Friday, July 28, 2006

7-28-06 Second Hamdan Effect

This article in the Washington Post today appears to size up the current situation...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/27/AR2006072701908_pf.html

It's clear that, beneath the MSM radar, there's probably one helluva lot of scrambling around going on!

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

7-25-06 Was this inevitable?

After the wildly successful "Da Vinci Code", it would almost be anticlimactic if nobody ever came forward to claim that they were part of the "holy grail" bloodline, a descendant of Jesus Christ himself. I mean, after all the hooplah, there would just have to be someone who'd be willing to cash in...

Interestingly enough, the person stepping up to the plate on this score managed to self-publish BEFORE Dan Brown published the Da Vinci Code, so a lot of the anticipated level of self-serving profiteering behind this particular venture is blown down to a hush. Of course, there have been stories, books, and theories about the Magdalene connection, the Knights Templar, and the south of France's obsessions with Magdelene for quite a long time, now. Why Kathleen McGowan is getting attention, or even why she'd be telling this story, is for the rest of us to decide...

Kathleen McGowan's website is here...

http://www.themagdaleneline.com/

...and I have to admit that I'm putting this on the blog without having read anything on it. But I did read an article in The Independant Online yesterday regarding the upcoming release (from Simon & Schuster, no less!) of her first in a series of three books on her story. That article is here...

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/news/article1191931.ece

It's clear that Simon & Schuster expects this first book in the series will be a whopping success.

7-25-06 August 15th

Remember that date. It's the day that the Chinese will do a plasma discharge experiment at their advanced superconducting research center in east China...

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060724-065917-5783r

I, for one, will be more than happy to awaken on the morning of August 16th to learn that the experiment was completed safely, and without the loss of any significant landmass.

Monday, July 24, 2006

7-24-06 The Big Break

It seems that George W. Bush has finally done it! He has alienated the father of modern conservatism, himself! William F. Buckley, Jr. goes on record Saturday in an exclusive interview with CBS News to tell the world that he thinks George W. Bush is not a true conservative.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/22/eveningnews/main1826838.shtml

I wonder how many more true conservatives will have to come out of the woodwork and say that the King has no clothes before this administration is put on a leash?

Saturday, July 22, 2006

7-22-06 WWIII and The Rapture

The underlying cultural angst connected to any war in the middle east has to be based on faith, alone. If you believe in the literal truth of the bible, then the end of the world has to begin with some sort of conflagration in the middle east. Within this extremely limited scope in viewing world politics, there are only the stories of Moses, Jesus, or Mohammed...

"Beware the man of one book."
- St. Thomas Aquinas

Here's a link to today's blog post from Thomas P.M. Barnett (author of two optimistic books describing how the world might be looked at in order to move toward a future worth creating), regarding the most recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and how calling this "World War III" is pretty stupid...

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/003497.html

Barnett's stuff is worth reading, regardless of your politics (which I often find difficult to agree with). He's an in depth futurist and his credentials carry a lot of weight.

Next, we have a link to a blog post by Andrew Sullivan, a Time magazine journalist, from last Sunday regarding the subject of World War III vis-a-vis the Israel/Hezbollah fighting...

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/07/world_war_iii.html

That post is worth reading, simply because it tells (in a very short space) what's really wrong with the whole ball of wax that's part and parcel of the christianist mindset, especially how it bears upon violence in the middle east. Being elated with the prospect of increasing violence in the middle east, just so that one will GET something for themselves, is probably the most selfish and un-christian mindset I can imagine.

This whole bag of horseshit called "the rapture" was created by John Nelson Darby in the 19th century. This whack-o mindset about the middle east flaring up, followed by "the rapture" is not a new testament prophecy, just the wild imaginings of this nutbag Darby who was born in 1800 and died in 1880.

Now, I have no slightest desire to impose upon anyone who believes in this stuff, but I do have a very strong objection to that sort of mindset being involved in public policy decisions, especially foreign policy decisions.

As an indication of how much public policy decisions are affected today by politicians trying to score points with true beleivers in their constituencies, I can offer this link to Washington Post article from Wednesday...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/18/AR2006071801336_pf.html

The quotes at the beginning of the article say it all... and the closing paragraphs really make the point.

In my view, legislators who write and support laws regarding religion are not acting in accordance with the first ammendment of the US Constitution.

Friday, July 21, 2006

7-21-06 Bodies in Pawn

As technology moves ahead, we can look forward to the day when telecommuting takes on a whole new meaning...

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71426-0.html?tw=wn_index_3

One fellow has apparently already made the leap forward, having created a robotic duplicate of himself, through which he can now give his college lectures without leaving the comfort of home!

7-21-06 Wherethehellismatt?

For all the nattering nabobs of negativity in the world (and I'm sure I could quite often be perceived as one of them), there is a video that belies the notion that man is basically evil. I can't say that everyone would enjoy this video, but for me it is one of the most refreshing and delightful pieces of work on the web that I've seen a long time...

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/

Thursday, July 20, 2006

7-20-06 Moral Boundary

George W. Bush's first veto (stem cell legislation), hung on the claim that he doesn't want to cross some moral boundary, is quite a convoluted bit of illogic, in my eyes. What about the moral boundary that he crossed with the torture of prisoners? What about the moral boundary he crossed when inventing the lies about WMD? What about the moral boundary he crossed every time he trampled on the US Constitution over the past four and a half years?

Having this man claim some sense of morals is just a cruel joke.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

7-15-06 Chernobyl

Twenty years ago, the Chernobyl disaster began. The effects of the radiation are still being debated...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/?feed=TopNews&article=UPI-1-20060418-11381200-bc-germany-chernobyl.xml

Was it only four to nine thousand or fifty to one hundred thousand people that were affected so adversely that their deaths can ultimately be attributed to the radiation from the meltdown of the reactor? It gives me great faith in "science" that the pro-nuke factions can come up with the small numbers and the anti-nuke factions can come up with the large numbers. It's all so "scientific", isn't it?

Here's a link to a documentary film on the subject...

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/chernobylheart/index.html

The film is a "must see" for anyone who ever thought the Chernobyl disaster happened twenty years ago, and this is just history. The disaster is ongoing, and it's far from over.

And then there's this link, which describes a study done recently to find out whether Chernobyl radiation caused thyrdoid cancer...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060714175324.htm

Gee, now this study really does appear to have finally applied some truly sober, objective science on this issue, doesn't it? It's so calm and low key, isn't it?

Pretending that there's no link (or even just a small, low key, underpublicized link) between exposure to various forms of radiation and various physical ills leads us to the present day use of "depleted uranium" in weaponry. As if the Chernobyl disaster isn't enough of a wakeup call for this civilization, the US military has been irradiating the areas of every military engagement they've had over the past several years. Not only are the natives of those countries getting sick and dying from radiation exposure as a result of the use of depleted uranium weaponry, our own soldiers are also getting sick and dying from this as well. It's a dirty little secret, so don't get too upset about it because your government certainly isn't worried about it.

The fact is that the world incidence of various forms of cancer have risen in direct proportion to the worldwide increase in ambient radiation, beginning with the end of World War II. This radiation increase was really small, because it was caused by only a couple thousand atomic and thermonuclear "test" explosions over the course of a couple decades after the war. The amount of radiation these tests added to the worldwide background radiation, or "ambient" radiation as I referred to it above, was considered insignificant. But isn't it an amazing coincidence that the same period of time showed a dramatic increase in the incidence of cancer, worldwide? Of course, this blatantly clear coincidence can't be verified "scientifically" because you'd have to repeat the experiment... Subsequently, we can add in Chernobyl and the US military use of depleted uranium in weaponry to this already blatant "coincidence" between radiation in the environment and illness.

What really bothers me the most about all of this is the politics of the whole thing. If you're in any way "anti-nuke", then you're supposedly also left-wing. And if you're "pro-nuke", then you're supposedly also right-wing. If you're the former, then you can spin the science to preach to the choir about the "anti-nuke" stance, such as the larger numbers of victims of Chernobyl. And if you're the latter, then you can spin the science about the "pro-nuke" stance, such as the smaller numbers of vicitims of Chernobyl.

What I want to know is, where's the REAL science?

Friday, July 14, 2006

7-14-06 US vs John Lennon

What looks to be a great documentary will be released in September...

http://www.theusversusjohnlennon.com/site/

Click on "trailer".

Thursday, July 13, 2006

7-13-06 Calls for Impeachment

It's interesting that various local government bodies are moving to pass resolutions to impeach George W. Bush, becuase if we've learned anything in the past five years it's that the Bush administration doesn't attack places that don't have any oil... so I guess the Bushwackers in Vermont feel safe.

http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_4022594

http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060709/NEWS/607090377/1004/NEWS03

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

7-11-06 Waytheheckout

James Casbolt claims to be a former MI6 agent. He also makes a lot of other claims, first concerning the involvement of intelligence agencies in England and the US in the worldwide drug trade...

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=4540

...and second concerning the involvement of same in something even further from our wildest imaginings...

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=4744

First, let me make it clear that I'm a big fan of Robert Anton Wilson's "The Illuminatus Trilogy". Those books launched my (and I'm sure, many others') imagination into the never ending abyss of conspiracy theories, and any other scientifically unconfirmable alternate realities that people are so willing to create.

I do enjoy wading around in that kind of stuff, only because I sometimes run across a smigeon here or a tidbit there that, despite the ridiculous sources, turn out to have had basis in fact. These things are what draw me to continue mining the fringes of our culture for any little gems that might be had.

Casbolt is definitely waytheheckout. His two articles, posted on a fringe website over the course of the past two months, more than strain the bounds of credulity. The first article set my teeth on edge, because he's not the only source for similar claims regarding CIA involvement in drug trafficking over the years. One need only consult the federal register to find congressional testimony for exactly the same thing (Iran/Contra), or surf for links on Michael C. Ruppert. But the newest article, published last week, is all about the involvement of world governemnts and intelligence services with aliens.

I look at this kind of stuff this way... I like to read what these guys have to say, and then if I run across any smoking guns elsewhere, I can at least have a reference point to put the waytheheckout thing into better perspective. But I never dismiss the crazy fringe stuff out of hand... even something as absolutely unbelievable as this.

Oddly enough, there are other people out there who have been making similar claims, among them Bob Lazar. Here's the essence of the Lazar claims...

http://www.boblazar.com/

Aside from the claims of these two people, there are also many other sites around that you can peruse for claims regarding the UFO/Aliens/Abductions scene. Prominent among those would be Whitley Strieber's website here...

http://www.unknowncountry.com/

...and his blog, here...

http://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/

Strieber has written extensively on his own abduction experiences, and I have to say that despite the horrific subjective ordeals that he's gone through over the years, he's continued to grasp anywhere he can for rational, down-to-earth explanations for whatever it is that he's gone through.

Most of us tend to dismiss any and all of this stuff because hard evidence is always lacking. But there is a never ending flow of ephemeral evidence and testimony. Despite the fact that James Casbolt tends to push the envelope a bit further than I've seen so far, his most recent claims are, nonetheless, published out there now. I think the guy's on a roll, now...

7-11-06 First Hamdan Effect

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e1de1572-1089-11db-8eec-0000779e2340.html

This is the first official change following the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld. It's a good nuts and bolts article.

Monday, July 10, 2006

7-10-06 Human Experimentation

Here's a little gem from ABC news...

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2166058&page=1

ABC's "20/20" aired a segment on this situation recently, but it's not a new story. Here's some news about the situation from back in March...

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=19845

And this from February...

http://polyhemelawsuit.com/

...which is a URL devoted exclusively to the lawsuit against Northfield Labs, claiming that their fake blood product, a substitute for real blood, was the cause of heart attacks in 10 out of 81 people in an early clinical trial, two of whom died.

Here's another link on this issue...

http://www.defrance.org/artman/publish/article_1531.shtml

...and there are plenty more if you care to search the World Wide Waste of time on your on for them.

Now the FDA says that Northfield Labs' "polyheme", the fake blood substitute, can continue to be used in larger clinical trials at hospitals on patients without their informed consent! This is what prompted "20/20" to do their segment.

What isn't reported in these stories, however, is a much bigger story that the mainstream media has failed to report on at all. The only response to the FDA change that I've found in the past month has been here...

http://www.newstarget.com/019497.html

I'm very doubtful that the FDA can establish this regulation to protect the drug companies, and actually get it to stick. It's no less constitutional for a government agency to declare the judicial branch of the government out of reach for anyone in this country than it is for Senator John McCain to write such an unconstitutional provision into his "POW" legislation. But the fact that the FDA established this regulation and it went into effect on June 30 leads me to believe that we can hardly expect less from our criminals in Washington, DC.

At least ABC news has done us the favor of listing all the hospitals in the country who are participating in this human experimentation without informed consent from the guinea pigs (see the first link, above).

7-10-06 New Driving Order

A few years back, a comedian named Gallagher was enjoying a fairly hefty amount of exposure on TV. He's still around. Here's his website...

http://gallaghersmash.com/

The picture of him on that site reminds me that he looks like David Crosby's little brother...

Gallagher had a great solution for the problems created by bad drivers on our nation's highways. It involved a complete scrapping of the current system where police use speed detectors and so forth, chasing around all over the place to spot people who just happen to break traffic laws while they're looking. Of course, everybody knows that traffic slows down whenever a cruiser is in sight, and then speeds back up again when the cruiser is gone.

The solution, according to Gallagher, is to issue everyone little dart guns and a supply of ammo. The ammo is simple, just a suction cup dart that will stick to the body of a car. Once the driving population is fully armed with these devices, the police will be able to sit back and let everybody do the job for them.

It works like this. If somebody pisses you off on the road, you shoot a dart at them. The dart sticks to the offending driver's car, and when it does, a little flag pops up with the word "ass-hole" on it. Whenever the police see a car with two or more "ass-hole" flags stuck to it, they pull the car over and give them a ticket. The fine amount will be geometrically proportional to the number of "ass-hole" flags stuck to the car.

Personally, I think that kind of a system would work a lot better than the way they do it now.

Meanwhile, in the real world, something very similar to this has actually been invented, and the LAPD is going to be testing the system this fall...

http://www.livescience.com/technology/060708_popsci_starchase.html

It's a very short article, so go ahead and read it.

I'm pretty sure that once this catches on, it'll mean the end of "World's Wildest Police Chases" on TV.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

7-9-06 Prisoners of War

It's a very long and tedious adventure to try and find out how domestic and international law can be applied to prisoners of war. As with any legal matter, it takes lawyers to figure out what applies. But if you spend only an hour or so looking at various major doucments and legal commentary, the status of a prisoner of war is pretty clear when you're dealing with the narrower issue of how they should be treated.

In the matter of people who have been "detained" by the US government in the Global War On Terror, however, there's obviously two sides to this story.

One side, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld side, says that Jihadists, terrorists, insurgents, and generally this whole indistinct collection of loosely organized, non-uniformed, underground fighters are "illegal combatants". This is a new term which, clearly, is used to describe the detainees in a way that exempts them from any legal protections, whatsoever. The basic idea is that a "terrorist" should be treated like the piece of shit that he or she is.

It's difficult to argue with this basic premise. The object of this stance is to strike as much fear as possible into the hearts and minds of these terrrorists, to make the prospect of pursuing their goals against the American people a matter of serious consequence. It's no secret that those who would harm us will do so by using our own infrastructure, our own laws, and taking advantage of the freedoms we enjoy. It can be seen and understood that, without the course taken by the government, the GWOT is impeded in many ways.

The first flaw in this reasoning, however, is that the terrorists' aims against America are ultimately against the American people. The American people are targets because of the conduct of the American government. This goes back in time, prior to 9/11. On the other hand, the flawed reasoning behind Osama Bin Laden's fatwah, in 1998, calling for the indiscriminate killing of Americans is that the American people have the power to elect officials who will stop supporting Israel, stop ignoring the rights of Islamic peoples around the world, and stop giving free reign to the international corporations. Our votes hardly have that level of power, for many reasons.

Osama Bin Laden, we need to remember, was a CIA sponsored operative in Afghanistan during the Russian war in that country. The US government sponsored Saddam Hussein in Iraq's war against Iran. With these and other very complicated origins, the current GWOT can't be discussed as a simple problem wherein the US government is hampered by domestic and international law. The problem here is the US government's conduct over many years.

Consequently, the GWOT and the opposing forces, however anyone wants to describe them, have both brought us to this juncture where the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld can be seen as a terrible blow to America. It's a terrible blow because it re-introduces a constraint for "our side" of the battle.

On this side of the argument, the terrorists have a victory in that our own laws can be used against us. This is hardly a viewpoint that I can dismiss out of hand, because a very important part of this whole thing involves the world-wide PR between nations, the standing that America does or does not have with other nations, and ultimately the underlying sense of our nation's actions coming from a position on moral high ground.

The other side of the story is a simple one, however. The moral high ground cannot be maintained when our basic principles of human rights are abandoned. The terrorists may conduct themselves in a psychotic manner, but America cannot respond "in kind" without losing everything we stand for in the world. The Supreme Court decision, on this side of the story, is neither a blow to the GWOT or to America. It is, instead, an event that marks the brakes being applied to America's four and half year descent from the moral high ground.

In the Global War on Terror, led by an avowed "War President" who has invoked the executive branch's "War Powers", prisoners taken can hardly be considered anything other than Prisoners of War.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

7-8-06 Hamdan Myth

I had linked to a National Review op-ed a few days ago...

http://ka1ogm.blogspot.com/2006/07/7-2-06-hamdan-hysteria.html

...since it was a big deal. The weight of the National Review has since been used to further purport the myth that because Al Qaeda is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, then the GC should not apply to them. This issue is discussed on Andrew Sullivan's blog today...

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/07/hamdan_myths_an.html

Those arguments aside, there is a deeper consideration as regards the Geneva Conventions. The simple fact of the matter is that the Geneva Conventions were preceded by a situation wherein a world power fought a similar war, about as close to the "global war on terror" as you can get when discussing an "enemy" that is neither represented by a distinct national government within any particular borders or confined to any geographic location. That earlier war upon an "enemy" without borders or government was, of course, the war waged by the Third Reich of Germany against the "racially impure". It was Hitler's example of inhumanity against man that spurred the signatories to the Geneva Convention to put into practice the simple idea of "never again."

Today, however, we are not only faced with an indistinct, non-national "enemy" exclusive of borders, but also with a similarly damaged sense of reason amongst our leaders in Washington DC that threatens to bring us closer and closer to the "final solution" of putting that simple idea of "never again" into its grave.

Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld seek to erase history, to make it "okay" to throw away all due process, the same way the Germans did when dealing with the "Jewish problem". They seek to remove any and all Constitutional guarantees from the entire process of capturing, imprisoning, torturing, and killing people who, according to them, are guilty with no right to even argue for their innocence.

If you think there's a big difference between the conduct of the Nazi German government and the US Government in this matter, then you've got another think coming. This is not about the definition of the "enemy", it's about the conduct of the government.

In the words of Larry Flynt, "When the US government guarantees rights for a scumbag like me, then the rest of you are safe."

7-8-06 More Hamdan Hooplah

This time it's from a retired Lt. Colonel, USAF, and her article is in Military Week.com...

http://militaryweek.com/columns/withoutreservation.php?id=44

When a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel with a Phd refers to the current executive branch of the US government as "...a military empire led by tinpot trollops of the Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld variety", I get a sense of proportion that neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post seem to be able to convey.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

7-6-06 Heinleinian News

If you've ever read any of Robert Heinlein's sci-fi books, you will remember his penchant for setting faux news clips into the scenes of his stories. From the late 1950's and through the 60's and 70's, whenever I read any of his stories, the news clips from the future always fascinated me. I would stop reading whenever I came across one of them and ask myself, "Will the future really get that crazy?"

As the years have rolled by, I've occasionally found a real news story that could have easily come right out of one of Heinlein's stories. The criminality in government, the Catholic Church's seemingly never-ending sex abuse scandals, and so on, seem to make Heinlein's little projections into our future (now our present) a foreknowledge that I consider uncanny.

Ultimately, that foreknowledge of Heinlein's may have merely been his sense of humor over man's inability to learn from history, simply because history is just so boringly repetitive. But Heinlein certainly did predict the resurgence of religious fanaticism in America, even the christianist bent that it has more recently taken, along with its effect on our society.

Here's a New York Times article that, were it not so starkly representative of the insanity ripping our society apart, could easily have been one of the better examples of Heinlein's prescience...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/05/us/05liberty.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The only thing missing from the statue is an AK-47 slung over Liberty's shoulder.

Thank you, Robert Heinlein, for warning me of what was to come in your books, so that I'd recognize the lemmings when they arrived.

Monday, July 03, 2006

7-3-06 Divine Encounters

A little over a month ago, I began reading Zecharia Sitchin's "Earth Chronicles" series of six books, starting with "The 12th Planet", which was published in 1976. In addition to the six book series, he's published four additional books, two of which I've read, and two of which I may not bother with, at this point. The most recently read was "Divine Encounters", published in 1995, which was the most laborious of all to force myself to finish reading.

I've posted on this month-long odyssey at some length in three previous posts, "5-25-06 Further Out", "6-9-06 The Creation Story", and "6-18-06 Genealogical Pantheon", so I won't re-state any of those impressions.

The final blow to any semblance of rationality in Sitchin's work comes with "Divine Encounters", however. In the years leading up to this, his books tended to be adventurous and lent insight into the evolution of mythical themes in our civilization. However unscholarly (and only marginally ethno-centric) those earlier books may have been, they were still inoffensive forays that had a flavor somewhat like the TV series "Connections". His 1995 journey into absurdity tends to seem more like a plea for mercy from religious quarters than anything else, however. By elevating the status of the Judaic God right back out of the ten year quagmire he had apparently gotten himself into with "The Earth Chronicles", Sitchin merely promotes the religion he was born into.

I much prefered his somewhat objective blasphemy to the bizarre validations of Judaism that he espouses in "Divine Encounters". Sitchin has come full circle from questioning his religious roots, to making a desperate attempt to elevate that blind religious faith far beyond the mess that he made of it between 1976 and 1995.

It is, without doubt, one of the strangest journeys one can find in print.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

7-2-06 Hamdan Hysteria

I missed this one on Friday...

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTYwOTYzMWY5NGZlNDM0MTg2MDc3ZjkxYmI4ZmY4NmU=

...otherwise, I would have added it to my post Saturday, "More Universality". The level of hysteria (perhaps "freaking out" would describe this one more accurately) in this National Review editorial tends to speak more to the serious level of damage that this decision by the Supreme Court may have done to the Bush Monarchy.

To see the editors of National Review reacting so uncontrollably to the decision tends to move me into the realms of actual hope... Hope for the future of the balance of power in our government, hope for the ultimate censoring of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld disaster of the past five years, and hope that this nation's government will come to its senses before a President of the United States is tried for war crimes.

7-2-06 Privatization

There are lots of arguments for smaller, more efficient government. The first one I can think of is the archetypal "government employee" feeding at the public trough. You know the type I'm talking about. You go to the local Department of Motor Vehicles to renew your driver's license and find yourself investing hours of waiting time to engage in a two minute transaction. When you drove over to the local Department of Motor Vehicles office, you passed the donut shop where seven police cruisers were parked. You had to get directed past a big hole in the road where six Highway Department guys were standing around watching one guy work, and the police officer (required by law to be there at $45/hour overtime pay) directing traffic was, instead, also watching the one guy work. Then, after waiting for at least two and a half hours for the two minute transaction at the Department of Motor Vehicles office, you finally head back home, and on the way you see that the seven police cruisers are still at the donut shop, the hole in the road is covered by a giant steel plate, all lanes are now open, no highway guys or equipment are there, but the officer on overtime is still there. Further down the road, you find the Highway Department equipment parked at the local diner.

Since you've had to take the entire day off from work just to renew your driver's license, you've also figured on stopping at the City Hall to visit the Registrar of Voters office to change your party affiliation from Republican to Democrat. When you pull into the parking lot (that was put there so people needing to do business at City Hall will have a place to park) you find that the lot is filled with late model SUV's and high end sedans with official state license plates. So you park in the nearest municipal lot a half mile away, find a spot, and get out of the car to be belted with the smell of urine. As you walk down the eight flights of stairs in this concrete nightmare (the elevator is out of order), you keep praying that nobody is lurking around the next corner to mug their next victim. Finally, emerging onto the street, you have to pass at least one panhandler with the obligatory handwritten cardboard sign ("Need Money for Alcohol Research"), and make a hasty cross to the other side of the street in order to avoid going anywhere near a drug deal next to the handful of hookers lurking nearby.

Finally, you arrive at City Hall, make your way through the building to the Registrar of Voters office, only to find it closed with a small sign saying, "Out to Lunch". You glance at your watch, see that it's 12:10, and figure they'll be back by one o'clock. So, you wander around for about an hour, then come back at 1:15. The sign is still there. You sit on the nearby bench. After another forty five minutes, the Registrar of Voters window suddenly opens from the inside. You walk over, state your business, and the clerk points to a sign next to the window that says, "Party Affiliation Changes on Friday Only".

Now, I could have just as easily opened this post with a much shorter mention of how there is a perceived level of inefficiency in government. But I wanted to drive the point home a little more graphically. Not only is there the clear evidence of inefficiency all around us, there is outright squandering of public funds, outright waste of public funds, and outright criminality in government. Every week, lately, we have a new public figure either being investigated, indicted, or sentenced.

So, we can easily say that this general idea of local, state, and federal public money being wasted through inefficiency is, indeed, an issue for the public. It's certainly a big issue for me, anyway.

There's the idea that if any of these government employees ever had to try and "make it" in the public sector, they'd probably find a job easily enough, but they'd never survive the initial probationary period of employment without being fired for, basically, not being able to produce enough of any value to be worth keeping. So, they never leave their "public service job" (what a misnomer that is!) for a private sector job, because of the benefits they've accrued... they'd never get unlimited, rolled over sick days, eight weeks of vacation, and fully funded pensions out there. And, on top of all that, they'd actually have to produce something of value.

Well, anyway... I'm sure you can understand that I'm not a fan of this situation in government. This is a problem, and there needs to be a solution. However one would want to characterize this problem, it's generally acknowledged that there's some very definite problem there.

The "bright idea" from the free market camp is "privatization".

This is where the government divests itself of various infrastructure entities and sells the operation to a profit making, private enterprise. At first blush, this idea makes me tingle all over. I can just see the goldbricks quaking in their boots! The operation and management of the Department of Motor Vehicles gets turned over to some slick, well-funded corporation. The hotshot management guys swoop in and lay everybody off to get rid of the entitlements, then hire new people at minimum wage as "customer service representatives", and the whole thing is off and running.

Like the idea?

It really gives one a sense of justice in the world, doesn't it?

Well, it's not going to have any other benefit to the public aside from this one perverted sense of revenge at the outset. After that, it's just going to all go downhill.

What it's going to evolve into is the usual corporate insanity. The infrastructure or service that the privatized business takes over will, by its very nature, demand that the product or service "make money". Instead of maintaining and/or improving the infrastructure or service, the "bottom line" will be the focus. In addition, the fees and costs will have to be increased to "make it work" on paper, so that the bottom line will yield a profit.

In my city, they "privatized" the trash collection to a small extent a few years ago. The city still maintains the collection vehicles, but now they will only collect "city bags" which cost fifty cents (at the outset). The recycling is done via a separate bin, and picked up by a private company, paid out of the proceeds from the sale of the trash bags. Within a couple years, the price of the bags doubled to a dollar. So, the groundwork has been set in place for the city to pirvatize the collection of the "city bags", as well. When that happens, we have only the increasing price of the bags to look forward to.

It's that "pay as you go" thing. On the face of it, it makes sense for the guy who generates a ton of garbage every year to pay more than the guy who only generates a quarter of a ton. It's also an "incentive" for people to generate less garbage. Unfortunately, the sustainability of this model for privatization fails to recognize that less trash equals less revenue, requiring a profit making enterprise to raise the price of the bags. This, in turn, provides even more incentive for people to generate less trash, decreasing the revenues further, and so on.

That's just a local level example. On the federal level, privatization will be much, much grander in scale.

For instance, privatization is the underlying spin in last year's SAFETEA-LU legislation...

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/safetealu/summary.htm

...even though this hardly appears to be the case when you read that $244.1 billion has been appropriated for this ambitious "thing" that the congress passed. But it's all about privatization.

In the overview at the above link, you only have to read down to paragraph six before discovering the impact.

"Innovative finance – SAFETEA-LU makes it easier and more attractive for the private sector to participate in highway infrastructure projects, bringing new ideas and resources to the table. Innovative changes such as eligibility for private activity bonds, additional flexibility to use tolling to finance infrastructure improvements, and broader TIFIA and SIB loan policies, will all stimulate needed private investment."

So, what the interstate highway system is being opened up to is lots of government money enticement on the front end for businesses to "invest" into a privatization of various parts of the highway system, along with the carrot of letting them install toll booths and collect tolls into an undefined future!

The very next paragraph is even more disturbing.

"Congestion Relief --Tackling one of the most difficult transportation issues facing us today – congestion – SAFETEA-LU gives States more flexibility to use road pricing to manage congestion, and promotes real-time traffic management in all States to help improve transportation security and provide better information to travelers and emergency responders."

So, not only can the private companies who enter into running our interstate highways put up toll booths and collect tolls for the rest of eternity, they can ALSO use the PRICING of the tolls to "reduce congestion"!!!

THIS is what "privatization" is all about... a great opportunity for squeezing the public, ostensibly without raising taxes. Of course, we all know that taxes will continue to go up, but the "idea" is that we'll get some tax relief from privatizing various infrastructures and services. It's a cruel joke, because the fees and costs we will be paying as "customers" of the private businesses will be MORE than the tax burdens we now have. And, of course, down the road the reasons for taxes continuing to go up will be "business as usual" in the government.

Consequently, I have to conclude that the whole idea of "privatization" is merely a scam for the usual bands of robbers, thieves, and criminals in our government who will turn it into a golden goose for their cronies in business, both local and national, far removed from the idealized image of privatization, on the face of it, that attracts the public to it.

Imagine a privatized water department. Imagine a privatized police department. Imagine, if you can entertain this level of nightmare, a privatized fire department...

In the end, I would rather have to deal with the tired bureaucratic goldbricks at the Department of Motor Vehicles, I'd rather give the cops a chance to make a big fat paycheck every week by standing construction detail on overtime, and I'd rather see the Highway Department guys take two hour breaks at the local diner. In the end, I find myself espousing a truly conservative view on this whole idea of privatization... leave things the way they are, because this "privatization" alternative is much, much worse.

Saturday, July 01, 2006

7-1-06 More Universality

As the fallout from the Supreme Court decision in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld continues to shower down in all directions, I found this one synopsis of the decision fairly concise...

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/06/30/hamdan-v-rumsfeld-a-tentative-guide-for-the-perplexed/

Without getting partisan and crazy, the major points are dealt with in a manner, I believe, that anyone who has any interest in this situation will find sobering.

The larger issue, in my view, is the concept of universality, wherein our government must act in a manner consistent with the rhetoric about "spreading democracy", fostering freedom for the people of the world, and defending human rights. The United States of America must stand for these principles and apply them consistently across the board.