to do what we can to reduce our share -- yes, even while burning coal and oil.  And we can.  But we don’t.

We lie about education by substituting technology for teaching.  Every kid has an iPad or a laptop computer. The entire world’s knowledge is on the internet. But who is to teach them how to use it? Educrats are forever coming up with new schemes for “improving” the classroom.  But there’s only one scheme that works and that’s teaching and learning.

By the time a kid graduates from high school, he should have the basic knowledge of what came before him, what’s going on around him and how to balance a checkbook.

The president wants junior college free for all.  Ridiculous.  They should have a working education before that.

Four year colleges shouldn’t have to teach incoming freshmen how to read or add a column of figures.

Worst of all, we lie about and with statistics.  Our math-phobic millions accept anything wrapped in arithmetic as objective truth.

The literacy rate, the unemployment rate, industrial production, the GDP, the budget at any level of government or business, crime, foreign aid, television ratings, market share, productivity... You name it, you can fake it.

Sometimes it’s because we just can’t get the sets of figures right.  Sometimes it’s on purpose. But statistics don’t tell the stories of people, they tell the stories of the people. And that itself is an artificial construct.

We get crazy about religion, race relations, guns, “freedom,” taxation, health care, social security. We get crazy about homeland security, we alienate our allies. We embrace our enemies and reject our own people.

The state of the union is not only pathetic, twisted out of shape, under attack from the outside and suicidal from within.  The state of the union is sorry.

And the first step toward changing that is to recognize it.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1435 Martin and the Oysters

The Martin Luther King holiday is upon us.

In “Through the Looking Glass” (Or maybe it’s in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”) The Walrus and the Carpenter are forever fighting.  They oysters try to get them to the bargaining table and they succeed. The Walrus and the Carpenter agree to eat the oysters.

All of which brings us to the annual rant about not second guessing King, but with a slight difference.  For many years, we’ve been saying it’s an insult to co-opt his name and insert what we think he would say about current conditions.  But things have gotten so bad, we have to step back from that. Because what he’d likely be today is appalled.

Income inequality.  Certainly he would have something to say about that.  But unlike the hard left it probably wouldn’t be a Robin Hood solution, take from the rich and give to the poor.

Nor would it be the right wing solution: cut benefits, end the safety net and let them all become entrepreneurs.

If there’s a middle solution, it’s silent. Let’s hear it.

Race relations.  They’re in horrible tatters.  And it’s not just in Chicago and Ferguson, Missouri and Cleveland and in New York.

The left’s position, expressed by police brutality victim Rodney King, “Why can’t we all get along?” doesn’t work.

The right’s position: Racism is a form of collectivism we would all get along if instead of black or white we’d all think green.  Green as in money, not as in environmental protection.

If there’s a middle position it’s silent.  Speak up.

Homeland Security.  King was a fighter for human rights. The Patriot act does as much or more to restrict American freedoms since “separate but equal.”  But “separate” was right out front where you could fight it.  Now, we have secret courts and we frisk little old ladies in wheelchairs, tap phones, read emails, track your websites and maybe have secret prisons.

That he’d oppose the idea of increased security is in doubt and speculative.  That he’d oppose the mechanics practiced today is not.

What about Charlie Hebdo?  Probably, Martin would rail against singling out Muslims for persecution.  What he’d say about the bloodshed is an easy guess: he’d oppose violence.  That he did while still alive.

King family dysfunction.  He’d probably try to get the feuding family members together.  But, then, if he were alive, he not they would decide where his assets and intellectual property would go.

He’d probably think little of the tea party freak show or the congressional freak show or the NRA freak show or the Citizens United freak show.  

He might or might not support the Al Sharptons of the world, those small men who now stand on his grave and his memory.

But one thing he surely wouldn’t be: the oysters.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1409 Hunting With Scotus

The Justices of the US Supreme Court have cancelled their planned hunting trip.  It’s not that Scalia doesn’t want to be seen with Cheney in public again.  It’s not even that Thomas can’t get a hunting license without a photo i.d.  It’s just that they’ve had a better idea.

First some background. Last year, the justices decided there were too many people, especially wrong minded people.  People who, say, didn’t believe that money equals speech.  People who think Arizona went overboard with its proposition 100 which bars holding people here illegally without bail.  And people who are still whining about putting G.W. Bush in office in 2000.

So here’s what they did:  they ordered catalogs for themselves and their clerks and other staff members.  Eddie Bauer, LL Bean… you know… outdoorsy kinds of things.  Some got subscriptions to Guns & Ammo.

Some of justice Thomas’ staff approached him and asked why they were getting this mail. Justice Thomas said nothing.  So they did the next best thing, they went to justice Antonin “Tony Ducks” Scalia who informed them they’d be going hunting.  Thinning the population. Performing a great service for their country.  And they’d be joined by at least four and possibly five or six of the judges.

Justice Sotomayor declined. Because she’s relatively new, she said she didn’t have enough accumulated vacation time.  Justice Ginsburg declined and said her arthritis acts up in the cold and damp.  And with Tony Ducks on board there were bound to be accidents.

So the hunting trip is off, the subscriptions have been cancelled and the catalogs un-subscribed from.

But overpopulation remains a problem high on the court’s agenda.  So they figured out a new plan.

There is a grammatical oversight in the Affordable Care Act that could end some federal subsidies to the holders of health insurance.

“We can use that,” said one justice speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to announce a decision before it’s published, “to get more of those useless poor people dead and in pauper’s graves early.  They’ll stop burdening our health care systems. They’ll stop moaning about income inequality. And best of all, they won’t be able to vote.”

He continued:  “...those who can’t get that socialist insurance will be forced more deeply into poverty and have to spend so much time working their three part- time minimum wage jobs they won’t have the energy to pester us with their frivolous complaints.”

Another justice was unhappy with the pre-decision and even more unhappy that the Guns & Ammo subscription was cancelled.  “My nephews liked to read it when they came over to visit.  I try to encourage them to read.”

Shrapnel:

--Got another “free gift” offer.  No thanks.  Some of us would rather pay for stuff people want to give us.

--As newspapers are cutting back, the Boston Globe announced it would soon start printing a stand alone business section.  One more well- edited voice is welcome in an era when most get their financial news from radio flakes and wobbly- thinking websites.

--One radio voice that is not trying to sell you books, advice or get rich schemes is closing down.  The Wall Street Journal report, heard on many stations, will be shutting of the mic at the end of the year.  You can only think “yeah, right” when the Journal says radio no longer fits its core business.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014