What if...

Claus von Stauffenberg and his conspirators had succeeded? Will future historians look back at our time and wish for an equivalent plot? Will there even be future historians or will the policies of today obliterate any viable path to continue the human species and/or culture?

It's hard to be optimistic in the face of so many authoritarian-minded national leaders. A short list that immediately comes to mind includes Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Duterte in the Philippines, India's Modi, Netanyahu in Israel and DJT in the U.S. They all actively repress free speech and expression to advance their own standing and power to benefit those of their class. Scary times ahead...

Retail decline?

I had to take an elderly friend shoe shopping and the reception we received at a local shoe store was unfriendly to say the least. It was a big store, two shoe aisles deep and absolutely no visible benches until the very back corridor (children's shoes) parallel to the entrance... so I picked up a bench and moved it over to the adult area where my elderly friend wanted to try on shoes.

(1) Don't make customers need to ask and search for benches in a shoe store!

Then a clerk came along and started harping about fire regulations, etc.

(2) The polite customer friendly response would be to apologize and move the bench to the end of the *nearest* aisle in keeping with fire regulations to best accommodate the limitations of their elderly, frail customer.

When I pointed out their customer had physical limitations that the store was not accommodating, the response was to submit a complaint online.

(3) Do not disrespect the comments of a live customer to their face! It should be the responsibility of every employee to improve the quality of the product and service of any company they work for. This especially includes passing the face-to-face critiques of customers up the chain of the company.

I was so livid, I've decided to never buy from that brand store again. I seldom buy that brand shoe and now I am much less likely to buy them also... no Skechers for me (my friend too).

BTW, I am not saying I was 'right' in my actions but the clerk was absolutely 'wrong' in the way they interacted with us.

CEO POTUS not POTUS

Comment at C&L:

The greatest threat posed to the U.S. Constitution by DJT is the privatization of the executive branch. In many ways, Congress has already been privatized; each congress critter has their personal cohort of financial donors. With DJT, POTUS no longer represents or acts in the interests of the American people; rather, as CEO of America, the job of POTUS is to pad his income and those of his board members first (POTUS & cabinet) followed by his shareholders (donors).
Candidate DJT was highly contemptuous of past presidents and had little respect for the power and responsibilities of the job. Now that he is POTUS DJT, shows no willingness to assume that mantle. In his view, the Presidency is not a role he needs to grow into but rather a role he can twist and fit into his self image.
External controls to our democracy are failing: By normalizing his behavior and failing to challenge his deficiencies, media is enabling the CEO-ization of the presidency. By not impeaching him, Congress is allowing DJT to distort the role of POTUS and empower the position with power never conferred by the Constitution. The consequences of allowing DJT to redefine the job of POTUS are a threat to the nation and the planet.

There are experiences/roles/jobs which force people to grow - a good example is parenthood. A responsible parent will see to their child/children's wellbeing before their own pleasure. The shift from non-parent to parent forces transformative growth. The job of POTUS is likewise a transformative job; the power and responsibility substantially changes people. But DJT has decided he is bigger than being POTUS. He is changing the job and not to its improvement.

Press failure

Comment at Crooks and Liars with video clip of Sean Spicer 'gaslighting' the press:

I blame the press for the sad state of affairs. Right wing news grew, profited and flourished under the failure of the mainstream press to contain their lies and doublespeak through benign neglect. Now we have a press secretary whose starting premise is a half truth which he follows with a ninety degree pivot to a full lie which rotates in a different direction to increase the base of the lie then he turns back around to accuse the press of misdirecting/misleading. Even a partial description of the spin is dizzying. 

I'm tired of DJT and company telling me what 'the real story is' and what's important. I want the truth.

Triumph or Tragedy

NPR posted a story on it website yesterday announcing the First Clouded Leopard Cub Born Using Cryopreserved Semen. I am often of two minds with such announcements. As a supporter and advocate of science and information, I cheer at the advancement of knowledge and understanding. IMO, the best justification for scientific inquiry is curiosity interesting; answer an interesting question. In instances when extraordinary efforts are needed to preserve a species, I detest the need to ask the question, often because human destruction of habitat is the root of population decline. When I read the post yesterday, I was angry. Economic greed drives habitat loss and decimates wildlife. Now appeals to the compassion of workers funds this type of research and 'preserves' these lost species in zoos as living exhibits. It's morally wrong.

No Principles of Economics?

The latest episode of Economic Update, Where Economic Theories Clash, strongly implies something I feared regarding the field of Economics. In it, Richard Wolff called Neo-classical economics, Keynesian economics and Marxian economics 'theories' of economics which implies they have undergone some form of validation or testing (scientific theories are vigorously tested before they are called 'theories'). But in real economies, each of these 'theories' has failed in one permutation or other. This suggests that Economics has no unifying principles. [To use the physical sciences as an example (again): the Theory of Evolution is a unifying principle in biology - it connects all living organisms and justifies the study of model organisms to better understand life; Atomic Theory is a unifying principle of chemistry - it predicts the behavior of all matter.] An example of a possible unifying economic principle is the presumption that functional economies must yield profit; this would have strong implications for capitalism.

This is particularly troubling when it comes to policy. All public policy is economic policy and it is argued and made on the basis of Economic theory. If Economic theory is as poorly developed as implied above, then for all intents and purposes, Economic theory is ideology without basis in empirical principle. As it stands now, the science of climate change has very strong physical evidence backing it and thus should drive energy policy. In its stead, we have nonsense 'economic' arguments that the cost of protecting the biosphere is 'too expensive'. Policy makers are balancing the future of humanity against the profiteering of capitalists at our ignorance. If science can detangle systems as complex as climate to predicted global climate change, it should be able to apply similar methods to answer the question of how to best structure economies for the sake of mankind. Economies should serve humanity not the other way around.

Repeat

Sorry for the repost. This is a record of another Truthout comment. They seem to be censoring me...

Truthout may be censoring my comments. I wrote this in response to another post but much of it is relevant here - terms have been adjusted to reflect this. It has been on 'pending' status for close to three business hours at this point... 

The media is not fully at fault here. Nor, for that matter, is fault at the foot of the First Amendment. The problem is the concentration of power. Concentration of economic power => concentration of political power => continuous feedback to increase power concentration (greater media consolidation) => fewer media voices/viewpoints. This is the step wise consequence of the elite doing everything they can to increase their power. In 'open' economies and countries, the elite are the capitalists (in modern parlance, corporatists); in China, the elite are generally members of the Central Committee; in Russia, Putin confers 'elite' status. 

The solutions offered by progressives, return to greater media regulation, primarily through government programs/policy, are short term fixes. They want to shift power to a (slightly) different set of elites while keeping structures of power (government & corporations) intact. This sets up a situation where the 'losing' elites will use the system to regain their lost advantages. That's the entire story of the Republican effort to reverse the New Deal. 

The real solution is to fully disseminate power to every citizen and individual. And the key to that is to maximize transparency so information is freely available. The elites have power because they control information. If their hold on information is taken away, neither they nor anyone else will be able to concentrate power in the future. From a media perspective, this translates to: all means of disseminating information should be essentially free. 

Warning to readers: Truthout may be censoring the content of allowed comments. In the more than 1 hour since writing this post, another comment has been written, approved and posted. This brings to question the 'journalistic' integrity of this institution. Bear in mind some issue I brought up elsewhere:
My comment at a piece Lewis Wallace wrote called 'Objectivity is dead, and I’m okay with it':
In no particular order:
1. Textbooks are carefully vetted for their content. In recent years, there have been any number of partisan battles to rewrite a historical bent but these seldom occur in backrooms. This means what schoolchildren learn has undergone some degree of scrutiny. The information available to adults by way of media does not undergo an equivalent degree of scrutiny for accuracy; in fact, it is legal for media to outright lie. This placed the burden of critical evaluation on consumers who more often than not, do not have the wherewithal to carry out that responsibility. ‘You decide’ is by definition, not journalism. I am not knowledgeable of most topics, I need knowledgeable journalists to accurately *and* pointedly highlight lies, mis-directions and distortions.
2. Today’s news in tomorrow’s historical record. Consider how little we know about the past (very little is known about lives of slaves, women and poor) because only white male voices were recorded, often silenced by deliberately and maliciously enforced illiteracy. There’s is no excuse or justification for that in this day and age of near universal literacy and vast mechanisms of information dissemination.
3. Some examples of false binaries that the media promulgates by never deviating beyond their boundaries: (a.) Political ideology is not fully covered by the Democratic Party’s definition of ‘liberal’ and the Republican Party’s definition of ‘conservative’. Alternate models of organizing health insurance (user pays vs single payer) or childcare (private vs. state subsidized) or criminal justice (reform/punitive) for example. (b.) Social gender is not biologically defined by sex; neither is biological sex always clear cut. All issues related to sexual identity and sexuality. (c.) Socialism is always public and capitalism is always private. Private insurance providers run by socialist principles; publicly owned utilities operate much like capitalist corporations.
4. What it means to be ‘objective’ or ‘neutrality’, journalistically speaking? (a.) to not insert any voice outside of the news item — journalism by stenography or “ ‘you decide’ journalism”; (b.) insert ‘opposite’ voice of news item — journalism as sports commentary; (c.) insert corrections of specifically mentioned lies; (d.) insert relevant factual context — for example, “…the millions of dollars mentioned by the Senator lost to fraud accounts for less than 1% of the overall program.”; (e) insert long term context — future cost/savings; past injustices.
Your essay was couched primarily in terms of journalistic integrity; it’s critical to also include the responsibility journalism has to public and social integrity.

Today, January 20, 2017...

...may mark the end of the American Empire as it currently exists. I have no particular attachment, loyalty or affection to this empire but it was familiar. It failed Americans and other people around the world in many ways so I don't anticipate grieving its lost. My concern is the uncertain future we all face. I would very much prefer a more measured and controlled change towards improvement. The fear now is a rapid negative change. The hope now is that the negatives are so egregious, the larger population will demand correction. And ideally, the correction will takes us into positive territory relative to today; it's the only way we can survive climate change.

Best wishes to all.

Any notion of American exceptionalism...

...has been destroyed by the election of DJT as President of the United States.

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.

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.

A silly rant...

... but perhaps indicative of profit seeking corporate culture.

My MacBook needs a new battery. Fine. I'm not happy but I'll deal. I also don't have a car so I either walk or take public transportation. Also fine, I deal. But when I called the Apple store to ask if they had the battery in stock, you know, so I didn't have to trek all the way over to the mall for no reason... guess what?

They can't talk to me on the phone because I don't have a service contract!

I ended up going to a small independently operated computer store. They had to order the battery so it'll take a few days but the personal contact beats the electronic Apple voice any day. Especially when the electronic Apple voice isn't willing to answer a non-device specific diagnostic question.