Appearances

      
This column has examined many commonly accepted “truisms” and found them untrue such as “all men are created equal,” “love thy neighbor as thyself,” “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and, my favorite, “those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know.”  Throughout time we have heard these phrases so often that we have taken them for granted without challenging them as we should.

Here’s one to add to our collection - “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

Have you been to a bookstore lately?  Every book has an interesting cover.  They are designed to be interesting so that you will buy the book inside.  Book publishers and agents want you to judge a book by its cover.

Have you been to the market lately?  Each product is covered in a design intended to get the buyer to judge the product well by it.

But maybe the phrase doesn’t really mean “book” or even “product.”  Maybe it just means that we can’t judge people by their appearance.  Is that true?  What makes us decide to talk with someone or to get to know them or to go out with them?  What do potential employers judge us by?  Yes, it is our outward appearance.

So what can we do to improve our chances of giving a favorable impression?  We can try to look our best.  That might mean avoiding dreadlocks, body piercings, tattoos, pants that appear to be falling off, sloppy beards, dirty or greasy hair, bad breath, pants that are too long and lay crumpled on the floor, clothes that are too tight or too loose, body odor and/or baseball caps with misplaced visors.  And instead of always wearing solid colors we could try attractive patterns.  Look at the people in Guatemala, Pakistan, India, Kenya or Haiti and you see people dressed in beautiful colors and patterns.  You look at most Americans and it is all solid and uninteresting.

Even in men’s ties we have gone solid.  I think it started with Regis Philbin hosting   that million dollar game show.  He wore solid colored ties with matching solid colored shirts.  Then came “the Donald” who wore solid color silky, oftimes pink, ties.  Then there was George Bush II.  He almost always wore a dark suit with a white shirt and a light blue solid tie.  This became an almost international dress code.  I noticed one international conference where everyone, including George II, wore that same outfit.  Boring.  If you can’t wear a beautiful tie, don’t wear one at all. And don’t wear a striped tie with a striped suit (are you reading this Brian Williams?).  In fact, avoid striped suits.  They usually look cheap and make the wearer look like a trafficker in the world’s second oldest profession.  Even Tim Gunn can’t make them work (no offense, Tim).

Some of my previous columns have already lamented the improper use of what has been called “shorts” for men but are now more like “medium-longs” going below the knee on their male wearers.  And while real shorts are appropriate while on vacation in some tropical paradise, they are neither appropriate nor attractive on men during cool weather or in urban environments.  Most men’s legs are best when covered.

I have also surely said enough about big, fat watches.  They don’t make men look bigger or manlier.

But what about women, what are their sartorial issues?  They have come a long way since the big shoulder look of the 80’s.  Designers have discovered the miracle of spandex for women.  What a difference - finally pants that really fit to compliment and complement the female body.  Women also seem to be wearing less makeup during the everyday.  Women don’t need dark mascara on their eyelids  or eyelashes.  They don’t need pancake makeup, but a tan always helps. ( Force a dermatologist to tell you the truth and the doctor will confess that tans are nature’s way of providing sunblock.  But tans must be built up to gradually.) And though wearing high heels can improve a woman’s appearance making her legs look longer and slimmer and making her drooping posterior stay up better, especially under some spandex, it is too high a price to pay for beauty.  High heels really hurt women’s feet and are no longer necessary.  Some die-hard cultural relativists desperate to find a Western equivalent of the burkas and other full head-to-toe covering that some women under Muslim subjugation are forced to wear with Western women being forced to wear high heels.  Let us end burkas, full body coverings and high heels from any woman’s must-wear ideology.

Also as mentioned earlier, women, let’s have more interesting patterns, not just solid colors.  Look at Missoni (and look for him now too, he is still missing).  He knows patterns. Beautiful patterns can make a woman look bigger or smaller, depending on the need. And, please, no more black.  It is not really a color but the lack of one.  Black is for tuxedoes, funerals and the clergy, and I’m no longer sure about the clergy. I see black and white as plus or minus for real colors. Black darkens while white lightens.  

And pregnant women.  You are wonderful and shall be forever blessed.  But I have one request: no more tight fitting clothes until your body has released its precious gift and returned to normalcy.  We are all willing to wait to see the baby after it is born instead of snuggled and squeezed prenatal under your spandex.

With both male and female clothing wearers, the key should be dressing appropriate to the occasion and one’s physique.  Some part of the body that is too big should be covered by something that minimizes the effect.  Something that is just right should be displayed with elegance and appreciation. Sweat clothes are not appropriate at church or weddings, much less church weddings.  High heels, while not needed with anything, are surely out of place with cut offs or a bikini and on tennis courts.

Is this all too controversial?  Am I hitting below the belt and is the belt really appropriate?  Is this all too subjective?  Should we say say “to each his or her own”?

I say “no!”

We have reached consensus about moral issues like murder, lying, stealing and bragging, we can have a consensus about aesthetic considerations. Most of us agree about what looks good and what doesn’t.  Remember the Edsel?  You are probably too young or too old to remember.  It was designed in the late 50s.  Almost everyone agreed it was ugly and it failed terribly.  Look at the history of the Plymouth, Dodge and Desoto.  They were consistently unattractive and now many don’t even remember them. What about the Chevrolet Caprice of the early ‘90s?  It was so ugly, even police departments didn’t want them.  SFPD finally bought some against strong protest from its esteemed principal analyst.  No one wanted to drive in them.  It solved the take home policy problem - people were too embarrassed to take them home.  And let’s not even start about the Monte Carlo - consistently hideous. Gone too are padded shoulders for women, even those who held out vain hope that the large shoulders would make their large hips look smaller in contrast.  They were sadly wrong.  Gone are narrow ties for men as are their opposites, real wide ones.

So while aesthetics can be somewhat subjective, it can also provide standards that the vast majority can agree on.

My hope, here, is that we all agree with mine. 

In Search of the Magic Bullet

We have all been assured that life is very complicated and in some ways beyond our human comprehension.  There are no simple answers or solutions.  There are no magic bullets for life’s many problems.

I see magic bullets everywhere.

The magic bullet to saving someone whose coronary arteries were completely blocked was open heart surgery.  They are developing magic bullets to destroy certain cancers without hurting healthy cells. The magic bullet to prevent severe birth defects was prenatal testing and if necessary, first term abortions. The magic bullets to reducing auto fatalities were seat belts and then air bags and laws against drunk driving.

But are there magic bullets for a country’s poverty or to cure a culture of violence?  How can the poor countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East free themselves from their crippling poverty?  Can Muslim radicals such as Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, and Hezbollah members end their lives of vicious violence? Can air pollution and climate change be reversed?

Surely, these are very complex problems dealing with culture, religion, history, genetics and ignorance.  There could be no easy fix.  Could there?

Yes, of course.

The magic bullet to end a developing country’s poverty by doing just one thing: educate the girls.  Educated girls will have children later and have fewer.  The key to a country’s economic rebound is fewer children per poor family. Educating all the girls might be easier said than done. Ignorant men, like the Taliban, do not want girls educated at all, the better to subjugate them.  Educated women would raise educated children who would behave in more productive and less violent manners.

But what of the magic bullet to end culturally institutionalized violence as we see in most of the Muslim countries?  Muslim men are said to be violent toward their women and to everyone they feel has somewhat different beliefs from theirs.  How does this tendency change?  I have the magic bullet.

Give them dogs.

Muslim men, probably the most violent on the planet, are not allowed to have dogs.  It is felt that dogs are somehow unclean. Their feet should never touch the ground and their saliva should never touch a Muslim’s skin.  Murdering, raping, lying, destroying and hating are OK, but not a dog’s footstep?

If we can convince Muslim radicals that their prophet had nothing against dogs, we could give them all our shelter dogs we have that will have to be put down - but no Pit Bulls, Rottweilers, Mastiffs, German Shepherds, Dobermans or Great Danes - just Cocker Spaniels, Golden Retrievers, Bernese Mountain dogs, Shelties and Cavalier Spaniels - warm friendly pups who not even a vicious terrorist could abuse.

While Muslim violence can be said to have several causes like low self esteem, feelings of inadequacy, low intelligence, envy, frustration and confusion; the chemical force that ignites the need for violence is testosterone.  It is the fuel of our reptilian brain which is the source of our fight and flight response as well as our sex drive. The counterbalance to this chemical is oxytocin.  Oxytocin is produced when a mother nurses a baby, or when someone is cared for or when a dog is petted.  Just as testosterone makes us violent, oxytocin makes us loving and kind.

Can you image a nursing mother getting mad and killing someone?  It can not happen.  So too, Muslims no longer denied the companionship of a dog who provides unconditional love and a healthy dose of much needed oxytocin will not hate and want to kill people. They will not commit suicide killing innocent women and children in order to go to paradise because they won’t want to leave their beloved pets.  Paradise would be here on earth with their loving pets.

What the magic bullet be and have been for our country's mortgage crisis? It started to unravel in 2007 and 2008. There were different elements to it. There were those who got mortgages even though they could not afford them. Then there were those who suffered income loss from our great recession. They were finding it hard to make their mortgage payments. Then there were those who saw their home values sink because of the foreclosures caused by the first two problems. Some of these people, realizing that their debt was greater than its secured collateral, walked away from their homes putting even more into foreclosure and further eroding homes prices. Surely, there can be no magic bullet for such a crisis. Should the banks lower the principals owed and take a loss? Should the government pay down some of these debts? Should their contracted interest rates be lowered? When "no" is the answer, where's the bullet?

Let the homeowners rent their homes by paying only the current low interest rate on their existing balance cutting their monthly payments in half, saving their homes and credit ratings, while not costing the banks a loss, not flooding the market with foreclosed homes and therefore not lowering property values and not making others move because of it. The answer was obvious from the start. I tried to tell every elected official but no one seemed to listen. I checked with the major bank and they said that my plan was always available - the magic bullet was known and obvious from both a fairness and a financially viability angle. Why wasn't it used extensively and advertized widely?

But what about climate change, what is the magic bullet to reverse the trend toward greater CO2 pollution leading to the gradual warming of the planet? Besides switching to cleaner burning fuels like solar, wind and hydroelectric power, what can be done?

Grow more trees.

Trees and all vegetation live on CO2 and produce oxygen. We have lost many if not most of our trees here and around the world. If we could immediately plant hundreds of millions of trees all over the planet but especially near highly polluted areas, the vegetation would thrive from all the CO2 available and would produce oxygen in its stead.

The Western world is addicted to a crippling drug called alcohol. It is the cause of several varieties of physical and mental illness. It destroys the liver and pancreas, it cause mood changes and memory loss. Alcoholism can cause people to fight and attempt to damage lives and property. Abuse of this elixir can lead to heart disease and failure, strokes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, driving accidents, type one diabetes and bar fights.

But what can be done to stem what has been a Christian cultural tradition since a Messiah turned water into wine? Alcohol provides an escape from the reality that sometimes is too much to bear. It is an accepted way for us to try to transcend our ordinary consciousness in the hopes of finding more peace and joy, or at least more fun and fewer inhibitions. Life is hard for all of us and we need a way to get beyond the past and future and submerge ourselves in some eternal present. So even though we are all aware of the severe price we pay for enjoying the fermented tonic too freely, we are willing because of the relief we find in it.

Could there be a magic bullet that would liberate us from the harmful effects of this much-needed transcendental device?

I say yes there is: marijuana.

Marijuana provides the essential transformational and transcendental experience almost instantaneously at low cost with no known bad side effects. Users will be smarter, funnier, more open, deeper, more compassionate, more creative, less neurotic and will have a much better appetite because food will taste and smell better. Love life will improve, while alcoholism can actually end it. It is also said to cure or at least lessen the effects of asthma. 

But what about education? Is there a magic bullet to improve America’s K-12 public school education system?  The system is plagued with all kinds of problems from tremendous student diversity, more probably than any other educationally successful nations like Norway, Sweden or Japan. Our system is impacted by strong teacher unions that make firing a poor teacher almost impossible.  Too many students come from broken homes or from great poverty or parents who do not speak English. While longer school years would help and the infrastructure can always use improving. But is there a magic bullet here?

Yes, smaller classes. They allow teachers to know their students better and to be able to identify problems much sooner. Does this child have a learning disability? Is that child being abused at home? Does this one really follow what we’re learning? Could that one be bored and need more of a challenge? It’s hard to answer these questions with 30 or 40 kids in a classroom. It’s much easier with just 15-20.  Smaller classes would also allow teachers to teach more effectively and would make inadequate teaching more apparent and subject to improvement efforts. The reduced class size would also allow for more experimentation by teachers and students while reducing the likelihood of trouble making.

There is even a magic bullet to reduce our deficit without hurting the recovery or causing damage: reduce the number of non-magic bullets and military bases abroad  and let the U.N. and the various regional treaty countries deal with foreign conflicts without enlisting the aid or unilateral action by the U.S. Making peace would be a large magic bullet for our economy, our morality and our very souls.

You see, there really are magic bullets.  They’re just waiting to be found, aimed and fired at their appropriate targets.

Punctuation Marks in the Grammar of Life

A long running cosmological theory is that the Creator spoke the physical world using the Hebrew alphabet.  The old Testament does begin with the Lord saying “Let there be light” in Hebrew. The proponents of this idea also believe that each moment still depends on His speech to exist. This cosmology introduces the idea of life being linked to language. The basic structure of language is grammar.  The primary component of grammar is the sentence consisting of a subject, object and verb as in “I love you” or “I eat food” or “I lost my gloves.” 

If you look at grammar and religion, the similarity comes more into focus.  The essence of Christianity is the Holy Trinity: The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Eastern religions believe that life’s duality is an illusion (maya) and that all is one. Judaism is also based on this premise: “Adenoi echad” - G-d is one.

So Christianity believes in the subject, object and verb. The Father, the Creator, is the subject and his creation - his son - is the object and the Holy Ghost is the verb, the act or process of creating.

Some of the Eastern religions believe that while there appears to be a subject and object, an I and Thou, there is just the one. Zen, however,  suggests that while  there is only one there are also two, hence the Koan “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” or “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” There is the subject who has consciousness and the object that cannot be said to exist without an awareness of its presence. A clap cannot occur without both hands - a subject and an object.

So when asked “Which came first the chicken or the egg?” the answer is “consciousness.”

We insert our own punctuation marks in the grammar of our lives.

 If we work Monday through Friday, then the weekend provides our period (.) after the end of our Friday work-day sentence.  If we work days, evenings supply us with commas and occasional semi-colons to get us through the week.

If we are students, our semester breaks are like new paragraphs, our year-end final exams mark the end of one chapter and the predictable beginning of the next.

Then there are vacations, holidays, illness, and daily lunch hours to break up our living sentences.  We also have our other meal times, rest periods and favorite T.V. shows to further divide up our daily labors (the way parentheses and “quotation marks” do in sentences).

If nights and weekends are commas, semi colons and periods, holidays might be highlighting, italics or underlining.  So when we celebrate a birthday, we are highlighting the importance that person is to us. We appreciate the person every day, but on this one day a year we want to emphasize that inclination.  Legal holidays are the macro version of birthdays. 

While we are, or should be, grateful for our lives every day, this feeling is put in italics on the fourth Thursday in November.  While we love one another as the reflections of ourselves at almost every moment of our waking hours, we feel it especially underlined on the 25th of December. The same goes for our daily  patriotism on July 4, May 31st, June 14th and best of all on the 11th day of the 11th month; our daily renewal on the first day of the first month of the year ( Jewish Chinese Americans can celebrate the new year three times a year); our unquestionable respect and adoration for our parents on the days set aside to honor them and our perpetual respect for our founding fathers on President’s Day and Columbus Day (now known as something else to some) and on Martin Luther King Day, commemorating the founding father of civil rights..

For those of us born on a holiday, that day is highlighted, italicized and underlined.

When we retire we find that we have and need fewer punctuation marks in our daily lives. What are evenings, week-ends and holidays off when you have nothing to be off from?  (Though we still have mealtimes, our T.V shows [for those of us who admittedly watch it], daily walks, bathing and eliminating waste products to break up our daily sentences.)

Our retirement should give us much more time to insert commas, semi colons, exclamation points, question marks and periods whenever we want to and to highlight, italicize and underline all of our celebrated feelings every day and then, at every moment of every day, so that each single sentence that we experience will be pregnant with our constant awareness and appreciation.  

Two Main Issues of the Day

The two main issues facing our government leaders are no longer unemployment, the deficit, the debt, our war in Afghanistan or abortion.  The main main issues today have become immigration and the regulation of firearms.

Immigration has become a top priority because the heavy favorable votes from members of the Latino-American community are credited for at least part of the President’s well deserved victory last November.

The regulation of firearms has come front and center because of the increasingly brutal mass shootings that have occurred in the past few years.

On immigration there appears to be the beginning of a bi-party agreement to resolve the issue of the estimated ten million or more people living in America without proper documentation caused by their illegal entry.  The plan seems at first glance to be very sound and well balanced. First our southern border will be completely secure.  Then a national i.d. system will be put in place to ensure that only legal residents are hired and are working in our country.  Then people here illegally will be given a criminal background check.  If they pass, they will be required to report where they worked and how much they earned for the time they were in this country and will then be assessed for back taxes with penalties and interest and only then will be issued green cards to work here legally.  To ensure that they are not taking jobs from Americans, the immigrants will be eligible only for jobs that no American wants.  They also must learn English and pass a U.S. civics test.  Then they will be allowed to place their names behind everyone else from their homeland who has been waiting for legal entry.

But at second glance, there are some problems.  First comes securing the border.  What does it mean and when will it be done?  We have been trying to improve security at our southern border for the past 12 years.  It is still not even half done.  When will it be completely secure? What are the criteria for calling the border “completely secure?”

Then there are the work histories.  The vast majority of illegal workers have worked off the books, for cash, for less than American workers would have demanded and for employers who were illegally exploiting their labor.  How will the illegals document their document-free employment?  How many employers will verify that they in fact hired and exploited the illegal workers?  How will the criminal justice system check on criminal history when the documentation of criminal identification is unavailable, because the arrestee is undocumented and not all fingerprints obtained during arrests are in the database?

How will back taxes be calculated absent any documentation?  How many illegal workers earned enough to owe taxes when 47% of American families didn’t? If there is a general fine, what if these poor workers don’t have the money for these fines?  They have to learn English.  What does that mean?  Do they really have to be fluent and be able to read and write English too?  And how much U.S. civics must they learn and where can they learn it?

Though many of them are already working here, they must yield their jobs if Americans want them.  They will no longer take lower wages than legal residents, so how many of their employers will see no reason to keep them?

And then they should get to go to the end of the line to get full citizenship so they can equal to everyone else.  Why?  Why isn’t letting them become legal residents with work permits enough of a reward for people who came here illegally and took jobs away from those here legally?  Why should they also have citizenship?  Is it so that they can be eligible for welfare benefits and later to Social Security and Medicare? Why can’t lack of citizenship be their penalty for their illegal, uninvited entry?

As a compromise, what about first securing our southern border, completely and tightening our monitoring of short term visitors’ visas while creating a national I.D. card system to ensure that only legal residents are hired, doing a criminal background search mindful that it might not be complete, give English language classes and charge each undocumented immigrant a flat fee, say $10,000, to obtain a green card to work and receive special driver’s licenses.  If as many as ten million paid $10,000 each we would raise $100 billion and ten million people would no longer be undocumented but would not be eligible to any welfare benefits.

With gun control legislation, it seems that all the ideas are good ones and couldn’t hurt and would probably help.  We don’t need assault style rifles.  We don’t need large clips holding more than 10 bullets.  We register car ownership and homeownership, we can register gun ownership too.  More has to be done about early detection of mental health issues for many reasons as well as gun safety.

But it seems clear that the real problem is our culture.  We idolize violence and make heroes of our most violent.  We love our military because they can crush their adversaries with brutal force.  Our soldiers are heroes.  Our favorite T.V. shows and movies are violent.  We love James Bond, Rocky Balboa, the Terminator, Rambo, Jack Bauer, Van Diesel, Dirty Harry, et al.  Even our news magazines have become showcases of past violence.  The CBS show “48 hours” used to be about different topics that occurred over a two day period.  The show is now only about murder cases. The same with NBC’s “Dateline.”  Both shows teach us that even white, middle-class Americans can be vicious murderers too. Then there are our violent video games that show what fun it can be to kill people and blow things up.

When we turn on the evening news to get away from all the violence, we see violence both locally and then internationally.  Every night the question is which Muslims are killing whom in what forsaken country (Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Mali, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, Turkey, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Chad, Niger, etc).  Lately each night holds news of another mass killing somewhere in our country. We are becoming numbed by and immune to the effects of more news of violence.

We are a violent culture and we must change our ways.  Just as we are polluting our atmosphere and causing climate change, we are polluting our society with violence and destroying the very fabric of our humanity. We must change our ways. But it won’t be easy.  We changed our culture regarding slavery, women’s rights, and civil rights, and are changing our cultural attitude toward gay rights, pollution and smoking. We’ve done it before, we can do it again. We must do it again.

Life After 12/21/12, A New Year and A New Chapter

The Mayan calendar was supposed to predict that the world would end on 12/21/12.  The Mayans obviously did not celebrate Christmas, otherwise they would have put the end off until after our after-Christmas sales are over.  The Mayans were not that good at predicting especially when it came to the end of their civilization. They somehow missed that one.

Now that this day has come and gone with no more than the usual amount of death and destruction, we are told that the Mayans actually believed that this was just the end of a cycle and the beginning of the next.  So what can we expect from this next cycle?

Here are my non-Mayan predictions. I believe that this date marks the beginning of the end of the following systems and institutions:

The right wing of the Republican party.  The vast majority of Americans are against all of right wing core issues.  Americans want the rich and corporations to pay higher taxes to afford government programs our civilized nation has come to expect.  The right wing doesn’t agree. Americans feel that it should be an individual’s free choice whether to have a full term pregnancy that would result in injury or death.  The right wing doesn’t.  Americans believe that women should have access to birth control to avoid unwanted or unhealthy pregnancies.  The right wing disagrees.  Americans believe that certain weapons and ammunition magazines should be banned and that all gun owners must have a background check before getting a weapon to prevent future mass shootings.  The right wing doesn’t. Americans believe that everyone should have health care coverage either through their employer, the government or affordable individual coverage, the right wing doesn’t.  Americans want Social Security and Medicare benefits maintained.  The right wing doesn’t.  The right wing of the Republican party will become the do do bird of the new era.  We will soon hear no more about Rush, Sean, Karl, Sarah, Michele B., Paul R., Eric H., and their ilk.  Fox “news” will no longer have an audience. It can not be soon enough.

The National Rifle Association has proven itself to be tone deaf and morally blind to the inadequacy of their position.  They stand firmly behind the second amendment wanting it to mean that there can and should be no restriction on gun possession by American citizens.  They believe Americans should be able to carry concealed weapons, assault rifles even machine guns if they want to.  Their solution to increased violence caused by increased gun possession is more gun possession to counter it with good guys with guns killing bad ones with guns. Even gun owners have become sickened by and ashamed of their lobbying organization.  The N.R.A. will soon no longer exist having shot itself in the foot once too often while it was in their mouth.

Organized religion has also outlived its usefulness.  Religion gave us a moral code to live by.  It inspired great art, architecture and music.  It gave us a sense of community and encouraged us to help our fellow man through acts of kindness and charity.  But each religion has based its teaching on its assessment of G-d’s will.  It is not logic or thoughtfulness that guide our actions, not intuition or instinct but a high priest’s pronouncement of what G-d wanted of us. Different religions offer different assessments.  They are mutually contradictory so one has to be right and the others wrong.  But which?  It is always ours is the true one and the others are mistaken.  People who strongly identify with their religion feel offended by the claims of those in other faiths.  Wars break out.  And all of religion’s beliefs and teachings are forsaken. Members of the world's largest and fastest growing religion have leaders who issue death warrants and encourage their faithful to commit suicide while killing as many innocent women and children as possible promising them eternity in paradise with 47 virgins or grapes, depending on the translation. 

We now have government with social services and its support of the arts and sciences. We have established laws and traditions based on centuries of past human experience.  We have a vibrant art and music culture supported by private as well as public resources.  We have a vast array of spiritual, political and philosophical schools of though to attend, participate in and identify with.  While some of the trappings of religion should continue - some of the great music like Ave Maria (Hail Mary), Hallelujah, the Kaddish, and Silent Night. The beautiful architecture reflected in many churches around the world should be maintained and used for community gatherings and weddings.  And we wouldn’t want to lose Christmas with its trees, lights and loving feeling.  We could perhaps cut back on the holiday toy spending to the tune of $600 billion during the holiday shopping season acquiring useless junk that even the kids don’t want but won’t admit.

Laws against marijuana will be revised making this beneficial herb legal but not mandatory. It’s about time.

We might start getting serious about waste in government including fraud.  No one can be in favor of waste and yet so little is being done to prevent it.  We waste money on foreign military bases that protect no one, on foreign aid that usually gets squandered and on a lack of accountability within agencies to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness. A recent large study found that we waste $750 billion a year on unnecessary medical costs.  They are unnecessary either because the tests, procedures and prescriptions are unnecessary or because of actual fraud, billing for products or services that were never provided.  Our tax code provides ample opportunity for false claims or intentional omissions.  We might get serious about reducing waste when it becomes clear that it is the best way to cut the deficit. We could get rid of the penny and nickel both of which cost more to produce than their worth and are rarely used anymore.  We could end Saturday mail deliveries since most of it is junk mail anyway.  We could end travel by government workers for training or conferences since both can be done via video conferencing.  We could end expensive publicity shows like the Blue Angels and Fleet Week.

There are some things that probably won’t disappear but should.

The abuse of animals from those subjected to painful and deadly diseases, to jungle creatures slaughtered for their tusks or their imaginary enhancements of sexual prowess, to the massacre of marine animals, to the endangerment of rare species, to the use of animals in fights to the death in bull fights, in cock fights or those involving canines should end but can’t soon enough.

The sale of children and adults into lives of slavery and their exploitation in factories with unsafe working conditions should not exist but does and will. American capitalism, our other great religion, has sent millions of factory jobs to third world countries where their workers are underpaid and subjected to unhealthy conditions.  American companies should be persuaded to bring its work back to America paying decent wages and providing clean and safe working conditions even if it means charging more for the products and making less profit with fewer executive bonuses and generous dividends.

America’s large global military footprint should be dramatically reduced but probably won’t be.  It has been 67 years since the end of World War II and yet we still have forces in Europe and Japan. It has be 60 years since the end of the Korean war and yet we still have 25,000 troops in South Korea.  It has been more than 20 years since the fall of the Soviet Empire and yet we are still developing defenses against their possible invasion.  We have been in Afghanistan for more than a decade and yet we are still there trying to build their country.  Meanwhile the money we spend there is needed right here in our own country.

Our political system is being threatened by its need for ever more money from wealthy donors to survive.  We have seen our national legislators act as handmaidens to big business interests who provide large donations for future campaigns. The bad situation has only gotten worse since the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were people and that political donations were expressions of free speech and therefore should not be limited.  Our system needs to be changed to end all political contributions.  Politicians would no longer have to spend much of their time raising money.  They could focus on the issues and make their decisions based reliable data and the will to always do what is best for the nation.  We should have much shorter campaign seasons and rely more on the candidates’ record and their plans for the future.  There should be extensive interviews and some debates but no advertising or  bus tours kissing babies and their parents’ asses.  All this should happen but I don’t see it in the near future.

We should change the federal income tax code to make it much more simple while widening the base to include more taxpayers and by obtaining more from the very rich.  The plan that I would love to see would eliminate all itemized deductions and credits (except for businesses) using instead a standard deduction.  I would count all sources of income at their full face value and have just five or six tax brackets with the lowest at 10% and the highest at 30 or 35%.  This also probably won’t happen because each affected special interest would fight to keep its most precious deduction.

The Congress should end the culture of pork barrel politics and earmarks.  Bills should be written clearly with articulate one page summaries including costs and benefits and each bill should be limited to its specific area. The federal government should have less to do with grants to states to encourage them to follow federal policy.

There is so much that we can do do to make this a better country and world.  We again have a chance to start a new chapter, eliminating the mistakes of the past and replacing them with realistic solutions for the future.  We could do them all if we insist that they be done, and soon.

Why is the "Fiscal Cliff" So Difficult?

Politicians and the media have gotten together to make us believe that we are about to fall off a financial mountain if the President and Congress can not come together on some terribly difficult decisions to save our economy from  certain ruin.

We are reminded that by year’s end, the Bush tax cuts put in as a temporary measure to lower rates to historic lows for a few years to grow the economy, will expire.  The plan didn’t work and led to high unemployment and enormous deficits and debt.

We are asked to believe that if we return tax rates to 2001 levels, mainly affecting the financial top 2% of families, our economy might collapse.  Letting these temporary cuts expire would raise about $230 billion in annual revenue.

We are also being made aware that the temporary one year cuts in FICA deductions  of 2% for up to $110,000 in earned income will also reach their end.

We are then asked to believe that if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire and we raise an additional $230 billion in revenue, sequestration would automatically kick in reducing defense and discretionary spending cuts by $110 billion.  This would be true only if the additional revenues had not been found.  But by letting the Bush tax cuts, they would have been found. So sequestration would not occur if the Bush tax cuts expired.

But what if the sequestration did occur?  Half the cuts would come from defense.  So almost $55 billion out of more than $1 trillion in annual defense spending would be cut and that by reducing the annual increase.  This “cut” or reduction in future spending would be a 5% reduction of the current spending level and would mean that future increases would be smaller.  Can defense afford to lose 5% of its budget?  I think so.

The other $55 would come out of discretionary spending.  This part of our budget costs about $750 billion a year.  Cutting its growth by $55 billion would mean a 7.5% reduction that should come from eliminating waste and fraud and perhaps eliminating, reducing or combining programs and functions to maximize efficiency and effectiveness.  Would that be so bad?

So what is the real fear?  As FDR said, it is of the fear itself.  If the mainstream media can continue to misinform the public of the possible effects of these budgetary changes, then the population will become frightened and change their behavior, especially their economic behavior.  They might shop less and cause employers to lay off workers who in turn will have less to spend and cause the economy to once again decline.

But if it were possible to analyze the entire situation with all the available information, the public might decide that this is not such a calamity and might actually be a good thing.

As I have said before, I believe that the ultimate solution to the revenue side of our nation’s budget equation, is to scrap the federal income tax code with all its deductions, credits and special circumstances all intended to motivate economic behavior.  It should be replaced by a simple standard deduction for individuals and couples and a few tax brackets counting all sources of income at their face value. The $200 plus billion additional revenue from this new system would reduce the deficit while also making funding available to address specific economic needs like housing, health care, education, nutrition and environmental protection when and where needed. 

I also believe that we would be best served economically and well as militarily if we dramatically reduced our global military footprint.  The money we spend on defense could be in this country so that the money is recirculated in our economy instead being lost in another.

And there is so much waste in government.  Surely tens of billions of wasteful, unnecessary spending could be eliminated.

But what should we do now that negotiations have broken down? Contrary to media and politicians’ accounts, we don’t have to settle this by the end of the year.

The spending cuts can and will be delayed and families will see approximately $5 to $8 a day less in net income.  The extension of unemployment benefits will expire affecting two million former workers who have already gotten a year of benefits.

I predict that what will happen is all Bush tax cuts will end and then the Congress will vote to cut taxes for the middle class minus some of the credits.  Long term unemployment will be extended for a period and the payroll tax cut of 2% will finally end meaning the average worker will pay about $2 a day more for their future Social Security and Medicare benefits which in their first year will equal more than all the payments the worker has ever made.

And the economy will rebound.

Then, in two years when the Republicans lose their majority in the House, the Congress can vote to close all the personal and corporate loopholes and develop a truly fair and simple federal income tax code.

The fiscal cliff is all hype as is the Republican party.

What's the Republican Party To Do Now?

The November elections are now finally over.  The Democrats won.  They won because they represent a larger share of this country and are for the issues the majority agrees with.  The Republicans have been on the wrong side of most important issues in recent years.

The Republican, long known as the party of big business but also of representing all those Americans who root for the top dog rather than the underdog, has become the white, Christian  older man’s party and there are fewer of these folk nowadays.

The Republican party has been against allowing abortion for any reason, against birth control to avoid abortions, against gay sex and unions, against labor unions and not in favor of giving amnesty to people here illegally.  They say they want to reduce deficits by cutting programs but they focus on Social Security and Medicare, two programs that have had nothing to do with our current budget deficit.  They want to end the Affordable Care Act which would give 30 million Americans health care that they had not been able to afford while actually reducing federal expenditures. And even though defense accounts for one trillion in costs each year increasing more than any part of our budget, the Republicans do not want it reduced, many want it increased. They do not want to end the temporary budget cuts put in by their party as a way of reducing annual deficits even though they didn’t work and raised our deficit.

The problem for the Republicans is that most Americans are not white, Christian men.  Most Americans are not rooting for the top dog to pull even further ahead of the pack, but are feeling sympathy for the growing number of American underdogs - the minorities, the disabled, the low wage workers, the unemployed, the poor and the people in need of medical attention that they can not afford.  Most Americans are in favor of the Affordable Care Act as they learn more about its many benefits.  The Republicans in the House have tried 33 times to eliminate it and have spent $50 million in the process.

While most Americans believe that  families in the top 2% should pay the rates they were paying before 2001, Republicans have resisted efforts with an almost self righteous certitude.

So now that it appears clear that the people are no longer on their side, what can the Republican party do in order to be viable in the future?

First they have to give up on making abortion illegal or making birth control more difficult to obtain.  While no one thinks that abortion is good, no one considers having one a life’s goal, some people are forced to rely on it for relief.  If the child will have a major birth defect or if the mother could be disabled or could actually die from childbirth or in the cases of rape and incest, it becomes necessary to have an abortion.  Whatever can be done to reduce the number or need for abortions should be done through education and counseling to teach our young to wait to have children until married; to teach our older adults to not have children past certain ages thus reducing the chances of birth defects and medical problems for the mother; and to find ways to reduce the incidence of rape and incest. Republicans could support all such initiatives.

They have to give up their fight against gay rights.  Homosexuality is not a sin and is a natural part of the human experience.  People do not choose to be gay and still have a right to enjoy a loving, romantic relationship.  Jesus stood up for a prostitute and would surely have come to the defense of a gay person who was mistreated by others.  Republicans could push for more discretion for all romantic Americans.  Sex should be a very private matter. And so should religion. 

They must stop being the anti-union party and become one that wants to make better contracts with unions, perhaps convincing management and labor that there always is a happy middle ground that should be found for everyone’s best interest. The influence of unions has decreased in recent years and their demands have been fairly reasonable.  Changes in the relationship can be made by mutual agreement for everyone’s sake.

Republicans must also realize that tax increases for the rich and decreases in military spending are necessary and would only strengthen our country.  It does not serve our country to have the rich get only richer while the rest stay the same or lose their financial footing.  We need a healthy middle class to fill needed positions and to consume the goods and services the wealthy are offering.

We spend more on defense than the next five largest economies combined do.  We have forces and bases all over the world keeping no one safe and sending more of our dollars overseas where they no longer can circulate in our own economy.  We no longer need to be the first responder to any of the world’s emergency calls for help. The countries we rescue end up either resenting us or becoming dependent upon our continued largesse.

So what can the Republican stand for in the future?

They could start a campaign to end waste and fraud in government programs including our foreign and military aid.  They could urge all agencies to submit zero based budgets that justify each program and its staffing as though for the first time.  Once their budget is established, each government department should be on an MBO system to identify program goals, objectives and measures to ensure that it is clear what is expected and what has been accomplished.  Agencies that can be should be eliminated, reduced or combined with other agencies to maximize efficiency and effectiveness.

They could develop inducements to get American businesses to bring their manufacturing back to America.  Apple, H&P, Ralph Lauren, AOL. United Airlines, General Electric and all the other large corporations could do better making their products that go to American families, here in America creating jobs and customers at the same time.

They could push for a new, simple and fair federal income tax code.  They could lower marginal tax rates by eliminating all itemized deductions for individuals and families while providing higher standard deductions.  The self employed and business deductions would be limited to actual costs with no special allowances or loopholes.  They would broaden the tax base so that we don’t have 47% of the families paying no taxes and by eliminating itemized deductions they would ensure that the high earners pay an appropriate amount of tax.  They could insist that all sources of income be counted at their full face value meaning that Social Security benefits, dividends, interest, unemployment insurance payments, capital gains and earned income can be combined and the total then can be taxed at the appropriate marginal tax rates.

They could agree to reducing our troop strength and closing many of our foreign bases, but insist that we increase significantly our special forces and our drone technology. They could push for ending programs like the Blue Angels.

They could push for immigration reform recommending temporary permits for those here without documentation as long as they avoid criminal activity, but no path to citizenship.  They could try to change our immigration criteria to be for skilled emigres rather than relatives of current citizens and legal residents.  They could try for a guest worker program to allow migrant farm workers to come and go freely.

They could recommend reducing government costs by discontinuing the penny and nickel, cancelling Saturday mail delivery and eliminating all government travel reimbursements for training or conferences.

In education, they could push for a reconsideration of school curricula and college entrance requirements to ensure that our students are learning what they need to succeed in higher education and in their adult lives.  It may be that most high school students don’t need calculus or even much algebra or chemistry but could use more classes in the social sciences and in life skills.  They could be encouraging corporate participation in community college funding and training as well as contributing to local K-12 programs to develop a better-educated applicant pool in the future.

And finally, that can and must disassociate themselves from the likes of Fox “news” and disruptive personalities like Rush, Sean, Karl, Dick, and Sarah.   The brand does not need further tarnishing with deceit.  And John McCain must finally swallow his very bitter pill and retire to a life of luxury in his desert oasis.

Then maybe the Republican party can have a future other than that of the Repugnacan party that we have grown so sick of.