Nation or people

There's a post at DailyKos titled 'New Poll Reveals The Eight CRAZIEST Things Trump Voters Actually Believe'. It would appear that non-Trump voters, presumably Democrats, are less stupid/crazy... except the numbers don't reflect all that well of non-Trump voters, presumably Democrats.

If anything, this further reveals a failure of the U.S. Constitution. The ignorance reflected in these poll results is a measure of the lack of a free press. The failure of Congress to confirm Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court is the failure of the Constitutional power/duty of the sitting President to nominate Supreme Court justices. The Constitution is a 'living document', capable of revision, modification and change in order to strive for 'to form a more perfect Union'. Yet for all this built in flexibility, it has not been sufficient to correct a major representation imbalance in the presidential election system because not all votes for president carry the same weight.

Democrats needn't be smug over their seeming superiority over Republicans when little divides them in terms of their actions.

The U.S. Constitution essentially defines the nation of the United States of America. A major cause of its failures can be attributed to the elite advancing nationalistic themes to gain more power, economic and otherwise. It's high time to carefully consider the priorities of the larger population of any nation... is it the responsibility of citizens to support (pay for and populate) a country or is it the responsibility of a nation to support the wellbeing of its citizens? Bear the difference in mind after DJT becomes president; he will likely define 'what is profitable for DJT' as 'good for America'.

It goes back to money...

According to Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, much of internal Israeli policy regarding settlements in Palestinian land is about money. Much of U.S. aid to Israel is military in nature and justified as needed to help Israel defend itself from its enemies, including Palestinians.

It appears there two very powerful lobbies supporting Israel and both are about profiting themselves and not humanitarian concerns. One lobby is the group in Israel profiting from the control of land, property and resources of Israel and Palestine. The other lobby represents American military contractors who profit from the goods and services directly or indirectly given to Israel as aid.

From the linked video:

SHIR HEVER: And what do Israelis think about this when the government is willing to spend so much money on such a small group of people? Is there protests about it? 

GIDEON LEVY: Unfortunately, the Israelis stopped thinking a long time ago, and those issues don't interest anybody and are hardly on their agenda. Israelis are mainly concerned about their next vacation and their next new car and this very regretful but nobody makes the linkage between deep social problems and the money that goes for the settlers. It's somehow the Israelis remain totally indifferent and blind and there is no-one to wake them up.

It's important to remember that 'capitalists' and power brokers can only steal when we (the majority of people) look away. Unfortunately, they are experts at creating distractions - Israelis are distracted with their comfortable life and perhaps some 'keeping up with the Jones' cultural meme. Americans are distracted by social issues - racism, immigration, sexism, 'religious liberty, abortion, etc. We need to learn to look past the distractions and smoke & mirrors and really see what is being stolen from us.

A spot of silliness

Bernie Sanders has coined our PEOTUS 'tweeter in chief'. While perfectly true and completely valid, 'twit-in-chief' would also be accurate.

Who's the real enemy?

It was an odd presidential election to say the least. One of its outstanding oddities is Hilary's quick acquiescence to defeat and her unwillingness to pursue a 'recount' in the states where the vote count was dubious. Hilary Clinton is smart, strong willed and ambitious. After winning 2.8 million more votes than her opponent, she uncharacteristically declines make a perfectly reasonable legal query to challenge the election outcome. The question is why?...

Greg Palast has an explanation. According to him, the two primary reasons are:

(1) The DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) was started with $100,000 from the Koch brothers. This organization got Bill Clinton started in politics. So the Clintons have a debt to the brothers who have had a huge part in organizing the modern Republican Party.

(2) The establishment Democratic Party is as guilty of voter suppression as the Republican Party. The Democrats actively suppressed progressive voters during the primary against Bernie Sanders to ensure Hilary would capture the party nomination.

So the facts are:
-Republicans cry vote fraud to suppress minority (largely Democratic) voters.
-Democrats suppress progressive voters to game the selection towards corporate friendly nominees.

What's clear from this is that both major parties are on the same side. Neither party is looking after the interests of regular working people. They all use pretty worlds and flashy pictures to sell voters their version of 'The American Fairy Tale'. The real battle in American politics isn't between Democrat and Republican; they're on the same side, the side of their wealthy donors. The real battle is between wealthy donors and regular working Americans.

In the linked video, Greg Palast mentions that Al Gore was warned by Warren Christopher to not pursue a recount (it may be more accurate to say, Warren Christopher passed on a threat). In exchange for passing the presidency, Al Gore today is a Nobel laureate worth close to a billion dollars. Will passing the presidency net Hilary a substantial financial reward? She and Bill are doing pretty well as it is.

Now contrast the cultural and financial standing of Al Gore and Bill & Hilary Clinton to James Risen, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. The former were amply rewarded for not revealing the corruption inside the American political and electoral systems. The latter have been pursued/persecuted/jailed for revealing corruption in the U.S. military/intelligence gathering.

Finally, ask yourself who are the real enemies of the state and who are the real heroes of the state.


Update: It has been reported that Bill and Hilary Clinton will attend the upcoming Presidential inauguration. Supposedly 'She and President Clinton, the sources said, decided to do so out of a sense of duty and respect for the American democratic process.' A process that the Clintons, as prominent members of the Democratic establishment,
did much to damage beyond repair.

Accounts due

It common knowledge that climate related treaties do not count all contributions to greenhouse warming when deciding what industrial/economic sectors to target for mitigation. From a political perspective, this may make sense - for example, the politics and narratives of food production makes it a very difficult sector to modify in terms of public opinion and policy. But it is essential that we remember that the physical, geochemical, chemical and biological phenomena of climate change occur independent of human wishes, wants and intent. Natural systems don't care about human societies and politics. Human contributed changes in greenhouses gases alters natures' normal accounting of global climate. Global accounts, or 'books', cannot and will not change just because human policy decides that certain economic sectors are exempt from greenhouse gas mitigation efforts. By granting exemptions, we are essentially creating a false set of greenhouse gas accounts. The real greenhouse gas/ climate change accounts are kept by planet Earth. Cooking the books to ease the passage of international treaties won't save us when the climate accounts are due.

Independent media is essential for transparency

A major goal of this blog is to advocate for increase transparency. For most part, And although not always explicitly state, the directive tends to be primarily focused on economically valuable information along the lines of intellectual property - patents, copyright, proprietary information, etc. But a recent piece by Robert Reich about how Trump controls/manipulates the media should remind all of us of the importance of transparency at the level of power brokers. By controlling the media, Trump aims to control the narrative of his actions and decisions. How he is perceived and the support/opposition he garners is determined by his 'story'. By controlling the media, he controls the story regardless of its veracity. Independent media may not provide the entirety of 'truth' but it will be more than a controlled media. Thus independent media is essential to increasing information transparency.

Contraindicated

At this point, the world knows who won the electoral college and thus the recent presidential election in the U.S. But the final vote count clearly shows the other party won the popular vote. It seems that the weight of the votes of the majority of voters (mostly in the coastal states) is less that those of the minority of voters (mainly in southern and western states). What's interesting is that although many pundits say HRC lost because she did not campaign much/enough on the economic pain of voters, the states she won are among the economically most vibrant and robust. So the states with policies that support (slightly) more function economies lost to states whose economic policies leave their voters in dire straits. Letting the supporters of super-bad economic policy choose a president with policy power is not the best way to ensure good economic policy. As doctors would say, this treatment (President-elect Trump) contraindicates the disease/condition (poor economy).

What is an economy?

According to Wikipedia, an economy is an area of the production, distribution, or trade, and consumption of goods and services by different agents in a given geographical location. This came up because I just listened to the NPR story about the recent surge in black lung disease in Appalachia. It seems that the number of cases of advance black lung disease has hugely increased in the past several years even as coal production has dropped. The story ends with a coal miner saying "...if I had it to do over I would do it again, if that's what it took to provide for my family as long as I have."

 That got me thinking of economics on a meta-level: why *do* people work and often choose jobs which endanger their lives. From the coal miner's statement, it's clear that he works because he and his family need to survive. But there's an inherent contradiction in that a job that endangers his life does not support his survival. And that means the standard definition of economy is seriously incomplete. A much better definition would be a self-organizing, self-sustaining social entity that facilitates the production and exchange of surplus goods and services to promote the survival and wellbeing of all participants.

True economies take into account public heath issues and would not support the production, exchange and profiting from goods which harm public health. True economies would not support the production, exchange and profiting from goods which endanger nations of individuals. True economies would not support the production, exchange and profiting from goods which endanger the health of their workers, their children or their near and distant neighbors. True economies would not would not support the production, exchange and profiting from goods which destroy the life sustaining ecosystem of the planet.

Most of what the modern world calls 'economy' are not economies but more accurately defined kleptocracies which enable a small elite group to concentrate power. The innate consequence of the corruptive capacity of power ensures the elite will further concentrate their power, wealth and influence at the expense of workers and environment. Kleptocracies ensure economies are neither self-sustaining nor promote the survival and wellbeing of all participants.

Greed and Corruption in military economics

The Real News Network has posted a series of short clips of an interview with Andrew Feinstein, a former South African politician who has written and book called Shadow World which has been made into a documentary film. He describes the secret corrupt deal making that drives military spending and eventually bleeds into insurgent uprisings and 'wars on terror'. In brief, politicians and their friends/family receive kickbacks and bribes from military contractors for purchasing goods and services from said contractors. In the interview, Andrew Feinstein essentially says that in comparison to corruption in military contracting, organized crime is for amateurs.

This is more confirmation of the accuracy of my theory of economics. See here for the relevant links.

Rampant consumption is not needed for functional economy

My comment at a Truthout.org post:

Rampant consumerism/disposable consumption is the major enabler of income inequality in modern capitalist economies. Capitalized production of goods is how financial capital and power are shifted away from productive workers and concentrated in the hands of owners. 

The intellectual property of the capital goods determines much of its value and control of such information is legally mandated by government policy. The elites of any given economy/nation have enormous influence over policy. 

Mass consumption of disposable goods is not necessary for a functional economy. A functional economy only needs a continuous and constant exchange of goods *and* services so an economy powered primarily by the exchange of services can be functional. 

If intellectual property were not constrained, an economy based on services derived from freely available intellectual property is possible. For example, computer programming services to custom modify open source software for a specialized application; independent musicians free to interpret song covers for any occasion.
Control of intellectual property and other information is at the root of many global economic woes and other injustices. The truest reform is information transparency and that should start with universal whistleblower protection.

A regular and ongoing theme to my thinking.

A Trump administration...

... will change the trajectory of the U.S. economy to something more like China's. This is a comment I left at a Truthout post which partially lists the president-elect's appointees thus far:

This reminds me of a terrifying article by Richard Smith about the devastating environmental effects of unregulated industrial growth in China and the corrupt political system that enables it. American democracy has already been weakened by the GWB and BHO administrations (in all state relations, the poor and minorities are less equal than the rich and majority - police brutality; banking/investing fraud; voting access; fossil fuel related issues...). If the Trump cabal has its way, they will set the U.S. along a path similar to that of China. So long as the power, influence and wealth of the cabal increases, all else can to hell; workers will be poisoned by industrial pollution; starved of living wages; deprived of life saving medical care and cheated of their human dignity.

Of course, this is also true of Hillary but at a slightly slower pace.

Trump's primary meme during the election was 'make America great again'. But he never defined (1) what 'America' is and (2) 'again' implies it was great in the past which he never defined. His appointments suggests his slogan actually means 'make the American Trump cabal richer again'.

I highly recommend the article by Richard Smith. It's long but covers an incredible amount of ground... and considering how much American corporations and government keep secret, think of the implications for the U.S. economy. Then consider what would happen if no information were kept secret. The ultimate reform, economic, political and everything else, is information transparency.

Ugliness of Israeli settlements

I am not fond of Abby Martin's Empire files - I find her presentation to be over dramatized, even when I agree with her point of view. But in this instance, even if only a tenth of her report is true, Americans are doing bad things. This episode describes how the state of Israel not only tacitly approves of Israeli terrorism against Palestinians, but it's overtly abetting such activity. And considering U.S. aid covers close to one-quarter of Israel's military budget, Americans are indirectly sponsoring state terrorism.

Be informed. It's necessary to mount effective opposition.

Economic ideology of climate change

I posted a comment at Truthout:

The most neglected aspect of the climate crisis is its economic root. It's in the interest of the highly profitable fossil fuel industry to (1) push climate denial to preempt the cost of mitigation and/or loss of sales/profits; (2) promote pipeline projects to decrease their transportation costs, thus boost profits; (3) find more sources of fossil fuels to extract and sell for profit and (4) sell as much fossil fuel products as possible to maximize profit (this includes minimizing energy efficiency).

Economic ideology is the primary driver of human behavior and, as it stands now, corporate capitalism rules. Regardless of the [good] intentions of bioconservatism, it cannot override the powerful forces of fossil fuel capitalism. The only way to specifically target the fossil fuel industry is to make it unprofitable. Another way is to redirect current economic ideology away from power concentration in the elite class (oligarchs and the 1%-ers).

The biggest problem with industrial pollution (includes climate change) is scale. Large powerful nations enable large powerful corporations which extend their reach into international markets to become international conglomerates. By pooling the monies of many investors, small numbers of executives have the power to use and do use these huge sums to profit at any means and that includes polluting the environment with their toxic outputs. If economies were structured so that power is  disseminated in a way that prevents it from being concentrated in the hands of a few elites, industry could only operate on a small scale. And small scale produces less pollution.

Stand with Water-Protectors

My comment at a Truthout post regarding the North Dakota Access Pipeline:

The colonial NoDAPL battle is another iteration of an economic conflict between two disparate sides; one brings the military and police power of the state, the other brings the voices of an oppresses population. We have and currently see similar (economic) fights all over the country and all over the world. Some examples include international trade pacts (TPP/TTIP) where corporations purchase government influence to negotiate terms to their benefit and develop marketing/propaganda strategies to sell them to the voters of their respective countries. Strong-arming or influence purchasing of local governments for tax benefits/incentives to draw so-called jobs in the form of factories (like cars or airplanes), sports teams (to subsidize stadiums/roads) and retail enterprises (like Walmart stores). International armed conflict where control of economic resources is a significant driver of government directed military conflict - the war in Iraq was at least partially about gaining control of Iraq's oil; it was also an opportunity for arms producers to sell more products to the U.S. military. Even U.S. elections are about corporations buying political marketing/propaganda in the form of campaigns to purchase/persuade voters to their thinking. In all cases, powerful corporations are backed by the institutional and/or military power of governments to exert their will on a weaker opponent.

The true nature of the conflict is powerful corporations/individuals fighting the less powerful to increase their opportunity to increase their power. For the sake of oppressed/repressed people everywhere, we should always stand with them. Many thanks to the water protectors. You are fighting for my rights as well as yours and I stand by your side.

Adverse effects of religious teaching

Unlike PZ Myers who has written often and militantly against deist teaching, I had primarily held a neutral stance, thinking religiosity was relatively harmless. Then the recent presidential election occurred and an editorial at Truthout blamed it on irrational thinking... so putting it all together...

Religion imbues irrational thinking because it promotes belief in beings which cannot be detected by any physical means. It teaches followers to believe in things they cannot rationally sense.

Abrogation of rational thinking through early religious indoctrination sensitizes followers to further irrational and illogical arguments.

Propaganda and marketing uses emotional appeals to shortchange/ short circuit rational and thus critical thinking.

While both Republican and Democratic parties are guilty of propagandish tactics and arguments, the recent president-elect was particularly adept.

The problem is that religious teaching and practice is legally protected by the US Constitution. How do we get around that obstacle?

Update: Confirmation that religious teaching is anti-critical thinking - NPR reports Evangelicals don't trust scientists.

Political responsibility

I hadn't thought about Dan Quayle for a while but then I just watched a Molly Ivins video where her opinion coincided with mine, he's stupid. And some dots started connecting... did G.H.W.Bush choose Quayle because he's stupid as a way to prepare the country to see his less than brilliant son(s) as qualified to be POTUS? I actually don't think he did but the consequences of his choice of Quayle for VP is evidenced by, thankfully, former president GWB and ominously by president-elect DJT.

Not hopeful

My Truthout comment at a post titled: Donald Trump's Victory Is Not the Last Word

Republicans have an in-group which is better known as the 0.1%. Democrats also have an in-group, the 5%. Donald Trump only has Donald Trump; he has no group loyalty. With his election, we may very well have just doomed the planet to catastrophic climate change. For those who voted for him hoping to improve their personal economic circumstances, not only will it not happen; he will sell your future and that of all your children and grandchildren to enrich himself. The future is far from optimistic.

I hope this is wrong today...

Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public. 

H. L. Mencken 

US editor (1880 - 1956)

 

The election hasn't been decided yet ... and I had a hard time believing we elected GWB twice. The oligarchs win regardless of who sits in elected office. International strife might be just a smidgeon more stable with Clinton.

More confirmation...

of the corrupting influence of information control/secrecy. This time, a post at Truthout describes the role of secret power brokers on U.S. elections - they effectively eliminate any chance of voters to select their favorite candidate by locking out most political speech.

My comment:

Absolutely. Secrecy and control of information are at the root of power and wealth concentration in this country and elsewhere. The Real News Network recently posted a series about how trade became linked to control of intellectual property which expands into how information control ('intellectual property') benefits its controllers to the detriment of economies and the majority of people at large (http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=832&Itemid=74&jumival=1561). Indeed, the economic consequences of information control (including disinformation) is behind the climate change that threatens economies, ecosystems and humanity. If we really want to fix the system, the most meaningful reform would start with universal whistleblower protection.

Independent confirmation

Any one who has read my series describing the relationship between ecosystems and economies knows how I think economies actually work:

Econology Part 1a: It's not the economy, Stupid; it's economics
 
Econology Part 1b: The depth and breadth of economies

Econology Part 2: The ecology of economies

Econology Part 3: Eleven economics lessons from ecosystems

Econology Part 4: Emergent flaws of Capitalism (1, 2)

 Econology Part 5: The Next Economy

A major conclusion is that the currency of change/evolution in ecosystems/economies is genetic information/information. Thus, the take home message is that control of information underpins the concentration of power in economies. The types of 'economic' policies proposed by policy makers, lobbyists and most economists don't address this; the only true reform of economic systems is essentially complete information transparency.

Not being an economist, I have very little background knowledge on which to draw support for my thesis and the mainstream economic thinking discussed in the media completely counter my ideas. But just recently, I came across a video series where an Australian economist, Peter Drahos, describes the impact of ever tighter control of intellectual property on the larger economy... and much of what he says concurs with my reasoning - Yes! If you can spare the time, it's worth a listen/view.

Gaius Publius posted 'TPP Is a Monopoly Protection Scheme, the Exact Opposite of a "Free Trade" Deal' at Down with Tyranny blog.

I left this comment:

The most valuable commodity is information. Information about boundaries define nations and states; information about military assets ('soft' information like logistics; 'hard information of weapons plans) define military strength/power; 'popular' information (music, literature, fashion, news) define cultures; corporate/trade/safety information (patents, wages, exposure risks) define and determine profits. This being the case, any and all policy(ies) regulating trade and economics regulates information; including multi-national trade pacts. A truly free market would have near information transparency. Information transparency *may* also circumvent the need for regulation; in your example of certified measuring devices, transparency would enable consumer experience to establish valuable information/data on quality of sellers and their goods.

The original post focused on specifically on TPP. It's important to understand all policy has economic consequences.

Economic drivers of humanitarian aid

One of the major themes that run through many of these posts is how entwined economic decisions are with all personal, cultural and political life at essentially all levels. A recent interview at NPR brought to mind some of the links between economics and humanitarian aid.

Firstly, the need for humanitarian aid is often (but not always) the direct or indirect outcome of economically driven policy. Two major examples: (1) war refugees - war is often waged to forcefully take resources from another sovereign nation. Civil wars are internal conflicts for control of resources. All wars have economic winners and losers. (2) climate refugees - victims of climate change intensified natural phenomena (droughts, storms, etc.); refugees whose native ecosystem can no longer grow the food needed for survival. Climate change is the consequence of economies spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere through the consumption of fossil fuels to make stuff. The fossil fuel industry and all fossil fuel powered industry have profited from this.

Three telling points/quotes from the interview:

"In your report, you found that conflicts last two times longer than they did in 25 years ago..." 

"...the aid sector is bigger than it's ever been before, with 4,500 known relief organizations around the world..."

"...Organizations have become businesses in many ways, held back by interests that are very corporate. Success is not measured in terms of the quality of the aid you provide, or how much you're working in partnership with other NGOs. It's about how many places you're in, how much staff you have, how much is in your budget..."

Put together, it seems that rich powerful players extract wealth from the poor to the point where they exist at the barest edge of survival and forced into the position of needing external aid (aid refugees). These rich powerful people then 'very generously' donate tiny amounts of the wealth they've extracted from the aid refugees to boost their charitable/humanitarian bona fides. But as the linked interview implies, much of this is a scam. The spending of aid money has more to do with boosting the balance sheet of the organization than actually helping people in need.

The worldwide economic system is set up so that resources are stolen from the poor and the supposed return of some of these stolen resources as aid are actually ways to further launder those stolen resources back to the rich. Aside from the immorality and injustice of such a system, it's also environmentally unsustainable. Either human societies lives within the constraints of the planetary ecosystem or the ecosystem will force us to. In case of the latter, recall what Tennyson wrote... "Nature, red in tooth and claw..."

Climate change is caused by geoengineering

I occasionally comment on articles at Truthout. I've seen some interesting (meaning thoughtful) discussions. Then I read a post with an incredibly silly series of comments - no I won't link to it; I don't believe in spreading silly conspiracy theories. Suffice it to say, many comments about chemtrails, contrails, geoengineering and climate change... and the majority of them very confusing. So I just wanted to make a few points:

(1) Responsible scientists do not expect or plan for the eventuality that geoengineering will rescue the planet from global environmental collapse caused by climate change. This is because there is no way to test the accuracy of climate theory before applying it and the risk of a bad outcome because a theory was incomplete is too high. There's only one planet Earth; an inadequate geoengineering theory could cause more problems than it solves.

Here's an illustration:
A pet store has a sudden outbreak of a disease in their puppies. Without knowing if it's caused by a known virus or bacteria or something completely different, it would be reasonable to theorize they have a bacterial or viral infection and thus treat all the puppies with antibiotic and/or anti-viral medication. This is because even if all the puppies in that store die, other stores have more puppies; there is no risk of loosing that breed or all dogs. If the treatment cures the disease, then the theory is likely correct and other pet stores can use the same treatment

A collector who has the only living dog would be very careful about how they treat any illness because there are no other dogs to test medications on. If the theory of the disease is wrong, the treatment may further injure the only dog in the world. With only one planet, if the climate theory is wrong, geoengineering can make matters much worst.

(2) Climate change is caused by inadvertent geoengineering. Human activity that pumps greenhouse gases/chemicals into the atmosphere is geoengineering the climate of the planet. This proves the point that without a thoroughly tested theory of climate, any outcome of geoengineering is driven in part by accident.

(3) Given we know that pumping greenhouse gases/chemicals into the atmosphere is bad and we don't have a scientifically proven geoengineering 'easy fix', the only real solution is to stop making the problem worst and support the ecosystem as best we can to help it recover.

One of my repeating themes: climate change is the consequence of human economies. The people who control the fossil fuel industry do everything they can to create demand and sell more and more fossil fuels (source of greenhouse gases) ... so they concentrate wealth. The question in the end - what can they buy with all their wealth on an ecologically ravaged planet?

Economically driven patterns

A recent article posted at Truthout.org describes an ongoing battle between a Texas rancher name Eleanor Fairchild and TransCanada which has not upheld their agreement to restore her land after building a pipeline through it.

The story brings up issues of corporate power, eminent domain, citizen's / landowner / individual rights, enforcement, unequal power and environmental stewardship.

(1) Eleanor Fairchild's story along with the ongoing protests by Native American tribes at Standing Rock, ND over the Dakota Access pipeline also brings to mind the treatment of Native Americans by European settlers and the U.S. government. Foreign settlers forced Native Americans from their homes, deliberately exposed them deadly pathogens from which they had little defense, stole their land and territory, negotiated treaties conferring certain rights and those treaties often weren't worth the paper they were written on. Whether signed or not, the U.S. government often imposed its will regardless.

And Eleanor Fairchild's story is extraordinarily similar. Her land was trespassed on and damaged before any rights were transferred; then accused of eco-terrorism for defending her land; and after damaging her land to put through their pipeline, failed to honor their agreement to restore her land.

In both cases, larger powers either used the power of the state (military intervention in Native American relationships, treaties between 'states'; judicial system, eminent domain) or the deliberate abrogation of state power of oversight (broken treaties; lack of enforcement/accountability for TransCanada) to force their will on the less powerful.

The U.S. Constitution is the supposed foundation of laws in this country and establishes the concept of equality under the law. In practice, the powerful have always had the law at their backs. Land hungry early settlers used the military to grab land from Native Americans; now power takes the form of paper entities like corporations to grab land and land rights from their owners. (International trade agreements repeat the same pattern - confers greater rights to corporations at the expense of nations and their citizens.) It makes me question if the true intent of the Constitution was the lofty descriptions taught to schoolchildren. The second amendment compromise to appease the slave holding south suggests those who drafted the Constitution had multiple motives, not all of them pure.

(2) A major by-product of corporate profit making activity in this country is environmental degradation - fracking and agriculture pollutes water; oil spills/ fires/ explosions destroy structures, infrastructures, damages air/water quality... And this is reminiscent of the damaged environment of China and the former USSR. In these cases, powerful authorities could and did override the will and wishes of local residents to determine what industries, what individuals and what interests could do as they wish in any given location. In the U.S., government is not making the decisions but its enforcing corporate decisions.

Has the U.S. ever been a state where voters make decisions? These patterns suggest otherwise.

About the minimum wage...

In the recent Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders made the $15 minimum wage a key aim of his agenda. His appointees to the platform committee were able to embed it into the 2016 Democratic platform. Increasing the minimum wage would have a positive effect on the economy - it will increase the circulation of functioning capital in the economy.

But why do politicians always define the minimum wage at a fixed dollar amount instead of indexing it to a updated metric? The current minimum wage of $7.25 was effective as of July 24, 2009 - 7 years ago! Inflation has increased prices across the board for all consumer goods, yet the minimum wage has not increased. The poorest earners have had the least capacity to improve their incomes to meet their daily needs. But instead of resolving the issue once and for all, Congress, more accurately, the partisan politicians in Congress, use the minimum wage as a wedge issue to their own ends. Republicans claim it will hurt jobs and young (meaning teenage)/part time workers. Democrats argue it would increase demand which improves the economy overall. Both sides aim to divide the electorate into pro or con minimum wage increase for party tribalism.

This is harmful and disrespectful of voters and workers and damaging to the economy by allowing the whims of Congress-persons to order the survival and well being of a large swathe of the population. Congress should instead peg the minimum wage to an annual metric. There are several that would work. I happen to think a full time minimum wage should equal half the per capita GDP of the prior year. For example, as of July 2016, GDP per capita was $51,486.00. Round to a easier number - 51,500 - and divide by 2 for $25,750 annual salary. $25,750 annual salary is equal to $13.34 per hour - less than the $15/hr in the Democratic platform but would increase or decrease based on economic performance as a whole. This approach would do much to protect low wage workers from the vicissitudes of public office holders.

When nice is not nice

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly this past Saturday. And like many public figures, death compels hagiographic remembrances...

He was a consistent jurist; he was enthusiastic and lively; he was best friends with Ruth Bader Ginsburg; he was steadfast and sincere in his beliefs.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a number of years ago about his friends and which, if any of them, could be considered 'nice'. (Most of our mutual friends are nice; most of his are questionable :).)

The division comes into play over the superficial usage of 'nice' which describes people who are overtly pleasant and polite. These are good conversationalists who do not stir the pot in social situations. But there's the deeper sense of 'nice' which involves a spiritual generosity that goes beyond many people. To be truly nice, there must be an intentional care to not harm others, regardless of a personal relationship. Nice people value their friends, their relationships (with people and the environment) and they behave in accordance with their values. A 'nice' vegetarian avoids leather goods for example. Using this definition, nice people are not obligated to be pleasant but nice people make the very best friends. (By the way, nice doesn't include rigid or judgemental. Many evangelical and fundamentalist religious followers fail in this. I fail when I judge members of religious communities.)

Going back to Antonin Scalia, many of the articles written about him since his death focus on his superficial niceness. But his rulings as a Supreme Court Justice and his legal philosophy run opposite of the deeper meaning of nice.

I actually prefer a president who is nice in the sense they value much of what I value but not nice in that they are ruthless in fighting to achieve what I want to achieve. But on the Supreme Court, we should have properly nice Justices; humanitarian jurists with impeccable judicial scholarship who interpret the Constitution in a manner meaningful to the issues of today. The late Justice Scalia failed in this regard. Cross your fingers and hope his replacement will be better.

Why do they need to see ID?

Shopping is far from my favorite activity and I had a highly questionable experience recently when exchanging a gift. As it happens, a brand name retailer wanted to see my ID for an exchange... why was this necessary? Legal identification has a great deal of personal information which a retailer has no need to access. Are they building a a marketing database? Are they planning to sell my information?

At this point, I will forego purchasing anything with this brand logo. They have enough on me; I see no reason to allow them more profit.

Note: I should have said I don't carry ID.