Women's Health Issues as defined by the Left.....

To the illustrious Mr. Pot:

I chose the topic of my last missive for the outgoing year of 2013 as an opportunity to decry the dehumanization of our culture and re-educate some of my good friends on the Left about the hideous practices to which the landmark decision of 1973, Roe v Wade, has sunk. While the Left has generally succeeded in disguising the gruesome practice of abortion under the feel good terms of Reproductive Rights and Women's Health Issues, the fact remains that abortion has little to do with either. It is the typical left wing tactic to give a lofty name to a practice that most Americans would eschew if it was honestly presented. The Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010 by President Obama is another egregious example of the political use of misnomers.

Few educated Americans can delve successfully into the logic that the majority of the Supreme Court employed to determine the constitutionality of a practice which is so inherently unconstitutional. Writing the majority opinion, Associate Justice Harry Blackmun linked abortion to the vague and constantly re-emerging concept of an individual right to privacy. Conservative pundits and legal scholars alike often refer to this decision as the ultimate grasping of legal straws to satisfy a voracious feminist appetite of the time. Ironically, the Gloria Steinems, past and present, constantly gloss over the undeniable fact that more than half of the aborted babies in this country are female and possible future feminists. No women's rights for them...no reproductive freedom for them...not even the most basic and scared of all human rights, the right to life!

Abortion has become the most sanctimonious sacrament of the Left. Regardless of its form or timing, the left will accept no reasonable compromise. “Absolute right to destroy human life for any reason and under any circumstances!” seems to be the mantra hummed in every Planned Parenthood abortion mill throughout the fruited plains. The incongruous and laughable opposition of the Left to any type of government regulation or limitation on abortion is supremely hypocritical since there is also an on-going effort by these same folks to legislate federal funds to pay for abortions.  The devious and perverse machinations of the Obama Administration has gone so far as to try to force Catholic hospitals to furnish “reproductive services” in direct violation of Catholic tenets of faith.

Many liberally educated individuals have a passing familiarity with the Hippocratic Oath. The oath in its pristine form forbade the doctor to induce or perform abortions.  That's right! More than 1,500 years ago, abortion even then was a societal no-no. My how civilization has “progressed”. Today, many medical colleges and universities have eliminated the once proud oath of all new physicians. The antiquated few who still make the oath voluntary have modified it and many have eliminated the pledge to perform no abortion.

Now we come to an accepted and legal practice in the United States of America that would make the most ardent supporters of Josef Mengele stand and applaud. Sadly, the gruesome ripping apart limb by limb in utero of a viable and feeling baby during early and mid-term trimesters  is not enough to satisfy the obsessive demands of pro-choice proponents. A new and efficient way to destroy babies up to the very moment of delivery, even in the ninth month, had to be developed. Sadly, it was and is in practice throughout our country. It's technically known as intact dilation and extraction (IDX). While the footnote reference specifically defines and explains the hideous procedure in clinical terms, there is one update to note. The reference maintains that as of 2008, the barbaric practice remains illegal in the United States. That is no longer the case. It is now perfectly legal to force a full term baby out of the birth canal with the exception of its head. The head remains just inside the mother, thus the term “partial birth abortion”. The physician then thrusts a sharpened probe into the base of the baby's skull. The probe is connected to a powerful vacuum machine which literally begins to suck the baby's brain out and thus flattens the infant's small cranium. The baby is not administered any type of anesthesia during this hideous procedure. Once the spasm of the dying infant ceases, the doctor simply pulls the baby out and sends it off for medical research much like a dead lab monkey or pile of medical waste material.

Liberal politicians, including our President, avidly and unalterably support partial birth abortion. Conservative politicians with, few exceptions, avoid the controversy in spineless fashion. Gallup polls indicate, regretfully, that a majority of Americans support a woman's right to abort her baby. Most Americans, however, also favor limits on the practice and have strong opposition to the partial birth procedure. I, for one, express extreme sadness that we have become so desensitized in this country. There a very few individuals courageous enough to stand and fight for the rights of the unborn. The Left, politically and in the media, have done a masterful job of convincing most women that this is a health issue and secondarily a rights issue. They are winning, or may have actually won, the battle. What's next on the agenda?  There's the sticky issues of infants strong enough and determined enough to survive botched abortions. Our President, when in the Illinois State Senate voted to deny person-hood to these babies. I can only imagine that the time will come, probably in our life time, when person-hood will be reserved for babies older than 30 days. Parents will then have a “trying out” period with the option of a full refund and return privileges. What will happen to the unwanted babies then? Not to worry....Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, et al already have some pretty radical remedies for those discarded albeit living and breathing “blobs of flesh”. Just don't ask what they are. It's better you didn't know (or care).

Respectfully,

Mr. Kettle

Re: Assembly line discards and Social Security

December 14, 2013

To the Illustrious Mr. Pot:

I was shocked, literally shocked, to discover (by your own admission) your active participation in a wholly capitalistic enterprise, both on your own and in service to a capitalistic master. I applaud your willingness to admit the problem and I stand ready at any time to assist and support you as a recovering liberal.

Now, on to your extensive seminar about the foibles of misplaced, malfunctioning, assembly line do-dads and the havoc they play with your computerized methodologies and algorithms or whatever they are called. Eventually I am sure I will uncover a relationship between your misplaced defectives and the wisdom of government sponsored retirement plans but as yet, regrettably, I have not. I appreciate the extensive lengths you went to explain to us unwashed semi-literates that the surprising results of investing lowers sums of cash in a retirement plans generally results in correspondingly lower returns.

But I would like to return, albeit briefly, to your adventures in computer programs that provide data to insure corporations can plan appropriately for assembly line errors, man-made or other wise. Are we still not at the technological level where factors of human nature can be incorporated into computer code? In other words, if I understand your conundrum in trying to discover the missing 4%, the program was unable to advise management that the missing defective products may have been simply discarded, hidden, or thrown away to disguise the laziness, incompetence, or apathy of assembly line workers (who were probably union organized to begin with). Perhaps top executives should have been able to ace this out for themselves, but at the exorbitant rate you surely charge your clients ( a little sarcastic humor here....I am sure you are worth every penny of your fee ...and more), a little prodding in that direction from the program could have been expected. Since I bow, however, to your obvious expertise in that area, I will leave that as an issue between you and the evil capitalists with whom you contracted.

Now, back to retirement programs, Social Security, et al. You specifically lamented the fact that I did not provide a concrete contemporary example of the benefits of private investment as opposed to government control of the golden retirement years. Since the Galveston employees are now happily enjoying their retirement and most are financially comfortable, I thought that fact, in and of itself, might at least begrudgingly elicit a positive response from you. Alas, I forgot I was dealing with a liberal mindset where empirical proof of a program's success is rarely greeted with enthusiasm, especially when taxpayer's dollars are not expended.

I must, therefore, turn to my own personal experience. I am now the beneficiary of the Social Security ponzi scheme and a separate retirement fund known as the Virginia Retirement System. After paying into Social Security for nearly 50 years, my monthly benefit is slightly above the federal poverty level. For only half of those fifty years, I also participated in the Virginia Retirement System which is invested in companies on the New York Stock Exchange and is extremely well managed. My retirement benefit is a full 30% more than an investment managed by the federal government. I hesitate to use the word “managed” since the current policy for funding Social Security seems to be to take as much in taxes as you can and spend it as quickly as you can. If private corporations treated their employee's retirement funds in the same manner as politicians treated Social Security, most would be residing now in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.

The point is that the federal government does very few things well. You of all people can certainly appreciate the fact that the most complicated and demanding of computer web sites in private industry generally function to perfection and make lots of money for creative entrepreneurs. A recent estimate by top computer professionals place the price tag in private industry for a web site like www.healthcare.gov. at $20 million tops with a median estimate at $10 million. They also estimated development and testing time at 18 months tops. Surely, you, Mr. Pot, as a taxpayer and techno-professional must be outraged that the government attempt at this web site to date has cost us in excess of $600 million and is now entering it's fourth year of development AND IT STILL DOESN'T WORK at the most fundamental level!!!!

I lump Social Security into the same pile of broken assembly line products mentioned earlier. Why can't we at least try a new approach to retirement funds with a pilot program allowing citizens to opt out of Social Security (average return is approximately an anemic 1.6%) I believe the answer is quite obvious....it just might work and then no one would want to allow the government to determine how well off you will be in your golden years.

Incidentally, you may have noticed the Dow recently closed at over 16,000 indicating that a lot of money is being made in the stock market. While government economists have traditionally scoffed at the idea of even a 15,000 day at the NYSE, some in the private sector are now saying a 30,000 closing is not as outrageous as it once may have seemed.

I close with a compliment, Mr. Pot. Your treatise on the development and implementation of your program was scholarly and mostly intelligible even to a lay person like myself. Kudos!

Respectfully submitted,

Mr. Kettle

What is Class Warfare?

"To be concerned about inequality is not to be engaged in class warfare." - Lawrence Summers, Former Secretary of the Treasury, In an interview with Charlie Rose, December 11, 2013.

Whenever the issues of taxes and social welfare programs rise to the consciousness of the public, the conversation inevitably devolves into a shouting match revolving about class warfare. Has it always been this way? Has the perceived sentiments that prevail always been the majority? Are those perceptions even real or merely the illusion of slick marketing?

If the concept of redistribution is such a pregnant term, should it be aborted like an unwanted fetus, lest it drain the life of those who would conceived it and even those whose lives are tangential, or allowed to grow that we might see its long-term potential?

Another phrase used in the aforementioned interview was that short-term growth raises long-term potential, which has been proven out consistently throughout our history. What's different now?

Feel free to share your thoughts.

Math, Money & Politics

Dear Mr. Kettle,

Years ago, when I was working in the manufacturing side of the computer industry, one of my more unenviable task was to improve something called the first-pass fallout rate (FPFR) of the products who’s manufacturing life cycles I was tasked with overseeing. For a bit of clarity to the uninformed, FPFR is a simple quotient of product that fails to meet basic manufacturing quality guidelines divided by the total production numbers for that product. It’s been said that for a manufacturing venture to master its profitability it must control its first-pass fallout rates. Whether that bit of wisdom still holds true in the decade since China joined the World Trade Organization, taking with it 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs in exchange for guaranteed profit margins, is beyond my understanding.

I mentioned that the task of improving FPFR was unenviable for two very fundamental reasons. The first unenviable quality to this particular responsibility has to do with the concepts of statistical control limits (SCL) and acceptable quality limits (AQL), which are two concepts associated with understanding just how much of what one manufactures will actually reach the customers’ hands. Without getting into a dissertation in applied statistics, I’ll use a simple analogy that everyone can understand. If we flip a coin there is a 50% probability that it lands heads up. This is a concept collectively known and intuitively agreed upon. By extension, if we flip the same coin 100 times, we are guaranteed that roughly half of those flips will result in heads, for that is the statistical nature of that system. Of course, any 100 sequential flips of the coin may yield slightly more or less heads than the predictable fifty, which we refer to as standard deviation, as a metric for anticipating the unpredictable aspects that we collectively call chance. Still, as long as we don’t see sixty, seventy, or eighty heads out of a hundred flips, then we can be assured that we’re still rooted in the reality of three dimensional physics. Most of us will agree with the assertion, but a few folks will still be stubbornly compelled to test the experiment by flipping that coin all 100 times – perhaps even a thousand times, or more – for statistics and probability can be difficult concepts to grasp, much less believe. Manufactured goods follow a similar pattern of predictability. Through observation and carefully recorded metrics we know that any electronic component that can be properly evaluated within its operational parameters when first turned on and survive those tests will have a long and healthy life on the order of twenty to thirty years. We also know with reasonable certainty what percentage of those electronic components will fail during this initial evaluation from critical, major, and minor defects. As a result, we can take our understanding of these predictable patterns of failure and translate them into more complex systems, such that every resistor, integrated circuit, soldered joint, and printed circuit board trace can be tabulated into a predictable FPFR for any manufactured circuit board. By vetting any newly sourced part and managing the testing process, I maintained control of critical and major patterns of failure – failures that might otherwise have shut down my manufacturing lines or, worse yet, allowed defective product out into the world. On the other hand, minor failures associated with workmanship issues, required diligent monitoring of FPFR to identify and correct negative trends in human behavior – new employees, protocols changes, equipment maintenance modifications, etc. However, in an almost completely automated manufacturing process even workmanship issues were almost inconsequential. Still, there was always a certain percentage of predictable failure, based largely on the complexity of the product being manufactured. In other words, there was never an expectation of FPFR approaching zero, among those who understood the way in which this process worked.

On the other side of the FPFR coin was the need to reduce these numbers as paramount to profitability, for as I’ve already stated a manufacturing venture that masters its first-pass fallout rates masters its profit. Failure to reduce these numbers from one fiscal quarter to the next was looked upon unfavorably by management. As a consequence of this business axiom, the FPFR reports being submitted by the factories were already below statistical control limits calculated for the products, making the reports meaningless as tool for assessing the relative health of a product in production. Point in case, an overseas factory was producing 50,000 units a month of my most complex data storage system and consistently reporting an FPFR of precisely 2.0%, from one month to the next. Unfortunately, because of the complexity of the system, SCL predicted that the product could not be produced with an FPFR much lower than 6%, without a radical change in its design or the manufacturing process. In other words, the factory was suddenly coming up heads eight times out ten. Place your bets folks, if you’re feelin’ lucky! More accurately, they had long since abandoned accurate FPFR reporting, such that I could not reliably track workmanship issues, much less any other patterns of failures. This arrangement made for an interesting pattern of behavior toward the end of each fiscal year as the factory pushed its bone pile of defective product back through the factory line only to discover that the product still could not be qualified as ready for sale, spiking FPFR and causing company-wide panic that got me more than one uncomfortable audience with the division’s vice president. I did make several offers to pack my golf clubs and travel to this factory in order to observe what was happening and, perhaps, better understand the subtle discrepancies between what was written and what was real. However, there was talk about the office I might be disinclined to return to the States, if allowed to leave. I came to look at this time each year as my own personal Halloween, except instead of answering the door to find a gaggle of diminutive monsters yelling “trick or treat”, I found a bag of excrement ablaze atop my stoop, each and every time. Rather than scrapping and salvaging the defective product the company invested thousands of extra man-hours each year (engineers, quality assurance managers, electronics technicians, factory line workers, etc.) into what I came to refer to as the Frankie Resurrection Effort, simply because no one would accept the math that says man can only resurrect the dead within the confines of his own imagination.

I offer up this belated little Halloween tale not because it’s an anecdotal message about how we have a tendency to ignore the subtle complexities of mathematics out of ignorance or blindness. Rather, this tale was symptomatic of all the products that I worked on, in every factory around the globe (to be precise there were twelve products, in four factories, on three continents). The only consistency in the whole affair was the lack of consistency in the way in which FPFR numbers were fabricated from one factory or product line to another because few, if anyone, writing the reports understood the application of SCL and AQL as it applied to the products they were building. This eventually led me to pull the encoded manufacturing dates off the defective products, revealing that the defective products that suddenly spiked FPFR at the end of each business year spanned an entire year’s production. In other words, these were the dead bodies that didn’t make it off the line, were never counted and everyone refused to bury. They were the missing 4% that the math had predicted would fall from the production line. Before that gig, I had hair and it was not white.

While this may be intriguing stuff for an aspiring engineer, chomping at the bit for the day when manufacturing returns to our shores, I'm sure I’ve lost most of my readers. After all, this is a fable of mathematics that, while succinct, strives more for truth than fiction and, in so doing, loses its entertainment quality. Still, the moral of the story is simple enough to understand, for when we neglect the math the math will come back to bite us. Regrettably, we neglect the math all too often and, in my humble opinion, cost us millions of dollars a year in profit, in the aforementioned situation.

Another point in case might include the example you offered me recently regarding the City of Galveston’s employee retirement program. It’s regrettable that you had to reach back thirty years and half-way across the country to find a workable model for your example. After all, in the 1980’s, we had gross domestic product growth rate that was more than three times what it is today, for which many will argue as to the cause of its decline and who is to blame. We also had 5 million more good paying blue collar manufacturing jobs and Federal deficit spending unparalleled in the history of this country until the dawn of the 21st century. More to the point, as regards your assertions as to the primacy of annuities as preferable to Social Security, in 1981, AAA corporate bonds were paying annual interest rates four times higher than in 2012 and certificates of deposit were paying 36 times higher. What’s more, these rates outpaced inflation with a good 30-40% margin, such that once a retiree factored in the eventual cost of deferred income taxes there were still viable options for investing retirement funds, including annuities. In the last twenty years (that would be the last three presidencies) corporate bond rates and certificates of deposit have offered such low returns that once the spectre of deferred income tax is calculated into the equation, such investment vehicles barely pace inflation. That means anyone looking to place their retirement savings into an annuity had better have a sizeable chunk of money with which to start or be willing to make some concessions regarding the annuity schedule or how the annuity investment can be speculated. Something not really discuss in any detail regarding the events of 2008 is that had the investments banks been forced to resolve their short-term liquidity issues amongst themselves, it’s likely some would have sought the protection of bankruptcy courts in an effort to restructure their debts. I suspect annuity holders would have been among the first casualties to fall in this alternate strategy as they are, after all, little more than debt holders.

However, to get back on target, what’s more regrettable is that I have a bit of firsthand knowledge with non-profit organizations such as the City of Galveston. You see the state is littered with such organizations. On the other side of Houston, there was another non-profit business entity which also opted out of Social Security for its employees, at around the same time. However, moving forward to the late 1990’s, while this organization opted out of the Social Security system, it did not opt to channel any of its 6% payroll savings back to its employees in the form of higher wagers or increased contributions into its defined-contribution pension program. In fact, their retirement program was structured under the same ideology of high rates of returns that were part of the 1980’s, such that the contribution limits made by employees and employer met only the minimum legal requirements. As such, the frugal, diligent employee tracking his or her retirement savings in earnest, with even a modest understanding of the effects of inflation and compound interest, would also feel an obligation to seek the higher returns of equities investments (stocks) to ensure that even the modest rate of 3% inflation did not outpace their retirement contributions. However, the relatively anemic performance of equities in the first decade of the 21st century meant that diligent employee also had to dig deep into his pocket to offset unrealized gains or face insolvency in the event his retirement savings and investments proved inadequate. After all, there would be no Social Security benefits waiting for him at the end of the line.

Of course, this story has an ending, whether it’s good or bad is in the eye of the beholder. You see, with new Federal mandates in formulating distribution of Medicaid payments to hospitals, this non-profit hospital was about to lose a big chunk of its annual welfare check. To understand this predicament, you must first understand that Texas, like many other states, use to take the Federal Medicaid dollars issued to it and simply divide that portion earmarked for hospitals equally amongst them. If you were a hospital in a relatively affluent area, treating few, if any, Medicaid and uninsured patients, those funds were like a profit sharing check that padded your bottom line, even if you were a non-profit hospital. On the other hand, if you were a hospital treating a lot Medicaid and the uninsured, then you were just out of luck, ‘cause that’s how we do things here in Texas. But please rest assured that Texas also mismanages its own tax revenue with equal aplomb, having recently been directed by its own courts to restructure the way it funds its school systems. More to the point, facing a significant reduction in Medicaid subsidies, beginning in 2011, this particular non-profit hospital was looking at immediate insolvency. As such, it was forced to sell itself or shutter it doors.

I would have found your example much more compelling had it simply been a little more current. Perhaps you could offer up something a bit more contemporary which reflects the math and economics of the time. For you see, whether it’s manufacturing or economics, a man must work with the system in which he finds himself, to the best of his abilities, even if he desires change for the better. After all, if a man finds himself standing in the streets of Rome, circa 100 A.D., it would be unwise of him to profess with loud defiance his love of Chinese food and Christian ethics, lest he sought to be drafted as the Emperor’s evening entertainment at the Colosseum.

Regrettably, I’ve been a bit more verbose than usual, but can find nothing to cut from what I’ve said, because it simply needed to be said. I do hope you’ll regal me with some more current investment advice, as I’m always keen to understand how others have successfully navigating a broken economic system in such dire need of repair.

Sincerely,
Mr. Pot

To the Illustrious Mr. Pot,

I thoroughly enjoyed your hand-wringing addendum to our Dollarocracy missives. I am thrilled beyond description to know that a former co-worker like yourself has garnered such an incredible knowledge of the finer points of juris prudence. It makes me sad to think that Chief Justice John Roberts and his associates failed to seek advice and consent with you before rendering their well thought out and constitutionally sound decree regarding corporate “personhood”. I think a more precise understanding of their ruling considers corporations as having the same free speech rights as individuals or “persons”.

To be quite honest, I am awe-struck to learn that you have chosen an evil capitalistic tool like a 401(k) plan to supplement that wonderful, sound, and financially healthy Ponzi scheme commonly known as Social Security. I thought by this time you would have procured a sizable piece of pristine property near the redwoods of California to establish your “retirement commune”. You and your liberal co-horts could live the life of shared and re-distributed wealth at such a place where, I am sure, Kumbaya would be heard frequently around the communal campfire.

Knowing that you currently reside in the great state of Texas, I am sure you are familiar with what has come to be known as “the Galveston Plan”. In short, in 1981, county employees opted out of Social Security for a private retirement plan. Shortly after, the federal government realized that this could start a trend of financial independence for future retirees and the honorables in Washington abruptly put an end to that nonsense. Now tax payments of FICA are involuntary. In any event, those long term employees in Galveston have now retired and are, of course, receiving a much higher pension thanks to investments in guaranteed return annuity contracts. (Not stocks). I am sure you will bring up the decades old reports from both the General Accounting Office and the Social Security Administration documenting that some employees did not fare as well under the Galveston Plan. After wading through the statistics and misleading conclusions, the results of these reports should surprise no one considering the source. In simple layman's language (or should I say layperson's language) those who contributed more to their individual retirement plans in Galveston made more money. I know this is a concept that leftists find abhorrent since there is no such thing as a level playing field in the world of economics, unless of course Marx and Engels are your mentors.

I for one do not bemoan the fact that investment portfolios are in the hands of competent investment professionals. In fact, I think the more cutthroat these individuals are, the better the returns since their individual compensation is determined, in most cases, by the performance of their investments. I am sure, Mr. Pot, that should you suffer the sad fate of needing open heart surgery, you would not want to micro-manage the operation.

But, like most liberals, if you insist on bringing democracy and the federal government into the world of Wall Street, be my guest. After all, the Feds have done a remarkable job with Social Security, Medicare, and now, the Affordable Care Act.

Respectfully submitted,
Mr. Kettle

Personhood in a Tertiary Republic

Dear Mr. Kettle,

A comment which you made regarding the United States Supreme Court’s decision, in 2010, in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee got me thinking about the concept of personhood in America. More precisely, it got me thinking how we have the allowed the concept to be corrupted in our society through an ever broadening concept of corporate personhood by virtue of the definition of a corporation as an association of individuals. This concept was key in the Supreme Court’s decision and flawed. The implied assertion is that stockholders may exercise the right of ownership in voting how a corporation spends its assets, whether it be to improve profits or position itself politically.

Regrettably, the rise of the 401(k) along with a pervasive of lack economic education, have all but made that assertion little more than a laughable farce. We Americans have some $18 trillion dollars tied up in retirement funds, with the vast majority of it invested in equities – i.e. stock – as the only viable option for hedging against the ravages of inflation. Ironically, while the economy has continued to flounder since the Great Recession began, in 2008, the stock market has not only recovered but grown more robust thanks in no small part to our Federal economic policies.

More to the point, if you own a 401(k) or an IRA, then you have a piece of ownership in dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of corporations, otherwise known as associations of individuals. Ironically, however, you have no voice. Momentarily looking past the convolution of stock types, ownership classifications and the various privileges bestowed and restrictions imposed upon them, for the sake of simplicity, if your retirement funds are invested in stocks for which there are voting privileges, you likely have no voice. It is more likely the manager of the retirement funds exercise voting rights and not the actual owners of those funds. In other words, you political will as regards your portion of ownership in a corporation must pass through a portfolio manager and then the board of director, if it is passed along at all.

I could not hope to management the politics of my investment portfolio, as it is both embarrassingly small and highly diluted across several retirement accounts and thousands of publically traded corporations. In other words, to chase after General Electric over its political activities just because I own combined shares worth $512.13 across four separate retirement funds is a laughable exercise, even if I could persuade the four portfolio managers holding control of these funds to hear me out. In other words, in deciding that corporations as associations of individuals are deserving of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, the Supreme Court Justices demonstrated a gross lack of understanding as to the true economics of corporate ownership in this country. Some might blithely advise that if I’m happy with the less than democratic process of retirement investment management, then I should get the hell out. Regrettably, these would be the same economically uneducated who do not understand that by Federal mandate there is no other game in town, outside of maybe card counting, houses flipping or mattress stuffing.

Yes, I can and I do invest directly into the stock market, exercising my right to speak and vote when the opportunity presents itself. However, I’m not Mitt Romney. I’m not a hedge fund manager, exercising tax laws otherwise inaccessible to the average investor that shelter the bulk of my earnings from annual taxes while permitting me to engage directly with the board of directors of those companies in which I’ve invested my own retirement savings. Oh, that what it were. I’m like most of us, putting the bulk my meager savings into the slot machines called 401(k)’s and IRA’s with as much regularity as possible, hoping that when the last of the coins are all placed and the lever’s pulled for the last time, it will all come up cherries. The simple fact is that the fate of my old-age pension is in the hands of small elite who have not a care in the world with regards to my politics. The fact that they’re spending my meager slice of the profits to promote their politics phases neither them nor the United Sates Supreme Court, apparently.

Sincerely,

Mr. Pot

“If you build a business up big enough, it’s respectable.” – Will Rogers

Dollarocracy Redux

Dear Mr. Kettle,

I preface my rebuttal to your insightful commentary of November 17^th with the simple observation that free markets and democracies are not entirely compatible systems. The former seeks consensus government with the hope of striking a balance of harmony in the community, while the latter strives to be as profitable as the law allows. Despite his best efforts, President Hoover learned the painful lesson that private enterprise is simply not equipped to deal with social issues. In fact, this is an issue we’ve wrestled with in this country from the beginning of the Republic. To show the perennial nature of the problem, I lift an excerpt from a speech, in 1910, byTheodore Roosevelt.

“At many stages in the advance of humanity, this conflict between the men who possess more than they have earned and the men who have earned more than they possess is the central condition of progress. In our day it appears as the struggle of freemen to gain and hold the right of self-government as against the special interests, who twist the methods of free government into machinery for defeating the popular will. At every stage, and under all circumstances, the essence of the struggle is to equalize opportunity, destroy privilege, and give to the life and citizenship of every individual the highest possible value both to himself and to the commonwealth. That is nothing new.”

As for your observation regarding labor unions, I won’t argue your point. In fact, labor unions do participate in the egregious doctrine of Dollarocracy, with their contributions of tens of millions going towards the tens of billions spent on the last presidential election. Still, I don’t believe they control any media outlets. However, as the saying goes, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. Or, perhaps a more apropos phrasing would be to say when in Sodom, do as the Sodomites do. The unions’ participation in the dysfunction outlined by Mr. Nichols and Mr. McChesney is a symptom of the problem. Not the disease. Until such time as we can have an open and sustained discourse on the disease, the symptoms will continue unabated.

The United States Supreme Court has made many decisions in its illustrious history that seemed reasoned, if not unanimous, that upon reflection in own time, give us pause as to the rationality of those who sat and decided. Some of those profound decisions included Dred Scot v. Sanford, in 1857, Plessyv. Ferguson, in 1896, and Korematsu v.United States, in 1944. As to your point regarding the decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in 2010, it is true that we recognize the concept of corporate personhood in this country. However, we’ve yet to construct laws and procedures which fully address the personhood of corporations. Point in case, if you or I were convicted of a felony, we’d likely be commanded to pay restitution and be incarcerated, with our liberties and freedoms stripped from us for a prescribed period, leaving those who might rely upon us for support to fend for themselves during our rehabilitation. In our society, a corporation found guilty of a similar criminal offense pays a fine and, perhaps, restitution. Until there is law – enforceable law – which matches the punishment to the crime, regardless of size, influence or structure of said person, corporations will never be people. Perhaps, in the not too distant future, a generation of citizens will look upon Chief Justice John Robert’s court and ask how we got it so wrong. For all we know, they may be doing it right now, but it’s unlikely we’ll ever hear the message.

As for your accusation that Mr. Moyer and his panel feel “that the average Joe is just too stupid to understand negative advertising when he hears it.”, I offer up an excerpt of the foreword to Nichols and McChesney’s book, written by Senator Bernie Sanders.

“The people got it, as they almost always do. Even then, they could see what we saw: a decline in the amount and quality of journalism and a parallel rise in the influence of Big Money in our politics.”

At the heart of Nichols and McChesney’s argument against Dollarocracy is that we are attempting to reconcile the discordant ideologies of free-market enterprise and the democratic process. Regrettably, we’re failing to find a balance which ensures economic prosperity for both business and the populace. What’s more, the tools by which we shore up the democratic process are under attack, as they are at odds with the business of business. Again, not a new phenomenon, but how long can we afford to ignore the trend before it swings too far to one side?

Sincerely,

Mr. Pot

“So long as I do not firmly and irrevocably possess the right to vote, I do not possess myself. I cannot make up my mind – it is made up for me. I cannot live as a democratic citizen, observing the laws I helped enact – I can only submit to the edicts of others.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dollarocracy Indeed

To the illustrious Mr. Pot:

Dollarocracy is the newest catch term of the left and, not without coincidence, the title of a darling new book specifically entitled: Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America. Bill Moyers, PBS's patron saint of all things liberal, recently devoted an entire program to the intricacies of how this leftist tome seems to be just what America needs right now.

Casual readers of this type of leftist ranting should always be advised to consider the source. In this instance, Dollarocracy is penned by John Nichols and Robert McChesney. Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation, a magazine which unashamedly pronounces itself “the flagship of the left”; and McChesney is a professor of Communications and Society at the University of Illinois. Both come across initially as well intentioned and well informed individuals until their veneer of objectivity starts to dissolve with overt prodding from Moyers.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read Dollarocracy but I did take the time to painfully sit through the Moyers' interview. What started as a seemingly reasonable discussion of the influence of the mighty dollar in our nation's electoral process soon turned into a good old leftie bashing of our capitalist system with Mr. Moyers as the head cheerleader. When the hand wringing finally started, all three blamed big business for exercising their right to free speech, especially during the electoral process. A right, I might add, which has been upheld by our nation's highest court. Nowhere in their scholarly dissertation was there a mention of the undue influence of labor unions, the environmental lobby, or proponents of 2^nd amendment restrictions. Apparently, the hundreds of millions of dollars that the AFL-CIO pours into influence peddling through phone banks, union printed bumper stickers, and outright cash do not merit a mention in their Dollarocracy treatise on the PBS show.

At one point, Misters Nichols and McChesney actually lament the effectiveness of internet media in targeting specific audiences to sell their products and that of course includes political candidacies. No big revelation there. Politicians and their ad agencies have been doing that for centuries. In today’s world, it is much easier to reach the people you want, let them hear your message, and do it far less expensively than advertising in the New York Times or People magazine. This is merely an evolution in technology and not the fatal collusion of Big Business to destroy America as we know it. The truth of the matter is that print media has been unable or unwilling to compete with modern technology. And they are now paying the economic price. While the print media in general is failing, those publications which espouse a liberal philosophy seem to be having the hardest time staying afloat. Even in broadcast media, left leaning entities like MS-NBC and CNN consistently find themselves at the bottom of the ratings heap when compared to Fox News. One wonders why advertisers would buy time at MS-NBC when statistically, no one is watching.

Have no fear, however, for Nichols and McChesney have the answer. Ban free speech during election time and let the government (i.e. taxpayer) finance elections. They turn to models in, SURPRISE, Europe to demonstrate how government controlled elections are such a joy. Sweden and Norway of all places demonstrate what Dollarocracy advocates for the United States. Unfortunately, these two vanilla countries bear little resemblance in any way whatsoever to the United States. As far as I am concerned, they can keep their exorbitant taxes and government controlled elections, Dollarocracy notwithstanding.

Moyers broke no new ground whatsoever during this show. Dollarocracy as explained is little more than the elitist philosophy that the average Joe is just too stupid to understand negative advertising when he hears it. He needs Big Government to explain it to him, or, better yet, have Big Government filter out messages that they think Joe shouldn't hear. Dollarocracy believes individuals, (and the Supreme Court considers corporations as individuals) should not be allowed to financially support the candidates of their choice. That decision should be left to Big Broth...uh Government. Don't worry about where the money to finance campaigns will come from..... Dollarocracy has the answer (courtesy of Sweden). The government will simply confiscate your political contribution money and dole it out to the candidates they think deserve support. I didn't quite catch from Nichols and McChesney how that will be determined. Maybe they go into specific detail in their book. Perhaps one day, when I decide to abdicate my right to free speech and my right to financially support a candidate of my choice, I might get around to reading Dollarocracy.... during a trip to Sweden.

Respectfully,

Mr. Kettle

Is Free Trade Really Free?

Top Secret Trade Deal WikiLeaked: It Is What We Expected

"WikiLeaks once again provided a valuable public service, releasing a working draft of the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s (TPP) chapter on intellectual property. The chapter has many of the provisions that critics had feared." - Dean Baker

Bill Moyer's & Company

Dollarocracy and the Zombie Apocalypse are Here!

"...'Dollarocracy' has the ability to animate dead ideas. You can take an idea that's a bad idea, buried by the voters. 'Dollarocracy' can dig it up and that zombie idea will walk among us." - John Nichols

How Dollarocracy is Destroying America

Are you ready for the Zombie Apocalypse?

A Question of Parallels...

At the height of its power, the Soviet Union made phenomenal ICBMs, but could not make a loaf of bread.

At the height of its power, the United States of America can make cutting edge stealth aircraft, but cannot make a pair of sneakers.

...Death by China

Trick or Treat Indeed

To The Illustrious Mr. Pot:

For a leftist, you could have not picked a more inopportune time to use the analogy of Trick or Treat. This Halloween, our Trickster-in-Chief  symbolically invited us to stop by the White House for some great treats (in the form of the Affordable Care Act) yet when we naively sauntered up to the door, we were greeted with nothing but a bag of tricks!

I couldn't help myself. I had to throw that in.....but now it's on to the topic of government largesse and who should get it and who shouldn't.

The problem with government sponsored doles is the necessary creation of a dependent culture. Some on the right might believe that the eventual, and then on-going, dependence is the specific purpose of liberal entitlement programs such as S.N.A.P. thus, when a meager reduction is effected, there is a genuine feeling that something is being taken away that rightfully belongs to the recipient. The reduction in benefits is not technically a reduction. It's a return to the pre-recession amount. The extra money was proffered in more prosperous times and now ironically the sun is setting. We seem to have reached an economic tipping point, yet you would never know it by the insatiable demands of liberal politicians continuously seeking votes by  offering more and farther reaching entitlements. We should note Maggie Thatcher's sage observation that the only problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money (other people being productive members of society). Your reference to what amounts to a 6% reduction in benefits woefully bemoans the fact that on a yearly basis it subtracts two full weeks of take home pay from the income of a minimum wage worker supporting a family of four. Mr. Pot, a minimum wage position was never intended to provide income to support a family of four. I've often wondered why the left always demands a minimum wage that is so abysmally low. If the Federal government feels it has the authority to establish a mandatory wage in the private sector, why set it so low? Why use a carrot and stick approach with federal entitlements?  If the minimum wage provided workers with a realistic amount to support a family of four, then, of course, there would be no need for S.N.A.P. or the couple hundred other Federal hand out operations.  And liberal control of those individuals would begin to rapidly diminish (as would votes for their liberal benefactors). A $75,000 minimum wage certainly shouldn't be any problem for a political party that keeps the Treasury's printing presses running 24/7.

Governor Rick Perry embraces the Affordable Care Act money

Rick Perry Quietly Lobbies The White House For $100 Million In Obamacare Funding

Governor Perry still opposes the Affordable Care Act (known in the popular media as Obamacare). However, true to form, the Governor still wants those Federal tax dollars. Wouldn't we all like to pick and choose the laws with which we comply?

Local Politics

Are all politics essentially local? Where was your state representative five years ago?...your U.S. Representative a decade ago?

How do the decisions we, as the electorate, influence national politics by our decisions in local elections?

The Two-Party System

Do you ever wonder whether our two-party political system has benefited us?

Would you be surprised to know that question has plagued us since the early days of the Republic?  

Below is President George Washington’s farewell address. Originally drafted at the end of his first term, he put it aside upon witnessing the divisiveness between Secretary of Treasury Hamilton and Secretary of State Jefferson. While the entire text is provided here, for those pressed for time it is the 370 words contained in paragraphs 22 through 25 that reveal our first president’s view on the two-party system.

What would you say to him 217 years later?

President Washington's Farewell Address

Friends and Fellow-citizens:

1.     The period for a new election of a citizen, to administer the executive government of the United States, being not far distant, and the time actually arrived, when your thoughts must be employed designating the person, who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression of the public voice, that I should now apprize you of the resolution I have formed, to decline being considered among the number of those out of whom a choice is to be made.

2.     I beg you at the same time to do me the justice to be assured that this resolution has not been taken without a strict regard to all the considerations appertaining to the relation which binds a dutiful citizen to his country; and that in withdrawing the tender of service, which silence in my situation might imply, I am influenced by no diminution of zeal for your future interest, no deficiency of grateful respect for your past kindness, but am supported by a full conviction that the step is compatible with both.

3.     The acceptance of, and continuance hitherto in, the office to which your suffrages have twice called me, have been a uniform sacrifice of inclination to the opinion of duty, and to a deference for what appeared to be your desire. I constantly hoped, that it would have been much earlier in my power, consistently with motives, which I was not at liberty to disregard, to return to that retirement, from which I had been reluctantly drawn. The strength of my inclination to do this, previous to the last election, had even led to the preparation of an address to declare it to you; but mature reflection on the then perplexed and critical posture of our affairs with foreign nations, and the unanimous advice of persons entitled to my confidence impelled me to abandon the idea.

Do Your Elected Officials Respect Your Vote?

Happy election day!

“If politicians see voters as most certainly responsive to nonsense, they will give them nonsense. If they see voters as susceptible to delusion they will delude them. If they see an electorate receptive to the cold, hard realities, they will give it the cold, hard realities.” - V.O. Key Jr

Today we would like to share an article from the Washtington Post's The Monkey Cage, written by Larry Bartels, titled

"Our elected officials aren’t feeling very accountable"

The question that must be asked is how we change this paradigm in a democratic republic.

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts and ideas.

Meanwhile, get out there, think carefully and cast your ballot.

Trick or Treat

Dear Mr. Kettle

Now that Halloween’s Eve has passed, it’s time to open our goody bags and take inventory of all that we’ve received. Regrettably, for nearly 48 million American, those treats may not be so sweet. What’s more, the real trick is on us all.

November 1^st , ushered in new Federal austerity measures meant to get the American people off their collectively lazy butts. That’s right, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), administered through the United States Department of Agriculture was directed to cut its $90 billion dollar program by some $5.5B, affecting all SNAP recipients. As this is not a transcript of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, to put those numbers into a more manageable perspective, they translate into a reduction of $36 per month for a family of four. That’s $420 a year. A modest amount until you realize that it constitutes nearly two weeks take-home pay for someone working for minimum wage.

However, this is not a rant about SNAP, but rather the other trick that does not dangle from the news feeds as prominently as toilet paper from one’s tree. That insidious bit of devilry that lay beneath our bag of treats won’t be found in mainstream media, lest they who bear witness be strangled in the shadows before they can even scream. The other welfare programs managed by the United States Depart of Agriculture are the Farm Income Stabilization subsidies paid to the owners of farms, ostensibly to ensure the stability of our food crops. At just over $20B in annual taxpayer dollars, it may lay lack the same largesse of SNAP, but is still

Equality versus Freedom Rebuttal Rebuttal

To the Illustrious Mr. Pot:

I thoroughly enjoyed your skillful avoidance of anything vaguely resembling a rebuttal. Despite your back roads trip down an historical memory lane, replete with presidential minutiae, there seemed to be no substantive defense of the leftist practice of trying to force their idea of equality down the throats of defenseless Americans. While you skillfully pointed out that Jefferson was occasionally referred to by historical scribes as a Republican, I think in all fairness even you would agree that the term Republican has evolved since then and today bears little resemblance to what Mr. Jefferson espoused. You say he was a man of contradictions. Some would prefer the term hypocrite. My preposterous example of a diminutive NBA player was intended to be exactly that: preposterous, as is the concept of a level playing field, quotas, et al. In our country, Mr. Pot, freedom equals opportunity. But opportunity will never equal equality, even on a "level playing field".

Respectfully,

Mr. Kettle

Equality versus Freedom Rebuttal

Dear Mr. Kettle:

Thank you for your letter of October 20th. First, let me be the first to say that outside of an old Disney movie where the word Flubber is used frequently, in straight face, the idea of a 5' 2" center does sound preposterous. However, permit me to explore your sports analogy a bit further with the understanding, of course, that all analogies unravel when worried too much.

If I were a younger man, with aspirations of a baseball career in the major league, with a working knowledge of how the game is truly played, I know with absolute certainty what would be required to excel in my chosen profession. First, I would need to temporarily immigrate to the Dominican Republic

Today's Food for Thought

We all have a duty to argue. However, in so doing, we must never forget that the boring bits of conversation are essential to the art of communication, for in the end it is as important to hear as be heard.

Who's on your money...and why?

In the early days of the Republic, most nations printed money which featured images of the current leaders. Among the many things rejected by George Washington as our first elected president was the idea that the United States should embrace such overt idolatry to living men, establishing a precedence for not using the images of current, breathing leaders on our currency. Therefore, most early currency included other images such as the lady liberty and figures from Greek and Roman mythology.

In the mid 19th century, as our founding fathers passed into antiquity

Equality versus Freedom

To the illustrious Mr. Pot:

Today, I choose to skewer one of liberalism's most sacred of cows...the fictitious concept of equality.

For those on the left who seem to envelop themselves in a euphoric fog whenever the concept of equality is mentioned, I will exercise bluntness and brevity: You can have equality or you can have freedom, but you can't have both. Equality and freedom can rarely if ever walk peacefully together hand in hand.

My good friends on the left will excitedly invoke the oft quoted phrase attributed to St. Thomas Jefferson assuring that “all men are created equal.....”. While good old Tom did not employ the use of asterisks when composing phrases in our nation's Declaration of Independence, that lofty idea about being created equal certainly begs for such punctuation. In colonial times, if you were a wealthy Caucasian land owner who engaged in the barbaric practice of buying and selling human beings for the purpose of forced labor, then you gladly rejoiced in the fact that only you and all of your chums were certainly created equal. Unfortunately, the Don of Monticello did not extend such equality to women, or blacks, or the hoi poloi of his time. In fact it was a pretty limited club with most members frequently seen wearing powdered wigs. But to a mindless leftie, if Thomas Jefferson said it then it must be true.

Power

Knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or wealth.

Shh

Helen Keller was quoted as saying, “Blindness separates people from things; deafness separates people from people.”

What if Ms. Keller was not speaking purely in literal terms?

The Capital of Labor, Rebuttal

Dear Mr. Pot:

Forgive my delay in responding to our very first point/counterpoint, but as a practicing capitalist, and unlike many of my liberal friends, I must pursue activities to support my family, pay my creditors, and stimulate the sluggish Obama-created economy.

That being said, there are a number instances where the Federal government has forced labor without direct compensation to the laborers. The most glaring example lies near the Potomac in our nation's capitol....the White House. According to White House historian William Bushong, and verified by CBS News, slave labor was utilized during the construction of the First Family's edifice. In the interest of accuracy, however, it must be said that the masters of the slaves in question were handsomely compensated for their slaves' efforts but the slaves themselves saw nary a contribution to their meager change purses.

I too am amused by understated verbiage you employ to describe the current economic strife prevalent in all aspects of the economy (except perhaps in the coffers of those who have unbridled access to the doors of the Oval Office). Unemployment consistently remains at historically high levels, our national debt is measured in trillions (the debt service alone is

Democracy & Capitalism

While democracy is intrinsically moral, capitalism is inherently amoral, perpetually putting us at odds with ourselves.

Your thoughts?

Our Fellow Americans

If you've found your way to this corner of the Internet, please be prepared for a bit of political verbosity from the unwashed offered up for entertainment and education. We hope to explore current topics which affect us all, whether they be part of the mainstream media or lesser known subjects that impact our lives.

We hope to explore these topics without descending too deeply into the chaos of rhetorical ideologies. With that thought in mind, should you have a question for Mr. Pot or Mr. Kettle, please feel free to post it here, that we might have a opportunity to answer the question and explore the topic. Should you wish to weigh in on an essay by either of us, please feel free to participate.

Of course, this is a forum for the exchange of ideas and the exploration of topics of a political nature, in long form. In other words, peppering this page with sound bites and political cartoons that do not include personal and insightful commentary by the individual submitting the post will most likely be removed, at the earliest convenience. We hope to maintain some decorum, for which we will put forth the effort. Still, we have our limits.

We want to dig deep and share our thoughts on what's going and in so doing maybe offer some balance and perspective. In turn, should you feel compelled, we want you to dig deep and share your thoughts with us.

We hope you enjoy this forum. We hope you learn something from it. We hope to learn something from you.

Sincerely,

Mr. Pot & Mr. Kettle

The Capital of Labor

Dear Mr. Kettle,

I wish to thank you for your note of October 9, as I was mightily amused by your skillful choice of words. Even using a liberal interpretation of the word modern, I could discern no instance in which the Federal Government forced labor without the promise of pay. Still, to borrow a few worn phrases, we are in uncertain times and uncharted waters where we have our worst possible opportunities to repeat the mistakes of the past. By narrowing your reply solely to modern times there is the implication that history does not repeat itself and that the future is wholly uncharted and unknown.

In a separate conversation, an old friend reminded me of the other rhetoric coming out of Washington that none of us, our leadership included, can understand the true economic impact of what lies ahead, should our elected officials continue failing us. My rebuttal then and now is that we have plenty of modern, democratic economic models on which to reflect and evaluate, as to what happens when governments fail to pay their bills. They merely lack the “Made in the USA” tag that we seem to desire as proof of validity. I fall into that trap often, as the America people continue to live an insular life, even in the Communications Age, which we helped forge.