Raiding the cooking jar

Last night I was listening to an interesting interview with an author of a book (no, I don't recall his name or the name of the book - that would be far too easy). He was talking about the huge waste of money and resources that have been poured into Iraq. By way of illustration, he said that at the beginning of the "war" we sent cargo planes full of money. I believe it was 1600 tons of $100 bills! (Around $20 billion dollars) This money was to be used as needed, basically without any requirement for accountability or tracking - it was just the pocket money for keeping things going. At one time our leader over there had $600 million in $100 in his office to be handed out has he saw fit. The net outcome of all of this cash without accountability was that it was wasted, it basically just disappeared into thin air (I suppose a lot of it was eventually used to buy weapons to point back at us). Because of the environment of free wheeling spending with so much cash floating around, we managed to create a situation where corruption and graft are so prevalent that it is almost impossible to do business or deal with the government without bribes and other forms of illegal activities and payoffs. So we managed to set up another corrupt government.

This got me to thinking about what is happening to the government in general. It feels to me like the current administration is making a giant grab for the wealth of the United States. They are in the process of taking as much as they can get (which appears to be a LOT), without any consideration of what happens to those of us who they are taking from. There are many examples that lead me to this conclusion. Little issues like the person who makes secret deals with the energy companies concerning national energy policy happens to be a huge player in energy (oil). The folks in the administration who are playing chicken little with bird flu and are ordering hundreds of millions of units of a vaccine that has been shown to not work happen to own the company that makes the vaccine. The folks who get non-bid contracts for rebuilding everything (Iraq, New Orleans, etc), happen to be big players in the companies who get those very same contracts. It just keeps going on and on. Every time there is a really big spending of money, it amazingly goes to the folks who are making the decisions on how to spend the money. I find it odd that nobody seems to ask the question of who is going to get extremely rich should the Social Security be changed to require putting the money into private investments. Also, when we hear anything about fixing the medical mess it is always in the form of making it so everyone can buy private insurance - this is the source of the problem, not a solution. But it will make the insurance companies much richer.

All of the decisions being made by the administration seem to be geared toward making rich people richer, they have nothing to do with the welfare of the country, the people, the environment, the world political situation, improving education or anything else even vaguely connected to what there job is.

It amazes me that this is invisible to the vast majority of our population. What is it that prevents them from seeing that they are being ripped off and are headed for a disaster? I suspect it is related to their own greed. For one thing, they keep thinking that they (each individual person) will somehow get in on the scam. In addition, they believe that they will get their personal way with regard to religious matters. They are willing to do anything if they feel that their religious issues will get supported. They really want everyone to be like they are and don't like the idea of other approaches, that means sharing and being tolerant, and that doesn't feel good.

It looks to me like unless something is done quickly, we are spiraling into a huge and deadly problem. Maybe it is already too late. We keep asking ourselves why the Roman empire collapsed and could it happen to us. It looks like we get a front row seat, and yes it can happen to us.

California job loses

There is an interesting article in the Oct 26 San Jose Mercury News concerning the myth of companies leaving the state of California because of high costs and a poor business climate. The part that is interesting is that jobs and businesses are not leaving the state in any significant numbers. While it is true that companies are leaving, or more commonly expanding, to new areas - it is also true that many companies are coming here to do business. According to the article, which is based upon an independent study of the issues, the net loss is less than one tenth of one percent per year.

The reason that this is important is that the huge flood of businesses leaving the State is the main reason that the governor is using for implementing many of the "business friendly" changes. The business friendly changes are designed to make more money flow to the owners of the businesses, and less to the state in the way of taxes (or environmental protection). As it turns out, there is no need to do that unless you happen to be the owner of a business that will be aided by these new regulations.

Once again, we the people are getting the shaft in order to funnel more money to the rich. This seems to be the order of the day from our representatives. Who are they representing? Certainly no one that I know. They are representing themselves and their friends. Little things like being able to purchase Hummers for free make you wonder how far they will go in their greed. (The free Hummer deal was last year, it is now a bit more expensive to purchase one. They were free because of the tax breaks that you could get if you were in a high enough income bracket. Since Arnold has 12 of the things, I guess he is in a high enough bracket. I am exaggerating with the "free" part, they weren't free, they ended up costing about $1500 after taxes.)

How do we get out of Iraq?

I heard an interesting idea about how to “solve” the problem of our not having a way out of Iraq.  The idea is that we could cancel all of the contracts to “repair” Iraq, effective maybe next March.  Then we could let the contracts over again, but this time open it up to companies from any country.  Then we could admit that we need help with managing the project, and ask for help from the international community.
It seems like this approach might work.  It would take a bit of eating humble pie to get there, but once that was taken care of it might turn out to be a way to turn the whole mess into a win on all of our sides.
The main problem that I see with it is that we wouldn’t want to be the sole source of funding, and then have the money go to all sorts other countries.  Seems like Iraq actually has enough money, in the form of oil, to pay for this work. Why not find a way to make that happen.  We were promised that we would do that when this whole thing started, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.  I think it would have to happen.  We could just say that we can’t afford to foot the entire bill, and that the other countries have to help in significant ways, or Iraq will have to pay for its own reconstruction.  Iraq isn’t a poor country, it is just a disorganized one.

Miers and the Supreme Court

I find the positions that the local talk show-folks are taking concerning Harriet Miers
to be totally mind boggling.  I am hearing them say that her nomination is great, and that they are taking the "glass is half full" position.  How can that position in any way represent a half full glass?

Clearly, Miers is inexperienced on the subject of the legal system from the point of view of being a judge.  Therefore, she will most likely have to depend to a large measure on her "gut" reactions or opinions to things.  That, of course, means that she will be depending upon her personal morals and mores in her decision making.  That might be OK with me if they happened to align with my personal morals and mores, but I suspect that they won’t.  We know that she sides very closely with Bush's opinions.  We know what those are, and they don't fit into any 1/2 full model that I am aware of.  She is almost certainly a very strong, probably fundamentalist, Christian (evidenced by the crosses that she wears).  My guess is that she is probably a “born again” Christian with a very conservative, fundamentalist, point of view.

So we know that she doesn't have the necessary background, she is probably a fundamentalist "born again" Christian and is almost certainly extremely conservative (otherwise she would not be friends with Bush or his administration).  The contention that because she has no track record, and that she will probably not give Congress much information about her beliefs, means that she will be OK is absurd.  I have heard no reason to assume that she will be anything other than a very right wing, highly religious, opinionated judge.  I think it is necessary to probe much more deeply into her points of view before we blindly accept that she will make decisions that are good for the country.

The local media has the audacity to imply that no matter what her current beliefs are, they might change for the better.  Sure it is possible that they might change for the better, they might very well change for the worse.  Assuming (or maybe it is hoping) that a person might change in ways that we like doesn't make sense to me. I think it is absurd to chose someone who appears to have what we consider to be negative attributes without finding out for sure what we are getting.  Hoping that they might possibly turn out to be good, or that the person might change their point of view in the future, doesn’t make sense to me.  Why not find out what she thinks and what makes her qualified for the job, and then make a decision based on that?

I am interested in what is meant by the administration’s statements that she will strictly uphold the laws, and not make them, means.  “Harriet Miers will strictly interpret our Constitution and laws. She will not legislate from the bench," Bush said. This sounds great, but what does that mean?  Does that mean that she will interpret them from the “Christian” point of view?  Maybe it means from the point of view of the time when they were written as opposed to today.  This could be just what we need, or it could be just what we don’t need.  The reason that we need a Supreme Court is to help interpret the Constitution in light of our present needs.  The Constitution needs to be interpreted because it gives general guidelines and goals, rather then specific details, of our rights and freedoms.  To strictly interpret the Constitution in terms that were in the minds of the original authors means that we will be losing centuries of learning and growth.  Our society has changed over the years. The interpretation of the Constitution must be flexible enough to keep up with those changes.  A “strict interpretation” may not be what we need to help guide us into the future.