When did the truth go out of style?

When I was a young man news was published in the daily newspaper.  Local news was investigated and written up by local reporters and proofed by the editor.  National news was provided on a teletype machine from the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI).  It was an article of faith that what was printed was true and unbiased.  At least everyone believed that and I suppose perception is everything.  I still think it was nearly always true and a newsman’s reputation for truth and fairness was his most important possession.  I was in the broadcast news business briefly in 1968 and at that time it was just as reputable as the newspaper. 

 Now anyone can get published just like this post.  No one screens it, I can spout truth or total nonsense and the chances are it will be about equally believed.  If I say something like “Congressmen can retire after 4 years on 100% salary” a sizeable percentage will believe it – especially if you are already anti government.  I’m pretty anti government these days myself, but I have a major respect for the truth that doesn’t allow me to publish nonsense.  So what am I getting at?  I think I may have just hit on what is wrong with the current political climate.  There is no source for facts and truth.  Or at least there is no easy way to separate fact from fiction.  Look at the sheer nonsense being published by the political parties during this run up to the November elections.  This is actually an important election, but are they offering real concrete solutions to the problems that the politicians have made in the first place?  Not that I can find. 

            So far as I can tell, the democrats (who have an actual current track record) are doing nothing but attacking the character and/or personality of the Republican candidate.  If I find an actual plan from them I’ll post it later.  The Republicans, or at least their candidate, have identified the problems we all care about.  I’m talking about terrorism, border control, international trade and many more serious issues but if they have offered a concrete plan to fix any of them it was lost on me.  Oh, I forgot about the wall idea.  At least it’s a ‘concrete’ idea.  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist)  Terrorism, hmm I guess that’s what TSA and homeland security or about.  They claim it’s working.  Many years ago I saw a beatnik (remember them?) on a street corner in NYC just standing there and snapping his fingers.  I asked him what he was doing and he said: “I’m keeping the wild elephants away.”  I said there’s not a wild elephant within 10,000 miles.  He said, “Works great doesn’t it?”  

          As for international trade, the solution is both simple and obvious.  We must make the playing field level.  American factories can produce goods as cheap as any after you adjust for shipping.  If a trading partner wants to sell a product for 50% of what it costs to produce we simply add the other 50% in customs and use that money to subsidize our own factories.  It wouldn’t take long for that to fix the problem. 

            Let’s forget this political correctness nonsense and stop immigration from Moslem countries.  In WW II we actually locked up entire Japanese families for the protection of the public at large.  Can you imagine that happening in the current climate?  If only 1% of Moslems are terrorists that means that 10 terrorists get in with each 1000 immigrants.  We just can’t afford that.  We don’t owe the rest of the world a living.  Hell, we don’t even owe our own citizens a living if they don’t want to work for it. 

            That’s how I see it.

The end of the two party system?

            Will the last Republican leaving the party please turn out the lights?  Are we seeing the end of the American two party system?  If so, is it past due?  Several elections ago the Tea Party achieved considerable success by offering a conservative alternative to the mainstream Republican party that many long standing republicans simply didn't feel represented their interests.  And yet, the party central committees just don't seem to see the handwriting on the wall.  The party "leadership" fought Donald Trump right down to the wire even though he was the landslide leader with the public. 

            With clear evidence that the public is fed up with politics as usual look at what the Democrats came up with.  The ultimate party insider was their only candidate from the outset.  In order to get maximum press coverage they had to have a straw dog for the debates and they couldn't produce a single Democrat willing to be the designated loser.  So they came up with an avowed socialist to have a sparring partner and he got a phenomenal amount of votes!  In fact he got about 12 million votes to her 15.5 million.  Think about it.  Among Blacks, she won 75.9% to 23.1%!  Among Whites she actually lost 48.9% to 49.1%.  Keep in mind that Blacks make up about 11% of the population and whites about 80%.

            So what does that all add up to?  Well, the Democrats appear to be oblivious (or uncaring) to what the public wants.  I suppose they may change their approach between now and the election, but I don't see how they can sell Hillary Clinton to the public as anything but more of the same.  I think it's too late to come up with another candidate at this point.  The Republicans are in a somewhat different situation.  They have a highly controversial candidate that is as far as possible from mainstream politics.  But--- they have taken too long to get behind an outsider.  It appears to me that voters who like Donald Trump don't like the Republican party leadership and the party leadership doesn't like Donald Trump.

             I don't see either party surviving this general election in a recognizable format.  The Republicans don't appear able to get their house in order so I foresee a major split into two parties - probably Tea Party and mainstream republicans.  The Democrats I see as just growing into a smaller party.  The Blue Dog Dems could easily join with the Tea Party to form a third conservative party.  If that actually happened we could easily wind up with a three party system and that might be exactly what we need. 

            That's how I see it.

Is our government just too old?

            Should laws have an expiration date?  It is no secret that once something becomes law it almost never goes away.  Our country has operated on a single government for 225 years or so.  In that time we have passed thousands of laws and most of them are dated at best.  They stay in force (or often stay unenforced) because it's just too hard to change them.  Witness the uproar over obamacare for the last few years.  Now whether or not you like it, you know that a majority of congressmen and senators have been trying to get rid of it for years.  It just displays how hard it is to remove a law. 

            So perhaps an improvement would be to pass laws for a specific period.  They would automatically expire after a pre-set time unless congress wanted to renew them by a fresh vote.  That way instead of trying to remove bad laws they could concentrate on trying to keep good ones.  It would also allow congress less time to create new bad laws.  I suspect that there should be some sort of variation in the lifespan of laws.  Perhaps if a law passed by a very narrow margin it was good for two years.  If it passed by say 55% it would be good for 5 years and 65% would give it 10 years.  Or the life span of the law could be built in as part of the law but with a limitation on the maximum of probably 10 years. 

            That would tend to make our laws much more representative of the current values of our society.  It would also make them change to reflect changes in society.  The way I see it if we don't find some way to make our government responsive to the values and desires of the majority of our citizens we are facing a popular uprising and a violent revolution that none of us wants.  Nearly all of my income now is in the form of retirement payments that I earned and paid taxes on during my earning years.  And yet, I pay a huge proportion of it back in income taxes even though I'm no longer earning anything.  On the other hand, the "middle class" worker here in Florida is paying no income tax at all.  I don't see how that is a sustainable plan. 

            In my much younger days, I semi jokingly proposed that everyone retire at 21 for 10 or 15 years.  Then everyone should work for the rest of their life to pay for the other folks who were retiring at 21.  It seems to be happening now except the ones who are retiring at 21 have no intention of going to work when they turn 35.  What do you think?

Is there any party of the people?

I wrote this post back in 2012 and never finished or posted it.  I think it's just as relevant now so I'm going to put it up exactly as I wrote it then.  Some things just don't seem to change. 

            I thought I was a republican until I heard Chris Christie's keynote speech.  Instead of fixing problems with social security and Medicare he thinks senior citizens who earned these benefits with their hard earned dollars should give up their benefits to benefit some future generation.  He preaches a lot of foolishness about teachers and their unions.  Ronald Reagan once said "government can't solve the problem; government IS the problem."  One thing he is right about, though.  We desperately need some real leadership in Washington. 

            He tells us we all have to sacrifice.  That's nonsense.  If we get the government off our back we can get by just fine.  Government does have a role to play, it's just not that of our daddy.  We need government regulation of gigantic multi-nationals like oil companies.  But we need careful oversight of that government regulation to be sure it doesn't become a bigger problem.  We need real government control of our import policies.  We are letting below cost imports drive our own industries out of business.  Why? 

            I find that there are several points in the new republican platform that I can't support.  They want to pass a law making all abortions illegal for any reason.  Now I don't support abortion as a method of birth control, but making it all illegal is unreasonable.  Basically, I think the government should get out of the abortion business altogether and leave things as they are.  This is a decision that should be made by doctors, families, and religions.  It is NOT a function of government in my opinion.

            Then I hear we are going to replace Medicare with a vaguely described multi level system.  You know, Medicare is one of the few government programs that is mostly working.   It is paid for by a direct tax on income of 1.45% which is matched by employers like social security.  Medicare is made up of several "parts" the main ones being part A and part B.  These cover hospitalization and doctor's visits and pay about half the actual costs with the recipient paying the remainder.  It discourages waste because the recipient has to pay half of all costs.  It also helps to control medical care costs by limiting the amount it will approve for any procedure.  It certainly could be improved, but all in all it's a pretty good system that has worked for 47 years. 

            I find it astounding that we can't produce a good sense party in this country.  Where are all the decent people?  Obviously not in politics in either party.

            Unfortunately, that's the way I see it.           

Installment number 3 of my platform

3.  I propose some changes to our election system.  First off, elected officials will no longer receive a pay check.  It doesn't make any sense to pay a pittance to a man who must be a millionaire to be elected in the first place.  There will be no more election contributions nor PACs.  Instead, to run for election a candidate must procure the backing of a major network.  Let's face it, the current two party system hasn't worked in decades so instead we will have Sen. Joe Smith, Co, CNN.  This strikes me as a win-win deal since the networks will try to get a candidate that they can make look good and gain viewers.  Does anyone really believe we could select a worse candidate this way?  Wouldn't it be great to vote for someone you wanted to instead of the one you hated the least?  I still remember the last presidential candidate that I voted FOR instead of against someone else.  It was Barry Goldwater and the year was 1964.  Anyway, elections will continue to be held in the same way except there will be no primaries unless individual networks want to hold their own.  It's easy to scoff, but think it through. 

The median amount of election fund raising in the House (including the non-voting members...) is $1,350,902 (for Rep. Janice Schakowsky).  This is for a position that pays about $175k per year and they have to run again every other year. 

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congresspay.htm

Here's installment number two of my platform

2.  There would be no Tea Party if the republican party were representing their constituency.  As it is, somewhere between 18 and 31 per cent of voters support the tea party depending on which poll you believe.  Since the huge majority of tea party members are republicans and no more than 50% of voters are republicans it doesn't take a math prodigy to see that you can't win a national election as a republican without their support.  Having said that, do you really know what the tea party is about?  I took a look at their website www.teaparty.org and didn't see anything extreme about it.  In fact it was probably less inflammatory than Cnn.com or Foxnews.com.  The liberal press is trying to implant in our minds that there is something wrong with the tea party and if they say it enough it becomes fact, just like any other whispering campaign.  I can't support ALL of the political positions of the tea party, but I agree with most of their primary points.  If I were running for election I would make an active attempt to gain their backing. 

 

 

I've decided it's time to post my platform in case I have to run for President.  I'm going to do it in stages but in no particular order.  Anyway, here's the first installment.

Here's my platform in no particular order

 

1.  I don't believe there is any advantage to the US in the current Iran deal.  I believe the sanctions are helping curb the spread of terrorism as well as helping to slow down the attempts by Iran to become a nuclear power.  I believe that removing the sanctions will force Israel to strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities in self defense which cannot help but become a major war in the middle east.  As to the nonsense about the US economy failing and the dollar being dropped as the world's stable currency please consider the fact that the euro has dropped 23% against the dollar.  What would you suggest as the new world currency, the ruble?