It is now okay to own up to your obsession with Betty Crocker or Ronald McDonald. As a kid I found myself attracted to the Morton’s Salt young lady. A handful of salted peanuts can bring up memories of days gone by.

Carrying a torch for Sara Lee or Big Boy was never really akin to bestiality but now you are equals. I would caution, however, that some of these attractive ladies are considerably older than they appear. Even Little Debbie is 55 years old.

Though parts of the Deep South held on to their anti-miscegenation laws until the very last gasp, they were not to be found bringing up the rear in jumping into bed with big business.

I need to leave this aspect of the situation. My wife says I am already taken. Besides, in seeing a historical romance novel, I am reminded that, at my advanced age, all romance is historical.

The ruling by the Supremes makes no sense on any level nor from any perspective. I would highly recommend reading, or re-reading, the article I wrote at the time of the Citizens United ruling. Otherwise, I will have to reprint it here. The title of the article was Supreme Stupidity.

One can show how ridiculous the decision is by poking fun of corporations enjoying rights that only make sense for humans or humans trying to enjoying the special privileges and advantages only permitted to corporations. How would you like to be a corporation?

My apologies for bringing up a sore subject but it hasn’t been too long since you sent in your gift to the IRS. It helped to be able to deduct that mortgage interest, didn’t it? Did you deduct all that you spent for the principal? On food and drink? On travel? On vacation? On all of your wife’s clothes? On her trips to the beauty shop? On her lipstick and perfume? You didn’t?

Why would you not deduct everything you spent? Your fellow corporations do. Food and drink are your personal energy sources. Oh, don’t forget to deduct the toilet paper. Corporations are only supposed to pay taxes on their profits – whatever remains after all of their spending. Then they call in the experts to take advantage of the subsidies and other giveaways their lobbyists bought for them.

How much profit did you make last year? How much did you have left over for savings?

Investors in corporate human beings have the protection of limited liability. If someone slips on your sidewalk and incurs an injury costing a few million dollars, your $48,000 average income might not be enough to cover it. But, the court can hold you fully liable. That’s when you need to tell the judge that you are a corporation.

Did you commit a crime? Richard Nixon wanted to know. J. Edgar Hoover wanted to know. Did you think? Tailgunner Joe McCarthy wanted to know. They wanted to get you out of their way. They threw a few in jail. But, those human corporations never came to share a cell. There are no banks in prison for illegally taking your home. There are no health insurance corporations serving time for ripping off the government (you) of billions of dollars. There are no drug companies on death row for lying about the safety of their medications, even when the number of victims is a large multiple of those lost in the Twin Towers.

Our church had nearly 12,800 in attendance to commemorate Easter. Not a single corporation showed up to exercise their rights of freedom of religion. Why don’t they exercise their right?

Corporations fail to exercise their right to trial by jury frequently enough for my taste. I’m referring to the 6^th Amendment right in criminal trials, not the 7^th Amendment right in civil trials. I’d be willing to make a career of serving on juries for the opportunity to play a role in holding my fellow corporations people to account.

The previous paragraph begs the question of how corporations are themselves able to avoid serving on juries.

A question comes to mind. Given, a corporation can own a firearm. How does it bear that instrument? But the real question is, in those states and localities requiring the bearer attend safety classes and/or exhibit a degree of proficiency on the firing range, has their right been abridged by such a requirement?

If a corporation has the right to unlimited free speech, in order to effect the voting, how is it possible to deny them the right to vote? If having more money provides them more free speech, does having more money also translate into having more votes? If not, how is that justifiable in light of the expanded rights regarding speech?

If money is speech, is an impecunious mute denied his right? In a land proud of its political equality, why is political speech powered by a factor that is based on an inequality that we glory in? Would equating money with speech not require everyone to have the same amount of money to ensure equality? Is this just a countervailing stratagem to compensate for the loss of privileges that ensued when ‘one man – one vote’ was enforced?

If logic, common sense and comedy can be stretched to give constitutional rights to corporations, there is no possible legal rationale sufficient to keep the franchise from further extension. I am inclined to think that animate beings would be next. Bunny rabbits do present the possibility of overly diluting the prerogatives of people and human beings unless we can legally restrain their proclivities for procreation. I’m uncertain as to how to handle a case such as Harvey’s.

As corporations are inanimate, my earlier supposition that animate entities would likely be next in line could very well be mistaken. Would it be fair to give man-made, or corporation-produced, objects preference over natural ones? It might be presumptuous to favor items made by humans over those created by God nature.

Perhaps I should have read the Supreme’s decision. Surely they covered all of my questions and concerns therein. After all, they are all educated, reasonable, rational, disinterested diviners of the inner thoughts of the Founding Fathers.

Since those First Daddies readily made known their fear and hatred of corporations, they must have changed changed their minds once they got to heaven. I wish I was also blessed to be privy to the thoughts of those heavenly beings. Absent that, we should count ourselves blessed that the Almighty’s hand ensures the Court is always populated with that ability.

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There are a few truisms in politics. It is obvious that the Democrats have yet to learn them. It appears necessary to take them back for a review of PoliSci 101.

Any nationwide election is multifaceted. This one was especially so. That means both the mistakes and correctives are many. I can cover them all but most of you have lives. So, I’ll touch on just the most glaring problems and their remedies.

Okay, class. There is no need to take notes. You must, however, pay attention. Truancy is its own punishment.

Friends and Enemies

Friends and enemies. There is a difference.

You dance with the one what brought you, not bought you. In 2008 Obama energized some existing constituencies. He also developed others. He had enthusiastic support from progressives, from unions, from youth, from women, from Blacks, from Latinos, from those who realized what the plutocrats and corporations had done to them and to their country.

He has spent that enthusiasm. Many of those in the groups still support him but many have put themselves at some distance. Hope and Change have been supplanted by Disappointment and Frustration.

They didn’t just decide one day to change their attitudes. It was brought about by the policies, positions and prostration of the administration. The White House and congressional delegations need to acknowledge their culpability and accept the blame. If they refuse to do so, they will lose on every point.

Not a single Republican in Congress voted for Obama. Not a single one will cooperate on the issues important to his constituency. The people that put him in office are important. Bipartisanship would be nice, but it is not the Holy Grail. It would make his job easier but its absence should not seen as his failure. Blind devotion to it will ensure his failure.

There was also the matter of trying to placate the Blue Dogs. The role they played in weakening the President was critical. They are a bunch of ideologues who actually think they understand economics and even other topics.

They love being called moderate, as though that was honorable. It may be when the center is the center but not when the entire political spectrum in this country rests on the right. It just means they are not as extreme right as some others.

The Blue Dogs paid a price. Even their constituencies didn’t see them as a recognizable political animal. They were seen as being as confused as their message. They were Republicans wearing a Democratic name tag. Of the 54 Blue Dogs, 31 are now gone and 3 others are in races too close to call. Good riddance.

Leadership

Leaders don’t always lead in the right direction. Leaders aren’t always nice. The most recent Bush was a leader. He saw himself as a leader. He told us he was a leader, or decider, or whatever. He acted as a leader.

The people accepted his claim of being a leader. Many who disagreed with him on almost every point willingly accepted his leadership.

People really, really want leadership. Admittedly, they were tired of LBJ’s and Nixon’s brands and thought they didn’t want a leader. So, both parties offered them non-leaders. The people quickly realized that they really wanted a leader. How conscious they were of what they wanted may be debated but those wants were there.

A conductor doesn’t just stand on the podium and see what happens. A conductor doesn’t expect a member of the stagehands union to thrill the audience with a virtuoso performance. He knows who to expect to contribute. He expects a concerted effort from them. He leads them.

Part of leadership is a clear objective, a clear direction, a clear message. All of that gets muddled in the attempt to bring the opposition on board. The opposition gets a free trump card by simply refusing to play. They don’t need a policy. They don’t need answers. They don’t need solutions. They just need to be seen as standing firm. Why? Because, while different leaders may follow different policies, firmness is a constant of leadership.

But, you say, we need to position ourselves and govern from the middle. Wrong. That is not the middle. It is the muddle. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln should have been advised to move to the middle. The middle is treacherous. One must be on guard on both sides. Being to the right or to the left leaves only the other side to be guarded.

Who won this election? The Republicans didn’t win by moving to the middle. They won despite making a hard right. Again, they won by displaying one aspect of leadership: standing firm. One was enough. It was one more than the Democrats evinced.

Is governing from either the right or the left the correct way? Not necessarily but it is a lot easier. And, the people will prefer it and reward it. That easier factor is particularly important when one is not very accomplished at leading. The only two accomplished leaders we have had during my lifetime were FDR and Eisenhower. Leaders are rare.

Someone will blurt out that St. Ronny was a real leader. Sorry. The Lipper was an actor. He wasn’t even very good as an actor, except he had that leader role down cold. Real leadership does require a bit of actual leading.

Talk to Them

With all of the money spent on campaign ads, it may be difficult to think that either side failed at effective communications.

It isn’t a matter of volume or money. It’s a matter of clarity. It’s a matter of selling what you have to offer or what you have done, not what your opponent says you are selling and doing. The opposition has been quite good at defining the Democrats and their products for them.

What did the voters buy? It certainly wasn’t what they thought they were buying.

The voter was concerned about the budget. They voted for politicians vowing to add a minimum of $3.5 trillion to the debt. They wanted jobs. They voted for people who stood against removing the tax incentive for moving jobs overseas.

They want to blame someone for America not being number one but voted for reduced spending on education, policemen, firemen, unemployment compensation, research on renewable energy, building a high-speed rail system, repairing roads and airports, cleaning the air you breathe and the water you drink.

They voted for politicians who want to eliminate consumer protections on credit cards, foreclosures, manipulation of the stock market and anything else the parasites want. Many voters blamed the Democrats for Bush’s and Paulson’s bailout.

They voted for people who want to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, put healthcare out of reach for 40 million people, allow insurance companies to refuse to cover people for a preexisting condition (btw, being a battered wife is having a preexisting condition) while placing no limit on price increases (remember those 56% increases attempted in California).

Somewhere the Democrats failed to get their message out. Other than the debt mostly caused by them and tax cuts, the Republicans had no message of their own. They wrote the Democrats’ message and fed the anger and fear. The Democrats deserved to lose but the people will pay a heavier price.

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Is it a miracle or just a coincidence? In my last article I made mention of David Stockman. The very next day he shows up with an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times.

For any of you who either were not old enough or not interested enough to pay attention at the time, David was Reagan’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget. More than that, he was that administration’s economics guru.

For those of you with little faith in my mastery of the joke known as economics, here comes a Republican trying to catch up. Not just any Republican, mind you. This is Ronny’s own personal point man; the Superman of Supply-Side; the Titan of Trickle-Down.

Below I have provided his opinion piece in its entirety. He has come a long way but has yet to complete his journey to reality. Therefore, I have interspersed a few of my own observations for your elucidation.

July 31, 2010
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse

By DAVID STOCKMAN
How my Republican Party destroyed the American economy.

If there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

Today’s, older but wiser, David fails to point out that the increase is the result of Bush’s tactics, represents the same rate as under Clinton and is lower than the Reagan and Bush I rates.

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

He blames it on Republican policymakers “for decades now.” Presumably, that includes his tenure of 1981-1985. He played a key role in developing and promoting the myths he now decries. As for his use of the word Keynesianism, we must give him some latitude, as, for much of his career it has been one of a conservative’s favorite profanities. That has apparently kept him from understanding just what Keynes meant. To oversimplify, old John Maynard meant that when the economy was in need of help that it was acceptable to incur debt for purposes of stimulus. He did not expect Reagan, Stockman and the entire Republican hierarchy to use debt to buy votes, even during the economic ups.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.

The first of these started when the Nixon administration defaulted on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world. Now, since we have lived beyond our means as a nation for nearly 40 years, our cumulative current-account deficit — the combined shortfall on our trade in goods, services and income — has reached nearly $8 trillion. That’s borrowed prosperity on an epic scale.

That period of 40 years of which he speaks puts him in the center of all of this economic misbehavior. As for Nixon’s ad hoc expedient of letting the Dollar float, it was in part a necessary move but, as Stockman implies, left room for considerable shenanigans. As shown by the graphs in my last article, Lie To Me, they filled that room.

It is also an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves. Just let the free market set currency exchange rates, he said, and trade deficits will self-correct.

Oh, Milton, Milton, Milton, that demigod of economics, the one most responsible for foisting the hallucinations of the Chicago School of Economics onto our already overburdened shoulders. They forgot, if they ever knew, just what criteria must be met to have a free market. There was no free market in currency exchanges. The kindest words we could offer is that they were so encumbered by their ideological cocoon, so protected from reality, that they really thought a free market existed.

It may be true that governments, because they intervene in foreign exchange markets, have never completely allowed their currencies to float freely. But that does not absolve Friedman’s $8 trillion error. Once relieved of the discipline of defending a fixed value for their currencies, politicians the world over were free to cheapen their money and disregard their neighbors.

In fact, since chronic current-account deficits result from a nation spending more than it earns, stringent domestic belt-tightening is the only cure. Stockman continues to be so tied to the ideology that he thinks austerity is the answer even when the economy is down. FDR learned that lesson in 1937 when backing off of a Keynesian stimulus put the economy into a recession inside the depression. When the dollar was tied to fixed exchange rates, politicians were willing to administer the needed castor oil, because the alternative was to make up for the trade shortfall by paying out reserves, and this would cause immediate economic pain — from high interest rates, for example. But now there is no discipline, only global monetary chaos as foreign central banks run their own printing presses at ever faster speeds to sop up the tidal wave of dollars coming from the Federal Reserve.

The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.

Remember, the bulk of this debt was incurred during the economic ups. Also, the 3 decades ago puts it at the beginning of his tenure.

In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.

The traditional Republicans wanted matching spending cuts but not the Reagan Republicans. That’s why it was referred to as the Reagan Revolution. Remember who was the economic general during Reagan’s first term. Once again, David is trying to deflect the blame to others. Also, he has to get in a few licks on entitlements, even though he elsewhere speaks of deficits caused by tax cutting. It reminds me of Reagan blaming the Chicago welfare queen who picked up her check in a Cadillac but never really existed. The 80s were vintage years for political fiction.

Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.

I can’t fault him on that paragraph.

Through the 1984 election, the old guard earnestly tried to control the deficit, rolling back about 40 percent of the original Reagan tax cuts. But when, in the following years, the Federal Reserve chairman, Paul Volcker, finally crushed inflation, enabling a solid economic rebound, the new tax-cutters not only claimed victory for their supply-side strategy but hooked Republicans for good on the delusion that the economy will outgrow the deficit if plied with enough tax cuts.

I find it interesting that, although the true believers give credit to Reagan for bringing inflation under control and enabling a solid rebound, the primary insider credits Paul Volcker, you know, the one Geithner and Summers are trying to push out of Obama’s line of sight.

By fiscal year 2009, the tax-cutters had reduced federal revenues to 15 percent of gross domestic product, lower than they had been since the 1940s. Then, after rarely vetoing a budget bill and engaging in two unfinanced foreign military adventures, George W. Bush surrendered on domestic spending cuts, too — signing into law $420 billion in non-defense appropriations, a 65 percent gain from the $260 billion he had inherited eight years earlier. Republicans thus joined the Democrats in a shameless embrace of a free-lunch fiscal policy.

True.

The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008.

But the trillion-dollar conglomerates that inhabit this new financial world are not free enterprises. They are rather wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could never have survived, much less thrived, if their deposits had not been government-guaranteed and if they hadn’t been able to obtain virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.

I get the distinct impression that he shares my concern that this is the area of greatest danger. He fails, however, to note that most of the new “money” being circulated is not printed. It is “created” by banks loaning money they do not actually have. They used to loan 5, then 10, dollars for every dollar they actually had. It is hard to accurately measure but appears now to be north of 50 to one for the biggest players.

The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore. In the past decade, the number of high-value jobs in goods production and in service categories like trade, transportation, information technology and the professions has shrunk by 12 percent, to 68 million from 77 million. The only reason we have not experienced a severe reduction in nonfarm payrolls since 2000 is that there has been a gain in low-paying, often part-time positions in places like bars, hotels and nursing homes.

This is probably the area most resistant to reversal.

It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.

The day of national reckoning has arrived. We will not have a conventional business recovery now, but rather a long hangover of debt liquidation and downsizing — as suggested by last week’s news that the national economy grew at an anemic annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter. Under these circumstances, it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism when the old approach — balanced budgets, sound money and financial discipline — is needed more than ever.

First, I notice he sees the Wall Street institutions as casinos, as I have for so long. His improved vision, vis-a-vis the Reagan Republican economic ideology, despite his failure to admit to his role, should have given him some level of acceptance of Keynes. However, you’ve come a long way baby . . . it’s just that he was so far on the wrong track that he still has a long way to go.

David Stockman, a director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, is working on a book about the financial crisis.

The book is certain to be interesting to economists and psychologists but you will get a better understanding of the subject from this blog, and it’s free. Anyway, if David can move that far in the “right” direction, there continues to be a modicum of hope for our survival.

Please note that the pre-Reagan conservatives are in many regards far closer to my so-called progressive position than to those who today claim to be conservative. Although he tried to shift to Nixon more blame than is probably deserved, when thinking of what conservative means, remember that Nixon hung the portrait of his favorite president in a prominent place in the Oval Office. Who would ever guess that it was Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat.

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It appears the leader is being led.

Obama has kicked out Paul Volcker, the closest thing to a sane voice on his team of economic do-dos.

He is reportedly sending 40,000 more of our young to be wasted in Afghanistan. He long ago abandoned any pretense of leadership or backbone in the farcical pursuit of healthcare reform. And he expects sane people to support his every capitulation to the financial, health and military oligarchs?

Obama needs to look back at Jimmy Carter for a lesson in leadership. No, I don’t mean emulate Carter. I mean Carter presents an object lesson. As Obama might say, “This is a learning moment.”

Carter was trained as an engineer. He had the mindset of an engineer, not a politician. Carter’s approach was to try a method to solve a problem. If it didn’t work, try something else. Do you remember the outcome of his way? He was labeled a “waffler.”

Now, look at Nixon, Reagan and W. Even though they promoted policies that frequently went against the wishes of the country, as expressed in the polls, they got their way. How? Why?

After Nixon the people thought they wanted someone who was not a strong leader. They got Gerald Ford. That next election their choice was between two candidates that were seen as nice guys but not strong leaders. After Carter’s term they gravitated to someone seen as a strong leader.

It’s a matter of follow the leader. We have discovered that, although Obama is accomplished at inspiring a crowd, he has yet to prove he can lead it.

He has given a free hand to the financial cabal led by Goldman Sachs. I think his instincts in this area are at least partially correct. They just are not fully conceived. Whatever, he fails to lead. He relies on those who caused the global meltdown to provide the remedy. It seems obvious to everyone else that they brought us to this point because of the idiotic ideology they have held since birth. Is there reason to believe they have gone through a massive, intense re-education in the past few months?

Obama is sending another 40,000 units of cannon fodder to Afghanistan. Why? Because a “military expert” says we need them to give the most corrupt government on Earth a chance to succeed. Really? How long will that take? 400 years? 700 years? Once again, Obama is not taking the reins. He is following, not leading.

His inability or failure to lead is most obvious in the realm of healthcare reform. First, he learned the wrong lessons from the Clinton fiasco. He learned that the Clintons had put together a plan and presented it to the Congress. So, he tells the Congress to develop a plan. Has anyone ever accused the Congress of leadership? Have they ever been accused of being able to construct a cogent, workable, real-world plan when left to their own resources?

The lesson to be learned was that the people want something understandable to support. That means it must be simple. Two thousand pages rarely suggests simplicity. You lead by raising your fist and saying, “Follow me.” You don’t lead by using both hands to hoist up a 2,000-page joke and saying, “Vote for this, whatever it is.”

What would work? Try HR 676, Medicare-For-All. That is simple. Medicare took less than 11 months to implement. That was starting from scratch. We now have the structure in place. It just needs to be scaled up. Who could possibly support a plan so complex its supporters claim it requires four years to get up and running?

What to do? The progressives in the House and Senate need to actually carry out their threats. They need to vote down the bills now being considered. No pussyfooting. They need to just do it.

What would the results be? Well, Obama and the Democrats would have egg on their face. They would be seen as being incompetent to run the government. The Republicans would gain some seats in both houses in 2010 but Obama would still be President and the Democrats would still have majorities in both houses. True, they would be slimmer majorities but the Republicans got their agendas through with smaller majorities. It’s just that they exhibited a modicum of leadership.

Obama and the Democrats in Congress have already acquired the reputation of being incompetent to run the government, so that would not be all that different.

If the progressives scuttled those bills, Obama would have to reassess his performance. If he took the reins and showed real leadership, the public would respond. He would still have time to recover and win big in 2012. He might even be fortunate enough to turn his administration around by the mid-term elections. That might be too much to expect but it is possible and could at least minimize the loss of seats in that election cycle.

Obama has the choice. He can learn the right lessons and be mentioned in the same sentences as FDR and LBJ, or he can be the next Carter, a nice guy but one who can’t accomplish the turnaround this nation so sorely needs.

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I am going on a little trip. This coming Saturday I will be off on the first leg – to North Carolina. I depart from New York on Sunday.

It has been some time since I last visited Scotland; 1971, in fact. I lucked out and left the States the day after Nixon allowed the Dollar to float. No one had any idea how much it was worth relative to any other currency. It was a time ripe for ripoffs.

I exchanged some pocket money at Kennedy Airport prior to departure – a ripoff. Luckily, the Royal Bank of Scotland had a branch in the airport at Prestwick. It turned out to be about the best rate available anywhere. Later, we learned that the biggest gougers were the American hotels in London.

With both Crawford and Harris being Scottish names, it should be no surprise that my genealogy points in that direction. Other family names include Fraser (from around Loch Ness), McJunkin (Scot-Irish) and Morgan (Welsh, but also Gaelic).

The most success in tracing our genealogy has come with the Frasers. In that part of our family was a U.S. Representative, his father, a Governor and Senator. Further back, Simon Fraser, chief adjutant to William Wallace, he of Braveheart fame was found to be in our family.

I will be visiting Sterling, site of the famous Wallace victory of Sterling Bridge. Braveheart was a wonderful movie but atrocious history. Its Battle of Sterling Bridge was filmed in Ireland, with no bridges anywhere in the vicinity. I will also visit Culloden Battlefield, site of a horrific defeat for the forces of the Jacobite Rising of 1745. It was the last battle fought on British soil.

It is also where we got the phrase ‘beyond the pale.’ Pale means white or light-colored. It came to be used as referring to a paling fence. Then such a fence became a pale, meaning a safe enclosed area. Being ‘beyond the pale’ was to be in a bad situation. There was a pale at Culloden.

Our Harris family is a sept, or sub-clan, under the Clan McLeod. There is an Isle of Harris. You may have heard of Harris Tweed, sometimes called iron cloth. The name is protected by the British Crown.

The lead picture is of the rear of the Castle Dunvegan, home of the head of the clan. It has been the home of that family for over 800 years. That makes it the residence continuously occupied for the longest period of any in the world. Immediately above is a picture of its entrance.

While the interiors for the recent movie, Maid of Honor, were filmed at Dunvegan, the exteriors were of a nearby castle, Eilean Donan. It is the most photographed castle in Scotland.

Much of the staff of the Castle Dunvegan was used as extras in the movie.

I will be taking a netbook, a laptop, a video camera and a still camera. If I have a few down moments, I may try to post a few pictures and a minimal travelogue. Don’t count on it though. I hope to spend my time enjoying what likely will be my last visit there.

My hope is that it won’t be the last. While there I will be contacting literary agents and booking agents. It would be great if I am able to put together a book tour. That might pay for a return and a 2-3 month tour of Europe. Wouldn’t that be nice?

My wife refuses to fly. But, she says, she is concerned that I might enjoy myself so much that I would decide to remain over there. No, it wouldn’t be for the universal healthcare. After all, I am on Medicare.

More likely it would be due to the beauty of the country, the sense of history, and the chance to get away from the birthers, the deathers and the teabaggers.

Don’t begin celebrating prematurely. I’ll be back.

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Do you REALLY want a democracy? The healthcare reform farce we see in Congress is proof positive that we do not actually enjoy a democracy in the United States.

Who is to blame? You and me. Who can bring back democracy? Only you and me. How, you ask. Well, that’s what I’m here for. I have the answer. While I have the answer, that doesn’t mean that I can do it alone. I need your help.

I recall a BC comic strip from during the 1968 presidential campaign. One of the characters was Peter. He had a stone couch and gave psychiatric advice. One of the other characters came to him complaining of a recurring dream. He dreamt he was in the voting booth and that there was only one name on the ballot. Peter asked what was the name. The response was Humphrey-Nixon-Wallace.

There actually was no choice. Corporations donated to all three campaigns. Things have changed. They have worsened.

Kent Conrad is the most prominent Democratic Senator opposing the public option. Yes, I know about Max Baucus. He says he is for it (he isn’t) but will not support it because it can’t pass. Anyway, back to Conrad.

The North Dakota Democratic Party held a convention. They voted, without dissent, to include the single-payer system as their healthcare reform policy. They sent a letter to Conrad, the state’s other Senator and to their lone Representative. That letter stated their policy and added that, if single-payer was not to be, their fallback position was for a public option.

Senator Conrad has received $2,362,436 in bribes from the insurance companies, health industry and lobbyists. I’m guessing that he didn’t share any of that with his state’s Democratic Party. A poll in his state shows an overwhelming support for the public option. Still, he is recalcitrant. Who does he represent? The people of North Dakota are missing that little thing called democracy. Remember the immortal words of Deep Throat, “Follow the money.”

Conrad was in politics before but he came to the Senate in 1987. He promised he would not run for re-election if the budget deficit was not reduced. It wasn’t. He ignored that promise. By the way, his present position is Chair of the Senate Budget Committee. He is in his 23^rd year in the Senate. That is the problem.

He needs all of those bribes to pay for his re-election campaigns. No re-election campaign, no need for campaign funds. Without those bribes, he could vote the way his constituents want – for single-payer. Wow. Just think about that for a moment.

Term limits would solve the problem. But, what are the chances of them voting themselves out of office? Nil. That leaves it up to us, the voters, and those who are eligible but don’t vote.

That should be easy. While the approval rating of Congress is 9%, 95% of them get re-elected. We, you and I, are to blame. We are stupid, gullible, lazy, don’t care enough or some combination of those virtues. They won’t do it, so we must.

The corporations have a Congress. We don’t. So, the answer is obvious. Don’t re-elect incumbents.

While the overall approval rating for Congress is 9%, the majority has a higher opinion of the member from their own bailiwick. Or, maybe we are just more forgiving. That may explain why a Congressman can consistently vote against his constituents’ interests or even get caught lying, stealing or making trips to The Argentine and still maintain the support of many, possibly most, of the voters in his district.

About a third of Congressmen run unopposed. Incumbency, and the money that comes with it, keeps a lot of good people from running. We could have a peoples’ congress. And, it wouldn’t cost us a dime. All we have to do is vote against all incumbents.

Would the very few good ones get ousted? Yes, but I’m willing to bet that there are other good people in their district. Perhaps they, as Sarah Palin, can work more effectively for our benefit outside of the system, without the onerous responsibilities of office.

After one or two election cycles they might feel it to be in their interest to enact some term limits. I would personally prefer an individual limit of ten to twelve years of total public office, i.e., combining the time of holding any combination of offices, with no more than two terms in any one office. Also, no elected or appointed official should receive retirement benefits or any other benefit after leaving office. While in office there should be no benefits not available to average citizens.

Judges are required to recuse themselves if they have any relationship with either party. They implement the laws. However, Congressmen, who make the laws, are permitted to take money from various parties and still vote on those laws. What is good for the courts is good for the legislatures.

Pay for each Congressman should be based on the income of the average family in their district. If they maintain a residence in their own district plus one in the Washington area, they would get the sum of that plus the average income for residents of D.C. Their pay would be tied to how their constituents fare.

Ridding ourselves of career politicians isn’t just something that would be nice. It is absolutely vital to reestablishing this country as a democracy.

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