The Trilateral Commission

The Tri­lat­er­al Com­mis­sion was cre­at­ed in 1973. I was eigh­teen. It could not have tak­en long for some peo­ple to be talk­ing about how the elites con­trolled the world and we, the peo­ple, were just giv­en enough to keep us com­pla­cent, and that the Tri­lat­er­al Com­mis­sion exist­ed for that pur­pose. Or some such line of thought. I feel like I have been hear­ing such talk my entire life.

In my mem­o­ry this the­o­ry was usu­al­ly put forth by a clean cut, wire rim wear­ing, pot smok­ing socialist…but maybe I’m just mak­ing that up. I don’t even know.

At any rate, I was not too inclined to accept the idea that the world was con­trolled by elites (though now I sus­pect it is…though I have no idea if the Tri­lat­er­al Com­mis­sion has any­thing to do with it) and even if it was, I looked around and thought to myself “This isn’t such a bad deal.”

Sure, there were eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties and there was no end of injus­tices going on, but life in the US for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple was pret­ty damn good. If the elites want­ed to con­trol the world and this is how they allowed the mass­es to live so they could do that, well, I was fine with it. Maybe the alter­na­tive was how the mass­es have lived through­out his­to­ry and I was sure nobody want­ed that.

Assum­ing that those clean cut, wire rim wear­ing, pot smok­ing social­ists were cor­rect, you have to give cred­it to those elites. Run­ning the world can’t be all that easy and, on bal­ance, they did a fair job of it for quite awhile.

I’m guess­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of elites has not been up to the task. Things have gone rot­ten here in the US. Even though the reces­sion has end­ed and cor­po­ra­tions are mak­ing lots of mon­ey, noth­ing has trick­led down. Peo­ple are out of work or afraid of becom­ing out of work after ten or twen­ty years of income stagfla­tion and the val­ue of homes plum­met­ing. Which brings us to the Occu­py protests.

The most inter­est­ing thing about the Occu­py protests is watch­ing every­body try to deter­mine who is actu­al­ly protest­ing and what do they want, and what does it mean. Prob­a­bly no one answer to any of those questions.

Well, maybe to the “what does it mean” question.

It means that the nation­al econ­o­my no longer func­tions as it once did. The mass­es, who once had it pret­ty good, are now strug­gling. To lis­ten to some of what is said in Wash­ing­ton, the elites still have no idea what the prob­lem is.

It is sim­ple, return us to the good old days when the elites con­trolled the world and allowed the mass­es to live in rel­a­tive and increas­ing pros­per­i­ty. Is it too much to ask?

Romney’s Mistake?

So, Mitt Rom­ney has

com­pared the cur­rent anti-Wall Street protests to “class warfare.”

This is inter­est­ing. If Oba­ma is vul­ner­a­ble next fall, it will be be due to the econ­o­my. I ful­ly expect that the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee will talk of lit­tle else.

I also expect the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee to be Mitt Romney.

All those peo­ple protest­ing Wall Street would not be there if the econ­o­my was hum­ming along and unem­ploy­ment was five percent.

Rom­ney has now gone on the record of say­ing that peo­ple who want the econ­o­my to improve are con­duct­ing class war­fare. That does not strike me as the best way to woo the votes of those unhap­py about the economy.

Giving the Customers What They Are Looking For

Over two years ago I post­ed an entry about Mei­jer com­ing to town and the strange store lay­out they had and how Wal­mart respond­ed. Since that time, I have con­tin­ued to receive a lot of vis­its from peo­ple that had Googled “Wal­mart store lay­out” or some­thing similar.

This entry prob­a­bly does not real­ly help those seek­ers out, but maybe.

Wal­mart built a new store in Con­nersville, Indi­ana and opened it up this past sum­mer. Here is a pic of the new store lay­out (click­ing on it should give you a larg­er version):

Only a Matter of Time?

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has received no end of grief over his rush to com­pro­mise right out of the gate. I have felt all along that this was due to his insis­tence when cam­paign­ing that he would change the tone of the debate in Washington.

For some time now it has been more than clear that it takes two to change the tone and that the Repub­li­cans were not participating.

So now Oba­ma is final­ly putting bills with pro­gres­sive ideas in them on the table and insist­ing that they be passed, as well as bring­ing out the veto threat in what seems a more seri­ous way than previous.

So how long will it take before a Repub­li­can accus­es Oba­ma of break­ing his cam­paign promis­es to change the tone in Washington?

The National Anthem

This morn­ing I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Fort Wayne’s Wom­en’s Bureau Walk a Mile in Her Shoes event. This was the fourth con­sec­u­tive year that I have done so (walk­ing in three inch heels is no more dif­fi­cult than stand­ing in three inch heels…unfortunately, stand­ing in three inch heels is quite painful).

Just before the Walk began, there was a singing of the Star Span­gled Ban­ner. I believe this has been done every year, but I do not have an actu­al mem­o­ry of it. This is prob­a­bly because pre­vi­ous years were done just like this years. A local singer per­formed the anthem and the rest of us stood and respect­ful­ly lis­tened. I admit to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this was the first year they had the anthem sung due to the next day being 9/​11.

The singer this year did a fine job of it, but it seemed to me that she sang it even high­er than it usu­al­ly is sung and she threw in enough flour­ish­es that it would have been dif­fi­cult to fol­low along. And no one fol­lowed along. Except for what hap­pened lat­er in the day and the fact that I am blog­ging this, I doubt I would have any mem­o­ry of her per­for­mance next year (as I have no mem­o­ry of pre­vi­ous years per­for­mances if there were any).

This evening, Deb­by and I attend­ed the 2011-12 open­ing night of the Fort Wayne Phil­har­mon­ic. The lights went down and the con­duc­tor came out, took his place, raised his baton and the music com­menced. Unex­pect­ed­ly, it was the Star Span­gled Ban­ner. There was a cho­rus singing. Sound­ed good! I was look­ing around to see where was the cho­rus? Then I real­ized that there was no cho­rus, the fine singing I was hear­ing was the audi­ence. I joined in (arguably dimin­ish­ing the qual­i­ty of the singing, but enhanc­ing the qual­i­ty of the event). The orches­tra played a fair­ly stan­dard ren­di­tion and peo­ple sang when they could and did not sing when they could not.

It sound­ed great. And we were all (ok, most of us) active­ly involved in affirm­ing our shared love of our coun­try. The con­trast with the morn­ing per­for­mance is stark.

Which One Is Right? I Know This! Why Don’t You?

I heard this on the radio yes­ter­day morn­ing, but by the time I got home I could not remem­ber what it was I had heard and want­ed to blog about. Well, I fig­ured some­one else would men­tion it to jog my mem­o­ry. And some­one else did!

Steve Benen at the Wash­ing­ton Month­ly post­ed today with the same thought (but bet­ter expressed) as I blogged yes­ter­day. At the end, he postscripts

Just as an aside, Per­ry also believes pub­lic-school sci­ence class­es should present stu­dents with both sci­ence and reli­gion, assum­ing young peo­ple are “smart enough to fig­ure out which one is right.” Here’s a rad­i­cal idea: maybe Per­ry should con­sid­er a sim­i­lar approach to sex-ed?

Well, yes, maybe he should con­sid­er a sim­i­lar approach to sex-ed. That would be refresh­ing. But my thought is that Per­ry assumes young peo­ple are smart enough to fig­ure out which one is right despite the fact that he him­self is not smart enough to do so. But of course, he is smart enough. He “knows” that cre­ation­ism is right! So he fig­ures kids are smart enough to always choose cre­ation­ism? He fig­ures that some kids will choose cre­ation­ism and some sci­ence and he’s OK with that?

Of course, it is not a mat­ter of choice. Too bad Per­ry isn’t smart enough to fig­ure that out.

Data Driven, or Not

When The Week­ly Stan­dard began pub­lish­ing back in 1995 they ini­tial­ly gave the sub­scrip­tions away for free. I received an offer for the free sub­scrip­tion and I glad­ly accept­ed. I assumed that they bought the mail­ing list from The New Repub­lic to which I was a long time subscriber.

My mem­o­ry is that the free sub­scrip­tion con­tin­ued for two years, but maybe it was only one. At any rate, there was a decent length of time where I was read­ing both The New Repub­lic and The Week­ly Stan­dard on a week­ly basis.

I was struck by one dif­fer­ence in par­tic­u­lar between the two mag­a­zines. Arti­cles in The New Repub­lic, even when labeled “opin­ion”, were almost always data dri­ven; arti­cles in The Week­ly Stan­dard were rarely data driven.

Over the years I have come to think that this may be one of the defin­ing dif­fer­ences between lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives. Con­ser­v­a­tives stand on prin­ci­ple, con­se­quences be damned. Lib­er­als are inter­est­ed in results and are pre­pared to make changes when the results are unacceptable.

And yes, the above is not true for every con­ser­v­a­tive and liberal.

But it may well be true for Texas Gov­er­nor and can­di­date for pres­i­dent Rick Per­ry. This post at The New Repub­lic has a won­der­ful video of Per­ry try­ing to square his prin­ci­ples with reality.

Affection

Anoth­er book I read over vaca­tion (see pre­vi­ous post) was Damia by Anne McCaf­frey which I believe I picked up at the dol­lar store (for $1.00 obvi­ous­ly). This is a sequel and I have not read the first book, but I did not notice that I was miss­ing any­thing. 336 pages, but, again, just anoth­er sci­ence fic­tion novel.

336 pages and I found one para­graph of mild interest:

Jer­an and Cera paused long enough in their mild­ly com­pet­i­tive appli­ca­tion of col­or to blank paper to smile at their father. He pat­ted them affec­tion­ate­ly, for Jeff had no trou­ble being demon­stra­tive with his chil­dren. Then he became the host, offer­ing to top up glass­es before he poured one for him­self and set­tled next to the Rowan on the cir­cu­lar couch.

You can see why the author had to explic­it­ly state that Jeff “had no trou­ble being demon­stra­tive with his chil­dren” since the scene cer­tain­ly fails to demon­strate such a trait.

I laughed when I read it. Giv­en the rest of the book, I do not think it was intend­ed to be fun­ny, but maybe.

Self-Importance

I am near the begin­ning of a long term project of let­ting go of books, espe­cial­ly books that I picked up inex­pen­sive­ly over the years.

Over vaca­tion I read a cou­ple. One was The Eye of the Heron by Ursu­la K. LeGuin. A short nov­el of 179 pages. A very fast read. Pret­ty stan­dard sci­ence fic­tion fare, noth­ing excep­tion­al about. But there was one line that I liked:

In the self-important…there is always room for a lit­tle more self-importance.

The Magic of the Budget

Back in April, Dave Lin­dorff had a post up at Truthout con­cern­ing the por­tion of the fed­er­al bud­get that went to defense. It turns out it is 53%. For that 53% we get the largest mil­i­tary in the his­to­ry of the world. In 2009 US mil­i­tary spend­ing account­ed for 47 per­cent of all mon­ey spent glob­al­ly on war, weapons and mil­i­tary preparedness.

Today, on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, (I think at about the four­teen minute mark) Robert Samuel­son explained that half of the fed­er­al bud­get con­sist­ed of tak­ing mon­ey from the work­ers and pay­ing it to the retirees. He was on NPR because he had just writ­ten a col­umn on the sub­ject. From his column:

Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, Med­ic­aid and oth­er retiree pro­grams con­sti­tute rough­ly half of non-inter­est fed­er­al spending.

So it would seem that the entire bud­get is noth­ing more than defense and mov­ing mon­ey from work­ers to retirees.

But wait. Samuel­son also says:

In 1960, nation­al defense was the government’s main job; it con­sti­tut­ed 52 per­cent of fed­er­al out­lays. In 2011 — even with two wars — it is 20 per­cent and falling.

So is Defense half the bud­get or twen­ty per­cent of the budget?

Well, the bud­get Lin­dorff con­sid­ers does

not count… funds col­lect­ed for Social Security

but does include

$94 bil­lion in non-DoD mil­i­tary spend­ing, $100 bil­lion in vet­er­ans ben­e­fits and health care spend­ing, and $400 bil­lion in inter­est on debt raised to pay for pri­or wars and the stand­ing military.

These two fac­tors would obvi­ous­ly increase the per­cent­age, but from 20% to 50%?

Although he does not say so in his col­umn, I believe Samuel­son did men­tion on NPR that some vet­er­ans ben­e­fits are includ­ed in his “work­ers to retirees” col­umn and so, pre­sum­ably, not in his defense numbers.

If you won­dered why the bud­get is not well under­stood by the elec­torate, the above num­bers explain some of that.

Also, note that Samuel­son says Defense is 20% of the bud­get and falling. Lin­dorff says that defense is increas­ing at 9% which would require the over­all bud­get to increase at a greater than 9% pace for its share to be falling.

I have no idea who is right here. But I would point out that the Social Secu­ri­ty Trust Fund is not in any real trou­ble, a lit­tle tweak­ing and it is fine. Medicare is a seri­ous long term bud­get issue. If defense infla­tion is 9%, then it is also a seri­ous long term bud­get issue (espe­cial­ly if it is 53% of the budget!) .

Final­ly, Samuel­son makes the point that

In 2011 — even with two wars — it [defense] is 20 per­cent and falling.

I would argue that if we have man­aged over fifty years to take defense from 50% of the bud­get to 20% of the bud­get (with the bud­get increas­ing from about 30% to 40% of GDP over that span), that that is some­thing to be very proud of!

With so many ways of mak­ing the bud­get appear the way one wants it to, you would think we could use that mag­ic to solve our bud­get problems!