American Demagoguery:

Mark Oppenheimer sheds some light on the so called "Christian Right" in a New York Times' column, "'Christian Economics' Meets the Antiunion Movement." It seems a character named Gary North has a strong influence on many of the far right's attitudes about something called "Christian economics."

As someone who has studied this matter for years, I can vouch for the fact that Christian economics can be stated in one short sentence: Give everything away to the poor. That's it, folks.

Oh, yeah, there is that part about rendering unto Caesar. Whatever anyone tells you about economics with a Christian label that doesn't fit within these quadrants …, well, he's lying. You'd better check your back pocket, because you can be sure you'll find his hand in it, and he ain't hardly poor, although he might be a Caesar wanna be.

The National Budget Proposal That No One Talks About:

The People's Budget: Paul Krugman wonders why no one talks about it. The answer? American's prefer our reality served up by Disney—lots of sugary fakery. It's medicine if it masks the symptoms.

The State of the Union:

"One out of every five American children lives in poverty. Yet the most consuming issue in Washington—according to members of Congress, Hill staffers, lobbyists and Treasury officials—is determining how to slice up the $16 billion debit-card swipe fee pie for corporations" (The Washington Post "Wonkbook").

More than 100 ex-government officials serve as lobbyist for the all consuming banking industry, fighting to keep bank fees high. And you don't believe in vampires?

Keep Your Filthy Gov't Hands Off My Medicare!

Americans are disgusted by America's indebtedness, but they have no idea what to do about it.

Polls show that Americans, by wide majorities, oppose significant cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and military spending. They do favor, by slightly smaller majorities, taxing the rich, as long as that doesn't include them. (See The Washington Post story.)

Standard & Poor Manipulates Stock Market:

The S&P announced a poor outlook for stock prices based on concern over the federal budget, thus causing the price of stocks to be depressed. This means more bang for the buck for speculators who can now purchase more stocks at lowered prices and thereby make greater profits when the price of stocks rebounds in the near future.

While speculators will win over the long run, conservative players in the market, including retirees will be gouged as usual or chased out of the market altogether.

Why Is It … ?

Why is it that the Feds can go after online gambling, but not one person in the international banking scandal that brought down half the world's economies is even being investigated?

Don't get me wrong. I'm no friend of online gambling. I don't even support the idea of state run lotteries. But come on, folks, nothing has been more criminal in the area of economics than the banking scandals, and there isn't even one case being investigated?

One is left to suppose that if banks are too important to fail bankers are too important to charge when they commit criminal behavior. Important how? Because they contribute too much money to politicians?

We had no trouble going after the criminals in the savings and loan fiasco twenty years ago. Why not now?

The American Civil War: 150 years later

The New York Times, in the spirit of James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, has been running a series of articles reflecting on the American Civil War that I've come to look forward to reading daily.

A recent article, entitled "The Defenders," is well worth passing on. Of particular interest is the description of the disparity between officers and enlisted men. On average the enlisted man was just short of five feet, six inches tall, while several of the officers were over six feet in height. Rations are explained, including the fact that while officers often ate meat, the enlisted men got buy more often than not on bread and what passed for coffee. The diverse nature of nutrition is worthy of note here. In addition, the enlisted men were, more often than not, at the beginning of the war, migrants, often unable to speak English, or, if they did, possessed accents that made them almost unintelligible. They were also almost always illiterate.

Finally, while a myth has persisted that nearly half of the Federal forces betrayed their country and joined the pro slavery southern forces, the truth is that, while nearly thirty percent of the officers did this, less than one percent of enlisted men did.

Privacy Issue: Online Tax Documents Reveal SSNs

Now this is scary: ZDNet blogger Stephen Chapman explains how easy it is to have social security numbers and other private information stolen by accessing online tax documents. Not only can you have your own social security number stolen but also your children's.

The Giving Pledge:

Sixty of the richest people in the world have pledged to give away the majority of their wealth, following the dictum of Andrew Carnegie: "A man who dies rich dies disgraced." You can see who they are here.

No, the Koch brothers aren't on the list. They're donating their money to political causes intended to keep working class and poor people as poor and unhealthy as possible.

Republicans Hate Poor Women and They'll Shut the Gov't Down to Prove It:

So this is the sticking point as we remain within a few hours of a government shut down over the current federal budget: funding for Planned Parenthood.

The budget currently contains a tiny sum for the organization that helps poor women, and in some cases this means abortions.

Naturally, the rich people's party isn't concerned about whether women have abortions. It's just that they don't want to fund poor women's abortions. The rich can safely continue to have the option. It's those pesky poor people they want to stop from getting one. (See The Washington Post.)

The Ryan Agenda: Bankrupting America

Senator Paul Ryan of Tea Party fame has proposed what some have called the only intelligent attempt to solve the future budget crisis, but what is his real agenda? As a Tea Party devotee, his devotion can only be to destroying the American government. Paul Krugman points out how Ryan is attempting to do this by proposing massive cuts to government spending while slyly providing financially irresponsible tax cuts for the rich. Ryan, along with his daddy in the House, is among the very rich, as are the Koch brothers, the guys who own the Tea Party.

Have you been reading the Times' stories on the Civil War this year? Interestingly, the language the south used to justify slavery and session leading up to and during the War matches that of the Tea Party and the Republican party today.

Obama breaks from the pack and tosses hat in ring for White House:

Surprise, surprise, President Obama announced today that he'll run for re-election, casting aside all doubts that he might follow in LBJ's footsteps and abandon ship.

Okay, so the only surprise is that he beat all those presidential wishy-washies on the right who are still "testing the waters," like Sarah-baby of "I can't make it through 4 years as Alaska's governor" fame. (She won't run anyway. She's making too much money profilin' from the sidelines, where you don't gotta do no face to face with opposition.)

Zack Whittacker, a ZiffDavis blogger, explains why Obama's gonna keep the key to the fancy place on Pennsylvania Ave. It's high tech, or Facebook.

Grading Schools and Punishing Teachers:

The most recent controversy in public education comes from President Obama taking the stage with former Florida governor Jeb Bush in the latter's efforts to destroy the teachers' unions by grading schools on their performance and punishing them economically when they fail to live up to standardized testing. (See Nick Anderson's Washington Post piece.)

How do I know it's an attack on unions? Easy. If these folks, including the president, were serious about education, they would focus on school boards, not teachers.

If the citizens of this country ever become united again in their desire to have sound education for America's children, they will elect school board officials who will insist upon it.

The truth is, however, that there is very little that the federal or state governments can do about improving education. Education is something one achieves, not something that is imposed upon the student. All a teacher can do is direct students toward materials and activities while trying to maintain order so that the student can engage with the material and the activities that will lead the student to becoming educated. At best, the teacher is a facilitator and a minor role model. The most important role model and facilitator in the student's life is spelled "p-a-r-e-n-t."

Starting tomorrow, PBS will re-air Ken Burn's Civil War saga. It is worth noting that Abraham Lincoln was self educated, as most people were during that period. The fledgling public school system was primarily manned by folks who had failed at everything else in life.

Did the economy bust? Or was it simply manipulated?

While the mass of humanity in the developed world suffered under the economic turn down, Wall Street and its bankers have done quite well, thank you. William D. Cohan lays out the successful exploitation of the economy by the few at the top in a recent New York Times op-ed.

It's business as usual at the top, folks. We're just the chattel, being milked as usual. While unemployment remains stagnant, the rich just keep getting richer. And the only thing they create is a new way to manipulate the game.