Could we exist without the automobile? The question pops into my head every time I stop at the pump, but there is reason for doubting the possibility.

One of every ten jobs in the country is manufacturing cars or supplying the manufacturers. Add in the dealers, the repair shops, gas production and distribution and a few odds and ends and it comes to about one in seven jobs.

I was much younger and lighter while in grad school but I enjoyed walking. The school was on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. My studio apartment was a little more than a block away. I parked my car in the basement garage and drove to the supermarket in Silver Springs, Maryland every Saturday.

The rest of the time I walked. It might be to the Smithsonian museums, the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, Burger King for my weekly Whopper, the corner grocery store or DuPont Circle to watch a few games of chess. The District was a wonderful place to walk.

At the time the Embassy of the USSR was a block away. I must have been the star of many video tapes walking past so often. The staff took the top two floors of our apartment building. They never spoke. They never smiled. They never took the same elevator. That was quite an object lesson.

New York City is walker friendly, though not so friendly in other ways. Living in Los Angeles was hell. When I first moved to L.A. I had no car. Pedestrians there are known as California cripples. I quickly acquired a small Honda motorcycle. That sufficed for a few months, until my wife and daughter arrived from Korea.

I was born in a town of about 3,500 Mayberry-type souls. One grandfather was sheriff; the other chief of police and city manager. We walked. Everyone said hello. Stores were next to each other.

Later, I was mayor of a small town, a bedroom for Atlanta, where you drove to the parking lot of the dry cleaners, then drove to the parking lot of the bank and on and on. Then they invented malls. The idea being to recreate the small town by making it possible to walk from store to store.

A lot is lost while riding in a car. You focus primarily on the roadway. You miss out on most of the scenery. It’s difficult for the odor of the roses to seep through the air conditioning. You miss out on the heat, the cold. You miss out on most of what makes up life.

Speed feeds on itself. We want to get there quicker, no matter where there is. Our impatience grows. That impatience spills over into other aspects of our lives. We get lazy. We get used to sitting in the car seat. That also spills over.

Most of our ancestors seldom, if ever, wandered more than 25 or 30 miles from where they were born. Many daily commutes are further. The difference in the pace at the downtown office from the pace in the bedroom community induces stress.

Our cars have molded our lives. It hasn’t been an unmixed blessing.

The other night, Jon Stewart’s guest on the Daily Show was Brad Pitt. He brought up the question of what cars would be like if they had not yetr been invented but we had today’s technology. He asked if they would be powered by a limited fossil fuel that required an expensive military to protect our access and transferred half a trillion dollars a year out of the country. Would we choose a fuel that polluted? Interesting questions. Basically, something so integral to our economy, our lives, is based on technologies more than a century old.

I’m not ready to give up my trusty, internal combustion-powered steed. However large a role as it plays in my life, I can’t ignore the less than salutary effect it has on my routine, my psyche, my health and my wealth.

In the next article I intend to examine how one aspect of this is related to our present predicament and impedes our addressing our problems.

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How many minutes has it been since you heard someone call this the greatest country in the world? How many seconds? Did you agree? Ooops. Was it you saying that?

It used to be arguably true. We got accustomed to telling ourselves it was so. We believed it. Many of us, most of us still do.

What ruler do you use? How do we measure the relative greatness of the country? What statistics should we employ? Perhaps I should find a synonym for that last word.

Back when such a claim was believeable, we had a dynamic, growing middle class that was becoming ever better off financially. I can actually remember that far back. It began around the end of WWII. We began losing all that about 1973.

The initial kick in the stomach was the first oil embargo. Then came the second embargo in 1979. While the then price of a gallon of go juice now seems impossibly low, a sudden quadrupling of the price brought major economic disruptions and dislocations.

We weren’t prepared for the first and refused to learn any lessons before the second embargo.

Those economic inconveniences were caused by a bunch despots. They were the ones that we had forced upon people we didn’t care about in order to set our own price for stealing their only resource. We showed them that Americans could be even more destructive. The rise of own domestic neocons and the Chicago School of Tinkle Down Economics were able to accomplish what our protégés could not.

They are doing what the USSR failed to do. They are bringing us to our knees.

In 1981 we were the largest creditor nation. Now we are the largest debtor nation. Then, we were the largest exporter of manufactured goods. Now? The largest importer. Then, the largest importer of raw materials. Now, the largest exporter.

There you have it. The definition of a 3^rd-world country. Our biggest export is lumber. Georgia’s biggest export is probably white clay (I haven’t checked in the last few years). White clay? They export mostly to Japan. There it is used to make china. It’s sometimes known as kaolin, from which they also make a product like our Kaopectate.

Are We Treated Fairly?

Does our country treat its citizens fairly? The United States ranks dead last on almost all measures of equity because we have the greatest disparity in the quality of health care given to richer and poorer citizens. No. We do not have the best health care in the world. We dropped to 37^th.

That was in 2000. We dropped further but expressed out displeasure with the results, so the World Health Organization ceased embarrassing us. Money not only talks, it also can shut people up. By the way, are we still nipping at the heels of Costa Rica?

Well, how about financial fairness? Lets see. Oh. The United States ranked 64^th in income inequality (worse than Cameron, but just above Uruguay). Accounting for inflation, personal income reached its peak in 1973. Do you remember when most households needed only one wage earner?

How about freedom? According to Douglas Berman, an Ohio State law professor, “We live in a country conceived on the notion of liberty, but we lead the world in locking people up.” One of every four prisoners in the world is in our prisons. Cuba, Iran, North Korea, even China cannot match our version of freedom.

It’s Beginning To Smart

2+2=? Surely we’re the smartest, er, best educated people in the world. Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14^th in reading, 17^th in science and 25^th in math. Who was on top? South Korea. I was in Korea in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. In the 50s and some of the 60s the road from the capitol of Seoul to its international airport, Kimpo, was gravel part of the way and dirt the rest.

They have created their infrastructure almost from scratch since then. They now have the highest percentage of people with broadband and the highest internet speeds in the world. All this, and leading the world in education. We need to really work hard to come up with excuses for our performance.

The people of Minneapolis may appreciate that out infrastructure has not been one of our highest priorities. China spends 9% of their income on infrastructure. The European Union spends 5%. We spend 2.4%.

On and on, it’s the same story. it’s not easy to find something to brag about.

How Did This Happen? Why?

During the Eisenhower Adminstration the highest marginal tax rate was 91%. No one paid that much on their entire income, just on the amout above some number that few people even dreamed about.

Those “job creators” created jobs at a faster rate than at any other time. Well, at least the jobs got created faster. Those making extreme incomes don’t really create jobs. Big business doesn’t create jobs. Small business doesn’t create jobs. Government creates some jobs but consumers are the real job creators.

No business hires and invests in more production if there are no customers. The public forums are full of economic myths. Giving the wealthy and corporations more money so they will create jobs is one of the most popular, . . . and absurd.

Both parties have stocked Congress with economic geniuses. Their owners get such lunacies as NAFTA. They get tax breaks for moving jobs overseas. All this while entertaining us with campaign promises to restore good-paying manufacturing jobs.

With a few exceptions, we will not see a recovery in manufacturing jobs. They are too easy to outsource, even without tax subsidies. They are also very susceptible to loss to automation. Unless the Congress gets some members with 3-digit IQs, we will all be selling burgers and fries to each other.

If these policies are destroying the economy and not really benefiting the elite, why did they do this? It’s partly a matter of stupidity, largely a juvenile devotion to a perverted, misunderstood ideology – capitalism. We must not forget a visceral hatred of unions. They are maniacally focused on the destruction of unions.

The unions created the middle class. Even non-members profited from their employers having to compete with wages and benefits. People were able to consume. Businesses had more customers with more money. What terrible monsters those unions were.

While most were in decline, with many also losing retirement and health insurance benefits, between 1979 and 2007 the 1% increased 275%. Income disparity here is in the same range as banana republics, and worse.

How does this really benefit the elite? Do they feel safer? Is the economy more stable? While the numbers in their portfolios are larger, they are actually pissing in their own soup. Instead of owning stronger, more stable corporations, the elite are making their wealth by manipulating paper assets. Can we say, house of cards?

Our economy is consumer driven but Congress has the answer. Give the wealthy more tax cuts and impoverish the consumers.

How do the elite spend their tax cuts? They buy a private jet. Most private jets are made in Canada and Brazil. They send it to Swiss and Caribbean banks. They buy several more $7,000 British suits, $12,000 French watches, $100,000 European cars. They create jobs in the US – not.

I have heard the claim that American businessmen are very smart. We are even told we should put them in the Oval Office. Businessmen like George W. (remember his MBA)? Herbert Hoover? Four of every five businesses fail within five years. Now that takes smarts.

Kodak owned the world. They invented the digital camera. They were so smart they didn’t allow it to divert sales from their film products. Now, they are in bankruptcy court.

Those masters of the universe on Wall Street needed us peons to bail them out from the results of their intelligence. Take a few minutes and make a list of dozens of business failures caused by our super smart businessmen.

It need not be. The titans of the auto industry rewarded their own intelligence with enough to make Midas envious. They went down the tubes. With a little bit of bankruptcy, humility and government interference, a new crew was able to turn them around.

We have made too many clichés come true: our goose is cooked, we killed the goose that laid the golden egg, the chickens have come home to roost, we have seen the enemy and it is us. But we have discovered that money does not respond to the force of gravity. Rather, it responds to the force of greed.

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Yes, you. You are the enemy.

Actually, it’s not you. It’s nothing personal. It’s your attempts to exercize those Constitutional rights you used to have.

With me, it is personal. I was once a commissioner of police. One of my grandfathers was a sheriff; the other was a chief of police. In tracing my ancestry I discovered several family members that served as sheriffs, even extending back to England.

One day my chief was speaking with one of our citizens. The person said to his child that he better behave or the police would come to get him. The chief admonished him not to engender fear of police in his child.

He stated that the police were there to serve and protect citizens. They were his friend. That lesson stuck with me but, today, that lesson seemingly has been largely lost.

What happened? Those riot cops don’t look all that friendly. They have been immitating the military, in both equipment and attitude.

They see themselves as being immune from the laws that give them warrant. They seem to be more the army of an invading enemy than our protectors.

This past year they have been more frequently the agents of disorder, rather than those seeking to exercise their rights of assembly, speech and petitioning for redress.

How many incidents just this past year have produced video for the media of unprovoked assault of peaceable, unarmed fellow citizens? It took several days before the media admitted there was a story.

Those imaginary liberal media, you know, the ones owned by super-conservative mega-corporations, waited until the “law enforcement” proved they didn’t know how to play bridge legally.

Do these policemen feel themselves in jeopardy? Are these the perpetrators of violence from whom we are being protected? Who is out of control? Who is menacing whom? Who is trashing the Constitution?

Once there was the occasional Rodney King atrocity. Now, almost every city with an Occupy presence seemed to be using the same handbook. The problem was, as a few courts reminded them, that these were citizens with rights, not their spouse’s paramours.

I was taught to respect the police. I complied, because I generally saw them as deserving that respect. Of late, I have had my doubts.

The Police Union?

The Occupy Wall Street movement is aimed at those responsible for, among other things, gambling away the retirement funds of untold millions. A large segment of those lost retirement funds belonged to unions and their membership. It was natural, therefore, that the labor unions supported the Occupy movement.

There was one little problem that nagged at me. The Wall Street casinos had also gambled away the retirement funds of the police unions. Surely, they weren’t stupid enough to support those who stole from them against their fellow victims. That’s just what they did. But, why?

My wife has a cousin who is a state legislator. He is also a captain of the fire department and former state president of their union. I asked for his take on why they would be so ready to break the law and violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow Americans, particularly their fellow unionists fighting for redress for them as well.

Mike admitted that the police union had almost always been a thorn in the side of the union movement. They see themselves as special. They see themselves as a breed apart. That seems in tune with the ‘law unto themselves’ demeanor that is far too frequently apparent.

As commissioner of a small town police force back in the 1970s, I never had to deal with that bullying attitude that fellow commsioners often lamented. I was aware that the profession particularly appeals to that mentality but had no first-hand experience in dealing with it. It is not by any means universal but it has always been there and seems to have grown into a significant problem of late.

Is This What a Free County Looks Like?

It’s difficult to watch a video of New York City’s phoniest and correlate that with the memories of those who served our city, or the respect, even love, shown my grandfather when I was a kid.

One grandfather died before I was born but the chief of police was also the city manager and in charge of the water department. He was more than fully employed during the Great Depression. One day he saw a man with some of his kids. They were all barefoot. He told the man to gather up the rest of his kids and bought them all shoes.

It had been payday. When my grandfather got home, my grandmother was waiting for the pay envelope. He finally admitted that he had bought shoes for the guy’s 8 kids. She reminded him that he also had 8 kids to provide for. He may have been in trouble at home but his kind of bond with the community won’t show up on the local news in Manhattan.

Okay. So things change. But, now all police misbehavior is excused as necessary. Homeland Security says so. Whatever fails to come under that umbrella, is serious enough to invoke the Patriot Act. I find the title ironic for a statute that violates so much of the Constitution.

You don’t need a copy of the Constitution if you have pepper spray, a helmet with face shield, jack boots, a big gun, body armor and an attitude. Are the police just simple minded or bullies. I think many are complex enough to qualify on both counts. If they were rational, acting on behalf of their own self-interest and devoted to upholding the law and the Constitution, they would be joining the protestors, not harassing them.

As a former foreign correspondent, I found the following interesting. Last week an international group that ranks press freedom around the world released their report for last year. Thanks primarily to the beatings, incarceration and other means of interference with the press with regards to the Occupy movement, the U.S. dropped from 20^th to 47^th.

Maybe it’s just one more of the burdens of getting old. You have a memory to compare with the present. I find it impossible nowadays to think of this as a country as free as the one I grew up in.

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Lucky me. I first met Newt during his first unsuccessful run for public office, way back in 1974. He wanted to meet me and get my support. Even at that tender age I was smart enough to demur. Actually, turning him down didn’t require that much smarts.

I was serving as mayor of a town in Georgia’s then 6th Congressional District at the time. Newt was an instructor at what was then West Georgia College. It was obvious that he wasn’t remotely qualified for either position, though he was telling everyone how intelligent he was even then.

Many keep saying that Newt is the smartest one running for the Republican nomination. That, of course, is not all that flattering. Why do people say he is so smart? It’s because he has told everyone that for the past several decades. It isn’t because of any known evidence.

The candidates are pandering to the base to out-conservative each other. As with his putative intelligence, Newt has convinced many that he is a true conservative. Really? It might be beneficial to pay attention to what he actually says and his very public record.

Newt is whatever he wants to be. If he thinks a conservative stance will benefit him, so be it. More moderate? The same. Liberal? He wouldn’t use that term but he is quite willing to stake out such a position, at least temporarily, if he sees it as helpful.

It’s unlikely to be a profitable pursuit to find a responsible Republican who served in Congress with him that sees him as a conservative. People should pay heed to those who know him best.

Many call Romney the master of flip-flopping, but he merely follows the path trailblazed by Newt. Some have noted that they should stage a debate featuring Newt debating himself. Who would win? We would.

The graphic to the left is Newt’s coat of arms. The flip-flops point in all directions.

People have asked how Newt has changed. Is he different than he was back in the 70s? Sort of. Most people mature as they age. When it happens to Newt and vegetables, we call it rotting. Despite his attempts to portray himself as civilized, his personality is most often associated with bar brawls.

For a few seconds I saw his temperment leading him to a career in ultimate fighting. Then, I realized how inappropriate that would be for an ultimate coward.

Newt vs St. Ronny

Newt would have us believe he is Reagan’s first-born. He invoked the saint’s name 55 times during the debates. There is a problem with Newt’s attempts to grab Ronny’s coattail. It can only be accomplished if he can get people to believe his lies.

He has suggested that he and Ronny decided to end the Cold War. The reality? He called Reagan’s foreign policy “a pathetic failure.” Elliot Abrams, in the National Review, wrote of Newt that he, “spewed insulting rhetoric” and “was voluble and certain in predicting that Reagan’s policies would fail.”

There’s much more. Just a quick search of Lexus shows:

■ 1982: “Really, Reaganomics has failed. We must regroup. The national government is running amuck. Without a freeze, I don’t see breakout out of higher and higher deficits.”

■ 1983: “Beyond the obvious indicators of decay the fact is that President Reagan has lost control of the national agenda.”

■ 1985: Newt calls Reagan’s summit with Gorbachev, “the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Chamberlain in 1938 at Munich.” editor’s note: I’m glad he was not one of my history professors.

■ 1986: “Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire’s challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic fundamental change in strategy will continue to fail.”

■ 1987: “There were two things that people felt they knew about Ronald Reagan. That he was fundamentally honest and that he was a strong American leader who would stand tall and not deal with terrorists,” Gingrich said. The Iran-Contra affair “violated” both parts of the trust, “and it has shaken people’s beliefs.”

■ 1987: “The sense of our overpowering belief in Reagan as the most effective president since FDR is probably not retainable.”

Clinton – Newt’s Forgotten Assistant

Newt sometimes forgets to acknowledge that Bill Clinton played a role in the government. Fron a campaign ad, “When I was speaker, our budget was balanced and 11 million jobs were created.” Does anyone else find it strange for someone who claims that government doesn’t create jobs to claim credit for the creation of 11 million jobs?

And there he goes again; reforming the welfare system. Newt didn’t realize it at the time but he had a bad habit of voting against policies that he now claims as accomplishments.

A historian? I find that personally insulting. How can a person claim to be an historian while harboring such a distain and disregard of facts. There is a glaring difference between an historian and a hypocritidiot.

Not a Rocket Scientist

Now that Jules, er, uh . . . Newt Verne is pandering in preparation for the Florida Primary, he’s guaranteeing multiple space stations and a permanent base on the moon. That moon station will hold a population of 13,000. Wow! What a visionary.

Realistic people know that such an effort, though technically feasible, needs scientific and political rationales. Newt can’t be bothered with reality. He seems to consider it sufficient as an expression of America’s destiny to be the greatest in every way.

This moon station can be paid for by decimating funding for education, taxing the unemployed, getting rid of food stamps, reducing medical care and eliminating taxes on corporations and the wealthy. There will be no more highway repairs but, with the necessary reduction of law enforcement, there will be no more speeding tickets. Think of it as a wash. We just have to let Newt set our priorities for us.

Speaking of food stamps, Newt intends to make them history. He calls Obama the food stamp president.He forgets that they were a Republican program. The intent was not to feed the needy. No, nothing so Christian in spirit. The program was designed to buy votes for Republican politicians in agricultural congressional districts.

Also, Newt ignores a couple of little facts. First, there were more people receiving food stamps under George W. than under Obama, despite lies by various politicians to the contrary. Facts seem to be inconvenient for some. Further, many of those receiving food stamps under Obama are a legacy from Bush. Once again, facts are irrelevant to the nation’s self-proclaimed greatest historian.

In which one is she wearing makeup?

Though I haven’t met Newt’s latest, it’s quite apparent she is no mental giant either. When Newt asked number 2 for an open marriage, that meant he didn’t want to marry her, even after 6 years in Newt’s version of the Lincoln Bedroom – the back seat of a Town Car. It still took another 2 years before he broke down and made her a legal migraine.

I don’t think there is too much of a chance that we will have to wrap our collective heads around his 3^rd lady being the 1^st Lady.

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p.s. It seems that few are aware of the correct way to pronounce Newt’s surname. His family pronounces it as though the final letter were a ‘k’ – rick, not rich. Just an added benefit from the expert on almost everything.

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There are some things that everyone knows but many refuse to admit. Then there are the cretins that have a critical gene missing that would allow them to absorb truth.

Fox doesn’t just make the occasional error. Their coverage on every subject, even those that might be considered non-political, is riddled with what might be generously characterized as “facts” created from whole cloth.

Fox News viewers are much more likely than others to believe false information about American politics, a new study concludes.

The study, conducted by the University of Maryland, judged how likely consumers of various news outlets and publications were to believe misinformation about a wide range of political issues.

Overall, 90% of respondents said they felt they had heard false information being given to them during the 2010 election campaign. However, while consumers of just about every news outlet believed some information that was false, the study found that Fox News viewers, regardless of political information, were “significantly more likely” to believe the following false information:

–Most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely)

–Most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points)

–The economy is getting worse (26 points)

–Most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points)

–The stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points)

–Their own income taxes have gone up (14 points)

–The auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points)

–When TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points)

–And that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points)

In addition, the study said, the greater amount of time spent watching Fox News, the greater the percentage of believing these false stories.

In other words, it isn’t necessary to read or watch the real news to actually know more about what is really happening. To stop looking so foolish, just stop watching Faux News.

Why is it that these people can’t understand that, if their positions on issues depend entirely on lies, it could be a hint that they should change their positions?

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Thanksgiving is coming, in case you forgot. It has both a positive and a negative aspect for me.

Well, okay, there are two problems if you count staying on my diet.

My wife and I were married the Saturday before Thanksgiving. So, I always think of our anniversary as being on Saturday. Unfortunately, the 19^th (I verified this) doesn’t always fall on a Saturday.

I hope everyone reading this has a plate full of things for which they can be thankful. That is not the case for far too many Americans.

The bulk of this article will be extracts from one by Michael Snyder, who maintains a blog called, The Economic Collapse. It lists several statistics related to the poor and extremely poor in this country.

Michele Bachmann recently shared her Christian spirit with us when she said that a person that didn’t work shouldn’t eat. Her separation from the real world is great enough to be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

The reason for being unemployed is largely a factor of there not being enough jobs. Also, the majority of the poor are employed. A sizable percentage of the poor are seniors. I realize these facts don’t comport with her fantastical world view but that won’t be a consideration, once she realizes she is a former candidate.

Anyway, here is some food for thought:

The following are 19 statistics about the poor that will absolutely astound you . . .

#1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.

#2 Last year, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.

#3 It isn’t just the ranks of the “very poor” that are rising. The number of those just considered to be “poor” is rapidly increasing as well. Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty. Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.

#4 The poverty rate for children living in the United States increased to 22% in 2010.

#5 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.

#6 In Washington D.C., the “child food insecurity rate” is 32.3%.

#7 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

#8 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.

#9 Today, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps.

#10 According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 15 percent of all Americans are now on food stamps.

#11 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

#12 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.

#13 We are told that the economy is recovering, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by another 8 percent over the past year.

#14 Right now, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#15 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.

#16 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#17 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program.

#18 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.

#19 It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States.

As Michael notes, you don’t see the media giving this subject a great deal of coverage. He provided a link to the following video.

Regardless of how you feel about the subject of same-sex marriage, that is not the real point of the video. It’s merely a convenient conveyance. Please stay with the video through the 1:15 mark. The remainder makes the real point overwhelmingly.

Try to remember the poor at your holiday dinner but also think of things about the country of which you can be proud.

Best wishes,

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Do you know which company is the world’s largest health care corporation? Care to guess? Aw, go on. You know the answer.

Time’s up. It’s Johnson & Johnson, with a logo that often includes the words, Family of Companies. Oh, doesn’t that make them sound so cozy? Maybe they should ‘incorporate’ a teddy bear with a Band-Aid as a part of their corporate symbol.

Would you be surprised if one of their signature products contained a couple of cancer-causing ingredients? Would you be surprised to learn that they have been the subject of a boycott that has already lasted two and a half years. That boycott is supported by 25 associations of physicians and nurses and cancer and environmental organizations representing over three and a half million people, here and abroad.

Would you believe those ingredients are unnecessary? While it is sold with those ingredients in several countries, including the US, it is available in other countries without them. It seems that regulations can make a difference. They can keep your baby safe.

Just what is this dangerous product? Okay, no more suspense. It’s Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo.

What are these ingredients? They are the potentially cancer-causing chemicals dioxane and something called quaternium-15 that releases formaldehyde. Those don’t sound quite so cuddily. They almost sound scientific.

Johnson & Johnson makes a weak effort at defending their policies by saying that the US and a few other countries don’t proscribe those ingredients. That raises the question, are they implying that babies in the U.S., Canada, China, Australia, and Indonesia apparently are more resistent to cancer than those in other companies? Maybe it’s a case of Congress being less resistent to bribery.

Their weak defense effort is belied by the following announcement – which basically constitutes an admission. The company has announced that it will reduce the levels of dioxane and eventually eliminate the quaternium-15. In the meantime, make certain your health insurance policy covers your children for cancer. They may be phasing in such coverage.

Don’t worry. Johnson & Johnson cares for you. True, they do make other products that contain chemicals but they know how to adjust. While not yet changing their main baby shampoo, they now offer a new baby shampoo without those vile, dastardly, scientific chemicals. It’s call Johnson’s Naturals – and it only costs twice as much. Remember that, for both shampoos, the bottles cost more than the contents.

See? There’s a health care company that loves you just as much as does Goldman Sachs.

To your kids’ health, and Johnson & Johnson’s financial well-being.
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Being born above my dad’s grocery store and being immersed in the grocery business, Summers and weekends, for many years, I thought I knew a few of its tricks. I’m now finding out how little I knew.

Admittedly, I have not had much recent connection with the industry, as my father retired about 25 years ago. He ended up in charge of a major regional chain’s warehouse.

Why have I had this recent epiphany? Why am I reading every label? I am on a diet.

When you go well past 300 pounds, particularly at my age, you begin to wonder why. I was following the standard diet guidelines and going to the Y 5 days a week. My metabolism was in the proper range and I had no tumor or other obvious reason for all of that weight gain.

I said to hell with the FDA’s guidelines. To hell with the AMA’s and Heart Association’s recommendations.

I did a ton of research and decided to eat the way my grandparents ate, before epidemic heart disease, fructose, soy everything, oleomargarine, processed foods, Cargill and ADM. I have rediscovered taste. Butter, butter everywhere. Real butter. I began eating a quarter or a third more food. I quit taking Crestor.

After 3 months of this heresy, I received the best blood test results ever. After a bit more than 4 months, now, I am approaching a weight loss of 50 pounds.

So, now I read the labels. No vegetable oils, except olive, coconut and flax seed. No bleached flours. No soy products, with one small exception. Reduce all sugars to the extent possible and totally eliminate high fructose corn syrup. No MSG.

However comprehensive that may seem, you could be forgiven for thinking that it was unnecessary to scrutinize every label. The food industry is the nation’s largest industry. That means it has more money to advertise its lies, so it can lie more. So, it does. It takes all of the supermarkets to contain all of the lies the industry produces.

A product may announce in large type that it is MSG-free. Read the label. If it includes natural flavors among the ingredients, those natural flavors are likely enhanced with MSG. So much for government-required labels being honest.

I look for a salad dressing. Soy oil is the first listed ingredient on almost all. There are even some vinegar and oil and vinaigrette dressings that boast of olive oil where soy oil is listed first and olive oil fourth. For any who are unaware, the ingredients are supposed to be listed in the order of the amount.

My favorite dressing was always blue cheese, even when it was still called Roquefort. Roquefort is made in France from sheep’s milk. They became upset when others called their product Roquefort and threatened lawsuits. That was when the others changed the name to blue cheese dressing. Almost all of these blue cheeses are now made from cow’s milk. Gorgonzola, a blue cheese from Italy is made both with cow’s milk or goat’s milk. I found one brand of dressing that listed Gorgonzola. It didn’t specify the animal source. Believe me, there is a difference.  Anyway, that dressing also was mostly soy oil. I can no longer find a store selling Roquefort in this area.

As much as I enjoy blue cheese, I thought I could avoid the soy oil by changing to one of those vinaigrettes. No such luck. Soy oil is everywhere. For the nonce I must also avoid salads, unless I bring my own olive or coconut oil and vinegar.

Meat should be meat, right? No, unless a soy bean has legs. No natural food is good enough for Americans unless it has been augmented with a soy product and blessed by those family farmers at Cargill, ADM, Tyson and their neighbors. I think I could put every thing in a supermarket that contains no soy or fructose into a single buggy and still have room for a couple of my grandkids.

Why are soy and corn products in everything? Is it because they are healthier? No. It’s for two special reasons. They are cheaper and more malleable in the laboratory. They are very productive per acre. They are easy to harvest with a minimal number of human workers. And, corn is subsidized. Why? Because the people with enough money to bribe Congress got what they wanted.

And I bet you thought they are putting all of those processed toxins into your food because they are concerned with your well-being. They eliminate the nutrients from your diet. Your body tries to get more. You consume more. You become obese. You consume more. They get richer.

Avoid low-fat, no-fat, skim and such. Fat, animal fat, is where all of the taste and nutrients are. Removing the animal fats would mean something less than tasty. They have found the solution. Sugar. Processed sugar, missing its few nutrients, replaces the nutrients that were removed. Without the enzymes found in animal fats, much of your food doesn’t get properly processed and ends up as fat or is discarded with its nutrients not having benefited your body.

Every few days, it seems, soy is said to cure another cancer, eliminate obesity, destroy cholesterol, save you from halitosis. Someone has to dream those things up. They have to get paid. They are marketing people, not scientists. Soy has some toxic properties; particularly in the amounts found in the American diet. It will help your body generate estrogen. Unless you are going through menopause, that is probably not a good thing.

I have a daughter-in-law that was a nurse. She is feeding my grandson a soy milk formula. That’s not good but my wife tells me to keep my mouth shut. Excessive soy in the diet is now the prime suspect in the premature development of 8- and 10-year old girls.

There is only one form of soy that is truly safe. Soy sauce was brewed from time immemorial in a process that takes 5-6 months. Scientists have now developed a method that produces soy sauce in two days. If the label says something to the effect that it is traditionally brewed, it’s safe. If not, save your money and protect your health.

They tell you that cereals are healthy, even the ones that are more than half sugar. Sorry. Not true. Steel cut oats are just about the only breakfast cereal that has any nutrients remaining after all of the processing. Granola? They are cereals without nutrients sugar, fructose, more sugar and honey.

If you don’t read the labels you miss all of the lies. If you do read the labels, the chances are they have tricked you into believing those lies.

Well, you think it might be a good idea to head over to the vitamin counter? Good luck. The pills are processed with large amounts of heat and pressure. In addition to oxygen, those are the prime killers of nutrients. It is estimated that the average vitamin pill or supplement contains from 0 to  5% of the claimed amount of that particular nutrient stated on the label.

It’s better to get those nutrients in your diet. Natural foods have those vitamins and nutrients and their co-factors. It is rare for nature to produce or use any nutrient as a singularity. Glucosamine won’t help your joint much on its own. You can get it and its co-factors from putting a joint bone with its fat and gristle into a crock pot and making a stew and some gravy and some stock. Those labs don’t make and factories don’t produce any co-factors.

Eat well.

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My occasional resort to language of a somewhat bombastic flavor may lead some to believe that I generally take an aggressive stance on practically every issue. That’s not necessarily so, but in the matter of class war, I am a super hawk.

Oh, am I not being divisive? No. It’s several generations too late for that. The war has been in progress since before Old Hickory was president. And that’s just in this country. It actually began millennia ago.

For those who think that the prostitutes of the elite, otherwise known as politicians and media mouths, are on to something when they accuse the victims of fomenting class warfare, think again. Most people have failed to notice the war because they have not been drafted. The actual war has been deliberately obscured by an extensive, expensive, all-pervasive campaign of disinformation.

Wall Street was bailed out by John Q. Public in order to protect their multimillion dollar bonuses.

College students were not bailed out of their onerous student loans.

You thought you had a right of free speech? You’re getting that mixed up with the Supreme Court ruling that money is free speech. You don’t have enough money. Sorry.

Over 800 people of Occupy Wall Street have been arrested. No Wall Street executives, those creating the problem, have been arrested. Hmmm. How many arrests were made of Tea Party demonstrators that were making threatening statements and even carrying guns on federal park land? Well, anyway, we are all equal.

Homeowners who are victims of mortgage companies or the disappearance of their jobs, or both, are on their own, while the government turns a blind eye as the mortgage companies ignore the niceties and laws of foreclosure.

Have you selected your park bench for retirement?

If you think the country’s economy is the nirvana our beloved leaders and Wall Street guaranteed, go back to sleep. If you want to do something to improve the situation for yourself, your family and your country, get yourself a draft card. How’s that?

Replace your present credit cards and accounts with the Wall Street casinos with cards and accounts from local banks and credit unions. Obviously, there are a wide range of other measures you can take but his has to be a minimum, a first step.

Was the economic meltdown just one of those things? Was it something that periodically besets us that cannot be avoided? Was it an accident? Was it the result of a mistake? No. It was caused by the unbridled greed of simpletons that considered themselves and referred to themselves as Masters of the Universe. They actually thought they had triple digit IQs. If they are so intelligent, why do they worship such a simplistic ideology? How can intelligent people fail to see its absurdities?

Investment banking, if you consider it a necessary evil, cannot justifiably represent more than 3-4% of the national economy. It now represents over 20%. It rakes in 50% of all of the country’s profits. One percent of the people own as much as 90%. Four hundred people have as much wealth as 150,000,000. This represents a gross distortion of the economy. So what?

There was a similar distortion in 1929. In fact, every such major financial meltdown was preceded by this type of distortion. An economy cannot function properly when class differences are so pronounced.

The irony is that the elite are doing themselves a great deal of harm in their pursuit of this folly. They seem satisfied to be oligarchs in a banana republic. For some reason a strong nation with a vibrant economy isn’t appealing to them. By nurturing a large, healthy middle class, the economy is more stable. Business failures decline. Poverty declines. People claim to be more satisfied with their lives – people, not oligarchs.

These intellectual giants appear to be convinced that their happiness can only be based on the misery of the serfs and peons. Strangely, the elites’ happiness goes down as the people’s increases. I guess that’s okay, because the happiness levels of the majority of the elites never are positive.

If you won’t do it for your own benefit, get involved and participate in the class war for the 1%. We don’t want these brilliant people failing in 80% of the businesses they create in only 5 years. It might cause them to have self-esteem problems; problems that can only be remedied by wreaking havoc on the poor and the remnants of the middle class. They can only win the class war if they have no opponents, if you won’t fight back.

Since you persevered, I have a video for you as a reward. Enjoy.

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I just wanted to share a couple of quick thoughts today.

Regular readers will be surprised at how short this post is – not too pleasantly surprised, I hope.

The common thread of these two subjects is stupidity. I promise to limit it to two, though you might be aware that we are suffering from a pandemic.

It gets a bit tiresome to be looked down upon for the sin of being educated. People glory in their ignorance. They scoff at those who have worked hard to earn credentials and labored mightily to gain experience.

When did everyone become an expert? Why does anyone bother learning anything?

I’m reminded of the short period I managed a theater. The number of employees varied seasonally but at the peak was about 95, perhaps 90 were high school students. I hung a sign on my office wall that suggested one hurry and hire a teenager, while he still knew everything.

Have people ceased growing up?

After trying desperately to find a way of explaining about job creation simple enough for a politician to understand, the guy just brushed it off as “liberal” nonsense, as though he actually understood the concept of job creation or the meaning of the word liberal.

He felt he had offered the ultimate in dismissive retorts by stating that even his 3-year old granddaughter could understand how to create jobs. I simply replied that his problem was in depending upon his granddaughter for his understanding of economics.

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It appears that, once again, Obama is going to compromise by giving the opposition everything they asked for. I’m concerned for the day when they realize that they could have gotten much more, if only they had asked for more.

Obama seems ready to fully capitulate to the oil industry. Canada has the second largest energy deposit in the world. The problems are that it isn’t oil and it is locked up in what are called tar sands. US coal is the world’s largest energy deposit but they haven’t found an economical way of running our cars on it.

All you need to do to get oil from the tar sands is to rape a delicate ecosystem, cover huge expanses of land and water with toxic chemicals, provide fire for people’s kitchen faucets, create the pollution equivalent of 13 refineries to extract it from more than a mile beneath the surface, convert it into oil and pipe it across Canada and the US to Texas, where you’ll have to build more refineries in the most polluted state in the country. I’m speaking of their air and water, not their politics.

We have passed the peak of oil production. The end of oil is predictable and foreseeable. The sensible path would be to find alternatives to petroleum. The entire ecosystem that we call home is already suffering tremendous damage and global warming is both the result and an additional environmental insult.

Instead of spending tremendous efforts to continue developing what is just another delay, another source for petroleum, we should be concentrating our efforts on types of energy that might possibly allow us to stop further damage.

It’s all about money and a refusal to mess with the comfort zone of the energy tycoons. It’s as though they were the business equivalent of couch potatoes. They could direct their massive profits into alternatives but just want to sit on their, uh, . . . money.

Instead, we get assaulted with a constant stream of commercials trying to convince us that the dirtiest, most ecologically dangerous form of energy is the cleanest and safest.

Okay. It isn’t short but it is briefer than usual.

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