Death Threats & Racism

I heard on the ABC news last night that death threats directed at President Obama are up 400% from those directed at any other president since they started keeping stats. This was in a story about racism and that was thought to be the primary cause for this. That's scary. Here I thought racism had died down to a managable ember. Guess I was wrong.

If you ask yourself, though, what other reason there could be, and you look at this whole situation honestly and without the blinders of political preference, maybe you, like me, would come to that same conclusion. Mr. Obama's political philosophy, his actions, his legistative programs are not 400% more offensive to the "American Way" than anyone else's have been. Could it just be the contrast between this guy and the last one? Is it too much, too quick?

The polarization in our country is reaching a point that you have to wonder if the whole thing won't just shatter from the build up of internal stresses. Many people are not willing or able to open their minds and consider anything other than what they already believe. The courage on one's convictions is great -- and we should all have that -- but those convictions need to be arrived at as a conscious act, after consideration of all the related facts you can get, and not based on the insane -- but oh, so entertaining -- ravings of a radio lunatic or the pontifications of some ivory tower air-head. I know too many people who will take whatever such men and women say without ever bothering to actually look up the info on what is being said. Trust no one: make up your own mind. Your OWN mind...

Oh, well...maybe it's just the weather. It has been raining a lot.....

Robert Reich on THE PUBLIC OPTION

Check out what Robert Reich -- former Secretary of the Treasury and currently a professor at the University of California, Berkley -- has to say. It's only a couple of minutes of your time and tells it like I think it is.

A couple of things...

Eight years ago – or so – we invaded Afghanistan for the stated purpose of capturing Osama Bin Laden and destroying his little gang of fanatics. It seems our reason for going there got away, is probably over next door in Pakistan. It seems to me our reason for being in Afghanistan no longer applies. I say we come on home.

Now, I do understand the concern about the Taliban, that they may gain the upper hand in Pakistan, getting access to their nuclear weapons stockpile in the process, or that if we leave Bin Laden will come back across the border, set up shop again, and start blowing people up in Dallas. I had a very reasonable, well educated woman explain all that to me in some detail at the grocery store yesterday. My answer was to maintain bases in the area – not combat – and if he sticks his head up, well, that’s what those little drones are for. They work. I don’t think the cost of staying in Afghanistan – the lives of our young men and women, the billions of dollars, are worth it.

The other thing…

I have satellite and that wonderful little box that records stuff, pauses, backs up, and all that. So, on Fridays, after we’ve gone to bed, it records Bill Maher’s show on HBO. I got around to watching last Friday’s episode Sunday. It was a special edition and instead of having a panel to discuss a range of issues, he had only two guests and spend 30 minutes with each one. One of his guests was Bill Moyers. If there is any way you can go back and watch that part of his show I strongly suggest you do so. Mr. Moyers spoke eloquently and in very easily understood terms about Afghanistan and health care. He made the point that health care for everyone is not a political issue, it’s a moral one. He asked what was moral or ethical about a system that decides who gets well – and sometimes, who dies – based on how much money they have? And I so agree with that. I don’t have an answer to the question of how to fix things – other than to point out that it would help is we were not spending billions of dollars a month in Iraq and Afghanistan – but there are many people smarter than I am who should be able to come up with something. Neither party in Congress is serving the best interest of the people at the moment.

So, until the next time…

The President wants to talk to your kids....

Good morning…

Yesterday afternoon the news summary on my home page had a story from the STAR-TELEGRAM, a newspaper in the Dallas/Ft. Worth, Texas area about parents, grandparents, and some school districts objecting to a speech President Obama would make next Tuesday to America’s school children. Then, they covered it on the ABC Evening News last night, noting that there were also objections from Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin. This morning, the Associated Press reports that this is blowing up into a BIG DEAL. So, naturally, I have some thoughts and comments…

The Secretary of Education, Ann Duncan, sent a letter out to all schools saying the President would talk to students about the need to study and work hard to get a good education. Sounds like a pep-talk to students, doesn’t it? Here’s what one politico had to say: “As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality," said Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Steve Russell. "This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq." (AP article) One has to wonder what they are putting in the coffee in Oklahoma these days.

"I think it's really unfortunate that politics has been brought into this," White House deputy policy director Heather Higginbottom said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"It's simply a plea to students to really take their learning seriously. Find out what they're good at. Set goals. And take the school year seriously." Then along comes Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer who said in a statement he was "absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology." (AP) Socialist ideology? Really? Is that what getting a good education is? Is that what parental responsibility and a student’s individual responsibility is all about? Socialist ideology?

“Nobody seems to know what he's going to be talking about," Governor Rick Perry of Texas said. "Why didn't he spend more time talking to the local districts and superintendents, at least give them a heads-up about it?" (AP) Well, there was that letter from the Secretary of Education, and lesson plans were distributed, and it sounds to me like the people who needed the information got it.

Now, back in 1991 President George H. W. Bush also made a little talk to the nation’s school children. At that time there was not outrage from parents, grandparents, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and all that bunch, but Democrats did complain that the President had made his talk a thinly veiled campaign commercial. Is this just payback, well orchestrated and organized by Limbaugh – Beck – et. al?

Come on…has everyone gone nuts?

Plano, Texas PTA council president Cara Mendelsohn worried that the President was cutting out the parent by speaking to the kids when parents were not present. She wondered why he couldn’t make his speech in the evening when parents could sit down with their kids and they could watch it together. I suppose he could, but I wonder how many parents would take the time or make the effort. My wife taught 3rd grade in our local schools for 36 years. I have reason to believe that quite a large number would not.

Anyway, since when do we have to fear a speech by the President of the United States? Any of them? Do anyone honestly believe that in 15 minutes he will totally corrupt the nation’s school children? That he would want to? I’m appalled at this kind of reaction, even from the lunatic fringes.

Today, shortly after 8:00 AM I will call our local school superintendent’s office to say how much I, as a tax paying citizen, and a grandparent of two boys who attend these schools, support the showing of the President’s speech, and some meaningful discussion of why an education is important, setting and working towards personal goals, and how the teachers and the system can help students to achieve.

Sanity has to prevail. It just has to. Doesn’t it?

Mark Lloyd, FCC Diversity Officer & The First Admendment

About leaving comments -- some people have contacted me to say they were unable to leave a comment. In the comments pop-up, where it says "choose and identity" it should work if you check "other". If not, please refer to the Help link......

This was in my email inbox this morning and just begs a reply. It would be fun to go through it line by line, adding my comments and corrections, but space and time is limited. By the way, The Investors Business Daily is a mouthpiece of the right wing, not at all an impartial, fair, or balanced source of news. Their article is crammed full of editorial slight-of-hand. To the friend who sent it, thanks…..
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We all should be afraid, very afraid of the unchecked power of ALL the appointed Czar's. Diversity Czar Threatens Free Speech By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, August 31, 2009 4:30 PM PT 1st Amendment: Mark Lloyd, a disciple of Saul Alinsky and fan of Hugo Chavez, wants to destroy talk radio and says free speech is a distraction. The new FCC diversity "czar" says Venezuela is an example we should follow. When Mark Lloyd was appointed July 29 as the chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission, a nation focused on ObamaCare and a deteriorating economy took little notice. But as angry constituents flood town hall meetings and call in to talk radio, a man dedicated to silencing them sits at the right hand of the president. They share a common hero - Saul Alinsky - who wrote the community organizer's bible, "Rules for Radicals." It speaks of confrontation or, as candidate Obama put it, of "getting in their faces" as a way to obtain power, not from the people or for the people, but over the people. Lloyd has written that we make too much of the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and the press - for "the purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance." We thought we were democratically governed. We thought we could vote as we choose after a vigorous and open debate. Once the major networks served as information gatekeepers controlling what we saw and heard. Now talk radio, the Internet and cable news have enhanced democracy by promoting the free flow of information and discourse. Lloyd wants to stop all that. Fox News host Glenn Beck has done yeoman work in exposing this threat posed by Mr. Lloyd. He points out that in his 2006 book, "Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America," Lloyd wrote: "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. . . . This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. . . . At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies." Lloyd wants to restore local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations and ensure greater local accountability over radio licensing. The kicker is he would also require owners who refuse to give up profitable air time in the name of "localism" to pay a fee to support public broadcasting. He proposes using the existing FCC "localism" requirement, which can mean anything from running more public service announcements to putting Janeane Garofalo on after Rush Limbaugh. Local community organizers would be encouraged to harass conservative stations by filing complaints with the FCC. He essentially proposes extorting money from broadcasters who have the audacity to air the likes of Beck, Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham, all of whom have competed in the marketplace of ideas and won in the ratings, and use it to fund those outfits nobody wants to listen to - like NPR and Air America. As Lloyd writes, the "part of our proposal that gets the dittoheads (Rush Limbaugh fans) upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay." Or worse. The FCC could then say they had enough justification to revoke a station's license if they didn't comply or pay a fee. In true Alinsky style, shut them up by shutting them down. Lloyd praises Hugo Chavez's "incredible revolution" in Venezuela and the way "Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country" by imposing restraints on cable TV and revoking the licenses of more than 200 radio stations" that insufficiently toed the Chavez party line. Lloyd long ago declared war on unbridled talk radio and cable news. He wrote that "our work was not simply convincing policy makers of the logic and morality of our arguments. We understood that we were in a struggle for power against an opponent, the commercial broadcasters." When Mark Lloyd talks about diversity, it is not diversity of opinion. As in the '60s sci-fi series, "Outer Limits," his advice is to "sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear."
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My thoughts….. First, don’t you just love the way that very last sentence, while citing the origin of the quote, really makes it sound like it came from Mr. Lloyd? And, I don't like the term 'czar', with its connotation of 'absolute ruler'. No one in our government has the kind of power a 'czar' had, or anything approaching it. The system is designed to make that impossible and has worked pretty well.

I'm not familiar with Mr. Lloyd, his views, or with what an FCC DIVERSITY OFFICER is supposed to do. I remember hearing something several months ago about someone who wanted to bring back The Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters. Was that him? You may remember that, The Fairness Doctrine. It was an FCC ruling that said anyone using the public broadcast frequencies and getting a license from the FCC to operate had to provide "equal time for opposing views". The FCC abolished the rule in 1987, during Ronal Regan's tenure as president. I always thought The Fairness Doctrine made a lot of sense if you buy the notion that broadcast radio and television have a duty to present all sides of an issue honestly and non-judgmentally so that a person can make better decisions. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine) That idea is based on the fact that broadcast frequencies are a finite resource. There are only so many of them, fewer than there are people and entities wanting to use them. So, when those frequencies are entrusted to an entity, they come with some responsibilities attached, and the government has a right to some control “in the public good”. The Supreme Court has upheld that idea, by the way. You might also want to read an article entitled: THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE; HOW WE LOST IT, AND WHY WE NEED IT BACK by Steve Rendall at http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0212-03.htm. It is well worth the time it takes to read and explains the issue in some detail. A short quote explains what happened to the doctrine, the how and why of it.

"The 80s brought the Reagan Revolution, with its army of anti-regulatory extremists; not least among these was Reagan’s new FCC chair, Mark S. Fowler. Formerly a broadcast industry lawyer, Fowler earned his reputation as “the James Watt of the FCC” by sneering at the notion that broadcasters had a unique role or bore special responsibilities to ensure democratic discourse (California Lawyer, 8/88). It was all nonsense, said Fowler (L.A. Times, 5/1/03): “The perception of broadcasters as community trustees should be replaced by a view of broadcasters as marketplace participants.” To Fowler, television was “just another appliance—it’s a toaster with pictures,” and he seemed to endorse total deregulation (Washington Post, 2/6/83): “We’ve got to look beyond the conventional wisdom that we must somehow regulate this box.”

I’m thinking Mr. Lloyd would like a return to something like The Fairness Doctrine, but he is coming at it from the direction of "broadcasters as marketplace participants". (I also think it interesting, as an aside, that Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Beck, et al, are so opposed.) At any rate, it seems to me that all this flack is based on something Mr. Lloyd wrote and said during his tenure in previous positions. I can’t support him in thinking that Mr. Chavez is a good idea, but then I don’t know if he said that, when, or under what circumstances. A lot of people thought Mr. Chavez was a good idea at the beginning. I'm not at all sure that Mr. Lloyd’s current position puts him in a place where he has any official say in the matter.



But, I will dig a little deeper. Until then, keep thinking.......

Cap and Tax

Yesterday (8-31-09) there was an editorial in the ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE titled "Cap and Trade". Well, I had some thoughts.....

There is a man, Claiborne Deming, who is chairman of Murphy Oil's executive committee, was speaking at the Clinton Library in Little Rock very recently and the writer of the editorial went to hear what he had to say. I didn't, but did hear him on a couple of local NPR radio shows. Since he said the same thing of both of those, I think he probably said about the same thing at the Clinton Library. Things mentioned in the editorial indicate that. Mr. Deming does not like "cap and trade" and the energy bill currently making its way through the congress. Now when you see 'chairman of the executive committee' of Murphy Oil, Arkansas' biggest entry into the oil brotherhood, you just know he's not going to be in favor of any bill that will change the picture on energy. It could cost his company. And him. But I have to give the man credit, what I heard on the radio did make some sense.

One thing Mr. Deming said was that, suppose the country did get very serious about about cutting back on carbon emissions? Then the editorial writer babbles about going back to covered wagons, no electricity. Were those his words or Mr. Deming's? Mr. Deming, on the radio, did not impress me as a man who would say something so silly. Anyway, the point was that just because we did it did not mean the whole world would, especially the developing countries like China and India. Mr. Deming seems to believe that any move to limit carbon emissions would mean a significant loss of economic resources and power for us. He points out the the U. S. is pretty much post-industrial and that our carbon footprint is fairly flat-lined, and wonders what good it would do world air quality for us to start limiting carbon emissions when the rest of the world does not? That's a fair question, I think, with a fairly obvious answer. But, I thought that we, as a country, prided ourselves on being that 'shining city on the hill', and example -- a good example. We certainly have not standing to ask -- or demand -- such limits from other countries if we're not willing to limit ourselves.

Mr. Deming would prefer that instead of calling it cap and trade we all refer to it as 'cap and tax' and I hear this a lot from those opposed to the whole idea. "Cap and trade" has a reasonable sound to it, would appear to be fair, easy, something workable without much, if any, additional cost. However, "Cap and tax" is an alarm bell. Now, truth to tell, I don't understand the whole thing enough to say which is the more accurate. But I am cautious when people start using phrases designed to create fear and loathing. Then, he went on to say that if we're to cut fuel emissions by 83 percent over the next 40 years, people in Arkansas would have to cut the miles driven yearly from 12,500 to 6,700 or about 50 percent. Of course what he did not say -- nor did the editorial writer -- is that that is true only if we make no progress over the next 40 years in fuel economy or even -- heaven forbid -- quit using oil/gasoline/diesel as our primary transportation fuel. You know, there's a lot of R&D going on aimed at just that goal. And much of it appears promising. At any rate, the cost of gasoline over the next 40 years is going to go up, probably very significantly. I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. If we continue to depend on gasoline and diesel to power our cars and trucks, most of us will have to cut back on miles driven anyway. We won't be able to afford the gasoline any more. (Remember last year? $4.00+ per gallon. You think those days are not coming back?)

Mr. Deming says that this cap and trade bill -- HR 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act 2009 -- is going to change our lifestyles significantly over the next 50 years, in ways we won't like, but that it does not tell the American people about those changes. In fact, he suggest, and the editorial writer just fans the fire here, "They" are hiding it all from the people because "they" know the people would not stand for those changes. Come on, our lifestyles are going to change over the next 50 years no matter what we do or do not do. The question is do we want changes brought about by radical attempts to maintain the status quo, or by research and development, by PROGRESS. He makes a plea for tax incentives for companies to purchase new diesel engines for their cars and trucks because the technology has improved so much since the last fleet re-do. What about tax incentives for individuals who add solar or wind power technology to power their homes. That technology has improved a lot over the last several years too. Investing in that will lead to even more improvement in the future, open up all kinds of new jobs and careers.

Then, we trot out nuclear energy. Folks, I'm of mixed feelings about nuclear energy. Sure, other countries have invested in a big way and now get significant amounts of their energy from nuclear power. And yes, there have been only two significant "accidents" that we know of, and only one of those was really serious. Do you want to be living next door to the next really serious one? What to do with all that spent fuel laying around. It's extremely hazardous -- and a potential target of terrorists. No one wants this stuff stored in their back yard! And the promise of cheap energy from nuclear power has never materialized, has it? Did your electrical cost go down when Arkansas 1 and 2 came on line? I didn't notice it if it did. I can't find any real figures from the US or other places to back up the claim to cheap nuclear energy.

I think Mr. Deming's take on this issue is heavily influenced by both his current and former positions in the oil industry and the determination of that industry to make sure it stays on top, that nothing else comes along that is better, cheaper, cleaner, more desirable. And I think the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette is afraid of progress, determined to prevent anything good from coming out of the current administration.

I'm going to read up some more about HR2454. I would suggest that we all do so. You can't have a viable democracy without an informed public and a lot of the people that are trying to inform you have private agendas. Be careful.

Just my thoughts...........