Amos's River of Justice

Our Season of Creation

  • February 22, 2014

    In this this article, I had two aims: to illustrate a principle about women and custody; and to help this woman avoid prison.  I’m still of the same mind, but I wish I hadn’t combined Barnett’s story with the source about battered women.  The source does describe what happens to women like Dorothy Lee Barnett in the courts, but it doesn’t fit Barnett’s case exactly, so I’ve deleted it. We shouldn’t demonize people who make mistakes. The culprits here are the court system and the judges, who should know better.   Family courts are influenced by the men who run Fatherhood Initiatives.  These men are also responsible.

    Dorothy Lee Barnett is awaiting trial for extradition to the United States. She is charged with kidnapping her own daughter from her estranged stockbroker ex-spouse. Almost two decades ago, her ex won sole custody, even though the child was only nine months old and still nursing at the time. She felt the child was in danger, so she took her out of the country. If extradited, she faces up to 23 years in prison. I just signed the petition “US Attorney Office in Columbia: Free Dorothy Lee Barnett – Mother of Savanna Todd” on Change.org.

    It’s important. Will you sign it too? Here’s the link:((http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/us-attorney-office-in-columbia-free-dorothy-lee-barnett-mother-of-savanna-todd))

    Updated, Feb. 20, 2014:

    Here’s the post of a signer of this petition, Bruce Michell of Australia:

    Dorothy Lee Barnett was let down by people within the system.  During her trial she was subjected to abuse and vilification, and the judge neglected, failed and refused to file his orders into court within the mandated 30 days and in fact did not file for 75 days.  During that period, and without the signed order, Lee was unable to appeal and was effectively locked out of the legal process which should be everyone’s right to access.  The evidence accepted by the judge upon which he wrote a scathing decision was in the main, based on the uncorroborated word of the father.  She was castigated as an untruthful person for denying that she had a mental disorder and all evidence supporting her and contradicting the father, was suppressed.  There is such a gulf between the evidence and the final order, coupled with the misconduct of the judge, that the influence of the father, his attorney and the Guardian ad Litem must be considered suspect and should be the subject of a proper investigation by the authorities.

    On the second visitation after the father had custody, whilst the judge had not filed the orders, the baby was injured whilst in the care of the father.  The injuries were consistent with those described by the father in his ‘autobiography’ during the hearing where he wrote that it was “OK to kick a baby in the face.”  Lee was extremely fearful for her baby given those circumstances, but could not appeal, given the lack of a signed order.  Lee waited another 6 weeks after this incident but still the judge refused to file the order.

    Locked out of the legal system, fearing for the safety of her baby she obeyed the fundamental law of humankind which was to flee to safety.

    These events are recorded in the chronology and the details are contained in the trial transcripts.  Lee was terrified of the power and influence of this man and remains that way today.  If he and his cohorts could influence a judge and subvert the judicial system, then the system of justice in South Carolina was corrupt and it is reasonable to question whether that power and influence still remains today.

    It seems that Barry Goldstein may have been too kind when he said the family courts were making mistakes.  It seems this judge was acting deliberately.  This is his own responsibility.

    Original Article:

    We recognize what Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail as sound principle because it’s in our Declaration of Independence. “…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…,”

    In King’s words:

    “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” ((Martin Luther King, Jr. Letter from a Birmingham Jail. April 16, 1963, African Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania.))

    Child custody law is broken, and American family courts are perpetuating injustice. Both mothers and their children suffer from this injustice, but it is the children who are in danger. Watch the video from the APN Newsdesk.((http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/mother-facing-years-jail-over-kidnapping-daughter/2153734/))

     

  • The dialogue about women has not been flattering lately. Officially, it’s centered around reproductive rights, but in between the lines the brutal tactics convey something else. Most recently we’ve been confronted with callous hospital policy. One hospital risks a mother’s death from complications of pregnancy. The other keeps a dead woman on life support against her wishes. Supposedly the abortion debate is about protecting life, however these extreme cases represent a clear statement of low female status. How did it come to this?

    Status is the value of one person in relation to another. There is evidence that female status was high at one time. The belief in the gigantic size of the Amazons was probably based on a misunderstanding—they were depicted that way to indicate high status. By contrast, pictures of Hindu gods with their consorts, indicate low status for females.

    From Moor's Hindu Pantheon
    Vishnu & Lakshmi on Sesha or Ananta

    Unfortunately, because hospital policy is premised on the absolute equality of a woman’s life with the life of her fetus, women in the United States would have to be drawn no taller than a man’s ankle. This doesn’t seem consistent with our ideals, but we don’t realize what it means when the issue of status is built into the world’s three main religions. The Bible wastes no time in ranking the first two humans in relation to each other.

    We don’t know what factors were behind the high status of the Amazons. However, there is evidence in the custom of bride wealth that it had something to do with the female role in procreation. Defenders of patriarchy claim that this changed after the discovery of the male’s part in conception. However, that’s not supported by the evidence. In any case, the male part is minuscule compared to the female part, and this was recognized in the custom of bridewealth.

    The value of the female role in procreation can be framed in the form of a cost analysis. Costs to the female include physical hazards as well as the time required for each pregnancy—9 months, not counting 2 or more years of breast feeding. Costs to males are non-existent.

    Consider also what bridewealth says about the value of females to their families. Bridewealth was a form of compensation to the bride’s family, especially to her mother, for the loss of her companionship and help. it was also compensation to the bride’s parents for the loss of her offspring. If not for the payment of bridewealth, her children would keep their name and remain with them.

    It was not the discovery of the male role in procreation that began the loss of female status. It was a philosophical attack on the relative contribution of the female. We know that Aristotle asserted the superior contribution of the male in the creation of life, and much later, Aquinas concurred. They claimed the father was the active agent and that the man’s sperm and the physical motion of intercourse ‘organized’ the lifeless matter in the menstrual blood. Further, both Aristotle and Aquinas said the ‘sensitive soul’ was entirely produced by the male. The semen is an instrumental cause, while the soul of the male parent is the principal cause.

    Aquinas added to Aristotle’s scheme by saying that the human soul was directly created by God. Nevertheless, he didn’t alter the superiority of the male’s contribution over the female’s. Theologians in the Middle Ages thought the spiritual soul was not present until after the first few weeks.

    Later, Thomas Fieinus (1567-1631) argued that the soul is present from conception. The development of the fetus consists of successively emergent functions attributable to a single original principle brought to life by the motion of intercourse. Following Fieinus, Paulo Zacchia (1584-1659) argued that the soul which organizes the development of the ‘conceptus’ is internal to it.

    Finally, an 1879 article, Aquinas on Human Ensoulment, Abortion and the Value of Life, argued that the principle of formative development is ‘immanent’

    With the development of embryology, you might think the female role would be vindicated, but that was never in the cards. On the contrary, the fetus is now said to be a separate individual whose right to life rivals the mother’s.

    But what about the physical costs of each pregnancy? They can’t explain that away, can they? You will recall that in Eve’s case, marriage was a punishment, and according to Christianity, there is no value attributed to the female for her role in procreation. At best, it might redeem her from her wretched state! The strange thing is that we see the practice of bride wealth, or rather bride service, in the Old Testament. Jacob worked 7 years for each of his wives. Jacob and Adam seem to represent two entirely different cultures.

    We can’t improve things for women if we don’t understand the problem. The female role in procreation was the basis of female status, but the protections and privileges associated with it have been systematically removed.

    The President is currently talking about higher wages for certain groups of people. This would be an improvement, but the lower wage paid to women is a special case. It is a conscious statement of lower status. On the other hand, if you think that your becoming a priest will improve the status of women, you don’t understand your own religion. And the abortion debate? It’s simply the effort to close the last loophole available to the world’s perennial subject class. In the process, its extreme nature masks the attack on female status. Those who are fighting Roe v. Wade may not realize how this draws women into the debate who would never consider an abortion for themselves.

  • The question of morality in political and economic systems has been brought into the national conversation by Paul Ryan, a follower of Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand’s definition of morality is the morality of rational self-interest. She argued that rational and ethical egoism should be the guiding principle of morality, and she defined egoism as the virtue of selfishness. Morality, she said, is based in the needs of man’s survival, and ethical altruism is incompatible with the requirements of morality. Individual rights should be pre-eminent and laissez-faire capitalism is the only system that can protect them.

    Perhaps those who interviewed the young Ayn Rand on their talk shows were fooled by the fact that she was simply a novelist. Maybe they thought that if her ideas were simply made known to the public, the public would see through them. That could explain why they offered no substantial challenge to Rand’s claims.  I suspect they have helped to ensure Rand’s continuing influence. You might want to watch her interviews again with this in mind. She was interviewed by: Mike Wallace ((http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ooKsv_SX4Y)); Tom Snyder ((Ayn Rand and Tom Snyder, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAFKnfN4bfk)); James Day ((Ayn Rand and James Day, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U8Zv8VpKmE)); and Phil Donahue ((Ayn Rand and Phil Donahue, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u8Jjth81_Q)).

    It is revealing that Rand herself chose to talk about right and wrong, good and evil, and it is therefore appropriate that the Catholic Church has been one of her main critics.  However, Rand had another purpose besides the promotion of her definition of morality. She claimed her views represented the ultimate truth about America, and she posed as a patriot when all the while she was working to redefine who and what America is. It is therefore appropriate that President Obama chose to enter the debate, stating that her ideas do not define who we are. ((Brinkley, Douglas, Obama and the Road Ahead: The Rolling Stone Interview. Rolling Stone Politics, Nov. 8, 2012. Available: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/obama-and-the-road-ahead-the-rolling-stone-interview-20121025))

    What do we mean when we talk about morality?

    The following definition of morality is from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

    “It is necessary at the outset of this article to distinguish between morality and ethics, terms not seldom employed synonymously. Morality is antecedent to ethics: it denotes those concrete activities of which ethics is the science. It may be defined as human conduct in so far as it is freely subordinated to the ideal of what is right and fitting.”

    America’s definition of morality, on the other hand, will require more discussion. [intlink id=”96″ type=”post”]We have seen[/intlink] that the creators of the secular foundation for morality had no intention of creating a new code of behavior. Their task was to develop a new basis for the old code. This was necessary because the moral authority of the church had been destroyed in the Protestant Reformation.

    The Church’s morality is based on natural law theory. Natural Law theories assume any rational person can know the kinds of actions that are prohibited, required, discouraged, encouraged, and allowed.  The theological version of natural law, such as that of Thomas Aquinas, assumes that God implanted this knowledge in the reason of all persons.  The secular version of natural law, attributed first to Thomas Hobbes, assumes that natural reason allows all persons to know what morality prohibits, requires, etc. These are not empirical claims about morality but claims about what is essential to morality, or about what is meant by ‘morality’ when it is used normatively.((Gert, Bernard, “The Definition of Morality”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/morality-definition/>.))

    Ayn Rand claimed to have dispensed with all previous rational arguments for morality with her critique of Emmanuel Kant. However, of the moral philosophers who contributed to America’s form of government, Kant’s ideas were probably the easiest to refute. Kant, by the way, was not a natural law philosopher.

    Theories of Morality in Perspective

    According to Bernard Gert, the term ‘morality’ is used in two ways: descriptively or normatively. Descriptive codes of conduct are put forth by a society or some other group such as a religion, or by an individual for her own behavior.  On the other hand, the assumption behind a normative code of conduct is that all rational persons would agree to it, given specified conditions.

    A descriptive morality might appear to be a normative system within small homogeneous societies. However, in large societies not all members accept the same code of conduct. A natural response to this problem is to switch attention from groups to individuals. However, when individuals propose a moral code, they imply that their guide to behavior should be universally adopted, or at least accepted by everyone in their group.

    When an individual claims that morality prohibits or requires a given action, the term ‘morality’ is ambiguous. It is not clear if she refers to a guide to behavior put forward by a society; a guide that is put forward by a group; a guide that a person regards as overriding and wants adopted by everyone in her group; or a universal guide that all rational persons would put forward for governing the behavior of all moral agents. But when she refers to her own morality, she invariably speaks normatively. I believe this is how Rand meant her ideas to be understood.

    When the term ‘morality’ is used descriptively, the proposed code of behavior has no implications for individuals not belonging to that group.  A person who accepts a normative definition of morality, however, commits herself to that code of behavior. For this reason, there are serious disagreements about which normative definition to accept.

    The Reformers Compared

    Thomas Hobbes’s remedy for the chaos of the Reformation was to establish a new basis for the old morality–not to create a new morality. He thought that “If higher laws are not equated with intangible goods like virtue, wisdom, and salvation, then the ills of civilization can be avoided and mankind can enjoy enduring civil peace.” Hobbes identified the same human traits as Ayn Rand, but while Hobbes considered them regrettable, Rand arbitrarily called them moral. This is typical of Rand’s thought, but it is also evidence of a continuing ‘[intlink id=”96″ type=”post”]process of forgetting[/intlink]’, which was already evident during the Enlightenment.

    Hobbes insisted that there is no utmost aim or greatest good as put forth by the ‘old moral philosophers,’ Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Rand insisted there is in deed an utmost aim, survival. Further, the individual’s moral purpose is his own happiness. Finally, according to her fictional hero, John Galt, human perfection is ‘an unbreached rationality’. ((The Ultimate Philosopher, Ayn Rand on Human Perfection. Available: http://ultimatephilosopher.blogspot.com/2011/03/ayn-rand-on-human-perfection.html)) While Hobbes lamented that human nature is restlessly striving for power after power that has no end and therefore no happiness or perfection, Rand considered such striving to be a virtue.

    “Hobbes presented the materialist account of man as a creature of appetites and aversions: seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and desiring power after power. The materialist account supports the view that no natural end for man really exists, only the ceaseless motion of a complex machine. The materialist account also strengthens the case against the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of man as a rational and social animal naturally suited by language and friendship to live in a political community. Hobbes’s model shows that human beings are selfish, competitive, and anti-social and that they are rational only insofar as reason serves the selfish passions. The logical conclusion was [his] ‘state of nature’ teaching, which describes the anarchical condition of individuals without an artificial social contract and a coercive sovereign to hold them together.” (Leviathan, Part I, as summarized in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Of course, Ayn Rand thought selfish striving was moral and that it should be given free reign.  Now back to Hobbes:

    “The mechanical model of man, however, [was] not sufficient to refute classical natural law. Hobbes develops a second argument based on moral experience, showing that human beings are motivated not only by pleasure and power but also by vanity–a false estimate of one’s superiority to others. In historical writings, Hobbes shows how the passion of vanity has undermined traditional political authority where kings have relied on higher law to gain obedience from the people. The defect of this arrangement is that traditional higher law doctrines are easily exploited by vain and ambitious men who claim superiority to the sovereign because of privileged knowledge of divine, natural, and common law. Hobbes’s account of the English Civil War (1642-60) in Behemoth illustrates the problem: King Charles I was overthrown by Puritan clergymen, democratic Parliamentarians, and lawyers of the common law who sought recognition for their superior knowledge of higher law yet who could not agree among themselves about whose doctrine was right, producing sectarian wars that reduced English society to the anarchic state of nature.”

    By contrast, Ayn Rand thought she could determine who among her acquaintances deserved her love.

    Today, Hobbes is notorious as an atheist materialist and advocate for absolute monarchy over constitutional government, but he was a major influence behind the natural rights principles of modern liberalism that became the middle-class materialist view of morality. Still, he would have disagreed with later thinkers who advocated constitutional limits on state power because he thought the sovereign’s absolute and arbitrary power was the only way to keep people in line. The movement to limit the scope of government to the protection of rights led away from Hobbes’s absolute monarchy and toward constitutionally limited government. This movement was led by Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, and the Federalist. ((Lloyd, Sharon A. and Sreedhar, Susanne, “Hobbes’s Moral and Political Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/hobbes-moral/>.))

    Ayn Rand in the Real World

    The limited government debate should be taking place in the context of this evolution from Absolutism to limited government. In a more specific sense, the discussion of Ayn Rand’s ideas should be carried on within another context. Because of her support for both Big Oil and Israel, a tendency she shares with Paul Ryan as well as the neoconservatives who emerged from RAND Corporation, it seems reasonable to compare her ideas and influence with theirs.

    The RAND Corporation used positivism to develop ideas similar to Rand’s. Ayn Rand was motivated by personal experience with Marxism; RAND Corporation was motivated by a perceived need to defend against the Soviet threat to the United States. Also, both efforts aimed at redefining America: Ayn Rand wanted to promote unfettered capitalism; RAND Corporation wanted to promote American imperialism. Their methods differed, but the effects on the body politic were complementary.

    RAND Corporation

    “At its most basic, Kenneth Arrow’s work (at RAND) demonstrated in formal terms–that is, in mathematical expression–that collective rational group decisions are logically impossible. Arrow’s paradox, or Arrow’s impossibility theorem, as it came to be called, presented an unshakable mathematical argument that destroyed the academic validity of most kinds of social compact. Arrow utilized his findings to concoct a value system based on economics that destroyed the Marxist notion of a collective will. To achieve this result, Arrow freely borrowed elements of positivist philosophy, such as its concern for axiomization, universally objective scientific truth, and the belief that social processes can be reduced to interaction between individuals.

    “Arrow assumed that individuals were rational, that they had consistent preferences that they sought to maximize for their own selfish benefit. Arrow also assumed that reason, as he defined it, was not culturally relative but identical in all human beings, who act according to the same rules of logic.

    “Furthermore, Arrow assumed the objectivity of science–that its laws are universal and that there aren’t two different sets of choices for capitalist and Communist societies, as some economists had theorized before World War II…[He] posited the individual as the ultimate arbiter of decision, using the phrase ‘consumers‘ sovereignty‘ to signal individual preference as the basic building block of any economic system.

    “Arrow’s impossibility theorem, then, lay a theoretical foundation for universal scientific objectivity, individualism and ‘rational choice‘ while undermining Marxism, totalitarianism, and the idealistic democracy. Simply put, he posited that immutable, incontrovertible science tells us the collective is nothing, the individual is all.”((Abell, Alex. Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire. Harcourt, Inc. Orlando Austin New York San Diego London. 2008))

    Note that axiomization was also a concern of Ayn Rand.

    Paul Ryan

    As for clues to Paul Ryan’s intentions behind his proposed privatization of Social Security, Israel would be the place to look.

    About fifty years ago, a certain Ja’akov Levinson, the head of Israel’s Bank Hapoalim, took over Histadrut’s retirement funds…

    “During the recession of 1965-66, these pension and provident funds, which were previously managed by various organs of the Histadrut, were brought under one roof. The immediate purpose was to boost the ailing finances of companies such as Solel Boneh, Koor, and Teus, which were hurt by the slowdown. The plan was backed by Labour Minister of Finance, Pinchas Sapir, and the man in charge of the operation was Levinson. In a typical manoeuvre, Levinson, who had no intention of having the Histadrut executive looking over his shoulder, merged the previously separate funds into a separate pool named Gmool, which he then turned into a department of his bank, far from the peering eyes of the Histadrut Controller. Gmool’s deal with the government was sweet and simple. Half of its funds had to be kept in government bonds. The other half was earmarked for investment and subsidized credit, with the interest rate financed by the government’s development budget. The beauty of the deal was that the precise allocation of these funds was up to Gmool’s managers to decide – that is, for Levinson. In this way, Levinson crafted for himself an enormous leverage, far greater than any of his competitors, and one which he quickly put into use. The mechanism worked more or less as follows. Workers and employers would make monthly contributions to Gmool. After putting half of these in government bonds, the rest was up for discretionary investments. Of that half, part would be earmarked for buying new stocks issued by Hapoalim and its subsidiaries; this part provided Levinson with ‘free money’ (since Gmool had no ability to exercise ‘control’) as well as a powerful vehicle for manipulating stock prices (since it enabled him to control both supply and demand). The other part would be invested in, or lent to Histadrut companies; in order to get these loans and investments, however, the companies had to mortgage their assets to Hapoalim, open their books to Levinson’s peering eyes, and accept his representatives as director on their boards.” ((Nitzan, Jonathan and Shimshon Bichler. The global Political Economy of Israel. Pluto Press, London, Sterling. 2002))

    You might say that both of these examples are ancient history, that they don’t explain the Ayn Rand resurgence today, but it looks like they were merely forerunners of today’s Rand-inspired injustice. It is likely that the interest in Ayn Rand today is the response of ruling corporations to Dodd-Frank. ((Reese, Frederick. Defang Dodd-Frank to Protect Wall Street Vampires: A Look at the Proposed Changes. Mint Press News. May 7, 2013. Available: http://www.mintpressnews.com/defang-dodd-frank-or-protect-wall-street-vampires-congress-to-decide/157026/)) Although Dodd-Frank was passed in 2010, it hasn’t been fully implemented. The House Committee on Financial Services continues to try to overturn its regulations, in spite of the fact that the four largest U.S. banks that would be affected by it constitute half of the nations entire economy and hold more than half of the nation’s fiscal deposits. These are: JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo. The collapse of any one of them would have the potential to permanently compromise the nation. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was created as a way to guard against this threat, but from the beginning it has been challenged by Republicans in the service of the banks.

    Most of the Republican caucus insists the 2008-2009 mortgage crisis was a fluke and therefore, they say, the banks should continue to regulate themselves. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this type of denial. We saw the same thing after the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1997. ((Roger Lowenstein. Long Term Capital Management: It’s a Short Term Memory. The New York Times, Business. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07iht-07ltcm.15941880.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&))

    Goldman Sachs

    I previously mentioned two firms that were top donors to Tea Party republicans, one of them being Goldman Sachs. According to one article, a managing director of Goldman Sachs is the Co-Chair of the Ayn Rand Institute. ((Martens, Pam and Russ Martens. Resurrecting Ayn Rand: Hedge Fund Money Teams up With Koch & BB&T. Wall Street On Parade: A Citizen Guide to Wall Street. Feb. 28, 2012. Available: http://wallstreetonparade.com/resurrecting-ayn-rand-hedge-fund-money-teams-up-with-koch-bbt/))

    What’s really at stake?

    This isn’t really a partisan issue, although Rand, Ryan and others try to frame it as such. It isn’t capitalism against big government at all. This is about a few powerful corporations becoming more powerful than the government. In support of this assertion, I’ll close with a strongly worded critique of Rand’s ideas in the Wall Street Journal. It seems a fitting conclusion to the discussion that Ayn Rand initiated about morality:

    “We have lost the collective spirit that led 57 capitalists to risk their lives and fortunes signing the Declaration of Independence. That’s dead. Today it’s “every man for himself” in a capitalist anarchy.

    You ask, why do we embrace our own demise like out-of-control addicts? In behavioral economics, as in classical Greek drama, Jungian psychology and cultural mythologies … all the battles we see “out there” are actually projections of unresolved conflicts raging deep within our own souls … we’re rehashing old traumas projected on the outside world as battles between our highest ideals and our darkest secrets … classic battles between good and evil.
    But they are conflicts buried deep in what Jung called “The Shadow,” a prison of dark secrets we cannot admit even to ourselves. In there, fierce battles are fought for the possession of our immortal souls … projected onto news, politics and finance, in television and films, theater, literature, history and dreams, at the dinner table and in the bedroom, “out there” we try to resolve our innermost secrets, never fully understanding how our minds are tricking us into inaction.

    And as our individual souls and our collective unconscious splits further and further apart, eventually we will collectively implode and collapse.” ((Farrell, Paul. B. Ayn Rand’s Death of the Soul of Capitalism. The Wall Street Journal, Market Watch. June 14, 2011. Available: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ayn-rands-death-of-the-soul-of-capitalism-2011-06-14?pagenumber=2))

  • I have recommended that taxpayers cut off discretionary spending as a response to the government shutdown and looming default.  However in the last week there has been little Congressional response to the lobbying efforts of business groups.  There is a simple explanation for that: the shutdown is fueled by ideology rather than political and economic expediency.  It has come to the point where a radical group of Republicans feels free to ignore the money interests that helped get them elected.   Unfortunately, they are still listening to the biggest of these money interests, think tanks and PACS which are run by people who don’t have to worry about votes or balance sheets.

    Take, for example, Ted Cruz.  He would not be a Senator today without the help of The Club for Growth and Senate Conservatives Fund.  Together, in the 2014 cycle, they gave him $1,021,648.  This is more than 55 percent of his total contributions.  His other top contributors are banks, lobbying firms, and of course Goldman Sachs.  You might expect Goldman’s input since his wife is a vice-president there, but the bank shows up as a contributor to other radicals as well.  Cruz wants to wipe out Affordable Care.  What he doesn’t say is that it won’t affect him either way; he has health insurance from Goldman Sachs through his wife.  Then there is the other disturbing contributor that keeps coming up when you look at the finances of Cruz and others in this radical group, Berkshire Hathaway.

    Before I get to the main point of this post, I would like to point out the irony of this situation.  Business has always thought it had an alliance with the Republican Party, and against the rest of us. That is, against employees.  Consumers they like.  They didn’t seem to object when women were being called sluts, maybe because they sort of liked the idea of not having to pay for employees’ birth control.  And of course, they’ve always been fine with holding down the minimum wage.  A weak labor union is a good labor union.  Affordable care?  Not if it means they have to pay.  And yet it never occurred to them that the stingy, mean, unjust spirit behind this thinking would turn on them.  What did they think would happen?

    On second thought, my main point might backfire.  I was going to suggest that business use its clout to end this, but who would they be most likely to help?  We already know the answer to that question.

    If the Congress hasn’t resolved this by Thursday I recommend the following: no one goes to work, no one drives, we buy only necessary food items. Employers who fire anyone at that time for any reason should be boycotted.

    [I don’t have positions in Goldman Sachs (GS-PC) or Bershire Hathaway (BRK-A).]

    Update:

    I’ve been thinking about my recommendation.  I don’t think it was too extreme considering the seriousness of the threat, but because  I wouldn’t be risking as much as many of you I’ve decided it’s not a good idea.  Things seem to be looking up so it may never have come to that, but at least I can remove the stress of thinking about it.

    [display-posts category=”the healthcare crisis”]

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Recently, there are hopeful signs that retailers and manufacturers are pressuring Congress to end the impasse over the spending limit. [ref name=”NRF calls for Immediate End to Government Shutdown”]NRF”]NRF Call for Immediate End to Government Shutdown. October 9, 2013. Available: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/nrf-calls-immediate-end-government-160000729.html;_ylt=A2KJjagM3lZSjWoAC9zQtDMD[/ref]  [ref name=”GOP Lobbyist: Business Needs to ‘Step Up’ Against the Tea Party”]Fang, Lee, GOP Lobbyist: Business Needs to ‘Step Up’ Against the Tea Party, The Nation Magazine. October 9, 2013. Available: http://www.thenation.com/blog/176578/gop-lobbyist-business-needs-step-against-tea-party[/ref] Of course if the taxpayer walkout suggested by [intlink id=”1305″ type=”post”]General Honoré[/intlink] had anything to do with it, we’ll never hear it from John Boehner.  Sadly, we have yet to see evidence of his good intentions.  

    According to an Associated Press article, [ref name=”House GOP leaders seek short-term debt extension”]Associated Press. House GOP leaders seek short-term debt extension. October 10, 2013. Available: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/10/house-gop-leaders-seek-short-term-debt-extension.html[/ref]  Boehner is offering to increase the debt limit, but only through November 22.  In addition, he intends to hold on to the bargaining chip of the government shutdown, meaning that the decision to reopen the government will remain in the hands of a few rogue politicians and we will go through this again before the end of the year.  

    To be fair, the bit about the default came at the end of my last article. Depending on one’s level of cynicism, that post could be interpreted as a plea to avoid a default on the debt, never mind the government shutdown.  Obviously, nothing can be left to chance.  

    I agree with Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew who stated that the United States should not be put in this position.  He was referring to the Republicans’ determination to hinge their spending bill on deficit reduction and cuts in government programs.  Lew also objected to the attempts by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and other GOP senators to extend the debt limit for the shortest period they can get away with.  

    “Our view is this economy would benefit from more certainty and less brinksmanship.  So the longer the period of time (for the debt extention) is, the better for the economy.”

    In my opinion the Republicans’ proposals are doubly unacceptable because of the time constraint.  The House is not scheduled to pass this bill until Friday.  That pushes a resolution into next week, assuming the Senate approves the bill.  They should be made aware that if they continue to work on a bill that merely postpones this train wreck until a later time, they are wasting precious time. 

    The outlines of a reasonable agreement are there:  Obama is willing to sign a short-term increase so that Boehner has more time to work with the Tea Party faction.  That would head off a default.  Even Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. has dropped his demands on ‘Obamacare’ and would extend the borrowing cap for four to six seeks to allow talks on a budget deal. Then, as Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont. said, “We need to reopen the government and pay the nation’s bills, no strings attached.”  

    I’m aware that when taxpayers forego discretionary spending it is a hardship on retailers and manufacturers, but the Republicans in the House, the Democrats in the Senate, and President Obama know how to remedy that. Our walk out should continue until Congress passes an acceptable bill as described above.  

    When the crisis has passed, we should make changes in procedure to assure this can never happen again. [ref name=”How to Solve the Debt Ceiling Crisis Forever”]Green, Joshua. How to Solve the Debt Ceiling Crisis Forever. Businessweek. October 7, 2013. Available: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-07/how-to-solve-the-debt-ceiling-crisis-forever[/ref]

     

  • In the government shutdown saga, righteous indignation is appropriate. However, it is also futile.  Some people out there think the extortionists in the Republican Party are making sense. To make matters worse, it’s not clear whose side John Boehner is on.

    One of the weirdest parts of this drama is the refusal of the Speaker of the House to call a vote. Some say he could pass an emergency spending bill if he would only allow it to come to a vote.  He claims it wouldn’t work.

    Recently I asked Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré, U.S. Army, Retired, [ref name=”generalhonore.com”]Generalhonore.com[/ref] if there is some way to force a vote on a spending bill. In retrospect, his answer was painfully obvious: fight extortion with extortion.

    General Honoré suggested that taxpayers do a walk out. Stop buying cars, TVs, clothing. Buy only essential food. Stay home and read to your kids. Those in charge ought to get the message…after four or five days.

    Extreme maybe, but the stakes are high. They now include a default on U.S. debt.  It’s time to call their bluff and teach the Tea Party who’s boss.

  • If you were hoping for a debate over Affordable Care on September 25 in Phoenix, you would have been disappointed. What was clear at the town hall conducted by Mayo Clinic and ASU Foundation was the panelists’ exasperation with the political debate about who pays for medical care. Contestants are so wrapped up in their squabbling that substantive issues never enter into it. In the meantime, people are dying.

    How might people spend their time if they don’t feel compelled to debate the Affordable Care Act? They might address the problems that still exist regardless of whether the Act goes into effect.

    The panelists at Wednesday’s meeting were ASU president, Michael M. Crow; Mayo Clinic Vice President and CEO, Dr. Wyatt Decker; and Dr. Richard Carmona, Surgeon General of the United States from 2002 to 2006. This town hall was part of a collaboration between Mayo Clinic and Arizona State University, but similar collaborations have been taking place with Mayo in Rochester and Mayo Clinic in Florida. Although Mayo Arizona has been working with ASU for about ten years, there was a new development in June of this year, a $1 million grant awarded to Mayo Clinic by the American Medical Association. Mayo Clinic is one of eleven applicants who received the grant, part of the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education program, aimed at the creation of a new model of undergraduate education, but its effects will go beyond these eleven schools. Selected schools will form a learning consortium to spread best practices to other schools.

    The panelists were all justifiably proud of Mayo’s record. First, Mayo Clinic is the safest teaching hospital in the nation. Also, Mayo’s costs are lower. Lower costs were attributed to the fact that doctors are employed and not in private practice, so they don’t benefit from any procedures and tests they order. And Mayo charges a flat fee for procedures. This means that if there is a poor outcome, it is the clinic that loses money, not the patient and her insurance company. Great care is taken to make sure things are done right the first time around. For more on Mayo’s Model of Care see: Mayo Clinic Model of Care

    However, in spite of Mayo’s good record, none of the panelists claimed to have the answer to the medical crisis. On the contrary, they made it clear that the system is unsustainable and that it can’t be saved as it is–not by money nor by increased efficiency.

    Not only is the system unsustainable, it is self-perpetuating. In other words, it is difficult for those already in the system to think of a way to solve its problems. Therefore, their goal is nothing short of the creation of a new kind of person through educational reform; a new kind of doctor with a broad and comprehensive understanding, not only of the medical system, but of human behavior and the structure of society.

    I appreciated the humility of the panelists in the face of the looming medical crisis, but I hope this town hall was merely the beginning of the discussion because I have a few concerns.

    Dr. Crow shared a quote to the effect that industries fail because they don’t understand what people want. I would hope the panelists remember that the survival of the medical industrial complex is not the concern of medical consumers. If the industry is at fault in this crisis, maybe it should fail.

    He also stated that the system used to work, but because times have changed it no longer does. Is this true? What is the definition of a working system? I’d like more discussion about that.

    Finally, I would like to suggest that the proposed additions to the curriculum are part of the old way of thinking Mayo is trying so hard to escape: evolutionary theory, psychology, cultural anthropology. I’ve discussed some of the problematic ideas that stem from these disciplines, but my main objection is they’ve been used to justify the categorization and control of human beings. They shouldn’t be accepted without question.

    I think the town hall was a positive start, so I say these things in the spirit of a conversation. The panelists’ initiation of this conversation certainly beat the competition in the House of Representatives.

    Now about Affordable Care. Although nothing was said about it at the town hall, Mayo’s FaceBook page does provide a link to a video with the following information: The clinic estimates that doctors will see a decrease in payments for services of at least 10 to 20 percent. On the patient side, insurance premiums will go down but many policies will have high deductibles, ((cnbc video: Mayo Clinic and Affordable Care. Available: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?play=1&video=3000201514&6415814=1.))

    Of course, insurance policies already have high deductibles. If the Republicans have plans to improve that situation, they aren’t saying.

    [display-posts category=”the healthcare crisis”]

  • Since Obama announced he would seek Congressional approval for intervention in Syria, some have gone on to speculate whether Congress will make the “right” decision. I think this illustrates the partisan politics behind most of the arguments, pro and con. For example, those on the left are against military action, possibly because Assad is partial to their way of thinking. On the other hand, one of the groups in favor of intervention, the neo-liberals, hope Assad’s ouster will give them access to Syria’s economy.

    I appreciate Obama’s decision, and not just because I’m against further involvement in Syria. Regardless of what Congress decides, adherence to the law has its own benefits. It inspires confidence and promotes faith in the good will of a country’s leaders, both at home and abroad. In this light, it is interesting that Obama’s supposed allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia, have pressured him to bypass Congress–in other words, to bypass the voice of the people.

    The proper foundation of law, as understood by the ancient Romans, was discussed by Georges Dumezil:

    “Finally, we know that the institution of the fetiales, which is generally attributed to Numa (and otherwise to Ancus, his grandson and emulator), was founded to preserve peace through the strict observance of agreements and, when that was not possible, to lend to the declaration of war and to the conclusion of treaties a regulated and ritualistic character. In short, Numa’s fides is the foundation of Rome’s supreme creation, its law.” ((Dumezil, Georges. Mitra-Varuna. Trans. Derek Coltman. Urzone Inc. New York.1988.))

    The benefits of adherence to the law are not limited to foreign relations. A better understanding of the law might also help us sort out America’s domestic problems. Recently, we have seen our laws changed to suit the goals of certain leaders. These goals include the increase of presidential power, and a higher birthrate through the subjugation women. It is reasonable to assume that laws which decrease liberty and justice have no relation to ‘fides’. In future posts we’ll try to develop a better understanding of the proper foundation of law.

  • Many in the media may not be representing the most authoritative interpretation of what is happening in Egypt. The following is from an article in Ahram online published by Al-Ahram Establishment, which has since 1875, published the Middle East’s oldest newspaper, The Daily Al-Ahram. ((About the Daily Ahram. Availiable: http://english.ahram.org.eg/UI/Front/Aboutus.aspx)) This article puts into perspective Obama’s support of the Brotherhood in Egypt, and the scorn his policies have received from the right.

    There has always been a certain amount of mistrust between the Saudi royal family and the brotherhood. It’s true that the Al-Saud family has supported the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations since the time of President Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 60s, but this is because they both opposed Nasser’s policy of exporting to the Arab world a socialism and Arab nationalism hostile to the West. The Islamists were useful to the Saudis in resisting Nasser, although they have always had ideological differences. Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism is a form of Salafism, which is ‘austere, puritanical, and rigorous’, while the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood movement is more flexible. The Brotherhood sought to reconcile Islamic tradition and Western political experience, while it also tried to counter socialism and Nasserism in the Arab world. While this alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood served their purpose, “…the Al-Saud family saw the activist and “republican” formula of Islam promoted by the Brotherhood as a threat to the absolute monarchy formula established in Saudi Arabia, which advocates popular obedience and prohibits revolt against the political regime.”

    Not only do the Saudis fear the challenge to their rule of the Brotherhood’s doctrine, some Saudi leaders fear an alliance of Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, which would reduce their influence. These fears came to a head when the Brotherhood came to power in Egypt and Tunisia. ((Mourad, Hicham. The Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia. Ahramonline. May 15, 2003. Available: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentPrint/4/0/71498/Opinion/0/The-Muslim-Brotherhood-and-Saudi-Arabia.aspx))

    It’s probably not news to most of you that we have been given an inaccurate picture of Egypt’s situation, but it goes deeper than that. For years we have been given an oversimplified, if not completely wrong, view of Islam. Islam is far more complex that we realize. For example, there are distinct factions that have been locked in struggle for generations, and they are represented today in Egypt. There is fundamentalist versus extremist Islam. Americans tend to confuse the two, but they differ in many ways: basically, fundamentalists want all of life to be influenced by religion, while Extremists want a puritanical system influenced by an anachronistic vision of history. Iran is fundamentalist; Wahhabism is extremist. ((Didier Chaudet, Florent Parmentier, Benoît Pélopidas. When Empire Meets Nationalism. Sciences Po, France, University of Geneva, Switzerland and Monterey Institute of International Studies, USA. Ashgate. 2009))  More to the point, the Muslim Brotherhood combines fundamentalism with activism and republicanism. Then there is the secular faction. The heroes of this faction include Nasser in Egypt and Kemal in Turkey. Secularism often coincides with military rule. This is the faction behind the current military coup in Egypt.  In his support for the coup, Dreyfuss has some strange bedfellows. The neocons also happen to prefer secular government in the Middle East.

    You will recall that Obama’s previous efforts to be conciliatory toward Islam have consistently resulted in accusations that he is a Muslim. The good news here is that the U.S. government’s factions are alive and well.  The bad news is that we don’t see these factions at work because of the incestuous relationship between the ‘democratic imperialists’ and the media.

    The neocon view of Islam has been disseminated by specialists such as neoconservative Stephen Schwartz and neocon followers like Bernard Lewis. They begin by making a distinction between two types of Islam: Arabic, which they reject; and European, Turkish, preferably Sufi Islam, which they represent. Yes, even as the Muslim label continues to hover over Obama, the neocons are in deed Muslims:

    “Ahmed Chalabi is a friend of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, and Stephen Schwartz converted to Islam under the name Suleyman Ahmad Stephen Schwartz. He was influenced by a group who is favored by Pipes and by neocon Orientalists, the American Naqshbandi Sufis, led by Sheikh Hisham Kabbani.”[backref name=”When Empire Meets Nationalism”]

    Kabbani shares the neocons rejection of Arabic Islam. The neocons’ sufi-ness serves this agenda and allows them to assert that Islam is an individual religion chosen by individuals in a spiritual rather than political perspective, whereas Islamism (Arabic Islam, i.e. Wahhabism) is a political ideology. However, the effects of these assertions are much broader than the condemnation of Wahhabism. They have allowed the neocons to appear supportive of Islam while discounting the beliefs of the majority of Muslims.[backref name=”When Empire Meets Nationalism”]

    If we believe the media, Islam as it is practiced by the majority can’t win. On the one hand, they argue that it has always had imperialistic politics. On the other hand, economic, social and political explanations for terrorism must be rejected. Terrorism is merely evidence that dialogue is futile. The only option that remains is to conquer enemy territories regardless of what the populations of those territories want.(When Empire Meets Nationalism”)

  • The problem with a conversation like this one is that it’s easy to get drawn into hit-and-miss analyses of foreign policy. You try to resist the temptation, but once in a while a headline comes along that’s impossible to ignore–like the one about ‘young Turks’ protesting in the streets of Ankara. https://www.gulf-times.com/story/356371/youths-seek-greater-liberty-not-revolution.  Whose idea was that headline? You assume that, whoever came up with it, Prime Minister Erdogan wouldn’t appreciate such propaganda in Turkey.

    In 1908, a group called the Young Turks helped bring down the Ottoman Empire. They also helped Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his secular government come to power.

    This train of thought would remind you that the neocons think of secularism as insurance against Islamization, and that they prefer a secular government for Turkey. This is troubling because Kemal’s Turkey was full of racist nationalism, not unlike the rest of Europe before World War I.1

    However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned while trying to educate myself about American foreign policy, it’s that there’s no single faction you can blame for the world’s problems. No matter which one happens to be in charge, good intentions and honorable behavior are mixed in with sheer madness. And even though the U.S. is having its way with the world at this time, America isn’t the sole cause of the world’s problems. To find the true cause, you need a longer timeframe.

    Is There a Cure for US Policy?

    It has been suggested that the cure for U.S. policy is to develop an intellectual tradition to rival the neocons. This is probably a good idea. Unfortunately all ideas are not equal. For the last 30 years, the neocons’ ideas have been well-funded by military and government contracts and transnational corporations. They have also been promoted by a captive media. Competing ideas won’t have that kind of support, regardless of their quality. For that reason, I recommend beginning the discussion by diagnosing the disease, rather than treating the symptoms. Current ideas are one of the symptoms.

    Less Inequality

    In a nutshell, our inheritance and real estate laws funnel wealth to an elite minority and allow a widening gap between the rich and the poor. Some would say patrilineal inheritance favors men, but it doesn’t really. Patrilineal inheritance allows a society’s wealth to be drained away in frivolous pursuits such as war. Matrilineal inheritance, on the other hand, preserves the property of mothers and thereby benefits entire families. In addition, the ‘usufruct‘ 2 of a woman’s inheritance can be used by her father and/or husband for a limited time.

    The usufruct is the ‘legal right accorded to a person or party that confers the temporary right to use and derive income or benefit from someone else’s property. Usufruct is usually conferred for a limited time period or until death. While the usufructuary has the right to use the property, he or she cannot damage or destroy it, or dispose of the property.’

    Matrilineal Inheritance Benefits Everyone

    My point: matrilineal inheritance benefits everyone without depleting a society’s wealth. It also protects its property from those who would wage war and monopolize industry.

    But of course, that’s why matrilineal inheritance is always the first thing to go. Misogyny helps the process along by misogyny, and the Judeo-Christian story of the Fall of Man justifies it in the West. It is entirely illegitimate, but those who benefit will never give it up without a fight. Still, it’s good to know that our current problem is not as complicated as the ideas that shore it up: Mothers are impoverished and subjugated while a small cadre of powerful men use their inheritance to impose misery on the human race. The tail is wagging the dog.

    Ideas are important. However, once the wealth of the land becomes vulnerable to a good argument there will be no end to good arguments. Change the laws first; correct the ideas at your leisure.

    See also: Onan and the Patriarchal Agenda

    and: Adam, Noah and the Snake-King

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