Posted on by mikecronin2013

The non-Howard Manifesto

Ron Howard By RodneyPike | Famous People Cartoon | TOONPOOL

By Mike Cronin

There is a piece making the rounds on Facebook, supposedly authored by Ron Howard, that gives a rundown of the liberal platform.  I’ve pasted it below, with my own critiques and comments added in bold text.

Ron Howard Right off the bat we’re subjected to the celebrity fallacy: If a liberal celebrity, like “Mr. Motherhood-and-apple-pie” Opie Taylor/Richie Cunningham himself says it, it must be correct, no? Well, Ron Howard didn’t write this. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ron-howard-i-am-liberal-essay/   

January 24 at 5:41 AM

I’m a liberal, but that doesn’t mean what a lot of you apparently think it does. After reading the post: Yes, it actually does.

Let’s break it down, shall we? Because quite frankly, I’m getting a little tired of being told what I believe and what I stand for. Spoiler alert: not every liberal is the same, though the majority of liberals I know think along roughly these same lines: Yep. We know.

  • I believe a country should take care of its weakest members. A country cannot call itself civilized when its children, disabled, sick, and elderly are neglected. PERIOD. You might get me to go along if you could narrow that down. 10% or 15% of the population might reasonably be called “the weakest members.” 50% or 60% is ludicrous! https://taxfoundation.org/60-percent-households-now-receive-more-transfer-income-they-pay-taxes/
  • I believe healthcare is a right, not a privilege. It’s neither. Healthcare is a SERVICE, which is offered by businesses employing highly educated and trained professionals. Somehow that’s interpreted as “I believe Obamacare is the end-all, be-all.” No, Obamacare was/is interpreted by “liberals” as “taking care of ___” when in actual fact it is the government issuing commands to the healthcare industry. That is fascist by definition. This is not the case. I’m fully aware that the ACA has problems, that a national healthcare system would require everyone to chip in, and that it’s impossible to create one that is devoid of flaws, but I have yet to hear an argument against it that makes “let people die because they can’t afford healthcare” a better alternative. I believe healthcare should be far cheaper than it is, and that everyone should have access to it. Then unshackle it completely from government intervention. You can’t make anything cheaper by adding government bureaucracy to it! And no, I’m not opposed to paying higher taxes in the name of making that happen. We don’t care what you are willing to pay for; we object mightily that you use the coercive power of government to make everyone else do the same to assuage your conscience.
  • I believe education should be affordable. It doesn’t necessarily have to be free (though it works in other countries so I’m mystified as to why it can’t work in the US), but at the end of the day, there is no excuse for students graduating college saddled with five- or six-figure debt. College was more affordable before liberals got it into their heads that everyone has to have a degree and a government grant or loan to pay for it. Colleges keep raising the price of education because liberals keep rewarding them with more money when they do! And college students are adults with other options. If they choose to saddle themselves with student loan debt, then they should be required to complete the life lesson in personal responsibility and pay back the loan!
  • I don’t believe your money should be taken from you and given to people who don’t want to work. I have literally never encountered anyone who believes this. Ever. I have met two families where the adults don’t work at all, or work below their potential, in order to keep Uncle Sugar sending the benies their way. One was doing it so their kid could keep qualifying for a Pell Grant to pay for college (see #3). I just have a massive moral problem with a society where a handful of people can possess the majority of the wealth while there are people literally starving to death, freezing to death, or dying because they can’t afford to go to the doctor. Abject poverty has been our natural state since we descended from the trees. In every society and every form of government a few get extremely rich and/or powerful. The best feature of capitalism, which is what we are SUPPOSED to have here, is that it makes it possible for anyone to create wealth, and competition in the free market makes prices of goods and services drop low enough for even poor people to afford the necessities (as long as they choose not to squander what they do have). Fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, affordable education, and the wealthy actually paying their share would go a long way toward alleviating this. Somehow believing that makes me a communist. No, what makes you a statist (whether communist, socialist, or fascist doesn’t matter) is feeling that achieving the goals of fair wages, lower housing costs, universal healthcare, and affordable education requires government intervention and massive wealth “redistribution,” even as you ignore the fact that you can’t make anything cheaper by adding massive government bureaucracy to it. You also evade the fact that the only place wealth is “distributed” is in graphs from economists, because in the real-world there’s no magic wealth distribution fairy. Wealth is created, and it belongs to those who create it. One other thing: What is a fair share? The only answer liberals ever seem to have to that question is: More.
  • I don’t throw around “I’m willing to pay higher taxes” lightly. If I’m suggesting something that involves paying more, well, it’s because I’m fine with paying my share as long as it’s actually going to something besides lining corporate pockets or bombing other countries while Americans die without healthcare. Virtue signal received. Don’t think you can compel the rest of us to do the same.
  • I believe companies should be required to pay their employees a decent, livable wage. Somehow this is always interpreted as me wanting burger flippers to be able to afford a penthouse apartment and a Mercedes. No, it simply reveals that you don’t understand economics, rights, how business works, or the effects of government intrusion into the market. Like any other thing a business has to pay for, labor is a cost. When business has to pay more for labor than it is worth because the government compels them to, they must buy less labor, or produce less product/service, or raise prices to compensate – or go out of business. Any way you slice it, that means fewer jobs and/or lower pay, increasing the number of people who need the benefits you so “generously” want the government to compel everyone else to pay for! What it actually means is that no one should have to work three full-time jobs just to keep their head above water. Restaurant servers should not have to rely on tips, multibillion-dollar companies should not have employees on food stamps, workers shouldn’t have to work themselves into the ground just to barely make ends meet, and minimum wage should be enough for someone to work 40 hours and live. How about instead of commanding businesses to pay minimum wages or “livable” wages, we encourage people to not adopt lifestyles that exceed their means?
  • I am not anti-Christian. I have no desire to stop Christians from being Christians, to close churches, to ban the Bible, to forbid prayer in school, etc. (BTW, prayer in school is NOT illegal; *compulsory* prayer in school is – and should be – illegal). All I ask is that Christians recognize *my* right to live according to *my* beliefs. When I get pissed off that a politician is trying to legislate Scripture into law, I’m not “offended by Christianity” — I’m offended that you’re trying to force me to live by your religion’s rules. You know how you get really upset at the thought of Muslims imposing Sharia law on you? That’s how I feel about Christians trying to impose biblical law on me. Be a Christian. Do your thing. Just don’t force it on me or mine. Agreed!
  • I don’t believe LGBT people should have more rights than you. I just believe they should have the *same* rights as you. Agreed. But consider: the battle for gay marriage wasn’t about rights, it was about permissions. The battle should not have been for the “right” (aka permission) to marry, it should have been to bar the state from having any say in the domestic partnerships between competent, consenting adults, except as regards fraud and contract enforcement.
  • I don’t believe illegal immigrants should come to America and have the world at their feet, especially since THIS ISN’T WHAT THEY DO (spoiler: undocumented immigrants are ineligible for all those programs they’re supposed to be abusing, and if they’re “stealing” your job it’s because your employer is hiring illegally). I believe there are far more humane ways to handle undocumented immigration than our current practices (i.e., detaining children, splitting up families, ending DACA, etc). Perhaps you feel this way, and we aren’t far off. However, your political masters want easy immigration and illegal immigration for another reason entirely: to turn red states blue.
  • I don’t believe the government should regulate everything, but since greed is such a driving force in our country, we NEED regulations to prevent cut corners, environmental destruction, tainted food/water, unsafe materials in consumable goods or medical equipment, etc. It’s not that I want the government’s hands in everything — I just don’t trust people trying to make money to ensure that their products/practices/etc. are actually SAFE. Is the government devoid of shadiness? Of course not. But with those regulations in place, consumers have recourse if they’re harmed and companies are liable for medical bills, environmental cleanup, etc. Just kind of seems like common sense when the alternative to government regulation is letting companies bring their bottom line into the equation. The Constitution made law-making the purview of Congress. We need laws to prohibit/prosecute fraud, endangerment/wrongful death, and enforce contracts. The Constitution doesn’t give unaccountable bureaucrats authority to create regulations that carry the force of law – and that vastly over-complicate modern economic life.
  • I believe our current administration is fascist. Not because I dislike them or because I can’t get over an election, but because I’ve spent too many years reading and learning about the Third Reich to miss the similarities. Not because any administration I dislike must be Nazis, but because things are actually mirroring authoritarian and fascist regimes of the past. Guess what? Both parties have saddled our once capitalist republic, ostensibly under the rule of law, with fascism, socialism, and communism. We now have a mixed economy under the rule of influence.
  • I believe the systemic racism and misogyny in our society is much worse than many people think, and desperately needs to be addressed. Which means those with privilege — white, straight, male, economic, etc. — need to start listening, even if you don’t like what you’re hearing, so we can start dismantling everything that’s causing people to be marginalized. I think you’ve been listening to too many race-baiters and intersectionality theorists. On the whole, things have been getting better, not worse. Yes, racism and misogyny still exist. But we ended slavery, then we ended segregation, and now we have a society where non-white/non-males have reached or can reach the pinnacle in virtually every high office and field of achievement, including CEO, Astronaut, Doctor, Professor, Special Operations, Cabinet Secretary, or even President of the United States.
  • I am not interested in coming after your blessed guns, nor is anyone serving in government. Wrong. You are utterly misinformed:
  • “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” Former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke
  •  “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.” President Barack Obama, during conversation with economist and author John Lott Jr. at the University of Chicago Law School in the 1990s
  •  “If I could have gotten…an outright ban – ‘Mr. and Mrs. America turn in your guns’ – I would have!” Senator Diane Feinstein, author of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban
  •  “Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all Americans to feel safe.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein
  •  “When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly…When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.” Bill Clinton
  • “If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the government’s ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.” President Bill Clinton, August 12, 1993

What I am interested in is the enforcement of present laws and enacting new, common sense gun regulations. Got another opinion? Put it on your page, not mine. Where is the “common sense” in proscribing the rights of every American in order to make the already-illegal even more “illegal-er?”

  1. I believe in so-called political correctness. I prefer to think it’s social politeness. If I call you Chuck and you say you prefer to be called Charles I’ll call you Charles. It’s the polite thing to do. Not because everyone is a delicate snowflake, but because as Maya Angelou put it, when we know better, we do better. When someone tells you that a term or phrase is more accurate/less hurtful than the one you’re using, you now know better. So why not do better? How does it hurt you to NOT hurt another person? I don’t go out of my way to hurt others. Neither will I be shoved out of my path because someone who is desperate to earn victim sympathy points actively seeks to be offended by something I am, say, or do – or because facts are inconvenient.

“Political correctness is America’s newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people’s language with strict codes and rigid rules. I’m not sure that’s the way to fight discrimination. I’m not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech.” ― George Carlin,

  1. I believe in funding sustainable energy, including offering education to people currently working in coal or oil so they can change jobs. There are too many sustainable options available for us to continue with coal and oil. Sorry, billionaires. Maybe try investing in something else. “I believe in funding” = “I believe the government should make you pay for__.” One of those huge “windfarm” windmills costs more to make and maintain than the value of the electricity it will produce in its lifetime. That is not sustainable. Solar only makes sense in sunny places. Sustainable, but not widely available. Nuclear fission is the only viable sustainable option with current tech, but the waste and supposed danger terrifies greenies. We need fusion.
  2. I believe that women should not be treated as a separate class of human. Agreed. They should be paid the same as men who do the same work Individually, they are. As a group, they don’t choose to do the same work. should have the same rights as men and should be free from abuse. Agreed. Why on earth shouldn’t they be? Then why on earth would you not want them to be able to carry a gun, or vote for politicians who don’t?

I think that about covers it. Bottom line is that I’m a liberal because I think we should take care of each other. No, you’re a liberal because you FEEL so strongly that “we” should “take care of each other,” that you use the government to compel others to “care” the same way you do WITHOUT doing the required CRITICAL THINKING. That doesn’t mean you should work 80 hours a week so your lazy neighbor can get all your money. It just means I don’t believe there is any scenario in which preventable suffering is an acceptable outcome as long as money is saved. What if some of that preventable suffering has nothing to do with who has a given amount of money, but instead is an outcome that will always be with us because some individuals make choices that lead them to suffer?

Copy & paste if you want.

Posted on by mikecronin2013

It’s Not That Simple.

By Mike Cronin

“If it saves just one life, isn’t it worth it?” Not when it means diminishing freedom – for at least two reasons:

  1. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson. Hundreds of thousands of our countrymen and women paid with their lives to give us our freedom; it is unconscionable to insult those sacrifices by letting freedom go for everyone on the chance that might buy a few lives. Especially when you consider that…
  2. …Whatever loss of (other people’s) liberty you propose to trade for a life, or a hundred, or a thousand, could just as readily cost as many lives and livelihoods as you think it might save. For example, you might save someone from COVID 19 with the lockdown, but condemn another to die at the hands of an abusive spouse, or of an overdose, or from suicide. And people have already died from not getting elective surgery.

“Not wearing a mask is selfish.” You make that sound like a bad thing. If “selfish” = concern for oneself, and wearing a mask is ineffective and potentially worse than not wearing one, then of course not wearing one is selfish. Guess what? Wearing a mask can be a form of virtue signaling. “Look at me, I’m a good person who has to be seen to be doing the pseudo “responsible” thing and giving the appearance of protecting others from my germs. That makes me feel good about myself.” That’s selfish, too, so what’s your point?

“Opening your business and “forcing” your employees back to work is greedy and exploitative.”  The funny thing about private business is that they can’t force their employees to do anything.  Another funny thing is that small businesses typically operate on small margins. Both the owner and the employees need to eat and pay the rent, so they need to work! And a big business owner like Elon Musk may not need the profit from his enterprise, but the employees and suppliers still do.

“Protesting the lockdown is white privilege.”  If all we have to go on is the mainstream media photos of the protests in the US, it might look that way. But it’s not:

In Wuhan, China, some people tried to resist the lockdown, and the government welded them into their houses:

And there have been lockdown protests around the world. Korea:

 

Italy:

Brazil:

Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, India…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/coronavirus-protests-lebanon-india-iraq/2020/04/19/1581dde4-7e5f-11ea-84c2-0792d8591911_story.html

Posted on by mikecronin2013

What is Your Right to Life?

Declaration Of Independence: Do Our Rights Come from God, the ...

By Mike Cronin

In this time of uncertainty, the great concern is that COVID-19 cases will overwhelm our hospitals with more patients than the system can handle. Therefore, we are admonished, or even compelled by executive order, to stay home, close our businesses, keep our distance, wear masks, and so forth.  This is supposed to “flatten the curve.” In other words, we are to forfeit our rights in order in order to slow down the spread of the virus, so that the hospital system can keep up, and thereby save lives.

Indeed, if “life” consists solely of beating hearts, breathing lungs, and the continuation of other biological processes, such measures may indeed be effective in keeping the body count down in the hospitals.

But human life is more than mere biological functioning. Shutting down the country may keep the COVID body count down, but the nation is no better-off because of it.  In fact, the closure of the economy is causing, and will continue to cause, untold destruction to lives, livelihoods, and indeed, the American way of life.

Consider: our Founders encoded the concept of individual rights into our national DNA when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. They said that we are endowed with the rights to “…life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and that the purpose of government is to “secure these rights.”

How can the government secure our rights by violating them? I submit that it cannot.  The old saying goes that the “road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  Well, the lockdown may have been well-intended, but it is quickly becoming apparent that the final destination will be hell to live with.  Stupidities and absurdities have already emerged before we’ve even reached the first mile-marker:

  • The police department that sent its unmasked officers to affront common sense and violate social distancing rules to arrest an isolated surfer (even as people were advised to seek exercise and get fresh air during their isolation) because the beach was closed.

Malibu surfer in handcuffs after enjoying empty, epic waves ...

  • The politicians who stand shoulder-to-shoulder during COVID-19 press conferences.

March 13 coronavirus press conference

  • The tone-deaf celebrities and politicians who, surrounded by more luxuries immediately to hand than most Americans will experience in their entire lives, offer well-meaning “public service announcements” about enriching ourselves while staying at home – in many cases without any means to pay for the mortgage or rent.
  • Mal-designation of some businesses as essential and others as non-essential – by politicians who don’t have any idea how an economy works. (e.g. The designation of veterinarians in Georgia as non-essential – as if pets’ lives aren’t essential to the morale of their owners, and as if vets are only for pets. What about working animals? Livestock?  Might not food and dairy ANIMALS need veterinary care? Should we now add Mad Cow disease to this mess?)
  • The COVID-19 relief bill that provides 15% more aid to hospitals per COVID-19-related death, thus incentivizing medical systems to declare every death to be COVID-19-related.
  • The politician who threatened to extend the lockdown to punish everyone if some individuals violate it.
  • The nosy Nelly who threatened to call the police to inform them her neighbor is violating the lockdown – when the neighbor was going to work at her job as a 911 dispatcher.
  • The nurse with mask-marks on her face charging lockdown protesters with being selfish because they might infect someone, thereby causing even more strain to the medical system.

That last point may not sound all that absurd to you, but consider what it means: For ~240 years or so, Americans have held their military in high esteem because some of its members (many of whom were drafted) have been maimed or killed defending our rights and freedoms.

Arlington National Cemetery – America's Largest Military Cemetery ...

There is a grass-roots campaign by medical providers to urge people to stay home.  Urging others to stay home is rational and violates no one’s rights. But it’s not enough for some; a few want to destroy those very same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness by using the coercive power of government to compel people to stay home –  because some doctors and nurses are getting marks on their faces from wearing masks all day.

These are the nurses on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic

Anyone who has ever worn a gas mask for an hour or two has had similar marks. Manual laborers and tradesmen get blisters, cuts, zaps, pokes, gouges, blunt trauma, chopped, and mangled. Ranchers walk in animal dung all day. Athletes get sprains, breaks, and concussions. I mean no disrespect to the medics enduring this battle; in fact, I salute you.  But it is a battle.  A few lesions go with the territory; earning them is no justification to curtail individual rights!

Posted on by mikecronin2013

Context Matters!

Preventing global food security crisis under COVID-19 emergency ...

By Mike Cronin

There are some folks who seem to think that because COVID-19 cases and death rates are roughly similar to the annual flu, that we are blowing the disease out of proportion or dismissing it.  While there is some out-of-proportion fear-mongering AND some unwarranted dismissiveness going on, and while COVID-19 may indeed turn out to be of similar menace level as the annual flu, the flu is still there. COVID-19 is happening ON TOP OF the flu, not instead of it, and there is no vaccine yet. That’s why there is genuine concern over the number of hospital beds and respirators, and that’s why COVID-19 can’t be easily dismissed.

Concurrently, panic-pushers, America haters, and political opportunists are giddily touting that the US now has the most reported cases of COVID-19.  There are a few things they are omitting:

The US has the most REPORTED cases. What about UN-reported cases? Do you think all of the countries not as transparent or as capable as the US really have lower case numbers and lower infection rates?

China has nearly five times the population of the US, and most Chinese citizens live in dense urban sprawl. The Communist party would have us believe China had a peak of only ~80,000 cases. Do you really think the disease is done there, or that the Communist government is reporting accurate numbers?

Do you think Iran or Russia even know how many cases they have, let alone are reporting accurate numbers?

Our reported cases have recently exceeded Italy’s (105K cases vs 85K). But Italy has roughly one-fifth the population of the US.  In other words, Italy has fewer absolute cases, but their infection rate is over four times higher than ours. (Infection rate = cases/population. Italy = 85K vs 60M or 0.14%. US = 105K vs 325M, or 0.032%). Worse, the COVID-19 death rate in Italy is almost 10 times higher! (10.5% in Italy vs 1.6% in the US.) https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-rates/

So, what’s the upshot?

The truth is in the middle:

  • As ever, news outlets are trying to sell airtime to advertisers. They do that by getting ratings. Breathless coverage and ominous alerts will induce alarm, and that will keep the ratings higher than dispassionate, in-context reportage.
  • COVID-19 is a slow-moving natural disaster that is affecting the entire planet – but it’s not the worst such thing that could happen. It won’t wipe us all out, not by a long shot; but we do need to address it.
  • Absolute numbers of reported cases don’t tell the story very well. Infection rates and death rates are better indicators.
  • Criticizing anyone for what has already happened won’t solve the crisis – but it may be a fun diversion!
  • Social distancing and attending to surface and hand hygiene are effective in slowing the spread of disease, but it rankles and induces fear to be commanded by government to all but shut down the economy.
  • Our politicians would all do well to remember that the USA was born when our Founders penned the most eloquent “F*ck You!” ever written in response to too much government intrusion (the Declaration of Independence).  Americans are not the most obedient lot in normal times, and just now there is an up-welling of  F*ck You brewing. Politicians must tread very carefully indeed.

We are going through some scary times, but the fundamentals of our geography and the political system our Founders instituted will have us come out of this thing in better shape than any other country.  Stay strong.

Posted on by mikecronin2013

Corona-nomics

By Mike Cronin

Have you decided to hate on the folks who hoarded toilet paper and are now selling it for $5.00 a roll? DeBeers did that with diamonds about 80 years ago, then followed it up with decades of shrewd market manipulation and marketing. We bought the diamonds with nary a peep.

Have you decided to hate stores that are “price gouging?”  The stores that aren’t gouging are out of everything you want.  Maybe if stores were allowed to set prices based on supply and demand without incurring uninformed moral outrage, the hoarders wouldn’t have been so keen to hoard, and now there would be more of everything available for the rest of us.

Do you think having the government step in to ration things would be a better solution?  Or maybe just takeover everything? The Soviet Union did that. The Soviets didn’t have some empty shelves during a short crisis; they had virtually empty stores for ~80 years.

Think the government should bail out companies and spend trillions to stop the stock market slide and “stimulate the economy?”  If the value of something goes way up when it’s scarce, like TP for $5 a roll, what happens to the value of a thing, such as the dollar, when it becomes ridiculously abundant?

Let me know when you get your $1000 check from the government.  I might have some toilet paper for sale.

Posted on by mikecronin2013

A Little Truth Bomb

Image result for Truth Bomb

By Mike Cronin

Our public education system has done little to truly educate our public. Since the Department of Education was signed into existence 44 years ago, and after spending a trillion dollars or so, test scores have remained roughly flat and educational rankings have stayed middling compared to other developed and developing nations. This is abysmal news – if the goal is truly to educate the populace.

But what if genuine education is not the goal?

Our primary and secondary education systems are always referred to as “free,” yet they have cost Americans something like $1 trillion over 44 years (just at the Federal level). Indeed, we spend more money per-pupil than any almost any other country. Our FREE, $1 Trillion, among-the-most-expensive-in-the-world system is mediocre at best, worthless at worst – to you.

When college is free, it will also be mediocre-to-worthless – to you.

When healthcare is free, it will also be mediocre-to-worthless – to you.

When generations of Americans have been taught how and what to think by the state (for example, that the one of the world’s most expensive education systems is somehow “free”) from preschool age to the Ph.D. level, and when Americans’ lives depend on the state “giving” healthcare (provided by graduates of the mediocre-to-abysmal, “free,” expensive school system), then such systems will have proven quite valuable to the elites who run the state – they will have given the elites control over you.

Posted on by mikecronin2013

Destruction from Within (and from Without)

Image result for America tearing itself apart

By Mike Cronin

President Lincoln once said: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

That’s not quite catchy enough for meme culture, so it was “massaged” by netizens into a more digestible tidbit: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.”

So now there is talk of Russia interfering with our presidential politics again. The difference: This time Russia is supposedly seeking to help Bernie Sanders, currently the front-running Democrat, AND President Trump.  You might be wondering which side has it wrong – after all, Russia wouldn’t support opposing candidates, would they?

They might indeed.  Russia can’t defeat us conventionally, and there would be nothing to rule over if we nuke each other. If you are Russia, how can you get what you want with the mighty USA always in the way?  How can supporting both sides of the presidential power struggle be of any benefit?  If they are doing it, it’s probably because it helps us to destroy ourselves from within. Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev both openly proclaimed that destroying us from within was on the table.

Destroying America from within is probably the favored strategy for any enemy or competitor of the US. Since the US has the most powerful military, most powerful economy, and controls the global commons, asymmetric strategies are all that’s left to enemies or competitors.  Where we are united, turn us against ourselves.  Where we are divided, drive the wedge in further. Where we have moral weakness, stoke it.  Use memes, fake news, cyber intrusions, donations, corrupt business deals, blackmail, identity politics and the like to taint our politicians, influence our media, corrupt our institutions, and keep us bickering among ourselves. That way, we won’t have as much energy to spare watching and worrying about what the Russians or any other bad actors are up to. And if the US has another Civil War, or has a wave of successions and breaks up into several smaller countries?  So much the better.

The Russians have a name for this doctrine. They call it Reflexive Control.  In the ancient Chinese volume, The Book of Qi, an essay called “The 36 Stratagems” refers to it as “Let the enemy’s own spy sow discord in the enemy camp.”

The moral: Whenever you feel like we are coming apart at the seams over Trump, immigration policy, gun rights, free speech abortion, LGBTQ issues, race, religion, wealth and income gaps, and so on, just know that Russia, China, Iran, Islamic Fundamentalists, and/or other enemies and competitors have the motivation to keep stoking the flames.

Posted on by mikecronin2013

Trial and Error

Image result for impeachment cartoon"

By Mike Cronin

The Senate trial of President Trump is fertile ground for misinformation and disinformation. We can’t fix the politics here, but at least we can examine the battlefield and the likely outcome. While the proceeding is a “trial,” it’s as much political theater as it is a legal hearing. Certainly, it does not operate under the same rules and standards as a criminal trial:

  1. The judge (Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts) may bang the gavel and make initial rulings on evidence and witnesses, but he has little or no standing to make final rulings on case law, facts, objections, and so forth. He is basically reduced to facilitating. His presence is essentially ceremonial. The Senate is “borrowing” the prestige of the court.
  2. The alleged offenses don’t necessarily have to be violations of any specific US Code. The House of Representatives can attempt to align almost any charge as a “misdemeanor” in order to meet the constitutional standard for impeachment:  “Treason, Bribery, and High Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In effect, this is what the House did by charging the president with “Abuse of Power” and “Obstruction of Congress.”
  3. By the same token, the Senate can acquit the president on the grounds that the charges in the Articles of Impeachment are not Treason, Bribery, High Crimes, or Misdemeanors, or indeed crimes at all, and thus are not impeachable offenses. As of press time, all indications are that this is what will occur.
  4. The Standards of Evidence are whatever the Senate agrees they are. Witnesses can be called, or not, according to the whim of the Senate. (Indeed, the Senate did not call witnesses.)
  5. The standard for conviction is not “proof beyond reasonable doubt,” or even “the preponderance of the evidence.” It is whatever 2/3rds of the Senate says it is.
  6. Jurors at trial are supposed to be impartial. However, Senate Jurors don’t don’t take the same oath us regular folks take to sit on a jury. The Senators’ oath says the following (emphasis added): 

“Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you god?” 

Jurors for cases in a US District Court take an oath to decide the case “upon the law and the evidence.”

Senators are compelled to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.”  Note that they are not precisely compelled to actually be impartial about the facts, the evidence, the the defendant, or the allegations, only about doing “justice.” You might think that the distinction is hair-splitting. You might even be right – but meticulous adherence to the exact meaning of words and phrases – hair splitting – is the bread-and-butter of lawyers, no? 

So what does that bode for the trial?

The safe bet is that 100 Senators will split into two camps as to what “do impartial justice according to Constitution and laws” means. One camp will see “doing justice to the Constitution and laws” as “requiring strict interpretation of the standards for impeachment,” while the other side will interpret “doing justice” to mean something more along the lines of “disposing of something offensive.” 

In other words: All but a handful of Republican Senate Jurors will vote to acquit the president. They will justify their action by asserting the Speaker of the House initiated the impeachment investigation without consent of the full House, which alone has sole authority to conduct impeachment proceedings; and that the House did not follow its own rules during the impeachment investigation, did not provide the president with due process, and failed to even allege the president committed actual, citable violations of US Code, let alone prove he committed impeachable offenses. Meanwhile, all of the Democrat Senators and perhaps the aforementioned handful of Republicans, will vote to convict, justifying that decision with their belief that the president is an offense who deserves to be convicted of something, and that the allegations in the Articles of Impeachment were impeachable and were already adequately “proven” by witness testimony in the House investigation. The votes to convict are highly unlikely to meet the required threshold of 66 (2/3rds of the Senate), so the president is all but sure to be acquitted.

Posted on by mikecronin2013

Pie from the Sky?

By Mike Cronin

In the video linked above, CBS uses an actual pie to show casual passers-by how wealth is unequally distributed in America. Predictably, the answer is stark. The wealthiest people have virtually all of the pie, and the poorest have no pie and are in debt. But CBS’s model neglects to address a few crucial points, and thus is just another beat in the long history of wealth envy.

  1. Whose pie is it? CBS lumps all of the household wealth in the US (almost $100 trillion dollars) into one pie in their model, as if all the wealth in this country belongs to everyone in the country. Thus they sneak in the idea that an unequal “distribution” of pie is automatically an unfair “distribution” of pie.
  2. Where does the pie come from? Was it just “distributed” unfairly in a spray of sparkle dust by a magic pie fairy in the sky? Was it stolen? Who from? The poorest never have any pie, so it didn’t come from them. So where?

The envy mongers don’t want you to understand the truth: There isn’t one communal pie being “distributed” unfairly. Pie has to be made. The people who have all the pie have it because they made it.  It’s their pie, not mine or yours. It has not been “distributed” unfairly, because it hasn’t been “distributed” at all! Another, less important factor CBS neglected to mention: People generally move “up the pie scale” as their careers progress, because they learn how to make pie!

If CBS (whose anchors and owners are among the pie makers!) wants to reduce the wealth gap, perhaps they should expose and work to close the unequal distribution of pie-making know-how. But they won’t, because they make their own pie by encouraging envy.

Posted on by mikecronin2013

Things that Make you go Hmmm.

Image result for hmmm

By Mike Cronin

Recycling reduces waste and saves energy! How much energy do we save by making and distributing twice as many plastic bins and running twice as many diesel-guzzling, CO2-spewing, traffic-increasing, infrastructure-damaging collection trucks?

Zero emission vehicles have no tailpipes. They have smoke stacks and cooling towers. They emit CO2 remotely – from the power plant that generated the electricity to charge them, and from the heavy mining equipment used to extract the rare earths and other metals needed to produce their batteries. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Donald Trump needed Congressional permission to attack Soleimani, and he didn’t get it!  How much Congressional permission did any previous president have to get to attack fleeting opportunity, high-value terrorist targets?

If a woman is drunk, she cannot consent to sex, on account of her judgement is impaired. Ergo, a man that has sex with her while she is in such a state is guilty of sexual assault or rape, even if he, too, is drunk.  Why is impaired judgement a compounding factor of victimhood for a woman, but not exculpatory for a man? Why does inebriation constitute inability to consent to sex, but endeavoring to become inebriated carry no onus?

An exercise in double-speak: The Constitution compels Congress to fund a military. It is silent about funding retirements and health care. Yet, somehow, defense spending is considered part of the “discretionary” budget, while Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and a few other programs comprise the “mandatory,” or “non-discretionary” budget.  It’s accurate enough to say the Constitution is silent on how much is to be spent on the military, so the amount is discretionary, but the basic requirement to fund it is not.  The so-called “mandatory” budget items have no such sanction.

How far back do you think we have been involved in the Islamic world of North Africa and the Middle East?  The first Gulf War? The 1986 raid on Libya? The 1979 Iran Hostage crisis?  Supporting the overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister in the 1950s and supporting the Shah until he was overthrown? What if I told you our involvement goes back almost to the founding? In 1801, President Thomas Jefferson sent the fledgling US Navy to protect US mercantile shipping from the Barbary Pirates in the Mediterranean.  The Barbary Pirates were the “naval forces” of client states of the Ottoman empire (e.g. Tripoli, as in “…to the shores of Tripoli” referenced in the Marine Corps Hymn). From the perspective of more than a few Muslims in the region, Americans are simply modern Crusaders who have been meddling in their affairs for centuries.