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 am not a fan of ceilings. Well, at home is good. Maybe in most any building.

But that’s not the kind that we have as the subject today. We’re talking about the debt ceiling of the federal government. It’s possible one or two people may not be as familiar with this issue as they think.

For instance, we are the only country in the world with a debt ceiling. Another minor point is that a debt ceiling is unConstitutional. Now, are you ready for some football . . . er, uh, facts?

Yes, Virginia, the Congress of these United States, in their infinite wisdom, made us the only country in the world subject to such a nonsensical, unnecessary and useless stricture.

It isn’t merely a matter of embarrassment. It represents a potential threat to this country, and the world, that can only be guessed at. Why would they put us in so precarious position? Why would they so jeopardize us?

The debt ceiling took years to develop. It was intended to help the United States Treasury. The original intent was laudable. Its present misuse as a political weapon is despicable.

Until the time of WW I, ‘The Big One,” Congress would authorize each specific debt that was incurred. For a couple of decades, efforts were made to provide the Treasury an easier way of dealing with debts. Those efforts were formalized into a law in 1939 that provided for a debt ceiling. No good deed goes unpunished; particularly when the good deed doer has no idea what they are doing.

Most debt is incurred by action of the Congress. However, the executive branch can cause some debt. Even the courts can subject the government to debts, intentionally or not, as the result of some rulings.

However debt may be incurred, if it is legal, the Treasury must, by mandate of the Constitution, pay that debt. The Constitution makes no allowance for failure to pay any and all legal debts.

Additionally, while the above is stated quite explicitly, the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is. In 1935 the Supreme Court very clearly ruled that Congress did not have the power to cause any legally incurred debt to go unpaid. There would, otherwise, be no way to promise the “full faith and allegiance of the United States” to any obligation.

Those great patriotic worshipers of the Constitution may tell the Treasury that they can’t pay any bills once the ceiling is breached. They need to actually read the Constitution. It would help if they would also read an occasional ruling that the Supreme Court hands down.

While the above is true and easy to understand, there is a political consideration. It is very unlikely that any Secretary of the Treasury would be willing to be seen as defying Congress. It’s a sure bet that Secretary Geithner and any of his predecessors and successors see, or saw, their only option being to bow to Congress and pretend they have the final word.

Hey. We have a president who used to be a professor of Constitutional Law. Surely he’s familiar with the original part of the Constitution. Surely he read all of way down to Section 4 of the 14^th Amendment. But, even though he may know better, he has no more political room for maneuver than the Secretary of the Treasury.

We are stuck under the thumbs of the super patriots who don’t understand most of the Constitution and disagree with everything they do understand.

Now, we hear that there is a certain amount beyond which the Treasury will be barred from borrowing. We are told that once the cash on hand runs out the Treasury will be barred from paying any bills or other obligations. Were that it was that straightforward.

They say that our armed forces personnel, those on Social Security and many others cannot be paid . . . but guess who can. Did you say banks? You are either absolutely brilliant or at least have a realistic perception of the way our system works.

How do they justify that? Ask them. The IRS collection personnel will continue to be paid as you and I will still be required to come up with the wherewithal to keep those bankers bonuses flowing.

Okay, you say. What’s so bad about not raising the debt ceiling? The truth is, we don’t know. I can recall nothing even close to this happening before. We have no real analog for guidance. We must depend on educated guesses.

Some of the guesswork can provide a relatively high degree of confidence. We know the level of greed that guides the majority of players. We know the inane ideology they will use to rationalize their actions. We know that fear mongering will likely set new standards. Put them all together Dr. Frankenstein.

Usually, interest on the debt is one of the largest items in the annual budget. It continues to be while significantly diminished. You may have heard that interest rates are at historic lows. That has allowed us to borrow at very low cost for the past few years. It is obviously to our government’s, and taxpayers’, benefit to extend those low interest rates as long as we can.

That makes sense, you say. Won’t we? Many in and out of Congress are determined that we pay higher rates. How could they be so unconcerned for our country’s economic well-being? Some because they are ideologues. Some for putative political advantage. Some for both reasons.

It is difficult to understand the ‘thinking’ of some politicians. They are owned by the banks. The banks love the essentially free money they can borrow now. The banks have told their representatives not to shut down the government. They likely will obey their orders but for the sake of their ideology and their ever credulous constituencies they want to push it to the brink.

The banks, our creditors and other major financial entities relying on our “full faith and allegiance” will begin to get fidgety at some point before the actual deadline. The automatic, ideologically-based response will be to raise interest rates. Our government, we the taxpayers, will lose those low interest rates ahead of the final due date.

Here we have the true believers screaming that the debt is too large. They threaten massive cuts to every program that helps the middle class and sustains the poor. Though our taxes are the lowest in more than 60 years, they bemoan such an intolerable tax burden on the top 2% and are willing to increase the debt for their benefit.

Now comes the kicker. They are willing to cause the government’s interest rates to increase incurring additional debt in the hundreds of billions. Don’t forget to send these self-described debt haters a thank you note.

Why all of the concern by the banks, China, the Saudis, the Brits and all of the other major players? Because the US Dollar is the currency of the realm. Everyone puts their “full faith and allegiance” into the Dollar. Everything in international trade is denoted in the Dollar. There is the stability required for the financial world to function because there is a common coin.

So, just replace it with the Euro. You may not have heard that several members of the European Community are experiencing even greater financial discomfort than are we. Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Portugal and others. This is putting heavy stress on the stronger national banks of the Community. There is not inconsiderable talk of some members leaving the Euro. Some even talk of abolishing it.

That doesn’t sound to me like a promising alternative. What about gold? Give me a moment. Let me stifle my paroxysm of giggling.

The Washington Monument measures 55 feet on each side at its base. It stands 555 feet high. All of the gold ever gathered by mankind in its entire history would equal about one-third of the volume of the Washington Monument. That doesn’t seem to be all that much. Use that as the basis for finances of the entire world? And that doesn’t even take into consideration how much would be needed for the egos of both the rich and poor in Rolexes and teeth.

Allow me to translate that for sports fans. The playing field for football is 300 feet long and 160 feet wide. This, of course, doesn’t include the end zones. All of the gold gathered in the history of mankind would stack up on that playing field a bit less than 11½ feet high, barely higher than the crossbars on the goalposts.

People usually fail to take into consideration how advantageous it is to have our currency accepted as the de facto world standard. When OPEC quotes prices in Dollars we have both a slight real and a psychological advantage. We are, to a degree, insulted from most of the zigs and zags of currency values. In many cases, the cost and convenience of currency exchange works to our advantage as tourists or direct buyers from other countries.

If the world holds our credit worthiness or solvency in question, the pedestal of world superpower will start to crumble at an alarming rate. Our national strength has always been intimately yoked to, indeed based on, our perceived economic dominance.

It is impossible to quantify the potential damage from shutting down the government, to us and everyone else. The loss of the standard will mean economic turmoil around the world until a new system can be developed. The present system developed in the aftermath of WW II and was possible because the rest of the world was prostrate. I don’t recommend revisiting those conditions.

The politicians, most of them, are presently playing games with this issue for some expected political advantage. It’s time to realize that it isn’t a game and hope some adults come to the fore.

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They are telling the teachers they are the problem. They are telling the teachers, “You’re Fired.”

What a load of simple-minded, self-serving crap.

Do any of these critics understand education? Emphatically, no. They have other axes to grind.

They neither understand nor care about our nation’s education. Is that hyperbolic? Emphatically, no.

What are their solutions? Charter schools? Evaluating teachers based on standardized tests? Getting rid of unions? Instead of just accepting their solutions without questions, as we have been doing, let’s actually look at what facts we have.

We know this country isn’t number one in education, by a long shot. Just who is? Finland. Why?

Finland has no charter schools – not one. But we were told charter schools were the panacea, the educational elixir. Well then, if it isn’t, what is?

Finland has no standardized tests. What? You’ve got to be kidding. How can they rate teachers without standardized tests? Perhaps we ought to ask them, rather than creating more standardized tests. Surprisingly, teachers make up their own tests.

Finland has a teachers’ union. In fact, 100% of Finland’s teachers belong to the teachers’ union. But . . . but, it’s all the union’s fault. Isn’t it? You mean those politicians who don’t know a fig’s worth about education have lied to us? Emphatically, yes. The truth doesn’t support their agenda, the one they failed to tell you about.

Perhaps we should pay attention to someone with expertise in the subject. Let me introduce Diane Ravitch. Both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton appointed her to Assistant Secretary of Education. She is a historian of education, presently at New York University.

Just a quick observation. Her being appointed by both presidents would suggest that she is not pursuing a political agenda. That is not the case with the politicians that keep fighting over the stage now to outdo each other in how much they can cut teachers, their salaries and their benefits. I’ll return to this further down. Cutting education causes the children to bleed.

Professor Ravitch has recently given us her 20^th book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

During her book tour she spoke with a longtime principal in California. She asked how many teachers the principal had supervised over the years. The response was over 300. The next question was, how many of those were bad teachers. The answer was, “One, but I fired her.” Is some self-important politician with an ax to grind a better judge of good teachers or is this principal?

A few years back, my wife heard a businessman spouting off to another teacher how he could, with his business acumen (LOL), run the school system much better. The teacher asked him what he would do if he was selling blueberries and some were delivered that were damaged or spoiled. Why blueberries? I don’t know but I think he may have been in the supermarket business.

He said he would refuse to accept them. The teacher replied that she didn’t have the option of refusing to accept poor students. Education is not a business. Sometimes it seems closer to a zoo.

If the produce manager had to accept any and all blueberries, would he be labeled a bad manager if he could sell the spoiled ones for the same prices as the prime ones? If you fired him for that reason you would be deemed an idiot businessman.

Who’s To Blame?

It’s not the teachers. Almost every teacher I have met went into the profession because they felt they could have a positive effect on the children put in their care. It certainly wasn’t for the money. People say government workers are overpaid. Bull feces. Very few own private jets or apartments in Trump Towers.

It’s the politicians. It’s the ideologues. It’s you, the voters, for electing those miscreants.

They promise they’ll get rid of the bad teachers, as if they knew. And the voters fell for it. They are going to run the schools like a business and be able to cut back on funding. And the voters fell for it. It’s all the union’s fault. And the voters fell for it.

They’ve got your number. They know how to pull your strings. You can add a few more appropriate clichés.

Why?

Why was the first act of the Scott Walker, Honorable Clown of Wisconsin to give a tax cut to corporations? Why is he cutting $900 million from the budget for education? Why was he so nice to the caller he thought was David Koch? Why does he want to destroy the unions and balance his budget on the backs of the teachers, the firefighters, the police, the snow plow operators, the garbagemen and the others who serve their community?

Why? Two reasons: He likes the money and support of the Koch brothers and the corporations and it fits the drivel he thinks is a coherent ideology.

Those trying to break the unions claim to be experts on business. Really? Employee morale is a critical factor in productivity, turnover, training costs and other important matters. Expert businessmen don’t abuse the ones that actually do the work. Expert businessmen don’t call their employees scum. No. Despite their smug self-assessments, they are no more than businessmen wannabes.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in the private sector for 2010 was 6.9%. Union membership for public employees was 36.2%. Teachers are the largest segment of public employees. Remember, in most, if not all states, school budgets are primarily funded by local property taxes, not state monies.

Unions provide perhaps 20% or so of the campaign funds for Democrats. Horrors! A higher percentage of Republican campaign funds come from corporations and those in the top 2% of income. I’m guessing that is merely the way God planned it, so it’s copacetic.

A disinformation campaign of several decades has been eminently successful in portraying unions as the reason Eve gave Adam the apple. The unions have offered the other cheek. They have offered all four cheeks.

The corporations make an offer. Isn’t that nice of them? The unions make a demand. How rude of them. Doesn’t the corporation make a demand that the workers accept certain wages and other considerations? Doesn’t the union offer to work under certain conditions?

It’s more than pedantic semantics. It’s how the public views the opponents. It’s how the opponents see themselves. The unions lost the public relations battle long ago; before they realized there was one. The unions bought into it. They themselves usually describe their “offers” as “demands.”

If the Koch brothers and their ilk can destroy the last bulwark of unionism, they calculate that they can deprive the Democrats of adequate funds and essentially destroy the two-party system. Their aim is to eliminate the engine that created the middle class and any political opposition to their grotesque ideology. They are so blinded by greed they cannot see that they will have the most toys in a far smaller sandbox; one about the size of Mexico’s.

You need not listen to what they say. They don’t care what they say, as long as it gets the great unwashed to vote the way they wish. Do they care about their fellow Americans? You mean the ones they refer to as scum? Do they care about our economy? Then why do they pay for special laws to subsidize sending jobs overseas? Do they care about you? They spend unbelievable amounts to continue their “rights” to foul the air you breathe, the water you drink, the food you eat. So, listen carefully when they tell you for whom to vote.

The teachers, the garbagemen, the public unions didn’t cause our global economic mess.

You were nice enough to give Wall Street a few trillion dollars. Almost immediately, they gave themselves billions in bonuses. Many people cried foul. But, we were told, those bonuses were inviolate. They were guaranteed by contract. We couldn’t break a sacred contract.

Come with me to Wisconsin. Don’t just break the contracts the government employees have with the cities, counties and school boards. Just eliminate the unions. Presto! There can be no contract with an entity that doesn’t exist. So much for the sanctity of contracts with the scum.

Most are in the high sixties but one poll shows 81% of the voters in Wisconsin think public employees should be able to have collective bargaining. So? The Koch brothers don’t want it. The public and their creepy ideas of democracy can take the next ferry across the River Styx.

Give multimillion dollar bonuses to the culprits and let the unappreciated public servants bear the entire burden. It’s too bad the teachers didn’t fail these bozos when they had the opportunity. Maybe they should fail every child of the politicians supporting the governor. OH, NO!!! That would be unfair. So, now we want fairness?

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Did your mommy tell you that you are special? Of course you realize she may have been biased.

You cannot look anywhere without seeing the results of the behavior of people who think they are special. The guy(s) who cut you off on the freeway this morning; the student who filmed his roommate’s private encounter; the bankers who take our help (read: taxes) after screwing the world’s economy and then give themselves billions in bonuses are a few examples.

Given a few days, I’m sure you could come up with one or two more. They’re out there. I just question whether we’re truly aware of how much damage this attitude causes.

I ran across a study on the civility of students from public and private schools. Being a product of both, I can testify as to the results of that study, whether you acknowledge my civility or not.

Would you be surprised that private school students were far more likely to consider it acceptable to lie, to cheat? They admit to being more apt to use racial or ethnic slurs. They lead the way in bullying, in hitting. Those in religious schools lead the private schools.

There is discrimination just in deciding who gets in to private schools. You are special by that definition. Religious schools also discriminate, using similar and additional criteria. Just being selected to be in such a school strongly implies that one is special.

So, there should be no surprise when these students internalize the “fact” that they are special. Being special in these cases is never interpreted as arriving at school in a short bus. It is always interpreted as being better; as being more deserving; as having more rights, fewer restraints.

Not every student buys into this concept. I would even contend that not every student that buys into it acts upon it. That said, the numbers in this study of 43,000 high school students demand attention.

Beyond high school, there are other ways of acquiring this special feeling. We are Americans. Our country came of age driven by the belief in American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny. That gives us the right to start wars against countries that didn’t threaten us. It gives us the right to “urge” countries to give American companies special considerations.

It drove the gunslinger mentality of the Old West, the Robber Barons in the late 19th Century, the gangsters of the prohibition era, the politician of today whose self-importance leads him to announce his intent to put a hold on every bill he doesn’t like and other expressions at other times. The feeling runs rampant throughout our society. There rarely are effective checks. Did the guy who cut you off get a ticket? Right.

We acquired this feeling of being special honestly a long, long time ago. We brought with us from Europe, and elsewhere, a religious concept that easily breeds that special feeling, the feeling that others are lesser, an intolerance for other ideas, other people.

Monotheism insists that it has the truth. Therefore, everything else is wrong. Being right is too easily seen as license to correct the errors of those others. I am not saying that being a monotheist requires such an attitude, such a position. It does, however, make it easy to arrive at that conclusion.

This intolerance stemming from monotheism plagued Europe for many centuries. It has, of late, once again become a problem in Islam. The simpleminded attitudes of the terrorist of today, those of the Crusades or those who presume to do god’s will by killing doctors performing abortion is difficult to avoid.

I have trouble seeing any god that I would want those performed in his name as one I with whom I would wish to spend eternity. I’m fed up living three score and ten with these miscreants here and now.

We are special to our friends and family. That does not confer the right to mistreat others. We laugh at the antics of a North Korean family, not recognizing the attitude upon which it is founded. We fail to see the faint images of them in our own mirrors. Please do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
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Yes, class warfare has been waged against those of the middle class and the poor for decades. No, the middle class and poor have not been fighting back, at least not yet.

I am suggesting a new and different strategy for at least the first significant counterattack. The plutocrats have handed us the weapon we need. They and their toadies have maimed the economy. Would you believe that can be turned into a weapon?

While they are somewhat cushioned from the results of their mischief, I have found a way to turn their weapons against them. Jujitsu is a method of using your opponents force against him rather than directly confronting that force. Everything old is new again.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the World Justice Project. It is an organization dedicated to “lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.“ It’s honorary chairs have included a range of Supreme Court justices from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Sandra Day O’Connor. Others are Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell and Jimmy Carter.

Recently, they published the results of a study, called The Rule of Law Index. It evaluates and ranks how laws are implemented and enforced around the world. Countries are ranked on such factors as whether government officials are accountable, whether legal institutions actually protect rights, and how ordinary people fare in the system. The index ranks 35 countries but will double that next year.

Of the 11 industrial countries, we were at the bottom in accessibility and affordability. We fell below such countries as Mexico, Croatia and the Dominican Republic. When polled, the responses were telling. “For instance, only 40% of low-income respondents who used the court system in the past three years reported that the process was fair, compared to 71% of wealthy respondents. This 31% gap between poor and rich litigants in the USA is the widest among all developed countries sampled. In France this gap is only 5%, in South Korea it is 4% and in Spain it is nonexistent.”

I’m inclined to believe that the reason for the rich litigants’ satisfaction being only 71% is a matter of spoiled brats not getting everything they want even when they win. The system does at least occasionally recognize the need to provide the gloss of fairness.

You and I suffer a disadvantage in our courts system. Other studies prove that perception of a disparity is real. Obama has appointed the acknowledged leading legal mind, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, to address this problem. Less than one in five poor people with a legal problem obtain legal services of any kind.

Is this really a serious problem? Mr. Tribe says, “The truth is that as a nation, we face nothing short of a justice crisis. It is a crisis both acute and chronic, affecting not only the poor but the middle class. The situation we face is unconscionable.”

Bernie Madoff went to prison for ripping off a relatively few. The Wall Street bankers and mortgage brokers ripped off millions. How many will Bernie ever get to see again? When the Dow dropped from around 14,000 to the neighborhood of 7,500 many IRAs, 401ks, pension funds, university endowments and such, many people experienced a sleepless night or two.

But, apparently, the consequences of destroying several trillion dollars of other people’s money do not include any perp walks. Actually, this year the result was $144 billion in bonuses.

Let’s step back and assess where we are. The poor and middle class, quickly merging, have little access to the courts and less satisfaction. The elite does have access. The parasitic plutocracy avoids paying the price and ends up profiting from their greed.

The problem is actual criminal activity. Fraud was committed when sub-prime mortgages were rated and sold as AAA investments. Any lawyer worth his three-martini lunch can come up with a dozen collateral charges. If some of these bad people were sentenced to a year for each offense, they could watch the dying of the Sun through the bars on their windows.

The pension funds and others managing large amounts of investments suffered major financial hits. They do, however, have the wherewithal to pursue legal remedies. They also need to fear action charging them with failure to do due diligence and fulfill their other responsibilities. They should be harassed, poked and prodded until they seek redress for their clients. Use one pack of parasites to squeeze another pack parasites. Some activity in the civil courts, with concomitant publicity, will make it easier to pressure the authorities to bring charges in the criminal courts.

Additionally, there needs to be a constant drumbeat for accountability. That accountability should be for those handling those huge amounts of your pension money. It should be extended to include government officials, politicians, anyone culpable. This will not be something that comes quickly. This will not be something to which the plutocrats and their lackeys will easily acquiesce.

We have a justice system that puts one of every four prisoners in the world in our prisons. We have the longest sentences in the world. Yet, a financial heist that dwarfs anything we could have imagined fails to stir our justice system to punish even one malefactor.

We can’t directly force the system to act. It is possible, however, to get those financial geniuses to face off against each other. We might benefit as a side effect. Some of you may get a bit of your retirement back . . . or maybe a little revenge and a justice system we deserve.

Let’s begin a class war by proxy.

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This section of the globe could be to show that we are a long way from the population center of the Earth.

Or, it could be showing those places that don’t care who wins the Stanley Cup (oops, I left out Nashville) or the NBA Championship, or whether Senator Nelson is looking out for Warren Buffet’s profits, or who the next Senator from Florida will be, or if Sarah Palin has read all of the newspapers, or if Dick Cheney has shot any friends in the face (who knew he had any).

Then again, it could be a map showing where all of our jobs have gone.

The first George Bush tried to give us NAFTA. Bill Clinton succeeded. Do you remember the promises, the promised benefits? There were too many to remember them all. Have you been enjoying them? Free trade has its benefits. It’s just that we don’t get them.

The promises made on behalf of “Free Trade” sounded nice. But, what are the results? China ships us $50 billion worth of computers and associated equipment. We ship them $8 billion worth of waste paper and scrap metal. Okay, who’s ahead, so far?

All the laid-off factory worker has to do is be retrained as an engineer and move from Akron to California, where schools for his kids are closing, the government is scaling back or closing down every service they can find, where earthquakes have dropped to the bottom of citizens’ worry lists.

The alternatives are flipping burgers, being a Walmart greeter, if you are old enough, or moving to Bangladesh. They did promise jobs, didn’t they?

Well, productivity has increased. The only problem there with the way it is calculated.

First, pay has not kept up with productivity as it is supposed to. That’s the theory. Or, at least that’s the song they sing to lure you into believing the American Dream is just around the corner (where you can’t see it).

The more output of widgets you have given an established amount of man-hours, the greater the productivity. Say you work on an auto assembly line. The engine was assembled abroad. So was the transmission. And the radio, the axle and transaxle, the electronic panel.

That factory is producing more cars with fewer American workers, so productivity is up. Wow! We won.

Another way of calculating productivity is one the corporations prefer not to emphasize to the general public. How much does it cost to produce a widget? Figuring in the 75-cent per hour cost of a child from China or Thailand brings the total labor cost down a little bit. Once again, productivity is up. Rejoice!

We get to indulge in fake lower prices at Walmart, if we have a job. The corporations have a prettier bottom line, so the executives can pay themselves that extra $5 million bonus. This keeps the executives relatively quiet when they see their luckier brethren on Wall Street getting half a billion a year.

Exxon had $37 billion in earnings last year, without having to pay any corporate tax in this country. Of course, many of their former employees didn’t have to pay any income tax either. We should give Exxon a pass though. They haven’t had any monumental accidents since their eponymous tanker Valdez dripped a bit into one of our major fishing areas. We know they learned their lesson because some day they will pay for all of the damage . . . oops, I forgot that the courts let them off the hook.

Well, anyway, enjoy the benefits of “Free Trade,” since some of you have a lot of spare time to do so.

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Yeah, I know. There isn’t such a thing as a good tax.

Well, maybe there is. Let’s think about it for a moment.

As illustrated by the graphic, Wall Street got a huge tax break. Actually, they got a lot of our tax money. That in addition to several reams of tax breaks, subsidies and such that they have been getting all along.

I would like to see them bear some of the load for the disaster they created.

It appears that the world is coming to a consensus. The G-20 will be meeting in June of this year and some of the major players have finally come to the realization that we ought to tax the large banks; those too big to fail.

Before we go too much further I would like to point out that there is no such thing as a bank too big to fail. That is purely self-serving propaganda.

There is one other matter that needs to be cleared up. Before you start worrying that this means a tax on your checking account, forget that. These taxes are directed at the investment banks, not the commercial banks.

There is, as yet, no agreement on the nature of the tax, its size or term. It is not a time to get your hopes up quite yet but France, Germany, Sweden, the US and others are making proposals.

The United Kingdom has already imposed a 50% one-time tax on bonuses. That’s nice but not to the point. It’s the banks themselves that are, or should be, the primary focus.

Some are proposing an advance tax to put into a pool to cover future bailouts. Thankfully, the US opposes that. Their position is that such a pool would encourage the banks to take risks, knowing they would be bailed out. That may be better than you and me failing them out but doesn’t really solve the problem.

It’s too early to see the direction that may emerge. Just be glad the issue is on the table.

There is an even better idea. This is not a substitute for a bank tax. It is, I feel, a necessary adjunct. Put a tax on every share traded on Wall Street. Just a penny tax on each share as it is traded would result in a surprisingly large windfall to our very needy Treasury. Compared to how much the traders are being ripped off by the brokerage firms and investment banks, a penny is inconsequential to them.

We can, and should, go even further. Money put in the stock market is called an investment. It is said to be so important that people need an incentive to provide the market with money. They call this capital, again incorrectly. That incentive is a taxable rate far less than that paid by people who actually worked for an almost living.

Relatively little of the trading in the market is actually investment. Maybe I buy some stock when a corporation sells new stock to raise some capital. That is an investment. But, if I pay a hundred dollars for the stock and sell it to you for a thousand and you turn around and sell it to your brother-in-law for five thousand, the corporation still got only a hundred dollars, minus brokerage fees and anything else they can think up.

You didn’t invest. You gambled, and won. Your brother-in-law gambled. You’re likely hoping he is going to lose.

The tax code needs to distinguish between investing and gambling. I know that they have a small, unimportant caveat in the tax code but it is little more than window dressing.

People will invest even without that much of a tax incentive. Why? Because some still see it as preferable to actually working. You know the old saw, “Let your money work for you.” What we have is a tax code skewered against actual work and benefiting people who are wealthy and lazy.

If we tax people at the same rate for investing as for working, what do we do about those who are simply gambling? We tax them at a higher rate. Why? Because working benefits our economy. Investing benefits our economy. Gambling distorts our economy and leads to the kind of situation we are now enduring. Why not?

These suggestions are not widely considered. They are not popular with those in charge. Therefore, I doubt that too many bean counters have warmed up their calculators and worked out the numbers. Simply blue-skying it, however, one can foresee a reduced deficit.

But, that’s not all. There would be far less volatility in those numbers in the bottom right-hand corner of your television screen when you watch the news channels. We might even be able to eliminate that bottom line on the tube and replace it with the legs of that blond talking hairspray depository.

If you haven’t guessed what motivated me to spend time thinking about this, I will confess. I am recovering from my annual headache marathon on behalf of the IRS.

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If you stay to the end of this post, you will see an offer you can’t refuse – no strings attached.

My last post was about a health issue, not healthcare reform. Writing so frequently on healthcare reform and the economy has built up a tremendous reserve of frustration.

I wanted to take a psychic break by expounding on other subjects but it seems not to be possible to get away from these matters. Storming once more into the breech they come again to the subject of reform.

Just now I feel more inclined to address the method than the substance. Could it be that there is so little substance to speak to?

I can’t help but wonder if anyone in Washington actually knows the definition of the word reconciliation. The dictionary says it is the reestablishing of cordial relations. All I see is animosity and hostility. How could a spirit of reconciliation engender such enmity and division? So, with the understanding that the term itself is inappropriate, let’s get on to the real problem.

That problem is the disdain so many Senators have for democracy. They seem to think that their prerogatives are more important than representing the needs and opinions of the people.

While the people have been confused, frustrated and angered at the shenanigans taking place in Congress, the majority still support the need for reform and, specifically, the public option. Many of those opposed do so out of a misunderstanding or lack of understanding of the problems and possible solutions.

Throwing around such accusations as this being an attempt to take over healthcare or mischaracterizing it as socialism come from ignorance or deliberate lies. The government has Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, medical care for the active military and veterans, coverage for civilian employees and other programs which it operates or for which it pays. It also subsidizes, through tax breaks, most private policies. The government already pays for 45% of healthcare costs, not including the subsidies.

The private insurance industry is permitted to skim off the cream. It is allowed to reject anyone they wish. They reserve the right to not pay the costs for whatever they wish to avoid. They skim the money to provide their executives multimillion dollar salaries and bonuses, private jets, lavish parties and such. Can you guess who bears the brunt of their exercise of these privileges?

At this time, several companies are attempting to increase premiums in a range from 22% to 59%. This while they are reducing the actual total amount they are paying out for your health care. Last year our health costs amounted to 17.3% of our entire economy. My untutored guess is that the above-cited increases might make the economic burden even greater. You get another guess as to who will get screwed.

Takeover? No. This is an attempt to provide almost everyone with health care and save our economy. As a nation, we cannot afford to rank 37^th in the world in health care. Nor can we afford an ever greater percentage of our total resources being designated as profits for the industry that has put at such a lowly ranking.

We shouldn’t forget the millions they spend on bribes. Is it possible this is a consideration when these “public servants” refuse to permit democracy to exist in the chambers of the Senate?

This talk of reconciliation may actually result in a vote. Even more important than the outcome of that vote is the fact that it will provide us undeniable evidence of who hates democracy and has no concern for their constituents. Every one of those opposing reconciliation needs to be thrown out of office. If your Senator opposes it, you have an obligation to yourself, your family, your country and the Constitution to oppose them. Yes, it is that simple.

My apologies for the preachy tone but it comes from frustration with our elected officials.

Now for the free offer. As mentioned earlier, my last post was on a health issue. It was one that is mired in misinformation. My book, Why Are You Mad?, is on the subject of mental illness. While this subject is not of interest to everyone, it does contain some nutrition information that is of universal concern. It speaks to another area drowning in misinformation: fats, saturated, polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, the whole panoply.

So, to anyone interested, I am offering a free copy of my book. Just send me an email and I will attach a copy of the book to the return. It will be in the form of a PDF file. If anyone prefers an actual dead tree version, I will send you one for $10 – $8 off of the retail price.

Why am I doing this? I did not spend 14 years of research and almost 3 years writing it because I wanted it to make money. I wrote it to provide as many as possible with an understanding of the subject. For those not interested in the overall subject, I feel that the dietary information is likewise of importance, but to everyone.

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Today, speaking of the bonuses, Obama says, “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”

Not that long ago he was calling those bonuses obscene and shameful.

Which is it?

Larry Summers was in full support of anything that the Wall Street casinos wanted. Tuesday he was calling it the “bloated financial system” as he claimed to support Obama’s plan to develop strict regulatory controls.

Which is it?

Larry may have decided it was momentarily more politic to go along after Obama seemed to finally put Volcker in the driver’s seat. It is difficult to credit this apparent 180 from a career dedicated to the complete absence of regulation. It is also difficult to credit Volcker’s advancement absent the firing of Summers and Geithner.

So, Larry’s zig, or zag, is easily understandable. What about Obama’s?

I am beginning to try to apply a combination of psychological and political approaches to the President’s multifarious positions. His oft-stated desire for political comity, i.e., bipartisanship, seems to be more deep-seated than a mere political position.

His approach, however, seems to be to stake out a position on what people usually, superficially refer to as the left, then follow that with a position, equally superficially, referred to a being of the right. Is he hoping that people will average them out? Is he hoping he is defining the range of positions? Neither seems realistic.

Leaders lead. Leaders do that by issuing clear-cut marching orders. Confusion is destructive of effective leadership. The general public needs a slogan. It needs something that fits on a bumper sticker. Complexity lends itself to easy attacks.

We have a perfect example before us. Medicare-For-All is simple, easy to understand. Two thousand pages of intentionally obscure prose meant to hide an even greater ripoff by the health industry has confused the public. Complexity simply offers more targets. It is more difficult, if not impossible, to defend.

Beyond simplicity, the public needs drama. It needs spectacle. Look at what is most successful at the movie theater: car chases, explosions, computer graphics, 3-D. Avatar garnered a “Best Movie” nomination. It did so without accruing a single nomination for any of what are considered to be essential elements of a best movie. Where are its nominations for writing, acting, directing, etc?

Ostentatiously firing Larry, Tiny Tim, Rahm Emanuel and a few others would catch the public’s attention. It would indicate to them an as yet unseen degree of firmness. It would engrave a line in stone, rather than drawing a line in disappearing ink.

Giving Congressional Democrats their marching orders instead of hinting that he might be willing to go with reconciliation or recess appointments, if forced into it, would be dramatic. It would be seen as leadership. People will only follow a leader if they think he is leading. Other politicians and media mavens may find the nuances of congressional maneuvering fascinating. John Q. Citizen does not.

Professors of Constitutional Law can get by without being famous for their leadership skills. Those skills are not requirements for the backbenchers in Congress. They are necessary to command the potential of the bully pulpit. When times are tough, the people become desperate for leadership. That desperation in troubled times explains why the Germans accepted Adolph Schickelgruber. If good men don’t provide the needed leadership, the people will turn to almost anyone claiming to provide it. Have you heard of the Teabaggers?

Leaders also need an enemy. The Republicans are benefiting from the fact that they have identified an enemy. Why are they questioning Obama’s birth certificate? Why are they constantly calling him by the names of past enemies? They are giving their dupes an enemy. Obama needs to give his followers an enemy. He needs to quit trying to bring to the table one or two of those mythical, reasonable Republicans. Declare them the enemy. That should be easy, as they have already self-identified themselves so.

They accuse him of being soft on terror. He could, with greater accuracy, call them soft on the Constitution.

Exhibit a backbone. Give us a bumper sticker. Identify the enemy. Rid himself of the dead weights. Issue a call to arms. He would be pleasantly surprised how much more productive his administration can be.

Let me say that, as a former politician and someone degreed in political science, the above represents what I know to be the reality, the Realpolitik. I wish it were different. I wish the public was politically sophisticated enough to understand the complexities of the issues. I wish they were able to sit back, unemotionally, and evaluate the statements and actions of politicians of all stripes. The problem is that we live in the real world. We rarely get our druthers.

I want our country to succeed. I therefore want Obama to succeed. His presence in the Oval Office has been grounds for hope, hope for change. But, however needful we are of hope, it does not guarantee change. The change has to begin with him. He must change before he can lead the country to the change it needs. Oration is a great tool of leadership but few complex projects require only one tool.

By the way, Obama should have learned enough by now not to throw around the term free market without understanding its meaning. Perhaps, if he replaced his economic team of ideologues, he could find someone to provide the real definition.

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Despite what some may think, I was not around for the Dred Scott decision. That aside, I had comforted myself that the Supremes could not make a worse ruling than the one that gave us Bush the lesser.

I was wrong, horribly so.

We are now the only developed country in the world that allows corporations to legally spend unlimited amounts to control the government. Aren’t we special?

Stay with me a couple of minutes. You will see how stupid and/or corrupt at least five of the Justices really are.

How did we get here and what needs to be done? It is simple but the ramifications cannot be overstated.

First we are dealing with a bunch of hypocrites. The radicals of the Court loudly proclaim that they believe in following the intent of the Founding Fathers. They also maintain that the courts should not legislate, nor usurp the legislative role. Yeah, sure.

No Supreme Court has come close to the activism of the present Court. They have overturned more legislation, by far, than any Court of which I am aware. That tendency alone was sufficient to make all predictions on the latest travesty easy. Commentators from the entire spectrum got it right. This ruling was no surprise.

How about their claimed devotion to what they term ‘strict construction?’ That is also a gross mischaracterization. What was the Founding Fathers’ opinion of corporations? It may not be common knowledge but is far from a secret to any scholar or amateur enthusiast of our founders.

With the exception of Alexander Hamilton, all of the founders hated and/or mistrusted and/or feared corporations and the threat they represented to the nation to which they had given birth. This at a time when corporations were relatively rare and weak compared to the present. Back then one must prove a societal need, a benefit to the public, in order to obtain a charter.

Corporations are not mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The last time I checked, the wording was still “We the people . . .” Corporations had only the latitude to function as was delineated in its charter. Where did this idiotic concept of corporations having a legal personality originate? Not from the Supreme Court. It came from an essentially parenthetical couple of sentences by one Justice.

The year was 1886. The case was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The doctrine of corporate personhood was included by Justice Morrison Remick Waite before the beginning of arguments. He stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”

So, two sentences by a single, junior Justice changed the Constitution, laws and the dictionary definition without argument, without discussion, without any attempt at rationality. It subsequently became the very foundation of corporate law.

Let’s look at this. It doesn’t require looking too deeply. It doesn’t require a degree in Constitutional Law. It does require more intelligence than five of the present Justices. It requires common sense. It requires an absence of devotion to the plutocracy, a jettisoning of ridiculous ideologies. Here we go.

Everyone acknowledges that a corporation is property. It, and/or its shares, not only can be owned, by its very nature it must be owned. If it is a person, it enjoys the constitutional prohibition of slavery. You are not permitted, under any circumstances to hold a person as property. Ask your wife.

A corporation speaks with one voice. Although the textbooks tell you that the shareholders control it, or that the directors control it on behalf of the shareholders, the reality is that management rules. Management’s priorities are rarely the same as the stockholders. Stockholders also are further removed from participation by mutual funds, hedge funds and similar devices. Does anyone believe that corporate lobbying efforts are always (sometimes) consonant with the interests or opinions of shareholders?

While many other legal and logical arguments reach the same, or supportive, conclusions, no serious arguments have been proposed that contradict those arguments. We have no need to pursue any further the irrationality of claims for corporate personhood. Let’s proceed to the ramifications.

The last presidential campaign was easily the most expensive in history. The estimates I saw last year were well over $1 billion but less than two. I haven’t seen your checkbook but to me that is significant change. Actually, I consider that amount obscene. It distorts and corrupts. There is no upside for anyone who values their right to vote.

Now let’s look at real money. The major Wall Street casinos have announced record, or near record, profits. These profits are after record amounts being set aside for bonuses. Have you paid attention? These bonuses total about $150 billion.

If Wall Street decided to redirect only half of that amount to campaign finance, we would never have to watch another non-political commercial in an election year (every other year) again. Although that might seem initially to be an attractive side-benefit, all you have to remember is how quickly campaign advertising begins to pall.

While we know better, politicians owned by special interests insist that they are not swayed by lobbyists’ bribes. Given the amounts now available to them, they likely will not even bother to address such questions. The $150 billion cited above represents only that available from the major institutional players of one corrupt industry. Factor in the insurance industry, PhRMA, agribusiness, energy and a host of others wanting laws that benefit them, to our detriment.

There would not even have been the sham of the healthcare debate with its foreordained outcome. The drug pushers could sell morphine as a toothing medication for infants again, as Bayer did before it became famous for its aspirin. The Department of Agriculture could eliminate all of those pesky areas and become a foundation to channel taxpayers dollars directly to ConAgra, ADM, et al. Exxon and its peers would not have to waste another nickel cleaning up after themselves. There no longer would be a need to debate global warming, or spending any funds on research. Government could really be streamlined.

How much have you ever donated to a political campaign? Look on the bright side. Now there is no need to.

I believe that there has never been a law or ruling which so drastically changes and damages our system.

Many people get upset about the power of the government. Permit me to reminisce. Back in the late 1960s or early 1970s there was a little flap at Delta Air Lines, where I was working. You need to understand that at that time aircraft mechanics were treated like royalty. They were the princes of the industry and highly prized by the airlines.

One of these princes let his sideburns grow to the level of the bottom of his ears. No, they were not mutton-chop sideburns. Though wild hairstyles could be seen everywhere across the country, his could not be considered wild by any definition. He was fired.

Except when I was in military service, I would never expect the government to be so intrusive, so controlling of the minutiae of people’s lives. Corporations are not bound to respect any of your rights, beyond the prohibition of discrimination. The government is constrained by the Constitution. With the Founding Fathers, I have always feared corporations far more than I feared the government – until now.

All is not lost. The Court struck down campaign finance laws, not corporate laws or regulations. The Congress unquestionably has the authority to control corporate behavior through changes in corporate law. It could be done by regulation. You and I are, as people, are not controlled by laws in this area so it cannot be claimed that corporations are being discriminated against or denied that to which people are entitled.

I would ask that you notify me the next time you see a bunch of corporations exercising their right of freedom of assembly or, perhaps, their freedom of religion. I would love to attend a baptismal ceremony for one of these ‘guys.’

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