Satire

 

Those Were The Days (Theme to All In The Family)        

And you know where you were then,         

Girls were girls and men were men,

Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again,     

Didn't need no welfare state         

Everybody pulled his weight,          

Gee our old Lasalle ran great,         

Those were the days.

Archie Bunker was an object of satire.  He was not meant to be a taken as an ideal.

Jonathan Swift, in his essay A Modest Proposal, proposes that the country ameliorate poverty in Ireland by butchering the children of the Irish poor and selling them as food to wealthy English landlords.  He meant that as satire, not as a serious proposal.  Those who did not get the satire treated it as a serious proposal. 

Similarly Norman Lear’s All in the Family was a meant to satirize, not idolize, Archie Bunker’s behavior.  You can see that in the lyrics of the theme song.  Herbert Hoover was not an ideal president.  The LaSalle was a discontinued automobile line. Everyone knowing their place was an unfair restriction on those in “lower” places.  You were meant to laugh at Archie Bunker, not agree with him.

It is a sad that there are those who have adopted Archie Bunker and his ideas as an ideal. They have missed the point of the satire.  Perhaps we can also interest them in a recipe for sautéed Irish babies?

The Future

 The Future

Give me back the Berlin wall    

Give me Stalin and St. Paul     

I've seen the future, brother     

It is murder.

The future for Leonard Cohen may have been murder, because too many people did not believe in a future.

If you do not believe in a future, then money spent on insurance, spent on agencies to deal with future disasters, or money put aside to deal with the future is wasted.  For example, if people do not spend on health insurance, then when, for example, there is a pandemic, they may have no health insurance available to deal with that pandemic.  If an employer does not provide sick days, perhaps his employees will come to work while sick.

Social Security Insurance is a government operated insurance program that was instituted to compel people to save for their old age. Insurance does not have to be government sponsored.  I live in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where the ability to register a car is contingent on that car having private automobile insurance.  

That is it wise to put aside money for the future is not a new concept.  Almost 2500 years ago Aesop’s fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper discussed the moral virtues of hard work and planning for the future.  But there are those who do not believe in a future.  That also includes those who believe that the current conditions will not continue because there will soon be a doomsday that is either man-made, (e.g. doomsday preppers ) or divine (e.g. those who believe that we are living in the ”end times”).

But belief in a future is why old men plant trees that they will never see mature and young men go to school to learn something that they hope to use in the future.  The stock market, with its focus on day trading and current earnings, and the political system, with its focus on the next election, may not be the best way to plan for the future.  But those who ignore the future, should not prevent others from planning for a future.   Otherwise the future will be murder.

Insurrection 2

 

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The revolution will not be televised   

The revolution will not be brought to you     

By Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions.

Gil Scott-Heron was wrong.  The revolution will not only be televised,.…it will be live-streamed.

“When in the course of Human Events…a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” After that declaration it may be necessary to “take arms against a sea of troubles”.  However once you make that declaration or take up arms against a government, if you lose, you should expect to be punished by that government.  The Founding Fathers knew this.  That is why John Hancock so famously signed the Declaration of Independence in a large signature so that “ King George could read it without his spectacles”.  It is thus hypocritical for those who participated in the insurrection against the government at the Capitol Riot on January 6^th to now claim that they were only exercising their First Amendment Rights bestowed by that government.

No one should expect to be an officer of the government against which one has rebelled. The Fourteenth Amendment makes it clear that this incudes those whom “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof".  That Amendment does allow mercy to those if two-thirds of the Congress agree.  But this remedy only includes the ability to be an officer of the government, it does not extend to criminal penalties due to those persons.  It is wonderful that so many of the Capitol rioters live streamed or posted images of their rebellion  It makes it so much easier to determine their guilt.

Insurrection

 

For What It’s Worth 

There's something happening here.    

But what it is ain't exactly clear    

There's a man with a gun over there.    

Telling me I got to beware.    

I think it's time we stop,    

Children, what's that sound?    

Everybody look, what's going down. 

What is going down? When did things go wrong? 

Many fine people have called the storming of the US Capitol on January 6^th, 2021 an insurrection.  Those fine people apparently do not include many Republicans.  So this division must be a recent phenomenon, correct?  Actually it goes back at least to my childhood, which is as far as I can remember. Barry Goldwater said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is not a vice and moderation in pursuit of freedom is no virtue”  Ronald Reagan said, “Government is the problem”, Nixon said that he was the Law-and-Order president.  George W Bush said Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Each of these statements was false. 

If extremism is a vice and moderation, liberty and freedom are all virtues, then together the vice of extremism (a negative) and the virtue of liberty (a positive) ARE a vice (a negative).  If moderation and freedom are both virtues then together they ARE a virtue.  

The policies of government might be thought to be a problem, but government, as the collective will of the people, can not by definition be the problem. 

Those who break the law can not be the Law-and-Order president.  

Weapons of Mass Destruction were not found in Iraq.  

"You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts."  Hearing Daniel Moynihan's phrase uttered by Vice President Pence during his pre-election debate was cringe worthy from an administration that prided itself on having its own alternate “facts”. 

The insurrection was a long time coming.  There is something happening here, but its has been happening for a very long time.

Know Nothings

Too Much of Nothing

Now, too much of nothing
Can make a man feel ill at ease
One man’s temper might rise
While another man’s temper might freeze
In the day of confession
We cannot mock a soul
Oh, when there’s too much of nothing
No one has control 

Too much or not, nothing should never be considered a virtue. 

Saying that you Know Nothing, if you are not Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes, might sound like an insult.   But it became the name associated with a political party when the phrase was said so often by its members.  In the 1850’s, the Know Nothing Party was an anti-Catholic, anti-immigration, populist and xenophobic movement, that because it was also anti-slavery was absorbed into the nascent Republican Party.  Does this platform sound familiar?  It may be fair to say that the descendants of the Know Nothings have captured the current Republican Party.

You reap what you sow.  The January 6^th invasion of the US Capitol shows the danger of catering to those who Know Nothing.  It has taken more than a hundred years, but isn’t time for the Republican Party to decide whether Know Nothings belong in the Republican Party.  If they have captured it completely, perhaps those remnants who are not Know Nothings should leave and form a new party.

 

 

The Electoral College

 

Naval Academy Fight Song (Anchors Aweigh)

Stand Navy down the field, sails set to the sky;            

We'll never change our course, So Army you steer shy-y-y-y.  

Roll up the score, Navy, anchors aweigh!        

Sail Navy down the field and sink the Army, sink the Army grey!

Many us recognize and get emotional over college fight songs.  So what is the Electoral College fight song?

The Electoral College has received a lot of attention in recent months.  Many of us understand that there are 538 electors, but that number is NOT specified in the Constitution. Article II, Section 1 of  the US Constitution specifies that each state has a number of Electoral College votes equal to the number of its Senators ( and there are two Senators for each state) plus the number of its Representatives.  The 23rd Amendment specified that the District of Columbia, which is not a state, would have three electoral college votes.  That the number of Representatives is 435 is due to a 1911 Act of Congress, not because of the constitution.  https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/sites/default/files/documents/resources-and-activities/CVC_HS_ActivitySheets_CongApportionment.pdf

Congress chose the number 435 because the House wanted a manageable number of members.  The Constitution only specifies that each state should have one Representative and that the number of Representatives be proportional to population, specifically excluding only “Indians who are not taxed.”  (Prior to the adoption of the 14^th Amendment, enslaved persons counted as 3/5 of one person.)  There are a number of mathematical formulas that could meet the objective of at least one representative per state and representation proportional to population.  A simple procedure known as the “Wyoming” rule, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_Rule, would set the number of representatives in each state based on its ratio to the state with the smallest population, which according to the 2010 census was Wyoming. Had this change in apportioning the House of Representatives been adopted in 1930, it would NOT have changed the outcome of any presidential election since 1930, including the most recent election in 2020.  However the California congressional delegation would have increased from 53 to 66, which is in line with the size of its population which was 66 times that of Wyoming according to the 2010 Census.

This would require that the size of the House be increased from its current 435 to 537, according to the 2010 Census (the 2020 Census results have not yet been officially released).  While this rule would have required the size of the house to be 1343 in 1930, 537 in 2020 seems reasonable even if all members were to be accommodated by the current House Chamber.  Given today’s technology which also allows for remote attendance at debates and votes, adoption of the “Wyoming” rule would bring the apportionment of the House closer to one man, one vote; while meeting the constitutional requirement of one representative from each state.  This changes the numbers of the Electoral College but does not abolish the Electoral College.  But it does bring its size closer to its original intent.

Socialism Is NOT A Political System

 

Rocky Racoon 

Her name was Magill,
and she called herself Lil
But everyone knew her as Nancy. 

Names don’t matter if we truly understand something. They do matter if we don’t. 

Socialism has become a common slur in American politics applied by those on the right to policies promoted by the left.  Senator Mitch McConnel opposes a $2000 COVID stimulus because it is socialism for the rich.  Silly Senator!  Socialism is an economic system, not a political system. Just as, Capitalism is an economic system, not a political system. 

And socialism is also NOT communism, any more than the regulated American form of capitalism is unregulated capitalism.  Communism is where ALL means of productions and outputs of production are the property of the state, society.  Unregulated capitalism is where ALL means of production and outputs are the property of individuals.  However neither extreme is perfect. 

Under Communism, if all means of production and outputs are the property of the state, there is no incentive for individual members of that state, society, to seek more efficient solutions. 

Capitalism assumes, among other things, that all buyers have perfect knowledge and that all sellers have unlimited access to buyers. 

Socialism, as practiced in the Nordic Countries, is where, among other things, only SOME  economic sectors, for example health care or energy, are controlled by the state and all other economic sectors are controlled by individuals. 

Regulated Capitalism, as practiced in the United States, is where sellers are required to disclose certain things so that buyers have more perfect knowledge (e.g. Food Labels) and  are prohibited from keeping others from entering the market (e.g. anti-trust laws). 

The fact that some proponents of an economic system (e.g. Karl Marx, or Vladimir Lenin) were also atheists only means that they were atheists, not that communism, or socialism, is inherently atheistic, any more than capitalism is pro-religion.  A religious or philosophical  system is NOT an economic system. 

Game theory would characterize capitalism as a user optimal solution and communism as a system optimal solution.  The sum of user optimal, equilibrium, solutions is often NOT the system optimal  solution.  Regulated capitalism or socialism, which again is not communism, are both less extreme systems that seek to make the sum of the user optimal equilibrium solutions closer to the system optimal solution. 

A $2000 stimulus is a political solution intended to work for any economic system.  Characterizing it as socialism is a blatant attempt to change the discussion from the merits of a political solution to the merits of economic systems.