Have you ever acknowledged that there was something you didn’t know? Fortunately, it’s a problem I need seldom confront.

I have a pet peeve. I constantly see politicians and others pontificate on issues as though they actually know what they are talking about.

Given the certitude with which they deliver their dicta, one would think they are the ultimate gurus. They need to be laughed off the stage. Absent that, they need to be asked questions.

One might think I would be pleased with the local political situation. After all, Bart Gordon, the leader of the Blue Dogs, decided not to run for reelection. Oh, how I wish I could take credit for his decision.

The result of his departure is somewhat of a wash.

Diane Black, our local state senator is the odds-on favorite to take the empty seat. Our district is apparently not blessed with intelligent people willing to run for public office. More’s the pity.

There may be more but I have only seen two of her campaign ads for the general election. Let me describe them.

In the first she appears with one of her grandchildren; I would guess a girl of, perhaps, 5 years of age. Using her grandchild in pursuit of her political ambitions, she speaks of how terrible it is that the child owes a debt of x number of dollars. Parenthetically, while several politicians are using this ploy, it seems each has their own figure.

Believe it or not, she is personally going to change that. She will eliminate the debt by giving the richest 2 percent of our population a tax break that will only add a trillion or two to the national debt. Another way she intends to reduce her granddaughter’s burden is by repealing “ObamaCare.” Just ignore, as does she, that healthcare reform is a necessary part of salvaging our budget mess.

Diane’s other ad shows her in what appears to be a hospital setting. She says that, as a nurse, she understands healthcare.

I worked for Delta Air Lines for several years. I worked on the ticket counter in Atlanta. I audited the caterer and planned the meals for the 258 daily flights out of Atlanta. I ended my years there a an assembler language programmer on the IBM 360 mainframe computers. Although I have a pilot’s license with instrument and multi-engine ratings that I haven’t used for over 30 years, I never came close to qualifying on a 747. Whatever familiarity I may have had with the airline industry would not likely induce you to board a jumbo jet with me at the controls. At least I hope not.

Am I in any way an expert on the airline industry, even were my experience current? No. I may have some insight into a couple of limited aspects but certainly not enough for someone to allow me to completely restructure the system. Hello, Diane. Calling Nurse Diane.

Her expertise with regards to the deficit, the economy, the healthcare system and any number of other issues is on a par with Christine O’Donnell’s  mastery of Constitutional Law.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know some of the questions these wannabes need to be asked. You can always refresh your memory. At a minimum, simply challenge them. Ask them what background, education or experience they have in the subject. Don’t forget, being a nurse is not competency to redesign the system.

Ask them for specifics. Here you need to be careful. Read their web site first. Most of them will have canned answers, talking points. Hold their feet to the fire. Make “uh” the most frequent word coming out of their mouth.

Catch them on contradictions. The big corporate money is fighting “the government takeover of health care.” At the same time, the same big corporate donors are funding attacks claiming the candidates they don’t like are jeopardizing Medicare. It is amazing how easy it is to make these bozos look ridiculous.

If a candidate in your area promises to repeal the healthcare reform as Diane does, ask them to provide the names of the House members and Senators who will make up the 2/3rds of each house needed to override Obama’s veto.

Go to one of the many meet the candidate town meetings and ask a question. Ask it with sincerity; not as a smart alec. Ask it as though you really want an answer. It will throw them off message. Plant a seed of doubt.

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There was some interest in the recent volcanic activity in Iceland. Don’t worry. I have no intention of showing off my ability to type its name just to twist your tongue.

My own interest was also sparked. I used to work for Delta Air Lines, back in the dark ages before deregulation. It was constantly emphasized that safety was paramount. Delta’s only fatality after five decades was a skeleton flight crew on a training flight.

Since deregulation, the industry has shown a willingness to juggle their priorities.

Let me give you a good piece of financial advice. Never buy airline stock. Over its entire history, the industry has lost money. The government helped get it off the ground in the 1920s with air mail contracts.

I’m uncertain of the present economics but when I was there the carrying of mail was still a way of subsidizing the airlines. Delta’s biggest profit ever was on the sale of stock it received from Priceline for its participation in their discount ticket program.

In most businesses, salaries and wages are the biggest cost. Even in the 1960s and 1970s fuel was the largest expense. It is difficult to see how they could have accommodated the rise of fuel prices.

In 1966 Delta had a dedicated pipeline from Louisiana to the far side of the Atlanta airport. It carried only jet fuel, only for Delta, only in Atlanta. We were told that, otherwise, it would require trains delivering 100 tanker cars a day. Fuel represented half of their budget before the oil embargo.

Given the economic pressures, I can appreciate the search for budget items that can be cut. I do not, however, appreciate those that effect safety.

Safety was important to me as a pilot. No, I was not a pilot for Delta. I held a commercial ticket with instrument and multi-engine ratings but did not fly commercially. I wanted to but with jets taking over and jet time being so expensive, almost all hiring was of those pilots returning from Vietnam.

After all air space was closed following 9-11, the government gave the airlines some money to help them avoid bankruptcy. The industry is necessary but it benefits businesses and the wealthy far more than Joe Average. The government pays for the weather reports, air traffic control, security and subsidizes airport construction, among other things. Businesses and the wealthy have never paid their fair share.

As I said, the industry is necessary and there are some collateral benefits to the general population. But the volcano in Iceland further highlighted the inherent problems.

The airlines are claiming they should be reimbursed for lost revenue. I think it can be successfully argued that 9-11 was an attack on the nation and the airlines were kept from flying for national security reasons.

Volcanic ash can represent a safety problem. The airlines claim it did not represent a significant problem. They wanted to make money.

Volcanic ash is not like sand. It is more like powder; a powder that can quickly turn into the consistency of a thick gravy or a thin peanut butter. It isn’t recommended for precision-machined parts moving at high speeds.

One crash would have brought down widespread wrath upon the governments, more so than on the airlines.

Volcanic ash is far more common than terrorist attacks. A volcano spews forth somewhere on an average frequency greater than weekly. Volcanoes are things that should be factored into the price of a ticket, as are maintenance, weather delays and other disruptions.

If the taxpayers in all of the affected countries make the airlines whole, where does it stop? There are pleas from the car rental agencies, hotels, etc. Even the flower growers of Morocco want to be reimbursed by the European governments.

What about the passengers? Their plans were disrupted. Their trips cost them more than planned. They may have missed work or school or weddings or funerals. Various industries demand recompense for their sector. Some politicians have proposed compensating multiple business sectors but I heard none proposing dipping into the government kitty on behalf of the passengers.

The mentality of putting corporate interests above that of human beings is deeply ingrained everywhere you turn. If you look you will see it and wonder just how valued you are.

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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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