Oh Iowa

Cnn, along with all other news outlets, was filled with political analysts discussing the Iowa upcoming caucasus.

It is the Caucasus system that is remarkable for its undemocratic nature; basically small groups get together, discuss issues and then vote.

Iowa is dominated by conservatives; especially Christian conservatives. This means that Republican Presidential candidates must appeal to the most conservative, reactionary part of their party, in a sparsely populated state.

Some Republicans, I suppose, would say this is good. It "grounds" the candidates in the conservative base of the party.

As a Democrat I think it's nuts!

The country is not represented by Iowa in the least. Most Americans live in urban/suburban corridors, on the East and West Coasts. The average American is urban, multi-racial, and lives in large population centers. The average economic American lives increasingly in the Global Economy.

Neither of these apply to Iowa at all. So how on earth does what Iowa thinks make any difference to the "national interest"?

And then there is the electoral college.

This is an anachronism of not the twentieth century but the eighteenth century. I assume you know how it works.

Is is also deeply anti-democratic.

Because of their racist anti immigration, anti African-American policies, the Republican Party is increasingly the Party of the minority white elderly (and Iowa!) The electoral college system, protects minority interest, and has more than once, elected a President who has less votes that his opponent.

This just happened in 2000. George W. was elected but actually lost the "popular vote" by over a million votes. But, he won Florida and got a majority in the undemocratic electoral college.

The results were disastrous for America. When 9/11 happened, Bush was a minority elected President. To increase his base, he deliberately sought out a foreign conflict; it was all about getting more support. Lying to do this was acceptable, as a minority elected President, the ends justified the means.

America's is changing. People of color are fast becoming the majority in all population centers. Inter-marriage is acceptable, and the country is becoming a blend of cultures, nationalities, and races. America is becoming brown. (I always have wondered why whites decry people of color, but risk their health by lying in tanning booths!).

Although many white racists are aghast at this browning , it really is understandable, given the global nature of the world we live in. The global economy, the internet, and communications have tied the world together like never before.

A racist nation, that elects to isolate itself from the various nations of the world, stands NO chance of economic survival.

As Republicans appeal in Iowa to white only crowds, that are "social conservatives", they isolate themselves more from the world economy. As they lurch further to the right, hoping for another minority elected President (numbers-wise not racially), they offend nations of color with whom the United States must deal with economically (and socially, politically and otherwise).

The world is watching in more ways than one, as racially isolated elderly white men react to, rather than embrace the global economy.

Electing another minority President will be a disaster for the United States economically. "Whites only" won't work in the global economy. Iowa is so far removed from China, India, and Brazil that it is almost comical.

Moreover, the problems and issues in Iowa are light years different than the problems of Los Angeles and Chicago.

If we elected a minority elected President, based on Iowa's values, we will also elect someone who cannot relate to the critical problems of urban America; unemployment, housing, economic revitalization; etc.

Iowa, with an unemployment in single digits, is MORE different from urban America than ever before. Not only are their values different, their economic status is different.

A minority elected President will open the door for widespread urban unrest, upheaval and violence that could end our democratic system of government.

So, Oh Iowa, holds huge risks for our continued existence as a nation.

It isn't just a matter of race, or whites "taking their country back".

Oh sure, they can take it back, and doom us all to second class status in the global economy.

Iowa's values are not America's values. They used to be, in 1940 for example. But it "ain't 1940" anymore, and is sure as hell "isn't Kansas" either.

The midwest that used to be America's core stopped representing American forty years ago. It figures that conservatives would still hold that notion, they usually are fifty years behind the times.

Go to Salinas sometimes,or Chicago, or San Francisco: THAT is America and is becoming more America all the time.

And it isn't about race either, it is about the world, and how it has changed, and how our economy is not our economy anymore....it is the global economy, and whites make up a minority of that economy.

Oh Iowa...Oh no Iowa...

Just Don't Get It

I have several friends who once were Democrats and now are conservative Republicans. Some even still maintain their Democrat registration, but vote hard line conservative.

All of them have been in one way or another adversely affected by the changes that have damaged the middle class over the past thirty years.

Their pensions have declined, their children's employment has suffered, their standard of living has declined. Many are still working, long after I, a public employee, retired. They resent that by the way.

They are having to work because they have little or no pensions, their health care is a mess, they aren't old enough for Medicare; etc.

The bottom line is that many of my peers are either working to provide for themselves with no end in sight, or working to support their uneployed children.

Shasta County has over 20% unemployed right now and things seem to be getting worse.

Regardless, they support the cons, they rant about welfare, they call the President a socialist, they vote hard Republican for the very people who are cutting their throats socially, economically and politically.

We have a thirty year Congressman, who has done nothing for the county, but has become a multi-millionaire during his tenure. How he did this over thirty years, on a Representative's income is beyond me. But, at last check, he has admitted to a net worth or seven million (it has been reported in other circles as thirty million).

You can almost see the standard of living decline. And my buddies rant about Obama, criticize the Democrats at every turn.

Interestingly, Shasta County is a small minority in a California that is becoming more democratic all the time. This has meant no political clout in Sacramento to deal with our economic nightmare.

Demographic studies show this will not change, as the state becomes more diverse racially, more progressive politically, while Shasta County goes more conservative.

All around us are artifacts of the New Deal. Shasta Dam, one of America's largest, is a cornerstone of a host of federal and state water reclamation projects. Government is everywhere, federal forests, federal water reclamation;etc.

And the cons in Shasta County loath the government. They hate government in every form. The Tea Party is a mainstay around here. The City Council is hard right, whereas in the past it was non-partisan.

I cannot understand this. How can people be so conservative when the economic system is almost abusing them in its unfairness.

The only thing that makes any sense is race. Shasta County has hardly any racial minorities at all. Hispanics are a small group here, it seems the Latino Wave stops in Red Bluff (thirty miles south).

Of course when I bring race up to my friends, they go ballistic, claiming they are not racists. It is all economics they say. Then, they attack the poor, as welfare cheats who are lazy, shiftless and are "refusing to take Burger King jobs to stay on unemployment".

One friend angrily told me he knows of several people, all on welfare, that moved into a large custom house, combine their welfare, and "live like kings". The Democrats are to blame for this he says, they coddle the lazy.

So, in my buddies' world, the recession is all self made, there are jobs, people are refusing to work because of government hand outs. I am reminded of the passengers on the Titantic who chanted it will be ok, as the ship sunk.

Of course, statistics, evidence, reality all are opposite of these myths. But, no matter how many times it is shown that 5 to 10 people are pursuing every job, that well paying jobs with benefits are virtually non-existent, that their lives are spiralling down and down with no end in sight, they STILL hold to their position that by gawd......it is not the fault of an unfair economic system, people just are too lazy.

I don't get it....I just don't.

Of course, when I say that my buddies say...see...another liberal who is clueless.

And they are still struggling, and their children are losing hope....

And Fox News continues its propaganda...

I think all of us are clueless.....

He Don't Know Nothing

Recently I wrote a piece about redevelopment agencies, and how efforts to repair and build downtown areas had been hijacked in the past 50 years by urban sprawl proponents. I was talking about how local governments had failed, and most of us didn't pay attention, because frankly redevelopment is a pretty mundane and boring thing.

My point was, while we weren't looking, speculators and quick buck artists have moved in, modified redevelopment efforts to line their pockets, and left California with millions of square feet of retail space that will be empty for the next fifty years.

One of the criticisms of my piece was that I am an "educator", not a businessman so don't know anything about such matters.

"You never made a payroll, hired or fired", or did all those esoteric things business people do.

Oh really? I was a school administrator for most of my educational career. In the district I worked most of my career, we had a payroll of about 400! I hired, I fired, I dealt with the union. I administered workman's comp, I balanced budgets (or at least tried); etc., etc.

The idea that government is not a business is ridiculous. The myth that "if only we ran the government like a business, things would get better" is ridiculous.

Every governmental service, every one, uses the same business priciples as private enterprise.

Sometimes that can be a problem, especially with social services, because people are not widgets. Using production models to manage large scale social programs often backfires. In fact, running social programs solely like a business is a bad idea.

The record is repleat with examples of "business people" trying to run school districts and failing; not because business principles don't apply, but because they don't understand the culture.

That was the point of my previous article. Lewis Mumford (that nobody bothered apparently to Google), studied and wrote about how urbanization created a culture, that greatly affected government. That is proven by a study of redevelopment and urban sprawl, which affects our culture today in mostly negative ways.

For example, dispite the fact that there are many more of us in smaller areas, Americans today are more isolated from one another. How can that be?

We spend hours each week sitting alone in our vehicles, droning away at 10 miles per hour, going to and fro from work. We listen to talk radio, that rants about the damn government, the damn liberals, and pushes a conservative agenda constantly.

It is no wonder that people hate government, distrust public schools, want to give tax cuts endlessly; even though they don't work to much help the econony.

A propaganda machine works on us everyday; one , by the way, that does not care about truth.

So we watch, and we bemoan our helplessness, as our political system sinks into dysfunctional oblivion.

We can still change this. We can read. We can use empirical evidence to prove that tax cutting does NOT stimulate job creation; that governmental programs, can be well run, and can revitalize our economy without waste.

And, these can be implemented and not cost liberty, or the private sector, any distress.

In fact, liberty, social justice, and even economic justice can co-exist.

But our culture will have to change. We will have to get out of our gas guzzling cars, agree to pay higher taxes, and demand that our tax money be used efficiently and well.

And yes, we can run government like a business; a caring, compassionate and competitive business for the best intersts of us all.

It is right there, in the Preamble to the Constitions...."We the People.....

Rant a little...to rats

Ok, I know most of my posts are calm, well stated, exercises in cool reason: (?) Anyway forgive me but here is a rant: Let's call it Rant Points...or Rat Points depending on your perspective.

1. To the House of Representative Tea Party: Rats to you for consistently stopping bipartisan compromise which has a direct effect on keeping my friends and family unemployed. Rats to you for actually voting against the extention of a tax cut for wage earners, which result in a tax increase for millions, an end to unemployment for many, and higher medical bills for the elderly. Raise taxes and cut spending during a recession will bring on a depression.....FDR 1936 (which it did by the way).

2. To the Heath "Care" Insurance Industry: Rats to you for refusing to disclose how you set rates while most of you make record profits from employer provided health insurance. This you did in the depths of the worst recession since the "Big One. Your premium rates outpace inflation by almost 100%....that's right 100%! So, while many cannot even get health insurance because they don't have a job, those that do are getting soaked; and the small businesses that strain to provide a decent benefit simply cannot do it.

3. To the Cons who have "kill Obamacare" in front of the loaded Supreme Court. Rats to you. Read #2.

4. To Newt: Rats to you because I detect your slimy hands behind #1.

5. To the the smug, medicare receiving, social security receiving old farts: Rats to you for being so damn selfish that you have thrown your children and grandchildren under the bus, voting Tea Party because you can't stand the idea of a Black Man being President while collecting entitlements that you think should be cut for the next guy.

6. To Big Oil: Rats to your lying, profits worshipping, polluting rotten souls. Thanks for ruining the planet...see Redding California weather forecast for Christmas, 60 degrees with howling and warm north winds...this is Christmas day for Christ's sake (pun intended).

7. To the global warming deniers: See # 7. Rats to phony patriots, big oil lovers, selfish, short sighted, expediency worshipping, science liars, who are quite literally sponsoring the end of times (and not in a religious way).

8. To the homo haters: Rats to those of you who divide churches with their hatred, while cheating on your wives of either gender. That's right, homo hating and hypocracy go together.

9. To Americans: Rats to all of us for tolerating and even voting for these fools.

Sprawl You All

Governor Brown, as part of his first actions in office, and at great shock to his developer followers, stopped state sponsorship of redevelopment agencies. They are still screaming! The fact that Brown is in his 70s, and gives a rip about re-election is not lost on this writer for sure.

Brown acted primarily to help balance the seriously underfunded California state budget. But, Brown was up to more than just balancing the budget; he was attacking the source of the housing bubble, the source of our unbalanced economy, and yes, the source of our present economic misery.

When I was in graduate school, I studied Government. Oh, you are probably saying, THAT is the source of our misery; Government.

Not quite!

Now there is Government and there is political science. Political Science is the fun side of government, the clash of ideas, biographies of great leaders; etc.

Local governmental planning and development begins to fog over the lenses pretty quick. I remember being assigned readings from Lewis Mumford, who wrote in the thirties about the dynamics of urban growth. He basically studied the growth of cities, and how that reflected the culture. Go ahead, google it...not exactly the most exciting topic.

I can tell I am losing you already. I can see the eyelids dropping.....

But, local government and local development is really where good government needs to be. Our problem is not government, our problem is the lack of anti-speculative government.

The ways communities grow, renew, or die are essential parts of governmental planning. Good government results in good planning, which causes in healthy growth. Bad government comes when the speculators run the show!

Since some real conservatives might still be reading this (a longshot), look for example at the Central Valley Project in California. This massive governmental plan, was developed over years, by both political parties, to counter the damage placer gold mining had caused to California's aquafers. Rivers and streams had been mauled by the gold rush over fifty years, turning the fertile Sacramento Valley into a flood zone, and filling the rivers with sludge. The result was economic disaster for California.

Hum......economic disaster caused by short sighted economic greed....hum....

Anyway, the Central Valley Project, a well planned governmental effort, has resulted in a series of dams, that are still criticized by ecological purists, but have certainly worked to reclaim thousands of acres of farming land with huge economic benefits. We are talking the most important economic engine in California is due to the Central Valley Project.

In short, good government planning, which is boring planning by bureaucrats who nobody knows or cares about, works for the benefit of us all.

It seems the more boring and mundane the project is, the better it turns out. The less speculative in nature the better. Long term, reliant but reasonable return on investment is best.

Brown, who is just such a bureaucrat, no matter what you think of him politically, is a political and governmental wonk. That is, he has lived in governmental dynamics and politics, particularly at the state and local level, all of his life. He has a deep and thorough understanding of local planning and its implications for our culture.

He understands that boring, thorough planning, works in the long run; not expedient quick profiteering.

In attacking our redevelopment planning sector in California, he is calling our attention to a toxic and harmful trend in local urbal planning that threatens California's prosperity.

It is not high taxes or over regulation, in fact, it is speculation and expediency that have us in trouble.

The enemy is urban sprawl, and the destruction of downtown areas. This has NOT been a natural consequence of growth at all, but a calculated urban planning strategy, fueled by the petroleum industry, fostered by real estate interests, and pushed always by quick buck artists.

At its core is rampant short sighted speculation; from the same people that brought us the recent housing bubble and Wall Street speculation. These charlatans are killing us!

And, it has not been the province on either political party; both have participated and both are guilty. It really is not a political issue. It is a planning issue. It is a moral issue.

It really is not difficult to understand (look out here comes the dull, boring local government lecture).

In the 50s and 60s local government embarked on redevelopment plans. This is not surprising considering the Great Depression started in 1929, and then came World War II, not allowing any financial resources to be available for urban renewal. The government was too busy keeping people alive, or later killing them, to spend much fixing a downtown sewer.

In the fifties and sixties, local governments noticed the basic infrastructures were wearing out. Downtowns were becoming areas of blight, the wealthy were moving out of neighborhoods into the suburbs.

To counter this need, redevelopment efforts were started at the local and state level, with some influence even from the federal government. The idea was to counter urban blight and rejuvenate downtown. This goal was hijacked.

Expediency got in the way. Since people were fleeing the downtown area (mostly to get away from the people of color who lived there); redevelopment was "hijacked" by developers who shifted it from downtown revitalization to suburban sprawl.

And, the automobile culture was exploding at the time. The national highway system was growing, tying remote areas to urban centers. Shopping malls replaced downtown development as the sign of urban economic health.

And sprawl intensified. At first the sprawl was not significant, a few miles out of town. Then it grew into twenty, thirty miles. Why worry, everyone had a car, so a few more miles to work (which stayed in the downtown area with the advent of multi-story high rises) was easy.

Today this has resulted in the average urban communter having a 40 mile drive one way to work every day. This commute is usually at about 10 miles per hour, spewing tons of CO2 and pollution into the atmosphere. It is so bad that to drive in Sacramento in the morning or late afternoon is virtually impossible. It is so bad that the San Jose Mercury devotes several columns each day to the "choke points" (no pun intended) of the freeway madness that communters endure everyday. People spend hours each day in their cars, going 5 to 10 miles an hour, cussing the madness.

Meanwhile train tracks are empty. The bullet train project is attacked as madness, as wasteful, by a car culture that thinks nothing of spending billions a day going nowhere fast!

Californias pay so much for cars and insurance, that they even recalled a Governor, for having the temerity to renew a vehicle license fee level, which was called for by law by the way, and elected yet another actor who this time didn't have clue what he was doing.

The actor then reduced the vehicle fee, was a momentary hero, than flopped around bewildered when the budget didn't balance. That fee non-renewal by the way was tax deductable, so its impact to the average taxpayer was minimal. The impact to local governments and now schools was huge!

Meanwhile, multiple car ownership was encouraged, especially of gas hogs, that now sit in commuter's driveways since they can't afford the gas to run them! And people still sit in traffic all day, every day....on and on and on....

Having fun yet?

And who benefited from the sprawl? Land was certainly cheaper the further you went out of town. Speculators swooped in, buying up large tracts of what was farming land, at low prices, and got rich using local governmental redevelopment funds (at taxpayer expense), to build auto malls and shopping malls that now lie vacant.

Developers became quick buck artists, looking always for the fast and easy profit.

Let's add Prop 13 to the mix. This tax con, rewards speculators and large developers far in excess of homeowners, resulting in billions of dollars of profit for the apartment and mall developers, and pennies of tax savings for the ordinary homeowner. And, local schools and services have been cut ever since.

How, you might ask, can someone make money building malls that nobody occupies? Try capital gains tax games, where a loss actually cuts your tax liability. Trust me, they are making money; they are the 1%. We are the 99%, left holding the bag, as our tax dollars help redevelop areas that actually kill our economy and cost jobs.

It is kind of like Potterville in "It's A Wonderful Life", where the rich banker, speculator, if left alone, ruined the little town with his quick buck dishonestly. In fact, it is EXACTLY LIKE POTTERVILLE!

The result of what must be called basic dishonesty, was sprawl for sprawl's sake. Of course the driving force was that it was cheaper and quicker.

Downtown real estate costs more than Farmer Brown's almond orchard. To develop a flat area is cheaper than tearing down an old building and putting up a new one. Short cuts are good business. Hey, its profit, "Greed is Good"...

But, as most of us know, cheaper is not always better. You get what you pay for is not an irrelevant saying. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If it looks too good to be true, it isn't.

Speculation will hurt your on the long run....

I could go on and on....But you get the picture.

I live in a very poor county that has been hit hard by the recession. Right now there are plans to build a large shopping mall in the middle of prime farm land, at least ten miles outside of Redding. This is being pushed by a developer from Idaho (?), and local builders as the panacea to stimulate Shasta County's economy.

And you should hear the builders salivate. Of course, Redding right now has millions of square feet of retail space that lies vacant. The old malls are less than half occupied, so where will the renters come from?

Don't worry about that, say the developers. We will build it and they will come.

They never come!

The locals don't think so, and have floated a petition that is putting the development to a vote.

People are tired of the sprawl, and are even willing now to forego the temporary economic stimulus that the mall supposedly represents; the stimulus never comes. They also smell a rat.

Brown, who unlike most of us, actually revels in this stuff, has been around so much government that he knows urban sprawl, as it is presently practiced in California, is toxic to real economic growth. Read carefully........this nonsense is killing us!

How can this be, you ask? How can redevelopment be bad?

Here are a few toxic consequences:

1. Building office space far in excess of demand, in remote places makes NO SENSE!

2. Spending millions of dollars of tax money, developing remote shopping malls while the downtown area rots makes NO SENSE!

3. Catering to quick buck artists, whose only motivation in developing a farm into a parking lot to make a quick buck makes NO SENSE!

4. Forcing urban renewal forty miles out of town, or building an auto mall when car sales are way down makes NO SENSE!

5. Being at the mercy of developers, who attack anyone who questions their motives as being "anti-growth" makes NO SENSE!

6. Sacramento's Natomas area, built on a flood plain, pushing dwellings miles away from downtown, into a flood plain, makes NO SENSE!

7. Expanding freeways, adding lanes, encouraging multiple ownership of cars that are poisoining the atmosphere and accelerating global warming, makes NO SENSE.

I could go on and on.

We have been duped, fooled, lied to and manipulated. Lewis Mumford would have a field day with the pure speculative nonsense that particularly California has practiced for the past fifty years regarding urban planning.

The housing bubble, that should have been a clear lesson to us of the dangers of spleculation, poor planning, and the quick buck, is deeply engrained in the urban sprawl, and false, dishonest, and lousy urban planning "redevelopment" of the past fifty years.

It is all a toxic brew, that is poisoning us.

We have fifty years of bad governmental planning, and frankly crooked dishonest speculators to overcome.

We should be giving credit to Governor Brown for finally calling our attention to this fraud. We should be putting some of these crooks in jail!

Development for development's sake is a fraud. Short term profit and gain that contain disastrous consequences in the future, like developing the Natomas area north of Sacramento, is a fraud.

If there are good chances the wheel will fall off the wagon when you go to fast...it probably will.

Finally there is Jacksonville, California. A few years ago I visited Jacksonville to do a school accreditation. As I drove into town, I could not help but notice a huge development. It was an auto mall, one of the biggest I had ever seen.

At the high school I asked about it. Some of the teachers were skeptical, worried about building such a large auto mall almost 50 miles from the nearest population center. But, others, believing the developers, expressed hope that the new mall would be a source of employment for the local economy, that had been suffering from the shift from logging and agriculture to suburbia.

Three years later, I returned for another visit. I looked to my right, as I came into town, and saw the auto mall, closed! Acres of pavement, thousands of square feet of space, emply, closed.....nada!

I asked about it when at the high school again. I was told, this time with a tinge of anger, that the mall had opened all right, in 2007, hired lots of people, then crashed to a close with the recession.

As it turned out, the people in Sacramento, for whom the mall was intended, would not drive the fifty miles to Jacksonville to visit the shiny new mall to buy a car they didn't need and now could not afford.

The city if Jacksonville, I was told, was trying to lure tenants to occupy the thousands of square feet of retail space that was just sitting there. Of course, no tax proceeds were coming from the mall, it was vacant; and prospects for occupancy were nill. Jacksonville basically got screwed!

So Jacksonville was left holding the bag, while the developers profited from the redevelopment taxpayer dollars and enjoyed the tax break caused by the loss.

Urban sprawl wins again...sprawl you all....

What Are Your Belliefs?

Ultimately it comes down to what you believe.

There is an incredible struggle going on in this country for your beliefs. Fox News, MSNBC, and countless Internet Bloggers are writing a blizzard (like this one) of appeals to your belief structure.

It is not hard to understand why it is so hard to know, "What to believe?"

Empirical evidence is a place to start. There is empirical historical, social and economic evidence to back up many of the political and economic appeals to belief.

Unfortunately the closer you get to present time, the more conflicting the empirical evidence is. This occurs naturally, because historical perspective adds veracity to belief structures.

For example, in the latter part of the twentieth century the struggle between capitalism and communism was the premiere belief struggle in the world.

Today, in 2011, we can look back at how communism in the USSR failed, and was trashed in the rest of Eastern Europe. It appears that communism lost to capitalism.

Except for China of course, where a blend of communism and capitalism is beginning to conquer the economic world. The empirical economic evidence seem to be proving that a blend of both economic belief structures is the most competitive.

There was virtually no one in the twentieth century, who predicted this. But the evidence seems to be bearing out that a blend of capitalism to encourage invention and innovation, and communism to bring government regulation and overall planning, works!

The same could be said in foreign policy. Take Iraq for example. The United States poured trillions of dollars into Iraq to "establish democracy", with few results. Moreover, America disregarded her economy, cutting taxes while spending enormous sums to "nation build" in Iraq.

Today, we are counting down the days until the United States pulls ALL of its troops out of Iraq.

And what did we gain, empirically?

Vietnam is probably far enough in the past to use empirical historical and ecnomic evidence to determine if the foreign policy that dominated the 1960s and 1070s was justified.

Clearly, 55, 000 American dead and millions of Vietnamese dead were not worth it.

Vietnam is a blended economy. It is copying its foremost rival, and traditional enemy China in world economic behavior. It has shown no aggression to its neighbors, discrediting totally the "dominoe theory" that led millions into battle against the "Communist Menace".

Empirically there was no menace. And, Vietnamese were right who said it was a war of national liberation, not communism versus capitalism.

It seems that the more ideology pushes an agenda, the greater the odds empirical evidence will prove that agenda was dead wrong.

Hitler for example pushed the agenda that the Jews were responsible for the Great Depression, and his brand of fascism would create a "thousand years" of German hegemony.

Clearly empirical hisorical evidence has disproved his agenda and theories at the cost of millions of lives and trillions of dollars, marks; etc.

So beware of ideologues! Take Newt Gingrich for example, who declares that Muslim Law is out to conquer the world. We need a crusade against Shariah Law his agenda says.

So, if he is elected, his belief structure, which has trouble with empirical evidence from the beginning, would plunge the United States into an idelological war with a legal system that hardly anyone can define, or find for that matter.

It is what you believe, but try to find some valid evidence empirically..

Otherwise you fall victim to demogogues!

My Way or Highway

We all sit and watch with disgust as the Congress is hopelessly deadlocked.

The national deficit is at record levels. There is little doubt that over time, this deficit will retard the growth and recovery of our economy. The short term effects however are less than certain.

Meanwhile conservatives try everything they can think of to cut spending, especially in programs that they hate like Social Security and Medicare.

Medicaid has been cut severely in several states. Welfare has been cut. Schools, public services are being cut everywhere.

So, even though there is gridlock in Congress, conservatives have been successful on several levels in cutting and ripping the economic safety net throughout the country.

Many Americans think there is some kind of strange balance between the two philosophies, that there is some kind of tie in the struggle to change American society. This is simply not true.

Conservatives are winning all over the country. In California, the "free" public university system has long ago been destroyed. Tuition and fees have gone up dramatically, making the system both not free, nor inexpensive. Thousands of middle class college students are finding themselves priced out of a college education.

This led to the famous pepper spraying of students at U.C. Davis (not exactly a hotbed of radicalism), who were protesting the endless tuition hikes.

So, there is NO balance between conservative political philosophy and progressives. Conservatives are winning.

The reason for these victories is conservatives have a 24/7 propaganda machine in Fox News and talk A.M. radio. These propaganda outlets are literally selling the public on several myths, and are dramatically shaping public opinion. Meanwhile, progressives have MNBC and that is about it, to counter this avalanch of propaganda.

So, middle class, ordinary Americans, who used to side with the New Deal philosophy because of the huge gap between the rich and poor, now support positions that only encourage that gap to grow.

Today America has a dramatic imbalance between the very few fabulously rich, and the rest of us. The 99% movement really is not accurate in its depiction of economic reality; it should be more like a 99.998% movement. Wealth is accumulating more in a few thousand mega-rich citizens, many of whom are conservative fascists. The Koch brothers for example are not putting millions into conservative propaganda but billions!

And the damage to democracy is palatable.

We are sliding into a fascist state, run by plutocrats, with myths holding the entire structure in place.

If history is an indication, this will ultimately implode, resulting in widespread protest, repression, and the evolution of a fascist dictatorship.

It is coming folks, unless you decide to turn off Fox and Limbaugh!!