July 2013 Archives

Dear America,

Once again, the American political discourse devolves to bickering over the national debt ceiling.  The players are the same: John Boehner as Speaker of the House for the Republicans, and in the other corner, President Obama and the Democrats, and the terms are the same too.  Boehner has insisted that an increase in the debt ceiling will have to be paid for with spending cuts while President Obama has vowed not to participate in negotiations on the subject of increasing the debt.  It's all so familiar...and so untoward for a nation that is prideful about its political system.  And in the meantime, there is no movement on the subjects that are on the minds of us Americans: employment, income disparity, corporate profits, a rigged financial system, and in the background specific things like the XL Pipeline.  On Meet the Press, one of the participants, short-term Congressman Harold Ford, made the point that the parties could agree on infra-structure improvements as a means of employment enhancement, but he didn't explain why, which enabled him to lump the pipeline in with new roads and bridges as a point at which there could be a meeting of the minds.  But it doesn't belong there, and the fact that someone would fail to see that does not bode well for compromise, much less progress because what is needed is cogent argument rather than misguided axioms.  While infrastructure improvements do result in job creation--and that is a consensus in which even Republicans cannot help but participate--for the most part, infrastructure improvement is a double boon in that it also enhances our economy for the future.  Better highways and bridges enhance transportation of both people and goods making it easier, faster and cheaper, and without a negative consequence as well.  Better internet infrastructure improves education, communications in general and commerce, again providing something lasting in exchange for the expenditures involved.  But the XL Pipeline does nothing but add profits to the bottom lines of gulf coast petroleum refiners' balance sheets as they export over 100 million gallons of gasoline per day and use the shortage of gasoline in this country to justify increased prices at the pump, yielding only insult to injury for what the pipeline will cost environmentally.  The point is that every kind of remedy for our economic woe requires careful analysis before it is endorsed.  In the case of the pipeline, it makes no sense to risk the pollution caused by an all-too-possible pipeline spill for the prospect of some jobs when there are hundreds of other project types that could yield the same number of new jobs with a potential gain for the nation instead of increased exposure to environmental disaster and nothing to show for it but more bloated corporate fiscs.  

So nothing has changed since 2012 despite the election and the expression by the American people of their dissatisfaction with the performance of congress, the House of Representatives in particular.  Still, the Republicans remain in control of what isn't working, continuing to make the same arguments to justify the dysfunction that they are wreaking on us all, which begs the question, why?  It would seem that the Republican Party cleaves to the notion that the American people don't know what to think and thus, if the party just persists in making an argument that only a minority has bought to date, the balance needed to form a majority, or at least a plurality on election day, will come around.  But the likelihood seems remote in light of the reality that most Americans live with.  For example, a friend of my wife's has worked hard all her life...the Republican ticket to prosperity, but she has also struggled all her life and is now on the verge of a final descent into poverty.  She has worked for others, held more than one job at a time, and has tried to start her own business, now on a second occasion.  But, while the consignment shop she has started for the second time is making money, it isn't enough.  Her significant other has also tried to get out of what amounts to corporate indenture as a route driver for a major soft drink manufacturer by buying a snack food delivery route of his own, but like my wife's friend, he is not making sufficient money to provide for life's necessities...even when combined with that of my wife's friend.  He is on the verge of losing the one thing he has managed to build for himself in his working life...the equity in his house...because he can't pay the mortgage, and the utilities are significantly in arrears as well.  The bottom line, in more ways than one, is that our economic system does not provide an opportunity for everyone who wants one and is willing to work hard.  For some people, there is no way up and out of the bottom cohort of our economy, and they often vote...except in Texas of course.  So how are the Republicans going to parlay this debt ceiling debate, which is nothing more than an abstraction for people struggling to keep body and soul together, into something other than a distraction for the news media and those affluent enough to care.  Frankly, I don't know the answer, but it seems likely to be one of two possibilities.  Either the Republicans are right and this red herring issue will work for them, or they aren't and when the election tallies are made, the joke will be on them and they will be one step further from their goal of political hegemony.

We'll see very soon how this plays out.  The public spectacle of the Republicans threatening to essentially shut down the government unless they get what they want is the equivalent of a spoiled child stamping his foot and demanding the chocolate to which he thinks he is entitled.  To Republican loyalists that's as it should be, but Republican loyalists have been a minority in the American polity for the past decade or so.  Thus, the cocky self-assurance of Republican politicians like John Boehner is less an asset for the party than it is one for the Democrats trying to discredit them.  It seems like foot shooting time again.  Let the target practice begin.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

When we discuss demographics in this country we are usually talking about race, and with good reason.  Our nation's changing racial demographics will, by 2042 it is estimated, result in a country that is no longer a majority white, and no doubt with that change will come a change in national direction.  A non-white majority will cast votes leading to different foreign policy with regard to the non-white, non-Judeo-Christian countries of the world, and even domestically we will see a change as the priorities of the voting majority change.  The electoral value of those of certain economic status--that is, the 2% versus the other 98%--will be altered as will many things that we assume today like language, market strategy, manufacturing priorities and much more.  Race, national origin, sexual preference and many other demographic parameters will gain in importance as money recedes in importance in light of the power of larger numbers of people without it, and politics will respond to those new forces in our national life.  But one demographic change that may soon be of pivotal importance is being effectively ignored today, and the portent with regard to our politics is that the affected group will be ever more dispensable to politicians in the future.  I'm talking about age.

I was watching the news on PBS two nights ago and I just caught the end of an interview with two young people discussing insurance.  Their rather insular point was that young people do not want to carry the old, but rather want insurance that reflects their health alone and thus is appropriately priced.  And the evidence that such attitudinal bents will ultimately prevail is already apparent in our politics.  Paul Ryan, whose budgets have included reduction of Medicare to a voucher system inadequate to fund the health care needs of the elderly as a general rule, went from being the relatively obscure Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee to candidate for vice-president largely as a consequence of his position on Medicare.  And other leading conservatives, like editorialist David Brooks, have repeated their desire to change the national creed from that which has taken into account the needs of Baby-Boomers for the past sixty five years to one that focuses on youth and allocates more common resources--that is tax revenue--toward their needs.  Brooks has more than once made reference to the cost in social terms of the last year of life, and he has advocated sacrificing that year, not just allowing but basically insisting on "death with dignity" rather than paying for life for as long as you can get it.  Of course, that's easy to advocate when it is someone else's life you're talking about or you can afford to pay for that last year yourself, but that is the point when it comes to insurance, whether the topic of discussion is "Obamacare" or Medicare.  In all those discussions by the young and the powerful to which we are privy today, the fact that everyone who is lucky enough will get old and have ever-increasing needs when it comes to healthcare seems to be ignored, but it is a postulate of human existence.  From the perspective of the baby-boomer, and I am one, fewer and fewer people whose opinions dictate national policy care much about us.  We have our first pos-boomer president, and most of The Senate is younger than the baby-boom generation, at least as I define it: people born in the period after World War II but before the year after the end of the Korean conflict, 1956.  As to The House of Representatives, youth is even more prevalent as The House is where most politicians start their careers in national politics while The Senate is where they hope to end up.

To put it bluntly, we seem to be headed for what I might refer to as "ice floe politics."  As time passes, more and more sacrifices in the way of things that cost government money will be called for by the ever-younger electorate regardless of race, religion or creed.  The demographics that matter in politics will shift away from us post-war babies, that is post WWII babies, and ineluctably toward the children of the veterans of other wars: generation X, generation Y, millenials and who knows what next.  And as the shift occurs, the orientation toward the needs of youth will become ever more palpable in our national priorities as more and more of us older people find that our destiny isn't comfortable golden years, but the figurative ice floe for which Eskimos are apocryphally fabled.  We are going out of favor, we old people, and those who will make the decisions as to where and how to spend our national weal will change relentlessly in terms of their age.  They will be younger, and as they do so, they will more and more focus on their contemporaries and become more and more inured to the needs of a population that no longer contributes economically to the wealth of the nation.  But the problem that the elderly represent will never go away, and as surely as we are all born and we ultimately die, the vast majority of Americans will one day be old, and will also be in need in one way or another.  

So as the partisan wars go on in Washington, and as race continues to be an issue that we dance around for the most part, one issue will get larger and larger without anyone caring to notice.  It is part of a trend away from collective compassion and toward solipsism and self-centeredness.  Maybe it is this way with every generation, but I don't remember it that way.  As a child, a young man and later as a not so young man, I never lost sight of the fact that the elderly have to be paid for, and they deserve to be for many reasons.  But perhaps like today's young and powerful, I didn't realize that I would one day be old before that day came.  None-the-less, that fact should inform the philosophy of everyone in my opinion.  One day we will all be old...if we're lucky.  Political fashion should not be allowed to obliterate our awareness of that indisputable fact, or the moral imperatives that go with it.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Ted Cruz and Rand Paul were in Iowa last week.  Cruz was interviewed on ABC's This Week, and he was pressed on the issue of why, but he refused to confirm that he is running for president...already.  He's been in The Senate for seven months, and that's the first elective office he has held since he was on the student council, he says; seems a bit precocious to think you could be president with that kind of political resume as a background, but modesty isn't one of the impediments to delusions of grandeur that Cruz suffers.  He has argued before various appellate courts but once when he argued a case before The U.S. Supreme Court, he lost 9-0.  He says that now, he has a giant painting of himself making that argument hanging in front of him as he sits at his desk in his senate office.  He says that it reminds him of what it's like to lose.  Of course he doesn't take from his Supreme Court experience that maybe his ardor in that case or in any of the dozens of other cases he argued there as Texas Solicitor General that maybe Texas isn't the bastion of mainstream thinking that he would like to believe it to be.  Nor, for that matter, does he see that having a giant painting of yourself arguing before The Supreme Court isn't a credible talisman of modesty and humility, but rather suggests the kind of unabashed egotism that can cloud one's judgment.  But that doesn't concern me.  What does concern me is that starting to run this early, Cruz might get discouraged before the Republican primaries for the 2016 presidential nomination start.  If he realizes that he isn't the voice of anything near the majority of Americans that he thinks he represents ideologically, he won't be the party's nominee, and with him as the nominee, Hillary Clinton is virtually guaranteed to win the election.  Cruz represents a sure thing, and those of us who consider ourselves liberal or progressive should be rooting for him every day.  I may even send him a campaign donation.  And furthermore, since the most logical opposition to the Cruz candidacy is Chris Christie, if Cruz hangs in long enough he will possibly be the reactionary counterweight to Christie's rational conservatism that the Republicans demand on the ticket, and Christie may be the only Republican who can beat Clinton.  With Cruz as an anchor--I mean who would be willing to risk the ascent of Cruz to the presidency given the odds favoring less than a long life for the obese Christie--Clinton's chances of beating Christie improve by at least half.  And then of course there is Rand Paul...the toilet flusher.

Paul became a senator, I suspect, by purveying every wild piece of Tea Party apocrypha that he could find.  The first I heard was his plaint...in open session...about the toilets that didn't flush in his house as he questioned a witness from an executive agency responsible for toilet related regulations.  He complained that well meaning but misguided bureaucrats like the witness promulgated regulations that led to things like his non-flushing toilets, and of course a flood of jokes immediately came to my mind, mostly related to what he was full of.  I did my own research and came across a federal agency report regarding this very issue, including the canards that were flying at the time, and probably still are.  The report debunked the myth with statistics, and since I have had my own experience with the subject, by the way.  Our old style toilet wouldn't flush, so we got one of the new low-flow toilets, with which we have never had a problem.  And Paul wasn't satisfied with castigating the nation's toilet regulators.  He also objects to the fact that you will not be able to buy incandescent light bulbs anymore.  This is a guy who thinks that we should be doing ever more drilling for oil so as to make ourselves energy independent, which is a pipe dream for more than one reason, starting with the fact that our oil companies already export over 100 million gallons of gasoline per day and from 200,000 to 400,000 barrels of crude oil as well, which those same companies then import back from other countries and then charge for exorbitantly.  The excuse is that oil is a global commodity, which means that until there's enough oil produced in every country in the world to meet that country's demand, we will be exporting oil rather than selling it here.  We won't be energy independent until everyone is, and that will never happen.  But at the same time, conservation serves a good purpose for everyone, and that is what the light bulb regulations are about.  There are other kinds of bulbs that consume far less energy, which people like Senator Paul should theoretically endorse in the name of at least approaching energy self-sufficiency in some sense, but as a libertarian Paul doesn't like any government controls apparently...even in a good cause...one that he himself thinks is a good cause.

So the Republican Party looks to be loading its foot-shooting pistol again, and I am more than willing to pass the ammunition.  To all you Republican patriots out there I say, keep up the good work.  We Democratic patriots will take all the help you want to give us.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

On Wednesday, Richard Cordray was confirmed as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by a vote of 66-34.  You may recall that under the Dodd-Frank Act that was the legislative response to the financial crisis of 2008, The Bureau was created to police and regulate the consumer credit industry so as to prevent from occurring in the future some of the abuses that had been uncovered in the aftermath of our economic crash.  Of course, in that the law was intended to fetter business in its tendency to eschew moral imperatives when making decisions as to how to operate, the Republicans in The Senate took every dilatory step they could think of to prevent its effective operation including filibustering the nomination of its first director, and that filibuster has lasted in excess of two years without a response from the Democrats in The Senate.  This week however, Harry Reid--the diffident leader of the majority, Democratic Party in The Senate--threatened to change the rules regarding cloture of debate (in other words the filibuster that no longer requires that senators actually take the floor and speak) if the Republicans didn't allow up or down votes on seven presidential nominees for various positions, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau being one of them.  The Republicans opted for discretion over valor on the issue of what they all precociously call "the nuclear option" and the first vote of note to go forward was the one that led to Cordray being confirmed.  Of course, that is significant in itself as The Bureau is an attempt to prevent abuse of consumers and the provisions of Dodd-Frank that created it are finally going to be implemented.  But I assume that the Republicans, who seem to believe that any regulation of any kind on business should be opposed as a matter of economic policy, feel somewhat thwarted by all this.  So much the better for the rest of us, and I say that for this reason: the mindless cleaving to economic policy that blindly favors facilitation of dubious business practices over fundamental fairness in our society has been "outed" by the vote, and consequently, the myth of the filibuster as an implement of caution and moderation has been debunked.

What I mean by that is that for over two years, at least 41 of the 44 Republicans in The Senate have followed the direction of that party's leadership and voted against cloture of debate on this nomination, thus preventing the full implementation of Dodd-Frank.  But now, at least 10 of the 44 Republicans in The Senate have voted to confirm Cordray and let his agency proceed with its function.  That means that principle was not involved in the filibuster of Cordray's nomination; it was sheer partisanship...politics and nothing else, which in turn tells me that even Republicans don't all believe that all regulation is bad regulation when it comes to business.  Without the hammer of requisite party fealty to threaten them any more, they voted their convictions and the result was good for everyone.  Conversely, the partisan withholding of even the opportunity to vote on this nomination--and for that matter the other six nominations as well--was demonstrated to be a disingenuous political exercise directed at nothing greater than thwarting the opposing party, and the president in particular.  That is what the filibuster represents: the power to obstruct.  It does not represent caution, or prudence, or wisdom or civilized governance.  It is sheer obstructionism for obstructionism's sake, and that isn't prudent, much less wise or civilized.  That isn't the ability of grayer heads to prevail, and it isn't an assurance that the rabble that Alexander Hamilton thought the American people to be when he wrote Federalist Paper number 62 will not gain control.  In that paper, Hamilton touted the concept of The Senate and its longer terms of office as a damper on what he conceived of as a threat to democracy: mob rule, which if you think about it is what universal suffrage really is.  That is the sentiment from which the filibuster was spawned.  The theory is that if the minority can keep the majority from implementing its will, a slower pace of governance will result, and it will of necessity be more prudent and well considered.  But that isn't what the filibuster accomplished in the case of Richard Cordray, is it.  A measure intended to serve all Americans was impeded by use of the filibuster, and it was nakedly partisan.  So much for wisdom and civility.

I have often intoned my resentment and scorn over the use of the filibuster in the supposedly- august Senate, and I have said more than once that the filibuster is nothing but a conceit in which some successful politicians enhance their own influence at the expense of democratic process, which is what The Senate is intended to employ.  It isn't in The Constitution, even though Hamilton might have sought to put it there if he had thought of it.  Don't forget that despite his stature as a founding father today, he was a duelist who injured others and eventually died of it because he was a prideful hothead, so the fact that Hamilton might have wanted something isn't credible evidence that it was a good idea.  The filibuster is nothing but a vanity created by old men--and don't take that as ageism because I'm an old man myself--most of whom have too much money and all of whom have far too much self-esteem.  Even Harry Reid, who launched the threat that led to the Cordray vote...a good thing in my opinion...is opposed to eliminating the filibuster, which is why I think he should be voted out of office along with everyone else who seeks to substitute his will for that of the majority when he's not in it.  The fear that the American people will vote for people aiming to do the untoward is not only legitimate, it is manifest in the 113th congress, but the filibuster is not a tool by which their untoward wishes have been interdicted.  It is the means they have used to keep those wishes alive; at best the filibuster is a double edged sword, and at worst it cuts only the wrong way: against all of us who believe in majority rule.  The Constitution was designed to prevent the tyranny of the majority by guaranteeing various rights and privileges and limiting the power of government.  Beyond that, however, democratic process should prevail because procedural chicanery like the filibuster hasn't accomplished anything...ever.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

For the past two days, the only topic of conversation on our news media has been the Zimmerman verdict.  But I believe that the only significance of the verdict is that it manifests a problem that merits universal and fervent attention, and it isn't bigotry.  It may be that the crime itself was racial in its fundamental nature, but the verdict is not a manifestation of that kind of prejudice.  Zimmerman may be a racist, but we will never know unless a means by which to plumb his mind is created and we can get him to submit to it.  And the possibility that a racist carrying a gun killed Trayvon Martin is disturbing, but the fact is that anyone who has been paying attention for the past three hundred years knows that there is racism in America, and this is far from the first time that it has been deadly.  The problem that the Zimmerman case represents however is much broader than racial prejudice.  The problem is the mentality that makes people like Zimmerman carry guns and the mentality that allows the election of legislators who would pass laws like Florida's "Stand Your Ground" statutes without anything to circumscribe the license they provide.  The common law makes such provisions when it comes to civil liability, but statutory law...at least in Florida...does not, and it should now be plain that it must even though the Zimmerman case was about self-defense and not standing your ground.

There are some basic premises in common law that are sometimes embodied in statutory law but control civil law, that is the law of personal liability, that should guide legislation relating to self-defense, but in Florida they do not seem to.  Specifically, life takes precedence over property in civil law.  You cannot take life to defend property; you can only take it in self-defense.  And cognate with that principle is the principle that you must retreat from a threat of personal harm until further retreat would be to no avail before you kill someone.  That is because until you have done so, lethal force is not necessary.  Retreat is the better option compared to inflicting deadly force on, say, an intruder.  That law has been in the making for a thousand years and that is the area to which the concept of standing your ground should be limited if it is to be enacted anywhere as the inspiration for such laws is generally in the area of home intrusions.  People feel that they have an absolute right to defend themselves in their homes...that retreat to the confines of the four walls of one's abode is all that should be required of him before he acts to defend himself, with lethal force if necessary.  And while I see such a principle as problematic for more than one reason, I can accept the motivation for it as valid.  There are limits to which we should let the decay in our society intrude into our lives.  But what about in the case of a confrontation outside the home.

In cases like that, the common law principle is that when one's assailant retreats, one may not pursue him.  At the point of the other party's retreat or withdrawal from an altercation, one becomes the aggressor if he follows he is therefore liable for injury he inflicts from that point on.  It doesn't make any difference who started the fight or what inspired it; withdrawal by one party makes the other party the assailant if he pursues.  The lack of such a constraint in the statutory code of Florida to counteract what appears to be the open ended license to kill if one perceives himself to be in mortal danger under the statutory stand-your-ground law allows people like George Zimmerman to kill with what turns out to be impunity.  That is the real problem exposed by the Zimmerman verdict: people carrying guns...and inevitably using them...for the wrong reasons.  That is why I'm staying out of Florida and the other several states that allow guns to be carried by would-be cowboys and cops.  Bigots are problem enough, but as long as they aren't armed, they are a non-lethal problem.  Give them guns however and that is no longer the case.  And add to them those members of our society who adopt the rubric of childhood backyard games that simplifies the taxonomy of the human race into two categories--bad guys and good guys--and you have what made the wild west wild.  The availability of a gun on one's hip doesn't make him capable of dispensing justice.  It makes him capable of dispensing death...indiscriminately...and that's the real problem manifested by the Zimmerman case.  We live in a society in which people think themselves capable of deciding for themselves the nature of law and order, and now we are more and more often allowing them to arm themselves.  In addition, even members of our society who should be perceptive enough to understand the problem continue to use the over simplified division of human beings into just those two categories--good and bad--in their discourse.  You hear generals and politicians alike talking in those terms all the time, and police officers in particular seem prone to such mindlessly permissive thought.  But a child kills a bad guy with an erect thumb and a simulated trigger finger; soldiers and cops do it with a gun...and the bad guy often doesn't get up afterward.  The use of such simple reasoning gives permission to act not just to those who do have the right but to those who don't as well, and therefore, those who do have both the right and the power should be more careful about what they say.  That in turn requires that they...and we as a society...think considerably more about it.

We have passed the point in our discussion of gun control at which Sandy Hook Elementary School and Sanford, Florida are central.  It is now the child in the back yard who learns at an early age that shooting and killing are remedies for problems that we must now think about.  Because eventually that child becomes a man or a woman, and lately, any man or woman can be armed with something more dangerous than a cocked finger and a raised thumb.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Have you noticed how quiet Washington D.C. seems lately.  No major domestic disputes are grabbing headlines, and likewise, none of the major members of the disloyal minority have reared their ugly heads much either.  There is still the effort to vilify the administration in committees here and there, and Obamacare is newly confronting some administrative hurdles, but overall, it is all quiet on the American front.  The one thing that interests me in the news for the past week or so is the "0 option" discussion taking place in political circles.  Of course there will be politicians trying to take advantage of one side or the other of the argument on the subject so as to advance his lowly little career, but the issue is really quite simple.  The American made government in Afghanistan doesn't appreciate us being there.  They claim that we are doing more harm than good sometimes, and they refuse to come to terms with us on the subject of keeping a training force in the country after 2014...ten or twelve thousand military men and women charged with continuing the preparation of a primitive military force for modern warfare.  And the most recent catch has been the attempts to negotiate some sort of participation in a civil government in Afghanistan with the Taliban, who would prefer the stone age to the modern age.  Apparently the Obama administration has accepted the premise that they will not be going away any time soon and has tried to bring them to some kind of agreement using back channels...all to no avail so far, but in addition against the now public howling of the Karzai administration.  He and his family--who are imbedded in Afghanistan's economy like ticks--don't want to share power with anyone.  So what will we do at the end of 2014 when only that residual force is scheduled to remain in Afghanistan when the terms under which they would remain, including exemption from prosecution for the acts of war that they commit, cannot be resolved?  Well, President Obama seems to be thinking that if the Afghani government won't take our help on our terms, they can go it alone: the 0 option, and I agree.

I'm on my way out of town for a summer vacation this weekend, so while I'd like to elaborate about my rationale, including a litany on the subject of Karzai's nepotistic protection of cronies and cousins, I've got to pack, somewhat like congress is doing.  We need a little political quiet time anyway.  I'll speak to you next week.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

I had a disagreeable experience yesterday with the MDC (Metropolitan District Commission) in the area where I live.  The MDC provides much of the water for residents and businesses in the Hartford metropolitan area under a charter issued by the member towns and cities.  It handles all of the water related logistical and supply issues, including not just providing potable water but also managing things like reservoirs and boat launches.  We, of course, pay for all those things plus the cost of administration, and no doubt the CEO and the other managers do quite well as I can see no sign of any critical oversight mechanism.  In fact, it seems just the opposite in that the MDC appears to be almost completely autonomous...and in my opinion autocratic too.  What happened yesterday was a continuation of a problem I have been having for a couple of years now.  We have lived in this house for more than twenty years and the water meter in the house is located in our utility room.  It is completely mechanical with no electronic components, and in the past, the way in which the amount we were billed has been calculated was by the completion of postcards onto which we entered the meter reading.  We did that for almost twenty years without incident, but now the MDC wants to install a new meter inside our house that will electronically transmit our water usage data out to the street, where I gather it will be collected either remotely or by some drive-by process.  The problem I have with that is that I don't want any government agency...or Microsoft or Google either...to electronically transmit anything out of my house.  The MDC's response to my concerns is that the transmitter will be in a box outside my house like the ones on the electric meter and the gas meter, and that it will be connected to the meter by only a three element, low voltage telephone wire, and there will be no sensor involved.  But that is impossible.  There must be some kind of sensor that will convert water flow into data that can be transmitted, and if there is a sensor in the meter that can do that, there might be others that do other things, and frankly, I was as concerned about the fact that this MDC employee didn't understand his own equipment as I was about his insistence that I allow it in my house.  Ah, I can hear the groans among my fellow Americans about paranoia and delusions of grandeur, but maybe my concerns aren't so far fetched.  The NSA tracks your and my cell phone usage, which they have denied doing in the past, but now have had to admit to doing.  Microsoft places all kinds of software aimed at informing the company about your and my internet usage--Google does too--and now we come to find out that the NSA also subpoenas their information, so in effect, Microsoft, Google and who knows what other corporations that collect data every time we enter a keystroke are working to provide data about us...personal data...to our government, which is supposed to respect our privacy.  The net result is that corporate America is providing to our government agencies information that The Constitution prohibits the government from collecting for itself.

Here's what troubles me the most about all this.  It all started when I spoke to an MDC customer service representative...a nice kid...about the fact that the estimated usage on which my bill was  over twice what my reading the meter indicated: about $150 worth of water.  He informed me that he couldn't adjust the bill (which made me wonder who can, but that's an issue for another time) but he calculated what the proper billable amount would be and gave me that figure.  When he added that I needed to get a new meter so as to obviate these unrealistic estimates, I explained to him why I didn't want one and he asked me to talk to his "manager."  I declined, but I told him that if his manager wanted to talk to me, he could call and I gave the kid my cell phone number.  Not thirty seconds later the manager called, and he gave me the explanation of the meter that I limned above, assuring me that all that would go into my house were those three little wires.  I tried to explain to him my concern about sensors to which the wires would of necessity be attached, and that if there were one sensor, there could be more than one.  I also pointed out what I said above about the role of corporate America in monitoring our every move, to which he replied that if I wanted the 10% discount, I had to tolerate their placement of cookies and other software on my computer.  "You want the 10% discount, don't you?" the manager said.  My response was, when I want it I'll ask for it, at which point he added something about the War on Terror...the universal government justification.  I was about to ask him if he objected to universal background checks and gun registration--from his tone and what he said I was sure that he owned guns--but instead I simply told him that I didn't want to argue with him.  References to The Constitution would have been useless in a discussion with someone who feels that the government is always right except when it deals with his guns, so I just declined to have the meter installed again and agreed to read the information he wanted to email me about them.  Incidentally, all that information dealt with was RF interference and radiation exposure, which was never my concern.  We get enough exposure to that kind of radiation from our cell phones and internet modems that a small source in my utility room would be the least of my problems.  But transmission of information about my cell phone usage, internet use or even personal conversations isn't something I am willing to abide.

Setting aside democratic principles, the problem in the final analysis is the extent to which all this spying by our government avails us of greater safety from malevolent forces, and I don't doubt that there are such out there.  With all the information being collected about our cell phone use, no one knew about the Boston Marathon bombers despite the fact that the government had enough concerns about the older brother of the two killers to interview him more than once.  Even the Russian government was expressing concern about his activities, but none of that stopped him, nor did gathering his cell phone records accomplish anything.  Nor did they know about the Times Square bomber until a hot dog vendor pointed out to the police smoke coming from his car.  The underwear bomber got so far as to set his underwear on fire, as did the shoe bomber...none of them being detected before their dirty deeds by all of the intelligence gathering being done at the expense of the fourth amendment's force and effect.  Still, I don't mind some generalized spying on the populace at large; maybe it will stop some of what the lunatic fringe wants to inflict on us.  I just don't want the government in my house watching every move I make.  I have my wife for that.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

After a bloodless coup in Egypt, the country is now in flux once again making Egypt's potential for hostility toward the United States and the west in general an open question.  The fundamentalist oriented former president, Mohamed Morsi, is under house arrest, and the mood of the country seems jubilant, but there is a substantial constituency that supports Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood Party...enough to elect him president, albeit in a fractionalized field of candidates.  Thus, the possibility of sectarian conflict both politically and literally seems a real consideration, though the Egyptian military is the most trusted institution in the Egyptian government and it has made it clear that it will quell any revolution, or as in this case, nip it in the bud.  It is the most powerful political force...essentially unassailably so...in Egypt, and perhaps in North Africa as a whole, so the prospect of instability is so remote as to be insignificant at this time.  But as the Obama administration has made clear, an open-ended term of military government is an undesirable outcome for Egypt, the region and the world, not to mention the Egyptian people, and unlike many other countries in Africa, the military itself seems to accept that notion.  That leaves the problem of finding a permanent solution to the schism in Egyptian society between the more fundamentalist constituency represented primarily by the Muslim Brotherhood and the modernist, secular society that apparently is the desire of the tens of thousands who have taken to the streets twice in three years to inspire the populist military to change governments on their behalf.  The reality is that there can be no internal peace in Egypt unless that secular contingent is recognized and heeded, but the more religious contingent cannot be ignored either, as other nations in the region have come to recognize since the Arab Spring most recently, and in the case of Iran, since the early seventies.  It appears to me that the modern world must soon recon with the fact that, just as in the Christian milieu, there is a fundamentalist movement that will not fade away, and must therefore be accommodated in some way in order to avoid the aberrations of Jihadism in the case of Islam and reactionaries in power as in the case of some of the state legislatures in our country, not to mention the Blue Dog Democrats and the Tea Party types who have brought our political process to a stand-still.

Actually, the problem in the United States is less dire in terms of consequence, but perhaps more intractable because of it.  With a democratic social framework on which to hang, those who would prevent movement toward a progressive society may not have the power to implement their own vision, but they do have the power to prevent the implementation of the visions of others.  The inertia we are suffering on account of the Ted Cruz's and Trey Gowdy's of the congress is frustrating and inimical to social progress, but no one is dieing on account of it...at least not at the hands of murderous individuals with a political purpose.  That some of our people will die for want of medical care that could save them is repugnant, but it isn't the same thing, intransigent as the adversaries of things like universal health care are.  In a full-fledged democracy like ours, these things must run their political course, and progress is made only in fits and starts as the political pendulum swings.  Thus, in a sense Egypt has an advantage over fully democratic societies like ours.  The military can intervene, and the vast majority of the population trusts it to do the right thing.  In some respects, the first post-Mubarek constitution and government was an experiment run by the military, which both spawned Mubarek and cut him off at the knees when it became obvious that he had gone too far toward oligarchy for the majority of Egyptians to tolerate it any longer.  What the military allowed to ensue was the advent of a more Islamic state structure with a government populated by a plurality that could only be characterized as religiously conservative and willing to bind society at large to such principles as their ethos dictated.  But like the previous secular, meretricious oligarchy, it failed to garner the support of the majority of Egyptians, and for that matter, accomplished very little in the way of progress even toward a semi-theocratic state.  Economic chaos still prevails in Egypt.  Tourism, which fueled the Egyptian economy to a large extent is moribund if not dead, and the nation-state itself seems adrift, so what is the military to do.

I believe that the political powers in the Near East and the Middle East, and the Far East as well for that matter, must acknowledge that the population of the regions is ambivalent about the role of Islam in government.  It seems that Muslims and Jews alike find it difficult to separate the religious tenets by which they govern themselves in their personal lives from those by which their nation governs them.  And in consequence of that unitary ethic as opposed to the binary ethic that prevails in The West, some effort must be made to create a new kind of governmental structure that can reconcile the two often times opposing types of political motivation: theocratic and secular.   Muslim fundamentalists on the extreme edges of Arab politics want the establishment of a Caliphate across the world by which all people will live by the principles of Islam essentially unchanged since the seventh century.  On the other hand, the vast majority of the world's population will not tolerate one.  So why not create a Caliphate that does exist all over the world, but not everywhere.  Why not create states within nations that are Muslim in their governance...that is regulated by Sharia Law...and allow them the kind of autonomy that exists in the fifty states in this country.  Let those who want to live that kind of fundamentalist Islamic life migrate to those states within their countries of origin--Pakistan, India, Malasia, Sudan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and so on--and let the rest of us live the secular lives we wish to live.  Let the Taliban rule a portion of Afghanistan with a guaranty that anyone who doesn't want to live that way can leave unimpeded.  Let Hindu Indians leave the Muslim province and let Muslims emigrate from the Hindu and Christian provinces.  And in particular, let the Jewish province...Israel...exist as a Jewish state without interference.  It seems like a plan in which everyone gets what he wants without inflicting it on everyone else, but unfortunately, as I used to say to my children, we don't seem to be sufficiently evolved as a species to allow such a universal accommodation.  Maybe the military can do something about that...in Egypt anyway.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

Immigration reform is at the top of the news again as a one thousand page bill passed by a margin of 68-32 in the Senate.  As you might have guessed, the nay sayers were all conservative Republicans.  But oddly, there is a cadre of unusual suspects importuning them to change their minds, starting with Evangelicals.  They seem to realize what the Republican Party as a whole realizes regarding the immigrant population...at least to the extent that it is Latino.  We are headed toward a non-white-majority--a minority majority as I heard it put Sunday--demographic nationally, and the Hispanic component of that demographic may well be the determining factor as to who survives in both political and religious circles.  Evangelical leaders are eager for immigration reform toward the end of filling pews as American youth seems to be less interested in organized religion than its progenitors were.  And right beside them in the importunate choir is the business community.

On the ABC Sunday morning news program "This Week," one of the panelists was a congresswoman who pointed out that legalizing the currently-illegal immigrant population represents a $200 billion chunk of the economy, presumably by virtue of both what they produce and what they consume, not to mention the services they perform.  Business--the primary Republican constituency in whose interests supply-side economics was created--is clamoring to make legal those who are now essential to the success of or economic recovery in more ways than one rather than allowing the Republicans to find a new way to expel them, and their money, from the country.  They may be aliens in the legal sense, but they are all-American when it comes to the dollars they earn and spend, and this is the business community's way of saying to them, "The Waltons want you...never mind Uncle Sam."  Meanwhile, the liberal component of the electorate makes it clear in every poll that it wants immigration reform that provides a "pathway to citizenship" for the illegal alien population, thus completing a force able to administer the electoral coup d' grace for which the Republican Party has seemingly been pining for the past six years or so.

So now the bill goes to the House of Representatives, where last week Congressman Gowdy of the House Oversight Committee--a prematurely gray would-be bully with a tendency to feign profundity with trite phrases and contrived indignation--bellowed like a stuck pig over the claim that an IRS employee now on administrative leave waived her fifth amendment rights when she refused to testify out of fear of mindless prosecution in the name of political narcissism, even though no one else cares these days.  And the huzzahs from Republican committee members demonstrate that like Gowdy, the Republicans in The House have their foot shooting pistol fully loaded and they are taking careful aim at their collective big toe.  It seems that self-destruction is the new conservatism, and it's all the rage in congress, and that's not a bad thing if you are an old sixties radical like me, but immigration reform seems to me to be too big a price for Republicans to pay for the internecine conflict within the already moribund party.  Something has to be done about the huge component of our labor force that is essential in various businesses and industries, not to mention all of our markets.  I said years ago when immigration reform last came up during the Bush administration that we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that there are only two choices.  One is to bring those people on whom we rely into our society and legitimize our reliance on them, and the other is to send them home and find another way to fill the void they will leave behind.  There is a moral issue in my mind, but in today's politics morality seems to have nothing to do with anything.  The practical reality however is something that even conservatives understand...especially those in business.  Money talks, and the illegal immigrant population in this country--eleven million of them at the moment--speaks very loudly.

What the Republicans face is this.  Their procrustean hard-core minority is intransigent on various elements of immigration reform, though they claim to favor it overall.  They insist on fortification of the border--and The Senate's bill includes it so the issue is largely dealt with in terms of the need for bipartisan support in order to pass something--and they reject categorically a path to citizenship for illegal aliens; I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the reason, though when you are making your choice you probably shouldn't exclude bigotry and winning elections that minority votes are most likely to tip in what they think is the wrong direction.  On the other hand, the votes on which the Republicans have traditionally relied--those of conservative "family values" types and those of the proprietors of businesses, not to mention the money that they have provided for Republican campaign purposes over recent decades--are quite plainly arraying themselves in favor of immigration reform, including legalization of some kind.  So they have to consider which votes they not only want, but need.  They can keep in their caucuses the votes of the likes of Congressman Trey Gowdy and Senator Ted Cruz, which seem to vitiate every Republican initiative that even verges on moderation these days, or they can throw those guys to the wolves and create a more moderate conservatism that a majority of Americans can accept.  But they can't have it both ways.  We are on the cusp of one of two things.  Either the Republican Party will be re-consigned to that political nether land from which they only recently emerged after decades of Democrat controlled congresses, or they will confront their own dysfunction and do something about it, which ultimately will probably require undoing the gerrymandering that they have indulged in when the next census is done in seven years in the states in which they control the legislatures.  Rigging elections so that only nationally unpopular ideologies can succeed locally is now demonstrated to be inimical to political success for the party...either party.  So between that and ending the filibuster, it may be that solutions to our political problems are on the horizon.  Let's just hope that our politicians can see that far.

Your friend,

Mike