Good News

It seems that every time we turn on or read the news, it is bad news. We learn about more violence and suffering in the Middle East; we hear that there was an attack at a school or hospital or workplace by a deranged assailant here in our country. We have daily weather reports of dangerous conditions in different parts of our land and are reminded of the threat from global warming. We are being made aware of more groups of underdogs who are in need of relief - refugees, illegal immigrants, minorities, the aged, the disabled, union members, the middle class, LGBTQ members, the bottom 99% and, most recently, the non billionaires.

All this news can be quite depressing.

Here is some good news.

Recent studies have found that the world poverty is declining with fewer people in the world living in the most extreme levels of poverty. Economic situations are improving in Asia and Africa and even in a few parts of Latin America.

In America more than 16 million people have health coverage for the first time thanks to the Affordable Care Act. The stock market which gauges the worth of American corporations has almost tripled since its low in the start of 2009 of 6,000. Large American banks have submitted to and passed stringent tests of their viability making a repeat of the 2008 recession due to bank failure, less likely. Home values have bounced back across most of the country boosted by low mortgage rates and a recovering economy. The American car business is doing better than ever a far cry from where they were seven years ago, with G.M. and Chrysler facing bankruptcy. Middle class wage earners saw a 2.5% increase in wages this year with inflation pegged at almost 0% led by gas prices that are down by more than half.

The income disparity, called by some the inequality, is less than originally declared by economists. The disparity was magnified by using pre-tax dollars and not considering in-kind benefits. The high income earners have to pay federal, state, local, sales, and property taxes, usually make large charitable contributions and pay huge interest payments. Their net income is much less than their gross and should not include future stock options as it usually is.

Those on the low end of the economic ladder get in-kind benefits from free breakfast and lunch programs for their children in public school, rent subsides, food stamps, free medical coverage (Medicare or Medicaid), utilities subsidies and Earned Income Tax Credits. These benefits could add significantly to a low income’s net. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour within the next few years would help narrow the income gap as would a simple federal tax code that eliminates all itemized deductions and counts all income sources equally taxable.

And those in the middle have all kinds of untaxed and uncounted fringe benefits from work. People working in large private or public organizations can get half of the FICA payment taken care of by the employer as are the health coverage costs, and the contributions toward a pension or 401k plan. For large city workers like those in San Francisco, the employee fringe benefits could be 33% of the gross income but would not be taxed nor would they be counted as income by these economists.

But still the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor.

The number of homeless is also decreasing with efforts underway to eliminate the problem in the very near future. It has been our nation’s great disgrace that in a land of such plenty there could be people living outside in parks and on sidewalks.

More is being done to train police officers to be more like guardians than warriors, teaching them methods to de-escalate difficult situations. Police departments are equipping officers with body cameras to document arrests. The cameras will also help make police and suspects more attentive to their responses. Improved education and economic conditions should make minority communities feel more a part of rather than apart from the general population thus reducing the drive for violence.

With cities and states are increasing their minimum wages with some going as high as $15 an hour, twice the national minimum, the increased income will make individuals and families more able to enjoy the fruits of their labor while contributing more in taxes and FICA payments which feed our entitlement programs for the aged and disabled.

The nation’s abortion rate is at a longtime low as are the number of teenage pregnancies which are down by 60% from their peak.

More than 190 nations have just signed an accord to fight global warming by reducing harmful emissions from fossil fuels. Climate scientists believe that if the promises are kept, the planet could be saved from going over the brink making life unbearable.

 On the local level, global warming or climate change, as it is also known, has brought great weather to San Francisco for the past four years or so. The downside to this great run of sunny days with little wind or fog or rain has been the worst drought in California history. The good news is that the water shortage that affected most of the state will soon be over thanks to El Nino which will bring much rain for the next three months, if predictions hold. Some people will be reluctant to admit that once again in a few months a longtime drought will really be over.

So there is much good news and reason to be grateful. It should inspire us to continue the trend and fix the problems that still exist. The rich are too rich and the poor is still too poor. We must improve our public education system from K-14, including junior college. We must learn to be much less violent, less narcissistic and less wasteful. We need to bring manufacturing jobs back to our land so that we can be self sufficient and self reliant. We need more integrity, less sensationalism and a greater sense of unity in our vast diversity.

In Search of a Presidential Candidate with a Moderate Agenda

After seeing the possible presidential wannabes, Republican and Democrat, I find myself wanting someone completely different from all of them. On the Republican side, most have not even a whisper of a chance to be the party candidate much less successful in winning next November. On the Democratic side we have a woman who is saying nothing very interesting and a socialist who is, but only because his ideas are so far to the left.

None appears ready to take on some of the real issues facing our country.

While the Republicans are against illegal immigration, none was saying that we must seal our border, tighten our VISA system, and immediately deport those caught sneaking  in, instead of releasing them with hopes of future court dates, until Mr. Trump did. But he went on to say that all here now should be deported and their American born children should not be citizens. The Democratic candidates want full citizenship for those who flouted so many U.S. laws. I would like a candidate who will on one hand secure our border and visa system, require employers to use the EVerify system on all employees, immediately repatriate those caught recently crossing illegally, but on the other, let those who have established roots here stay with legal status but no path to citizenship. I have not heard one candidate suggest we develop a Marshall Plan for Mexico and Central America so that their citizens will want to stay and prosper in their own lands and that some already here might even want to return to their beloved homeland.

None has expressed a desire to reduce our military footprint in the world by closing many of our 700+ foreign bases and for being fully reimbursed by the host countries in which our bases remain. This could save us almost $100 billion a year and make America seem less like an imperialist nation which seeks to control the world. We would also be less likely to be the 911 of the world.

No hopeful is talking about dramatically reforming the federal income tax code to make it much more simple, fair, verifiable and revenue producing. The GOP candidates want to simplify the code but do it to make the rich pay less. The Democrats want the rich to pay for everything. I would like to see a tax code that considers all sources of income equally taxable, that has no itemized deductions or credits, replaced by a standardized deduction, and that has only five or six tax brackets and a lower top tax rate but one that would apply to one’s total income, not just the reduced net after all the itemized deductions and credits currently in place.

We hear no mention of making government more effective in providing services while preventing the massive fraud as we have seen in the Earned Income Credit, unemployment insurance and medical service charges.  Not one has suggested eliminating the penny and even the nickel, coins we never need and which cost more to produce than their worth.

I have heard only one presidential hopeful mention changes in Social Security to make sure it remains solvent, but his idea is to increase benefits threatening its solvency.  I have heard none say that we must crack down on fraudulent payments to recipients no longer with us. None has suggested we raise the contribution from 6.2% to 6.5% while raising the income ceiling from $118,500 to $200,000 nor that we change the way we tax the benefits so that all benefit payments are fully taxable not just 85% subject to tax. Taxes on Social Security benefits go right back into the fund.

And while many have concerns about the Affordable Care Act because of its mandatory individual enrollment, the penalties for non-compliance and the subsidies to healthcare organizations allowing them to charge more, none has recommended changes that would make enrollment voluntary, eliminating penalties. If insurers were able to reject any applicant, it would not have to be mandatory. If applicants are rejected by insurers, they could then get the “public option” which would be government-run like Medicare and Medicaid are now. There would be a share of cost. Rates would decline and subsidies might be unnecessary.  

Neither the liberal Democrats nor the conservative Republicans promised to right a century-old wrong and decriminalize marijuana, until Bernie Sanders did just now, finally..

And there is nothing but silence about ending poverty in our rich land affecting tens of millions of people, including half a million homeless, while much talk is heard about saving the middle class which can barely spend $600 billion on Christmas presents that nobody needs each year and contributes $400 billion to charities. 

No candidate mentions reforming high school curricula to better tailor coursework to student talents and inclinations, substituting courses that are not relevant to many students some that would be.

I have heard no candidate promise to ensure that the U.S. military will stay out of the Middle East conflicts which have no future prospect of being resolved as the countries there are currently configured. I have heard none say that these countries, many of whom were created last century by Western powers after the fall of the Ottoman empire, should be reconstructed to be either Shiite or Sunni but not both. None has called for an independent state for the Kurds.

I think that we need a moderate party with a candidate who is neither just liberal nor just conservative but finds a middle path between both extremes. I believe that we need it very much and very soon.

Making Lives Matter

There has been talk lately about making lives matter. Community members outside St. Louis rioted for more than four months when a young man was killed while attacking a police officer who had stopped him for committing a strong-arm robbery. The people were mad and showed their displeasure by looting and destroying local businesses. They began a campaign saying black lives matter.

So how do we make lives matter?

I think that it starts before the beginning - family planning. Today, half of all pregnancies in America are accidental and 40% of them are aborted. This is no way to make lives matter. Children should be planned by couples who are committed to each other and are willing and able to raise their children responsibly together.

Parents need to display positive role models for their children by living lives that reflect integrity and consideration - lives that matter. Parents are responsible for providing a clean, safe and nurturing environment ensuring that each child gets the best education at school and at home.  Any health issues that arise should be dealt with immediately and not allowed to worsen.

Society is also responsible for ensuring that our children get the education they need and deserve. Teachers should know their students’ strengths and weaknesses and students should have the help they need to get the very most out of their educational experience which in turn will help them develop throughout their meaningful lives. Society is also needed to provide adequate and available medical coverage and facilities to prevent or deal with the onset of potentially serious conditions.

The idea introduced by the President to extend public education to community college, adding two years to the K-12 series, could be a great benefit. It would give students more applied knowledge and skills that could lead to meaningful careers for a comfortable life and help make life matter for the individual and for all those affected by the graduate’s work. This idea has been practiced in Europe for more than a century.

For those who want to go to a four year college, the extra two years of public school could also be used to take all the general education courses required by four year colleges. Students could then enter college as juniors with only two years until graduation, taking mainly courses for their major and minor plus courses they take as electives. This would greatly reduce college costs, enable students to graduate sooner, and would probably get more students to actually complete college.

Life matters when we know what our special talents are and can find ways to apply them for personal and public good. This will help us feel a part of our community, society, culture, and world, not apart from it. People who feel a part of their environment, don’t riot to destroy it. They work to improve it.

The Jewish belief is that we were created in an unfinished, seemingly imperfect, world so that we could live our lives to heal the world (tikkun olam). This pursuit gives our lives meaning.

The challenge according to Eastern religion is to overcome the negative effects of past karma, what we experience as entropy, without creating more. So destroying lives and property to protest loss of life or property is to only prolong and deepen the problem leading to the suffering by creating more disorder/ disorganization/ karma/ entropy. Rioting for months and destroying businesses does not make life matter. It makes life seem to have little or no meaning. 

I believe that it also is important to raise our children with an accepted value system which would include being honest; considering the needs of others; being dependable; maintaining a clean and neat appearance; being non-violent; treating figures of authority with respect; and perhaps, most importantly - doing everything and treating everyone not only as a means, but also as an end.

Society has an obligation to provide a safe and just environment for all of its people. This includes ensuring that all police officers are well-trained in de-escalating potentially violent situations; that they refrain from targeting certain groups; and that they use deadly force rarely, and only as a last resort. A just environment includes efficiently and effectively enforcing laws and prosecuting violations fairly and without bias.

And, I think, that the news media have a significant role to play in making our lives meaningful. We need to be told the whole story as clearly and concisely as possible without editorializing it, embellishing it, sensationalizing it or leaving out important parts. Reports should be objective and be presented without emotion. This kind of coverage would not only provide us with needed information about what is happening around us but it also could show us a model for viewing, understanding and describing our environment - our context.  This would help us make life matter.

As adults, we can make our lives matter by being more concerned about being able to take pride in our efforts, than in our ancestry, affiliation, or our preferences. What we do is a better reflection of who we are than are our names, group memberships or labels. 

Society has a role to play to ensure that there are enough jobs for people who need them and that working people are paid a fair, living wage.  Not earning enough to enjoy the fruits of our labor can make us question whether or how much our lives matter.

I think that life matters when we feel free to express ourselves and also free to keep certain information to ourselves. Our private lives should remain private and not be exposed to invasion or exploitation. When we choose to express ourselves, we can do so thoughtfully and with consideration for the audience. Why waste words on someone who clearly does not care? Why say things that would hurt the listeners by making them feel inadequate? Why bear false witness only to make truth and life have less meaning?

If life is to matter, we need the individual, the family and the community to take responsibility for its maintenance and refinement.

All lives matter as long as we each behave as though they do.

Private and Public Ownership

For thousands of years, the notions of private property and ownership have been basic to Western Civilization beginning before the Old Testament and reinforced again in the New Testament. We own many things. Our possessions include our real estate, cars, furnishings, and clothing as well as less material things like our names, our memories, our talents, our personality, our reputation, our thoughts and, to some degree, other living beings, like our loved ones - human and otherwise.  

There is also the notion of public ownership. Citizens are part owners of their homeland and residents are part owners of their public spaces like parks, highways and bridges. Those who pay for, use, and depend upon public facilities have a vested interest in their continued availability.  Citizens elect representatives to not only make and enforce policies for the greater good, but also to properly maintain our public property.

The private sector which affects the flow of private property is driven by the profit motive, enlightened self-interest. In our western, capitalistic society, the banking industry controls the flow of capital - the cause and effect of private ownership, by deciding to whom to lend money and for whom to deny it. Private sector activity is monitored and impacted by the appropriate government agencies - the public sector - as well as by shareholders, the media and by the consumer.

Private sector workers are primarily motivated by the same profit motive as is their industry. In this sector, in order to ensure maximized profit, employees are evaluated based on their    ability and effectiveness.  Just as private sector firms are competitive, so are their employees. Only the best survive. The better you do, the better you do.

The public sector is controlled by government agencies to provide for the efficient and effective distribution of public services to create and maintain public property. The goal is not maximizing profit.

In the public sector, workers are motivated by a love of service
to the community and/or by the comfort of knowing that their jobs are safe and that their performance will not be used for or against them when it comes to raises and promotions. This environment can foster a spirit of cooperation rather than the competition found in the private sector. But it can also cause some to become less enthusiastic about doing much at work since it makes very little extrinsic difference.

We see this in education where inadequate teachers who have seniority and tenure don’t have to worry about losing their jobs because any layoffs that occur will affect the least senior teachers, no matter how excellent their work has been.

We see this in our city’s and probably our state’s civil service system. Public employees testing for promotional opportunities are not judged on any of their past evaluations (if there are any), no matter how behavior-based, because they could be subjective. The promotion must be based on seniority as well as the results (subjective and/or objective) of a standardized oral or written examination. Seniority and test taking ability can become more important criteria than actual past performance.

The same is true in many public sector agencies where transfers to other units are granted based solely on seniority of the requester and the request.

The effect of this difference in private and public sector performance is striking.

The private sector employee is motivated by fear of job loss and by an ambition to succeed as well as any intrinsic motivations that might be involved such as pride in one’s work, wanting the organization to succeed, being of service and a nice working environment.

The public sector employee can enjoy job security and excellent present and future fringe benefits like a good pension, with some getting 90% of their pay in retirement, and a Cadillac health plan. There also is the satisfaction of serving the public to help make life that much more pleasant for the people affected by their services - police officers save lives and arrest criminals; firefighters save burning buildings and rush people suffering illness or injury to the hospital; nurses and social workers help those in greatest social or physical need. Public sector gardeners can provide the community with beautiful spaces filled with nature as relief from the concrete and metal that surrounds us.

While we each can encourage our private sector by making wise purchases that reward quality, value and creativity, we must motivate our public service sector by treasuring our public property and insisting that it be maintained. Just as we should take good care of our private possessions, we can also take that same responsibility for our public property.

Do you see a public garbage can with its door flung open by someone who had been digging in it for food or recyclables? Stop and close it back up. It’s your can on your property.

Do see someone sleeping on the sidewalk or in the road? See if the person needs help or call the number to get city services for the person. Your sidewalk or road was not made for sleeping on and humans deserve a better place to sleep.

Have you noticed that they stopped work on a street repair leaving everyone to navigate their way over wooden planks and large barriers? Contact the appropriate city agency to get the work started again.

This just happened in Pacific Heights at a busy intersection. Workers began replacing the four corner curb cuts but left the job unfinished and never came back leaving wooden planks and large plastic road barriers behind. This absence went on for almost a month and during that time it appears that only one person called in to have the job completed. Hundreds of people passed by this unfinished work everyday. Shop owners saw it. Shoppers saw it. Police officers saw it. And yet only one person called in and had it finished.

It was “the Emperor’s New Clothes” in reverse with only one person declaring that the emperor (intersection) has too many clothes (obstacles).

Neighbors saw their park being neglected by Recreation and Park personnel. Weeds were everywhere, trees were dying, park benches were battered, cigarette butts were everywhere in this “no smoking” area that lacked proper signage or enforcement and the pavement was cracked. After many years of passive acceptance by most park visitors, a few concerned public property owners, have begun work to redo the park. They meet with their district supervisor and with park officials to motivate them to do what is needed to fix the park and then to properly manage it. These neighbors are exercising their ownership of the park.

So just as we need the public to keep the private sector from its potential excesses, we need private individuals to keep the public sector from its potential shortcomings - inefficiency and ineffectiveness with the strong scent of impunity.

False Equivalents

It might have started with our early American founding fathers or perhaps with the leaders of the French Revolution. It might have been an overreaction to aristocracy in France and/or England. It might have been inspired by a notion of paradise. But an idea emerged and was written into the DNA of both countries: all men were created equal - equality, fraternity and liberty.

But as pointed out in a previous column, “Are We All Created Equal?” we are not created equal. The founding fathers knew that and so did the French revolutionaries. Items created on an assembly line or made using the same mold might be created equal, but living creatures, except possibly for identical twins and clones, are not. Dogs are not created equal, nor are elephants and neither are humans. The founding fathers had slaves who were not considered equal or treated that way. Women were not considered equal and were not entitled to vote. Only white, Christian, male,  American landowners were considered of somewhat equal standing.

Maybe they meant to say that all humans are equally human and therefore equally due certain human rights.

Communism was based on the idea that we are all created equal and that we should always remain that way and would were it not for capitalists who rig the game. No one should have more money or status than anyone else, they believed. Everyone should share in the group’s bounty, equally. Communism didn’t work out well with lowered productivity and creativity and increased corruption with human nature revolting against the idea that we are all equal.

Our democratic and capitalist system accommodates our individual differences and provides different amounts of rewards for various talents and accomplishments. A baseball star player does not get equal pay with a rookie. The brain surgeon gets more money and prestige than a butcher or car salesman.

But the idea of equality lives on today. We talk of marriage equality, income inequality, arrest equality, gender pay equality and cultural equality, also known as cultural relativity. We are insisting that there must be equality in these realms.

Gender pay inequality claims are based on surveys that look at how much people of each gender are paid for their services. The results were that in the past women received only 75% as much pay as did men. The reason was that women were more likely to work in lower paying jobs or did not have as much seniority in similar positions they held with men. Women who begin careers today make about 93% as much as men do because more of them have higher paying jobs.

Same-sex relationships have always been considered to be very different from those opposite-sex ones in that they did not result in accidental or intentional pregnancy and therefore did not need to be monogamous. But people in same-sex relationships suffered from several forms of unfair discrimination and wanted to be recognized as legitimate, as indeed they are. They wanted the considerations and benefits married couples enjoyed. They argued their case using the notion of equality that so appeals to us. “All love is equal.”

And even though in a capitalist system, some will earn more than others, the gap between the haves and the have nots has grown much larger. The people on top are earning more in salaries and in investment returns than ever before while the majority of Americans see little improvement in their own economic conditions. People began describing this as income inequality as though the goal were to have everyone receive equal pay. This is not the goal. The goal must be to reduce the degree of income disparity: the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor and those in the middle feel stuck in place.

A federal Justice Department review was made of police activity in Ferguson, Missouri after a grand jury found a police officer not guilty for the death of a black teen who was attacking and threatening the life of the officer. Finding that the grand jury was correct in its ruling, the Justice Department looked for problems with the local police department. They found that over a five year period as many as five emails that seemed racist were written by members of the department. While this finding was not very significant considering the number of officers and the five year period, the Attorney General then found that while the city’s black population was only 67%, the arrest rate of black residents was 80+%. The thought was that this might prove bias. The idea being that every group should be arrested equal to its proportion of the population.

 A look at crime statistics shows that this is nowhere near to the case.  Certain minority communities have a disproportionate share of victims and causes of violent crime in America. While representing only 13% of our population, blacks suffer 55% of all gun related homicides (53% of all violent homicides) or about 6,000 deaths a year, and blacks are 93% of their assailants and are responsible for more than 52% of all violent homicides in America. 

But the equality claim that has suffered most by the real world, is cultural relativity, a mainstay of members of the far left and frequent world travelers. These people will immediately try to counter any criticism of another country or culture with an example in our culture. Say that Muslim countries that require women to be subjugated by having their appearance covered or having their freedom limited, and these cultural relativists will desperately come up with equal examples of it here. Some will point to the fact that some women here feel they must wear high heels and make-up or that they earn only 93% as much as their male counterparts as examples of our cultural equality with those in the Middle East. Mention the severe terrorism in that same part of the world with groups like Boko Haram, ISIS, Al Qaida, Al Shabaad, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Taliban and our relativity friends will remind us of the Crusades, fought barely a thousand years ago and the KKK whose members burned crosses and lynched innocent blacks. 

But by now, even these dedicated reality deniers realize the folly in their efforts. All cultures are not created equal and do not ever get to be equal. People in these less-than-equal cultures suffer from poverty, ignorance, corruption and violence. Many are ruled by cruel tyrants as we have seen in the Middle East and Africa and to a lesser degree in Latin America.

So, rather than continue to pretend that everyone is somehow equal or that there should be income or crime or gender or cultural equality, we could be more helpful by acknowledging significant differences and finding ways of reducing the disparity and its damaging effects in our nation as well as elsewhere in the world.

Awards

We Americans love awards and award programs. We want to celebrate success in competition. We want to recognize and honor excellence. We have awards for almost everything. We have awards for entertainment such as the Emmys, the Oscars, the Golden Globe awards, the Grammys, the Country and Western Music awards and the daytime Emmys. For sports we not only have our championship games in football, baseball, hockey and basketball, but we have awards like Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player and the many Hall of Fame honors.

Americans, make up less than 5% of the world population, but earn many times their share of international awards as well. We earn the majority of Nobel Prizes and Pulitzer prizes in many categories like physics, economics, literature, peace and medicine.

Our prizewinners are then entitled to add the award to their name much like aristocratic titles of old and those still granted today in England. The person is introduced as Pulitzer Prize winner or Nobel Prize winner or Hall of Fame inductee or Oscar winner. The title gives the holder greater authority and usually a bigger future pay check in their field.

But these prizes are not without much controversy and disagreement.

In the field of sports awards, questions have arisen as to whether an athlete’s moral character should be a factor in the selection process. There are several recent examples. A man considered the best baseball player ever because he hit the most home runs in a single season and the most in a career while also winning many Golden Glove awards for fielding excellence and several season MVP awards and for making many All Star game appearances, had been accused of using performance enhancing drugs. Should he be eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame? What about another who denied similar charges for years and finally admitted that he had lied repeatedly and had actually used the forbidden fruit? Should he ever be eligible since he too was a great player and a team leader? Then there was the man with the most base hits who lost his career for betting on baseball. Can he ever be forgiven and awarded for his performance?

In the entertainment industry, awards are even more in question. How does a movie get nominated for best picture but the director doesn’t get a mention? How do some movies or actors win when few believe that they were the best? Remember when “Chicago” won best picture? Remember when Halle Barry won Best Actress for that dreadful movie? And why do Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren seem to win so often just because they are by far the best two actresses in the world? Can’t we set quotas on how often one could be nominated or win this treasured award? Why doesn’t Maggie Smith win more awards? And why didn’t the Mentalist and Simon Baker get awards when their’s was one of the best American T.V. shows for many years?

The latest claim against the entertainment awards is that they do not go enough to people of different ethnic and racial populations. The feeling is that awards should be more proportional.

This disproportionality has also affected international awards like the Nobel and Pulitzer. Members of one religious/ethnic group which represents less than .2% of the world population has won more than half the awards since the end of World War II, while a religious group’s membership, accounting for almost a quarter of the world’s population, has won only three or four and one of those was a peace prize that went to a terrorist.

Time magazine also has an annual award - Person of the Year. The recent nominees have included some of the least likely people like a genocidal dictator, an alleged narcissistic traitor, and a woman who was able to avoid paying inheritance taxes on her wife’s multi-million dollar estate.

President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize when he was first elected. Since then he has done everything possible to earn it retroactively. He got us out of Iraq and Afghanistan and kept us out of Libya, Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Ukraine. He has realized that regional countries and their organizations should deal with conflicts in their area. We and our troops will no longer be the 911 of the world. His next step should be to close many of our 700+ foreign military bases. But he would have done all this even without the Nobel prize.

We already have many ways of voting for our favorites.

In sports, we have the statistics which give an objective evaluation of the player’s greatness. In baseball we have batting averages and stats on the number of home runs hit, the number of runs batted in, the number of bases stolen, etc. We know who the best players are in every area. We also have objective statistics in football, basketball, hockey, etc. Our best athletes are known, clearly identified by accomplishments and are paid accordingly. We have athletes who make as much as $20 million a year, surely that is a reward and an award.

In other areas of entertainment we have other solid criteria and rewards to honor the best. The best actors get the best parts, generate some of the best box office receipts and most importantly are paid generously for their accomplishments.

In the case of awards for economics, literature, science and politics as we see in the Pulitzer and the Nobel prizes as well as dozens of lesser known ones, they are also very subjective while there are objective criteria that are recognized for these high achievers.

In economics there are clear winners who provide theories that greatly affect economic analysis. They are awarded high level positions in academia and the business sector that profit from the ideas and are awarded generous salaries. How many award winners in economics warned us about the crash of 2008? How many have come out with a simple and fair federal tax code?

One Nobel Prize winning economist supported the mistaken idea that the Occupy Wall Street people came up with that our problems are caused not by Wall Street but by the top 1%, making 99% of us innocent and helpless underdogs. So every household earning $400,000 or more is the enemy. This includes all successful actors, professional athletes, musicians, comedians, writers, educators, surgeons and economists. He didn’t realize that he himself was in the group. Or maybe he did.

(We are now being told by socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders that the fault really lies with our top .0002%, our 536 billionaires. That would make 99.9998% of us helpless, economic and political victims - a nation of underdogs.)

In literature we have best-selling authors as well as those who produce great classics. Shakespeare never won a Pulitzer or Nobel prize, but we still know how great he was. The same with Salinger, Peter Beagle, John Barth, etc.

(Full disclosure: I did not get a Pulitzer for my novel, “Reflections of a Freelance Monk,” though it is considered by some the best example of its genre - the modern metaphysical murder mystery memoir appearing to be an unauthorized and unintentional autobiography. Had I won, I would have donated the prize money to organizations helping young, inner-city metaphysicians.) 

In science we have great inventions and cures. The scientists who devise these breakthroughs are known, recognized and rewarded regardless of award ceremonies. Prize winning scientists get into trouble when they venture outside their very specific area of expertise.

One Nobel Prize winner recently made some absurd comments regarding working in a lab with women and was forced to resign his unpaid position in humiliation. Award winning physicists embarrass themselves when they venture into philosophy, especially metaphysics. Their genius is as limited as is their award specialty. They would be well advised to opine only in their very narrow area of expertise.

It seems that these many awards and award shows promote narcissism and controversy and emphasize the extrinsic rather than encourage excellence.

Could we ever live without these awards, bold symbols of our meritocracy? Could we establish people’s authority without knowing their provenance?

I think that it would be nice to try.

The British Are Coming!

I admit that one of my many pleasures is television. I have loved it ever since the early 50s. Back then in the days of black and white reception, we had comedies with people like Milton Berle, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Lucy, Burns and Allen, Bob Hope, Sid Cesar,  Jackie Gleason, Laurel and Hardy and the Three Stooges, and later by Don Rickles, Rodney Dangerfield, and Flip Wilson, to name a few. We had family comedies that reflected our middle class values like “Father Knows Best.” “Leave It to Beaver,” “Donna Reed” and “Make Room for Daddy.” We had several popular Western shows with heroes like Hopalong Cassidy, the Lone Ranger with his trusty friend, Tonto,  Matt Dillon in “Gunsmoke,” Roy Rogers with Dale Evans and Trigger, Maverick, and Paladin. We had a few police shows like Dragnet and variety shows like “Ed Sullivan” and Steve Allen’s show.

That was then. This is now and very different.

Now we have “reality T.V.” shows, many of which seem to me to be neither reality nor T.V. shows. We have shows like “Big Brother,” “The Biggest Loser,” “The Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Survivor,” “American Idol,” “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Real Housewives” from everywhere, et al.  “Project Runway,” is the only one I actually watch.

And we have endless crime shows with violence and sequels. How many
“NCIS,” “C.S.I.”  or “Law and Order” variations are there? Do we now have one for every major city? For those of us who enjoy even more violence, there is always “24,” sure to return for yet another season, “Blacklist,” and “Homeland,” shows that allow us to actually watch T.V. characters being tortured. For those of us who enjoy soft crime stories we have what used to be “60 Minutes” style news magazines like “Dateline” and “48 Hours” now showing us exclusively real life stories about murder among our middle class population, proving that even doctors, lawyers and business executives kill people, usually their spouses.

But now with the “Mentalist” gone along with “Covert Affairs,” “Fairly Legal,”  “Human Target,” “House” and now, “Mad Men” and probably soon, “Suits,” I find little left on American T.V. to look forward to watching. There will still be “Grey’s Anatomy” next season,  but with so many good characters dying off, it’s beginning to resemble Death’s Anatomy. “X Files” and “Twin Peaks” are supposed to return giving American viewers like me some hope.

For comedy, I am left with “the Big Bang Theory.” The “Colbert Report” is gone as will soon be “The Daily Show.”

What is this T.V. lover to do?

Fortunately, thanks to PBS, the British are coming and many have already arrived. Our friends back in England have brought us shows like “Downton Abbey,” “Foyle’s War,” “Inspector Morse,” “Inspector Lewis,” “Poirot,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Sherlock,” “Endeavour,” “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery,” “Mrs. Bradley Mysteries,” “Rosemary & Thyme,” “Father Brown,” “Grantchester,” “Midsomer Mystery,” “Vera,” “Zen,” and “George Gently.” And these are just my favorite English shows.

These productions are not all on during the same season or even the same year and some were first broadcast in England as long ago as the 1980s. Many are period pieces ranging from the late 19th century to the beginning of the 21st.

These English shows are mainly murder mysteries, “Downton Abbey” being the exception. But they are different from American crime shows in almost every way.

While American crime dramas take place mainly in large cities like New York, Chicago, L.A., Baltimore and Miami, English crime dramas mainly take place in small villages such as those in Yorkshire and Oxfordshire. While in America we see the urban plight and ruthless, brutal murderers, British shows feature nice, middle class, civilized people who sometimes commit murder.

While on American T.V. the criminals are extremely diverse and violent, those on British T.V. shows are much less so. While American crime stories show us every part of the murder including all of its brutality, in the English versions the murder usually has already been committed and all we see is the result and that without gruesome detail. We see the inspector’s reaction to the corpse more than the body itself.

And while America’s mainstream news media have made much of the term “unarmed victim,” trying to equate “unarmed” with “harmless innocent,” in British T.V. shows most murders are committed by unarmed assailants. England has a very strict gun control system. We are slowly learning in America that an unarmed man can also commit murder, sometimes with his bare hands or by using someone else’s weapon.

The detectives on American crime shows always carry a gun and make frequent use of it along with their hand-to-hand fighting skills so necessary in our violent environment. Inspectors on British shows are unarmed and almost never use force. Their challenge is usually intellectual, trying to figure out what really happened and getting the witnesses and guilty parties to tell the truth, even if it kills them.

While American police seem to have minimal education, many of those on English shows are almost erudite. Inspector Morse and his young version, Endeavour (Morse’s first name, his mother was a Quaker), attended Oxford and is a lover of classical music. His sergeant, Lewis, went on years later to get his own show and has a sergeant, James Hathaway, who attended Cambridge in the hope of becoming a priest and seems to know every subject in its entirety. Many of their suspects are brilliant college professors who are amazed at how knowledgeable Hathaway is.

After watching some of these shows, I feel more educated, more civilized and even more intelligent. The feeling soon wears off.

And the majority of lead officers in these shows are not only educated, but extremely kind and compassionate.

Father Brown is a Catholic priest in this Protestant country. He is not only educated but wise. He is able to solve crimes by mentoring the suspects and getting them to realize their moral obligations while at the same time offering them solace and forgiveness. Grantchester is a young, handsome and Protestant version of Father Brown.

Some, like Foyle, George Gently and Zen, a police inspector in Rome with a name said to be Venetian, are solving crimes while fighting their own police bureaucracy. They are opposed in their efforts by corrupt superiors who usually do the wrong thing but for understandable, though sometimes misguided, reasons. Most are decent people who made some judgement errors.  

These British murder mysteries show that even murderers can be civilized and that even civilized people can commit murder. I’m all for people being civilized.

Although we declared our independence from England back in 1776, I have become dependent on the British for my evening entertainment.

 Please don’t think me unpatriotic.

     

What Can America Do for You?

America is the third largest country in the world and the very richest. More people apply for entry here each year than they do to all the other 194 countries in the world combined. America started the United Nations and is its largest contributor. America is also the major force in NATO and in the World Bank, which distributes money from the richest countries to the poorest. America also has the largest and best trained and equipped armed forces.

So what can America do for you?

Was there a natural disaster in your country as we saw in the Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia? Do you want America to send money and aid? Was there a mining disaster? Do you want America to send technical assistance?

Are the angry mobs in your country calling for the ouster of your leader as has happened recently in Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Egypt again and Tunisia? Do you want America to provide military assistance? We know you never meant “Death to America” when you yelled it in the streets. And after we help you, we will not mind if you repeat your old slogan. We know that we are not perfect no matter how hard we try.

Does your country fear invasion by another as is happening now in the Ukraine and happened 23 years ago in Kuwait? Should we intervene? Is one of your religious sects trying to destroy another causing a civil war? Do you want us to take sides - yours? Is a radical religious group trying to force its wicked ideology on your people as it is in Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen Nigeria, Darfur and Afghanistan? Is American military assistance needed?

Are two neighbors fighting each other because one wants the other to not exist while the other fights to survive? Is it America’s responsibility to settle the dispute by offering more foreign aid?

Are the people in your country no longer able to stand living in their beloved homeland because of all the poverty, violence, pollution and corruption there? Should all the poor and huddled masses come to America? The poem on the Statue of Liberty seems to offer an invitation, surely this young poet’s message must be America’s obligation. Our almost 40 million poor Americans are more than happy to be joined by millions of needy from foreign lands. We all love diversity.We're dying for it.

Is there a health crises in your homeland like Ebola or AIDs in Africa? Can America find and provide a cure? Should we send in troops and health workers to assist while risking their lives in the effort?

Do our many friends and allies need military protection from enemies from long ago? Does South Korea still need 30,00 American troops there for 60 years after the Korean War? Does Europe need American military bases in its many countries to continue to protect against a possible invasion by the Soviet Union that no longer exists? What’s $100 billion a year among friends?

But what about helping Americans? How can America help its own people?

Does your business need to pay its workers the minimum possible wage? No problem. The government can subsidize the employee and you by providing them Earned Income Credit, SNAP, housing and utilities subsidies, and free school breakfast and lunch programs for the children.

Are your banks struggling to make billions of dollars in profits each year? The Fed can lend you money at no interest so you can afford to lend it to your customers for as much as 25% interest. Why should your bank account holders get more than .1% return on their savings? You need the money more than they do - big bonuses and higher dividends need to be paid. 

Has anything terrible happened to a family member? Were any victims of a terrorist attack? Was it an air or rail-caused fatality?  The government can compensate you for your loss if there is no other deep pockets party to file a claim against. Did you lose property because of a storm in an area very vulnerable to weather conditions? Did you not have insurance for this natural disaster? The American government will cover your losses.

And if you and a mob of others are upset about something you heard about in your area, no matter how incorrect, the police will stand by as you riot in the streets, block traffic, chant obscenities and loot businesses. They will not interfere because they want you to express your First Amendment rights disregarding the fact that the amendment only covers peaceful demonstrations, not riots by angry and usually misinformed mobs.

Did you go to a college you could not afford causing you to rack up huge debt? It’s been a year now since you left school and you still owe the money as do many others. If you do pay it back, you will have less money to spend on other things like a new car or a nice vacation. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the government to bail out this trillion dollars worth of student debt? Isn’t that what you’d like? Better yet, can’t all college education be free. A lot more money could then be spent on goods and services.  Aren’t we all entitled to a free college education?

Did you borrow too much against your home over the years until you owed more than the collateral was worth when real estate values declined? Do you want the government to get the banks to lower the amount of your debt because the value of your collateral has decreased through no fault of your own?

Have you committed a terrible crime but did not put away enough money to cover your defense? No problem. The government will provide you with excellent legal defense and you will never be billed for it. This offer is also good for foreign terrorists who commit heinous crimes against this country. Surely, they deserve the best defense American tax dollars can buy. It seems like the least we owe these people.

America is here to help.

Free Speech

They say that talk is cheap, but is it actually free?

The very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the Congress from making any law abridging the freedom of speech or the right to peaceably assemble.

Lately, this freedom here and abroad is being tested.

Last August a police officer shot and killed an 18 year old, six foot five inch man who had just committed a strong-arm robbery, a felony, and when confronted attacked the officer and tried to get the officer’s weapon in order to shoot him. The officer ordered him to surrender but was ignored and after trying to stop his advance by shooting him several times in the arm, the officer resorted to deadly force. Some the eyewitnesses bore false witness claiming that the young man had been shot in the back and at a greater distance than forensic evidence indicated. But many in this Missouri town were angry. They wanted the officer put in prison for defending himself against “an unarmed black teenager” who was attacking him.

When a grand jury, after an extensive deliberation calling every possible witness and reviewing all forensic evidence, ruled this self defense, hundreds in the town and from other areas, began rioting. Some decided to break into and loot the town’s businesses and the rest of the crowd did nothing to stop them. This went on for four months. The non peaceable assemblies were covered extensively by the media  which seems to thrive on the sensational.  So four months of riots disguised as demonstrations went on all over the country over this injustice that wasn’t. The cost to businesses and municipal governments was in the tens of millions of dollars.

The same thing happened a few months later in New York City when officers tried to arrest a 6 foot, five inch 300+ man who refused to be arrested. The officers grabbed whatever was small enough to get their arms around, his neck, and he died on the scene. It turned out that he had several severe health risks in addition to his morbid obesity including diabetes, heart disease and asthma. The officers did not know of his condition which is protected by HIPPA regulations which restrict free speech when medical information is involved. It was a tragedy.

Once again there were demonstrations when a grand jury did not recommend an indictment for the officers involved. The crowd was seemingly unaware of the fact that there could be no indictment without provable intent. There was no intent to kill or even injure this victim. The people used the First Amendment to complain about a judicial injustice that never happened.

The Mayor exercised his free speech right to express his shock at the verdict and went on to say that he warns his son, who is black, to be aware of the danger police represent forgetting to mention that the majority of all violent deaths in the U.S. are suffered by blacks who number only 13% of the population; that 93% of all violence against blacks is by other blacks and that police are there to protect the victims from the predators. He chose not to use his free speech to talk about this much greater problem.

The NYPD officers used their First Amendment rights by peacefully protesting the remarks their Mayor freely spoke. They turned their backs to him when two officers were assassinated by a young black man who was inspired by the riots against the police and the false impression that the police were the enemy. Many New Yorkers thought that the police went too far in their peaceful expression.

A few weeks ago a French paper known for being at the edge of free speech, published cartoons that were much more offensive than they were funny. They ridiculed Islam by showing depictions of the prophet being vulgar. They knew that some of the six million Muslims living in France might be offended but did it anyway because they were free to do so. Free speech was described by France’s President as being at the very core of French culture along with equality and fraternity. Everyone must be free to say or write whatever they want. The French people gathered to demonstrate their support for this freedom with an estimated 3.7 million in attendance.

A few days later, a black French Muslim comedian posted some remarks on Facebook that were sympathetic to the Muslim terrorists who killed 12 people in response to the cartoons. The Muslim comedian was arrested. Apparently, in France, some speech is more than free than other speech. His comments on his Facebook page were not free but came with a cost - jail.

The other day, the Pope, believed to be infallible, denounced the vicious, murderous attacks but also reminded us that there are limits to free speech. It is not acceptable to use free speech to insult someone else’s religion. Then he went on to say that if a Cardinal said something bad about the Pope’s mother, now long gone, Il Papa would hit him in the face. The Pope would punch someone in the face for exercising his free speech or for any other reason? The Pope? But aren’t we taught to turn the other cheek when offended? Is he saying that if someone offends us that we have a right to strike out violently. Really?

We see the media selectively showing and telling us the news, unwilling to tell the whole story for fear of losing a share of the audience and, therefore, advertising revenue, the life blood of the media, by fully exercising their free speech.

So maybe speech isn’t really free but has a price.

When an old, somewhat demented man exercised his free speech in a private conversation in his own home with his young assistant/mistress by telling her that he objected to the people she was hanging out with and didn’t want them coming to his basketball team’s home games, he was outed and vilified. Never mind that his privacy was violated by taping and then selling the private conversation to a sensation - hungry media. He was sanctioned by the NBA, fined and forced to sell his team for only $2 billion. His privacy was not private and his free speech was not free.

When we learned that a famous Southern cooking maven had once testified during a deposition to using a word the begins with the letter between M and O, we rose up as one and insisted that she be punished severely for that one use of a forbidden word, a word we are not free to speak. It cost her millions of dollars as once-loyal sponsors dropped her as though she was on fire.

When we learned that a recently-hired CEO of a large internet server company had used his free speech to make a campaign contribution of $1,000 to a California initiative that won majority support but not ours, we wanted him fired. How dare he use his constitutionally guaranteed right to support something many of us are against? He resigned. His speech wasn’t free.

At the 50th anniversary of the free speech movement on college campuses which began at our own, U.C. Berkeley, some of its students wanted to deny a famous liberal comedian the right to speak at their commencement ceremony because although he is the champion of liberal causes, he had spoken out against religion and Islam, in particular. They did not agree with his views on one subject and so these young, liberal college students decided him to be unfit to address them. He disregarded their objections and came and gave a speech about being a liberal to a group who knew liberal all too well.

So perhaps we can say it’s like “The Animal Farm” in which all were equal but some were more equal than others: We believe in free speech even when it is offensive as long as we are not offended by it. Say something that many don’t want to hear and you find that your words will have a real cost. 

How much will these words cost?