Saturday, May 30, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Back on track, maybe
After a week-and-a-half of anxiety, the New Hampshire legislature seems back on track to make gay marriage legal. You'll recall that the governor decided to back gay marriage provided that language "protecting" religious denominations was adopted. The Senate quickly voted in favor, but the House vote failed by 3 votes. The bill went to a joint committee; the committee has finally agreed to language that is basically the same as originally proposed; the governor has signed onto the compromise. A vote appears likely on Wednesday. Sometime next week gay marriage will be the law of the land in New Hampshire.
That will leave only one New England state, Rhode Island, without gay marriage. A new poll indicates that fully 60% of Rhode Island citizens approve of gay marriage. The present governor does not; the present Democratic leaders of the legislature do not; so one wonders how long the personal preferences of three elected officials will be allowed to trump the will of the vast majority of the citizens. The Catholic church is very influential in the state, so the fight for equality is likely to be an ugly one. One would think that the Catholic church had lost all moral credibility given a decade of exposure of its rotten, corrupt tolerance of child rape by its priests (the latest horrific chapter of this tale is now being played out in Ireland, and a more appalling tale of officially tolerated brutality against helpless children cannot be imagined by decent people). But the church and its boosters pretend to speak from a moral high ground as they shamelessly lie about gay people and their families, and enough dimwits believe this rot to keep gay marriage a contentious topic.
Read about New Hampshire here
That will leave only one New England state, Rhode Island, without gay marriage. A new poll indicates that fully 60% of Rhode Island citizens approve of gay marriage. The present governor does not; the present Democratic leaders of the legislature do not; so one wonders how long the personal preferences of three elected officials will be allowed to trump the will of the vast majority of the citizens. The Catholic church is very influential in the state, so the fight for equality is likely to be an ugly one. One would think that the Catholic church had lost all moral credibility given a decade of exposure of its rotten, corrupt tolerance of child rape by its priests (the latest horrific chapter of this tale is now being played out in Ireland, and a more appalling tale of officially tolerated brutality against helpless children cannot be imagined by decent people). But the church and its boosters pretend to speak from a moral high ground as they shamelessly lie about gay people and their families, and enough dimwits believe this rot to keep gay marriage a contentious topic.
Read about New Hampshire here
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Defenders of marriage
Jim Gibbons, governor of Nevada, has vetoed a bill providing gay people domestic partnerships citing his support for traditional marriage as justification. Mr. Gibbons is both Mormon and Republican, so you can easily see why he vetoed the bill passed by a Democratic state legislature. What you may not know (but everybody in Nevada knows) is that Mr. Gibbons is a serial adulterer and is accused of sexually assaulting a woman, among other things. Such a man is the defender of "traditional marriage" in Nevada. This lecherous creep enjoys all the rights, protections, rewards, and privileges of traditional marriage while mocking it by his behavior but simultaneously denies gay people any legal rights as domestic partners. Do you feel all warm inside knowing that Jim Gibbons and his mistresses are on the frontlines defending marriage from those nefarious gays who want to redefine it?
For further information about this champion of marriage, read an extended quotation from Wikipedia about Gibbons here:
Gibbons has been married twice and has three children. He married his current wife, Dawn Gibbons, in 1985; they have a son, born in 1987. Dawn Gibbons did not move to Washington to live with her husband during the 10 years he served in Congress, saying she preferred to raise their son in Nevada. She herself was elected to the Nevada State Assembly in 1998, two years after Jim Gibbons was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. On May 2, 2008, Gibbons filed for divorce, citing grounds of incompatibility stemming from an undisclosed event in Reno, and requesting the court to determine whether Gibbons or his wife would live at the governor's mansion.
In April 2009, Gibbons was living in Reno; his wife, Dawn, remained in the Governor's mansion in Carson City. An 1866 state law requires that governor must "keep his office and reside at the seat of government." A spokesman for Gibbons described the move by the governor back to the couple's Reno home, which they had owned since 1989, as a temporary situation and said there was no violation of the law. By April 2009, Dawn was living in an apartment near the Mansion rather than in it.
Divorce proceedings were stayed upon agreement of living separately pending the suit. Dawn accused Jim of "infatuation and involvement with the wife of a Reno doctor,” but he stated the woman is just a friend. On March-April 2007, he sent 860 text messages in one month to the woman. He later reimbursed the state $130 for the cost of the messages. In June 2008, he was seen with former Playboy model Leslie Durant at the Reno Rodeo. Durant is particularly prominent not solely because of her nude Playboy appearance, because she was once married to Pete Sferrazza, formerly mayor of Reno.
On April 6, 2009, a judge in Washoe County Family Court ordered the records of the divorce proceedings unsealed. Dawn's papers alleged that Jim was unfaithful with Durant, and with the woman who received the 860 messages, and "has had similar relationships with many other women during the marriage." She also referenced her humiliation at standing beside him when her husband attempted to defend himself from allegations of attempted sexual assault shortly before the 2006 election. See "sexual assault allegation" below.
Jim Gibbons' divorce filings stated that he wanted his wife out of the Governor's Mansion because she was aggressive: "It was once said in another context that being in close quarters with such a volatile person was like being locked in a phone booth with an enraged ferret."
For further information about this champion of marriage, read an extended quotation from Wikipedia about Gibbons here:
Gibbons has been married twice and has three children. He married his current wife, Dawn Gibbons, in 1985; they have a son, born in 1987. Dawn Gibbons did not move to Washington to live with her husband during the 10 years he served in Congress, saying she preferred to raise their son in Nevada. She herself was elected to the Nevada State Assembly in 1998, two years after Jim Gibbons was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. On May 2, 2008, Gibbons filed for divorce, citing grounds of incompatibility stemming from an undisclosed event in Reno, and requesting the court to determine whether Gibbons or his wife would live at the governor's mansion.
In April 2009, Gibbons was living in Reno; his wife, Dawn, remained in the Governor's mansion in Carson City. An 1866 state law requires that governor must "keep his office and reside at the seat of government." A spokesman for Gibbons described the move by the governor back to the couple's Reno home, which they had owned since 1989, as a temporary situation and said there was no violation of the law. By April 2009, Dawn was living in an apartment near the Mansion rather than in it.
Divorce proceedings were stayed upon agreement of living separately pending the suit. Dawn accused Jim of "infatuation and involvement with the wife of a Reno doctor,” but he stated the woman is just a friend. On March-April 2007, he sent 860 text messages in one month to the woman. He later reimbursed the state $130 for the cost of the messages. In June 2008, he was seen with former Playboy model Leslie Durant at the Reno Rodeo. Durant is particularly prominent not solely because of her nude Playboy appearance, because she was once married to Pete Sferrazza, formerly mayor of Reno.
On April 6, 2009, a judge in Washoe County Family Court ordered the records of the divorce proceedings unsealed. Dawn's papers alleged that Jim was unfaithful with Durant, and with the woman who received the 860 messages, and "has had similar relationships with many other women during the marriage." She also referenced her humiliation at standing beside him when her husband attempted to defend himself from allegations of attempted sexual assault shortly before the 2006 election. See "sexual assault allegation" below.
Jim Gibbons' divorce filings stated that he wanted his wife out of the Governor's Mansion because she was aggressive: "It was once said in another context that being in close quarters with such a volatile person was like being locked in a phone booth with an enraged ferret."
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
I told you so
In a 6-1 decision, the California state supreme court sustained Proposition 8. The chief justice, previously one of the majority who ruled in favor of gay marriage, upheld the revocation of gay marriage. In other words, the chief justice decided not to defend his own decision, which speaks volumes about this guy's utter lack of integrity.
So much for seeking the rule of law in a court of law in California. The court did let stand the 18,000 gay marriages that had occurred prior to the November vote, thus leaving the state in the bizarre situation of simultaneously prohibiting gay marriages and upholding them. Not only is the California state supreme court bereft of moral or legal integrity; it is also bereft of logical integrity. It, like the rest of California's political institutions, is utterly corrupt. The rule-by-referendum madness and the fear of recall that have both paralyzed the state's government and driven it over the brink of bankruptcy now have handed human rights over to the whims of the mob. No wonder that Plato and other ancient philosophers declared democracy to be the worst sort of tyranny--the mob gets whatever it wants by force solely because it outnumbers its opponents. Nothing is safe from the action of the mob, said Plato. We see plain evidence of that today in California.
Of course, this ruling settles nothing. Gay marriage will be the law of the state very soon. Gays are organizing politically state-wide, and the trend is entirely on our side. This was the last, embittered hurrah of the anti-gay haters. Soon the ballot box that they have so effectively used as a weapon against gays will be turned on them. Then they will be the ones screaming about their rights being violated, specifically their religious rights. But now that they've cut down all the laws that protect human rights from cancellation by the mob, what will protect them? Answer: nothing. Sounds like karma to me.
So much for seeking the rule of law in a court of law in California. The court did let stand the 18,000 gay marriages that had occurred prior to the November vote, thus leaving the state in the bizarre situation of simultaneously prohibiting gay marriages and upholding them. Not only is the California state supreme court bereft of moral or legal integrity; it is also bereft of logical integrity. It, like the rest of California's political institutions, is utterly corrupt. The rule-by-referendum madness and the fear of recall that have both paralyzed the state's government and driven it over the brink of bankruptcy now have handed human rights over to the whims of the mob. No wonder that Plato and other ancient philosophers declared democracy to be the worst sort of tyranny--the mob gets whatever it wants by force solely because it outnumbers its opponents. Nothing is safe from the action of the mob, said Plato. We see plain evidence of that today in California.
Of course, this ruling settles nothing. Gay marriage will be the law of the state very soon. Gays are organizing politically state-wide, and the trend is entirely on our side. This was the last, embittered hurrah of the anti-gay haters. Soon the ballot box that they have so effectively used as a weapon against gays will be turned on them. Then they will be the ones screaming about their rights being violated, specifically their religious rights. But now that they've cut down all the laws that protect human rights from cancellation by the mob, what will protect them? Answer: nothing. Sounds like karma to me.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Bet on abject deference to the mob
Tomorrow, the California state supreme court will issue its ruling on the constitutionality of Proposition 8. The argument in favor of Proposition 8 is simple: 52% of the voters wanted it, so they get what they want. The argument against is also simple: the Califonia constitution requires a more complex, extended, and prolonged procedure to make major revisions of the constitution. Taking away human rights by constitutional amendment is such a major revision. Therefore, the quickie referendum route was unconstitutional. This was the argument of the state's attorney general.
I'm not betting a dime on the integrity of the California state supreme court. The justices know that the rule-by-referendum loony-tunes way of government in California makes them vulnerable to retaliation by recall. A bare majority of justices went out on a limb once to rule that equality before the law actually means equality for gay people too. Rightwingers sawed that limb off, and the justices got the message loud and clear. So I fully expect that we'll hear a lot about the sacredness of the democratic procedure, the sanctity of the voting booth, the will of the people, blah blah blah, as ways by which the justices will acquiesce to mob rule and allow this affront to human rights and the rule of law to stand. The justices will get to keep their jobs; that's the most important thing for them; the human rights of gay people can go hang.
As evidenced by the state's budget catastrophe, demagoguery runs California and all elected officials know that they are on a short lease. Any disgruntled mob able to secure enough signatures on a petition can throw the state into electoral chaos. That's how Governor Arnold got his job; now an angry mob is collecting signatures against him. With talk about a constitutional convention running rife, mass layoffs, defunded schools, canceled healthcare and welfare for poor people, anti-tax fervor, and growing public anger at everybody in or near Sacramento, no elected official wants to run afoul of a mob of vigilantes who'd just as soon string him up from the nearest tree. That includes justices on the supreme court.
I hope I'm wrong. I want to believe that law still rules in California, and that the court will defend its own decision--which was absolutely correct. But I know better having lived there. The mob is out to punish, and California's elected officers--including judges--are gutless. Expect Proposition 8 to be sustained.
I'm not betting a dime on the integrity of the California state supreme court. The justices know that the rule-by-referendum loony-tunes way of government in California makes them vulnerable to retaliation by recall. A bare majority of justices went out on a limb once to rule that equality before the law actually means equality for gay people too. Rightwingers sawed that limb off, and the justices got the message loud and clear. So I fully expect that we'll hear a lot about the sacredness of the democratic procedure, the sanctity of the voting booth, the will of the people, blah blah blah, as ways by which the justices will acquiesce to mob rule and allow this affront to human rights and the rule of law to stand. The justices will get to keep their jobs; that's the most important thing for them; the human rights of gay people can go hang.
As evidenced by the state's budget catastrophe, demagoguery runs California and all elected officials know that they are on a short lease. Any disgruntled mob able to secure enough signatures on a petition can throw the state into electoral chaos. That's how Governor Arnold got his job; now an angry mob is collecting signatures against him. With talk about a constitutional convention running rife, mass layoffs, defunded schools, canceled healthcare and welfare for poor people, anti-tax fervor, and growing public anger at everybody in or near Sacramento, no elected official wants to run afoul of a mob of vigilantes who'd just as soon string him up from the nearest tree. That includes justices on the supreme court.
I hope I'm wrong. I want to believe that law still rules in California, and that the court will defend its own decision--which was absolutely correct. But I know better having lived there. The mob is out to punish, and California's elected officers--including judges--are gutless. Expect Proposition 8 to be sustained.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Now it's 6 states
The governor of New Hampshire will sign the new gay marriage bill as soon as the legislature amends the bill to include language protecting the rights of religious organizations from being forced into performing such marriages (as if that was ever going to happen here in the real world).
This language is perfectly acceptable to gay people in New Hampshire. This fact completely discredits any of the ridiculous, contrived objections that bigots have used to prevent this legislation from being enacted. Of course, the bigots are still opposed; they just don't have even the appearance of an argument to make now. All they can say is just "No, no, no, I don't want it." To bad.
Now all eyes are on New York, specifically the state senate. Will the state become the lucky seventh state? Do New Yorkers really want to be less enlightened than folks in New Hampshire or Vermont or Maine or Iowa or Massachusetts or Connecticut?
PS: What a pleasure to type that honor roll of states, and what a pleasure knowing that the list will soon include many more!
Read it here
This language is perfectly acceptable to gay people in New Hampshire. This fact completely discredits any of the ridiculous, contrived objections that bigots have used to prevent this legislation from being enacted. Of course, the bigots are still opposed; they just don't have even the appearance of an argument to make now. All they can say is just "No, no, no, I don't want it." To bad.
Now all eyes are on New York, specifically the state senate. Will the state become the lucky seventh state? Do New Yorkers really want to be less enlightened than folks in New Hampshire or Vermont or Maine or Iowa or Massachusetts or Connecticut?
PS: What a pleasure to type that honor roll of states, and what a pleasure knowing that the list will soon include many more!
Read it here
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The logic of thinking illogically
According to the "economics writer" of the article below, we're in lots of trouble because Medicare is already broke--paying out more money than it takes in--and Social Security will begin doing that in 2016, draining its "trust fund" in 2032 and going broke then.
Maybe the writer got his facts correct regarding Medicare, but he certainly doesn't understand Social Security. There is no such thing as the "trust fund." This "trust fund" is supposed to be the accumulated SS funds collected over the years but not yet disbursed to recipients. This big pile of cash is supposed to be in a vault somewhere. But there is no cash. Fact: every dime of SS funds ever collected has already been disbursed. The biggest recipient? The US federal government. It has "borrowed" these funds to spend year by year as part of its annual budget deficit financing. The SS "trust fund" is just a big pile of IOUs--government bonds, i.e., debt. Any excess SS funds accumulated during the year are always spent--just not on the old folks.
So in 2016 (or before), when SS begins paying out during the year more than it collects, then (and not later) SS will be insolvent, i.e., broke. Where will the missing money come from? Higher domestic taxes or more borrowing from abroad are the only possibilities. Maybe we can persuade the rest of the world to finance the retirements of millions of American elderly, but I doubt it. Maybe we can tax young American workers up to 100% to finance the retirements of millions of American elderly, but I doubt it too.
So what happens in 2016 (or before) when it all goes broke? Well, the logic of illogical thinking catches up with America and the crap hits the fan. My guess: if the government has not already done so financing Mr. Obama's colossal deficits, wars, and bailouts, it will then print money by the trillions to pay its debts. Hyperinflation will overwhelm the economy. Everybody will be impoverished. After that, who knows?
Read it here
Maybe the writer got his facts correct regarding Medicare, but he certainly doesn't understand Social Security. There is no such thing as the "trust fund." This "trust fund" is supposed to be the accumulated SS funds collected over the years but not yet disbursed to recipients. This big pile of cash is supposed to be in a vault somewhere. But there is no cash. Fact: every dime of SS funds ever collected has already been disbursed. The biggest recipient? The US federal government. It has "borrowed" these funds to spend year by year as part of its annual budget deficit financing. The SS "trust fund" is just a big pile of IOUs--government bonds, i.e., debt. Any excess SS funds accumulated during the year are always spent--just not on the old folks.
So in 2016 (or before), when SS begins paying out during the year more than it collects, then (and not later) SS will be insolvent, i.e., broke. Where will the missing money come from? Higher domestic taxes or more borrowing from abroad are the only possibilities. Maybe we can persuade the rest of the world to finance the retirements of millions of American elderly, but I doubt it. Maybe we can tax young American workers up to 100% to finance the retirements of millions of American elderly, but I doubt it too.
So what happens in 2016 (or before) when it all goes broke? Well, the logic of illogical thinking catches up with America and the crap hits the fan. My guess: if the government has not already done so financing Mr. Obama's colossal deficits, wars, and bailouts, it will then print money by the trillions to pay its debts. Hyperinflation will overwhelm the economy. Everybody will be impoverished. After that, who knows?
Read it here
Friday, May 8, 2009
"Fierce advocate" fakery
Mr. Obama has marketed himself as a "fierce advocate" of gay rights. What that phrase means is anybody's guess because Mr. Obama's gay rights record is a blank. Not a single piece of legislation advancing gay rights or eliminating arbitrary denial of rights to gay people bears Mr. Obama's name as author--not in the Illinois state legislature or in the US Senate. Mr. Obama is on record as opposing gay marriage, a position in which he finds himself shoulder-to-shoulder with the likes of Pat Robertson. Does he oppose "don't ask, don't tell?" At various points during his presidential campaign, he seemed to say so, but his first opportunity to prevent a discharge under this preposterous law came and went yesterday without Mr. Obama lifting a finger to do anything about it.
Lt. Dan Choi--Iraq veteran, platoon leader, West Point graduate, fluent Arabic speaker--was found unsuitable for service in the National Guard and discharged because he stated on a CNN talk show that he is gay. Mr. Obama--who has never worn his country's uniform nor has ever been to war nor has ever even broken a sweat in defense of his country--let Lt. Choi be dismissed despite the fact that his war record is impeccable, his leadership qualities unimpeachable, and his language skills absolutely essential. Lt. Choi wants to serve in Iraq, for gosh sake's. But Mr. Obama let him be fired instead. Some commander-in-chief.
So where's the "fierce advocacy" already? In the lunch meat section at your nearest supermarket along with the rest of the baloney, that's where!
Read it here
Lt. Dan Choi--Iraq veteran, platoon leader, West Point graduate, fluent Arabic speaker--was found unsuitable for service in the National Guard and discharged because he stated on a CNN talk show that he is gay. Mr. Obama--who has never worn his country's uniform nor has ever been to war nor has ever even broken a sweat in defense of his country--let Lt. Choi be dismissed despite the fact that his war record is impeccable, his leadership qualities unimpeachable, and his language skills absolutely essential. Lt. Choi wants to serve in Iraq, for gosh sake's. But Mr. Obama let him be fired instead. Some commander-in-chief.
So where's the "fierce advocacy" already? In the lunch meat section at your nearest supermarket along with the rest of the baloney, that's where!
Read it here
Thursday, May 7, 2009
By the way up in Washington state...
All the action on the gay marriage/civil union front is not in New England. Recently the Washington state legislature expanded the state's modest domestic partnerships into everything marriage is except the name. That's just how this expansion was openly discussed in the legislature. The bill has been sent to the governor for her signature.
The wacko religious right is trying to organize a referendum against the soon-to-be new law. They argue that the everything-marriage-is-except-the-name law is effectively marriage and within a few years Washington state will have actual gay marriage once people get used to the idea. Well, duh! They've finally got something right. Now they need to convince citizens of Washington state that somehow this matters. Fat chance.
The real evidence that the tide on gay marriage has turned is that politicians are openly embracing it. You can count on one hand the number of years ago that supporting gay marriage was a career-ender, or at least so quivering officeholders thought. They wouldn't give gay marriage advocates the time of day much less support. Civil unions/domestic partnerships were radical ideas on their own and had little support. Then KA-BOOM! The zeitgeist changed. Gay marriage is now on a roll, and Democrats in liberal states (along with a small but growing number of Republicans pols who want a future) are now leading the charge (having sprinted from behind to catch up with the advancing army). Clearly soon we are going to be a nation in which some 10-12 states allow gay marriage. That's the critical mass necessary for advancing to the next phase: federal recognition and repeal of DOMA.
That's also a critical mass necessary for federal judicial action. The idea that a married gay couple with two adopted children enjoy full legal protections as a family in their home state but become four unrelated individuals when they cross the border into one of the anti-gay marriage states is simply repugnant to any conception of equal protection under the law. Someday soon the federal courts will rule that the 14th amendment includes married gays and will overturn all those preposterous anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments with the stroke of a pen.
I can't wait!
The wacko religious right is trying to organize a referendum against the soon-to-be new law. They argue that the everything-marriage-is-except-the-name law is effectively marriage and within a few years Washington state will have actual gay marriage once people get used to the idea. Well, duh! They've finally got something right. Now they need to convince citizens of Washington state that somehow this matters. Fat chance.
The real evidence that the tide on gay marriage has turned is that politicians are openly embracing it. You can count on one hand the number of years ago that supporting gay marriage was a career-ender, or at least so quivering officeholders thought. They wouldn't give gay marriage advocates the time of day much less support. Civil unions/domestic partnerships were radical ideas on their own and had little support. Then KA-BOOM! The zeitgeist changed. Gay marriage is now on a roll, and Democrats in liberal states (along with a small but growing number of Republicans pols who want a future) are now leading the charge (having sprinted from behind to catch up with the advancing army). Clearly soon we are going to be a nation in which some 10-12 states allow gay marriage. That's the critical mass necessary for advancing to the next phase: federal recognition and repeal of DOMA.
That's also a critical mass necessary for federal judicial action. The idea that a married gay couple with two adopted children enjoy full legal protections as a family in their home state but become four unrelated individuals when they cross the border into one of the anti-gay marriage states is simply repugnant to any conception of equal protection under the law. Someday soon the federal courts will rule that the 14th amendment includes married gays and will overturn all those preposterous anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendments with the stroke of a pen.
I can't wait!
You've got to be joking, Mr. Obama!
Mr. Obama and staff have been poring over the federal budget for fiscal year 2010--the first budget that he will present to Congress as president--looking for places to cut and programs to end. They've finished their work. The cuts total--hold on to your hat--$17 billion in a budget that will be well over $3 trillion and more likely approaching $4 trillion when you add in all the "off budget" expenditures people in Washington like to hide from public view.
These "cuts" amount to a little more than one-half of one percent of the $3 trillion budget. So much for Mr. Obama's campaign promises to cut and end old and wasteful programs. According to Mr. Obama, everything else the federal government spends money on is essential and efficient.
This guy is no more serious about fiscal responsibility than was his dimwitted predecessor. Both are empty-headed spendthrifts and squanderers. The federal government is bankrupting itself and us along with it.
Read the nonsense here
These "cuts" amount to a little more than one-half of one percent of the $3 trillion budget. So much for Mr. Obama's campaign promises to cut and end old and wasteful programs. According to Mr. Obama, everything else the federal government spends money on is essential and efficient.
This guy is no more serious about fiscal responsibility than was his dimwitted predecessor. Both are empty-headed spendthrifts and squanderers. The federal government is bankrupting itself and us along with it.
Read the nonsense here
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
As Maine goes, so goes the nation
The phrase in the title used to be something of a political principle in American presidential politics. Maine was then the quintessential state, America in miniature.
Let's hope that regarding gay marriage this principle still holds because today the governor of Maine made gay marriage legal by signing a marriage bill passed by large majorities in both houses of the legislature. The governor, previously opposed to gay marriage because he thought civil unions were enough, decided that "separate but equal" was baloney. Equality before the law requires equality, which civil unions are deliberately intended to deny.
Congratulations to the citizens of Maine. The angry fundamentalists will now mount a referendum campaign to force a vote in November in an attempt to veto this new law. In previous years, they forced such votes on anti-discrimination laws that included protections for gay people, winning twice before finally being defeated and giving up. Let's hope that the citizens of Maine will vote resoundingly for equality in November and put the people's imprimatur on full citizenship for their gay fellow citizens.
Let's hope that regarding gay marriage this principle still holds because today the governor of Maine made gay marriage legal by signing a marriage bill passed by large majorities in both houses of the legislature. The governor, previously opposed to gay marriage because he thought civil unions were enough, decided that "separate but equal" was baloney. Equality before the law requires equality, which civil unions are deliberately intended to deny.
Congratulations to the citizens of Maine. The angry fundamentalists will now mount a referendum campaign to force a vote in November in an attempt to veto this new law. In previous years, they forced such votes on anti-discrimination laws that included protections for gay people, winning twice before finally being defeated and giving up. Let's hope that the citizens of Maine will vote resoundingly for equality in November and put the people's imprimatur on full citizenship for their gay fellow citizens.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Bad news for Carrie
Things are not going well for Carrie Prejean, Miss California. You'll recall that her largely incoherent answer about gay marriage irked Perez Hilton. Since then, Miss Prejean has become a mouth (but not a brain) for an organization working against gay marriage. And suddenly, little items have begun popping up. Item: it seems Carrie didn't like the pair of knockers God gave her, so she got herself a pair of silicon fakes she liked better. Item: it now turns out that she has posed nude and somebody's got the pictures to prove it.
This latter fact presents several problems:
(1) Why do conservative Christian organizations claiming to be dedicated to traditional family values want a nude model with fake boobs to be their spokesperson?
(2) Miss Prejean signed an agreement with the pageant in which she specifically affirms that she has never posed nude. Whoops, looks like she lied. Now her crown is in jeopardy not to mention her veracity.
(3) Miss Prejean admits that the person in the nude photographs is indeed her--at 17! What was an under-age Carrie doing posing for nude photographs? There may be some serious legal entanglements here, both for her and the photographer. There is certainly very bad publicity for her and her anti-gay pals. Giggle, giggle.
Looks to me like the anti-gay nitwits are up crap creek without a paddle. It serves them right. It serves Carrie Prejean right. Having an opinion is one thing; attacking the human rights of gay people is something else. More juicy details will surely become public. I can't wait!!!
Read it here
This latter fact presents several problems:
(1) Why do conservative Christian organizations claiming to be dedicated to traditional family values want a nude model with fake boobs to be their spokesperson?
(2) Miss Prejean signed an agreement with the pageant in which she specifically affirms that she has never posed nude. Whoops, looks like she lied. Now her crown is in jeopardy not to mention her veracity.
(3) Miss Prejean admits that the person in the nude photographs is indeed her--at 17! What was an under-age Carrie doing posing for nude photographs? There may be some serious legal entanglements here, both for her and the photographer. There is certainly very bad publicity for her and her anti-gay pals. Giggle, giggle.
Looks to me like the anti-gay nitwits are up crap creek without a paddle. It serves them right. It serves Carrie Prejean right. Having an opinion is one thing; attacking the human rights of gay people is something else. More juicy details will surely become public. I can't wait!!!
Read it here
Friday, May 1, 2009
Read this! Forewarned is forearmed.
John Williams publishes the Shadow Government Statistics newsletter (www.shadowstats.com). He is an amazing professional economist with a great grasp of the real economy. He and I have arrived at the same conclusions about almost everything in the economy, despite the fact that we approach it from totally different directions: me from the fundamentals, and he from a real technical and numbers point of view.
I am now in John’s home in Oakland, California, looking past the government numbers to get his views on the world as it really is. Shadow Government Statistics reconstructs published government statistics the accurate way we used to do it that reflects reality, rather than the way these numbers are now manipulated, and comes up with different conclusions about the economy, such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and other revealing areas published by government.
I trust John’s numbers because the government has been manipulating and restating these numbers for purely political purposes.
HJR: John is it necessary to recreate government statistics to show what you feel is reality, and how have you recreated them? I’d like some examples.
JW: Howard, I’ve been a consulting economist for about 27 years. I found early on that to make meaningful forecasts I had to have accurate information. It was evident early on that there were big inaccuracies in government reporting I surveyed at a convention of the National Association of Business Economists. Some economists have to make real-world forecasts, as opposed to economists who are employed by Wall Street to come to up with happy stories to encourage people to buy stocks and bonds.
I asked them what they considered the quality of government statistics to be. Most thought the numbers were very poor quality. Political manipulation tends to increase in election years.
I talked to the chief economist for a large retail chain, and he told me that the retail sales reports were absolutely no good, but he thought the money-supply numbers were pretty good.
Next was an economist for a major bank. He said the money-supply numbers were not very good, but he thought the retail-sales numbers are pretty good. The more someone knew about a given statistic, the greater the problems there were with the numbers.
Over time public perceptions increasingly varied from what the government was reporting because government kept changing methodologies, and usually tended to build an upside bias to the economic statistics of unemployment or the GDP – the broad measure of economies – and a downside bias in the Consumer Price Index, a popular measure of inflation.
When it became popularly used in auto-union contracts after WWII, the concept of the Consumer Price Index was fairly simple. But they wanted to measure changes in the cost of living, and they needed to maintain a constant standard of living. That was the traditional definition; the way the CPI had been designed.
That held pretty much in place until we got into the 1990s when Alan Greenspan and Michael Boskin, the head of The Council of Economic Advisors for the first Bush Administration, started talking about how the CPI really overstated inflation. The rationale was that when steak goes up in price, people buy more hamburger instead of steak; therefore you should reflect the substitution in the CPI.
That is not the concept of a constant standard of living; it is the concept of a declining standard of living that has no value to anyone other than politicians in Washington. They succeeded in reducing the reported level of inflation, which reduced cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security checks. Because of the changes in the 1990s, our Social Security checks are about half what they should be!
There have been different definitions over time. The government itself publishes six levels of unemployment from what they call “U-1” through “U-6.” The popularly followed measure is called “U-3.” Right now they say it is around 8.6 percent.
The broadest measure published by the government deletes “the discouraged workers” and people who are marginally attached to the economy. This is close to 16 percent. The key there is the “discouraged workers,” people who consider themselves to be unemployed. They know whether or not they have jobs. The Discouraged Worker hasn’t been out looking for work because there are no jobs to be had in his area.
Up until 1994, those discouraged workers wouldn’t have to specify how long they had been discouraged. After that, if they were discouraged, the government wouldn’t add them. I add them into my numbers, and it totals around 20 percent unemployment.
The popular number for the Great Depression is 25 percent unemployment rate and 34 percent among non-farm workers. We are mostly a non-farm economy.
HJR: During the Bush Administration, we heard all the happy talk about how well the economy was doing because of the cuts in tax rates. Is that really just happy talk or was the economy really doing well under Bush?
JW: We actually had a pretty bad recession in the early’90s, longer and deeper than popularly reported. Near the end of Bush’s first term at the time of the re-election race, a senior Commerce Department officer talked with a senior executive in the computer industry and asked him to boost the reporting of computer sales to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which prepares the GDP report. They did; it boosted the GDP, the broad measure of the economy, and George Bush touted the strong economy. But some felt he was out of touch with reality.
The average guy has a pretty good sense of reality and knows whether or not economic conditions are good, or if inflation is up or down, which is why people have a difficult time accepting the government’s numbers. They have gotten so far away from common experience that people just don’t find them credible.
In terms of the GDP, clearly retail sales and industrial production were showing us a deepening recession long before the government reported it with the GDP. In fact, you didn’t show a contraction in the GDP until the second quarter of 2008. Officially the recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, started back in December, 2007. If the GDP numbers accurately reflected what was happening, it would have at least shown the contraction two or three quarters before that. Other indications show that the recession really began in late 2006.
HJR: Let me get to a practical issue. What kind of economic activity should we support? For example, the conservatives will say we should cut tax rates to boost the economy. What does your research show?
JW: Cutting taxes is always a good idea. The private sector can do more with the money than the government can. Right now we are in a deep and deepening recession which will probably be called “a depression” before it ends. By depression, I mean a ten-percent contraction in overall economic activity.
When the government is reasonably solid, it can cut taxes. It can even increase spending without disrupting the system.
Right now we have a system where with the money poured into the banking system, and the “stimulus” by way of spending and tax cuts, is on top of record deficits.
If you look at the real numbers on the deficits, based on numbers published by the federal government, we really should look at it how it used to be. In the late ‘70s, the ten biggest accounting firms and congress said they could design an accounting system where the government will report its books the same way a company does. They finally got that into effect in 2000. Since then, instead of running deficits in the range of a couple of billion dollars, on a Generally Accepted Accounting Principal (GAAP) basis, the deficit has averaged $4 trillion a year. It was over $5 trillion in 2008 and will top $8 trillion this year.
This is unsustainable! You could not raise taxes enough to bring that into balance. If you wanted to bring it into balance, you’d have to eliminate Social Security and Medicare payments. It can’t be done.
HJR: Right now, Obama is spending money – I won’t say like a drunken sailor, because a drunken sailor spends his own money – but he is throwing trillions of dollars at the economic downturn, assuming it will stimulate us out. My personal opinion is that they are only stimulating government growth, and some day the average person may get a job, but his employer will be Uncle Sam.
What is the end result of creating all this money and throwing it at the problem?
JW: It will not stimulate the economy. The cost of all this is inflation. We will see inflation levels not seen in our lifetime by as early as the end of this year. Eventually we will see liabilities of $65 trillion – more than four times U.S. GDP, more than global GDP. There will be a hyper inflation where the dollar becomes worthless, where the paper is worth more as wall paper than as currency.
HJR: They couldn’t even use the money as toilet paper because it is a bad absorber of water. So we will have hyper-inflation. How can we protect the value of our assets, assuming that people have some discretionary money? Should they buy growth stocks because they are cheap, assuming “buy low, sell high?” Or are there better alternatives?
JW: We are headed into a hyper-inflationary depression that will become a Great Depression. When hyper inflation hits, it will disrupt the normal flow of commerce and turn it into a Great Depression.
What about paper assets based on the dollar? You want to get into something like gold or silver –physical gold or silver, not paper. Perhaps get some assets outside the dollar. It’s a time to preserve your wealth and assets, not to start speculating on the stock market. There is a lot of volatility ahead. Over the long term, gold and silver are your best hedges.
HJR: That sounds like the familiar tune I’ve been singing for several years. I’ve been publishing for 33 years. About 11 of those years I have been bullish on gold and silver as investments. When I abandoned gold in the early ‘80s, I was excommunicated from the gold-bug church because I was supposed to stay faithful to gold, but then the metals weren’t the right place to put your money. As a financial adviser, if I don’t have subscribers in the right investments, they will lose money and not renew their subscription to The Ruff Times. So I have a financial interest in being right. Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” the same thing is happening that I saw in the ‘70s that drove the prices of gold and silver to unprecedented highs – only more so now. They are creating more money than they ever thought of creating back then. We are using words like “trillions,” which we never used before. I’m not just looking at it as an investment and a place to make money. I am looking at it as a possible way to preserve the real value of your assets so you are not left destitute with a pile of worthless paper.
You showed me a display of Zimbabwe currency, where multi-billion dollar notes started out as $2-bill notes. We could face the same thing. The world is littered with worthless dead-paper currencies with an average life span of about 75 years. It’s always the same: we make too much of it ever since we created paper currency with the printing press, and creating too much of it to buy votes, diminishing its value.
A subscriber who wrote to me recently asking me that if the government and the bankers can manipulate the price of gold and silver, so couldn’t they do that for many years and gold and silver would go nowhere?
History doesn’t record a single example when a society inflated the dominant currency even near the quantities we are creating dollars now without destroying its value. Gold and silver, not being anyone’s debt or obligation, is where people ought to put their money.
I have been watching your work now for more than two years. I am amazed that you and I have arrived at the same conclusions from different sides of the street. I’ve learned a lot from your view of the numbers, and I’m a fundamentalist.
One reason I like you is because you agree with me. We like people who agree with us. Thanks so much for sharing your time and expertise with us.
JW: Thank you very much, Howard. I greatly appreciate the interview. I also appreciate your work. Indeed, we are in very broad and general agreement on where things are headed here. I have followed your work for many years; in fact, your writings back in the 1970s were part of my education as to the nature of the real world. Again, thank you, sir!
I am now in John’s home in Oakland, California, looking past the government numbers to get his views on the world as it really is. Shadow Government Statistics reconstructs published government statistics the accurate way we used to do it that reflects reality, rather than the way these numbers are now manipulated, and comes up with different conclusions about the economy, such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and other revealing areas published by government.
I trust John’s numbers because the government has been manipulating and restating these numbers for purely political purposes.
HJR: John is it necessary to recreate government statistics to show what you feel is reality, and how have you recreated them? I’d like some examples.
JW: Howard, I’ve been a consulting economist for about 27 years. I found early on that to make meaningful forecasts I had to have accurate information. It was evident early on that there were big inaccuracies in government reporting I surveyed at a convention of the National Association of Business Economists. Some economists have to make real-world forecasts, as opposed to economists who are employed by Wall Street to come to up with happy stories to encourage people to buy stocks and bonds.
I asked them what they considered the quality of government statistics to be. Most thought the numbers were very poor quality. Political manipulation tends to increase in election years.
I talked to the chief economist for a large retail chain, and he told me that the retail sales reports were absolutely no good, but he thought the money-supply numbers were pretty good.
Next was an economist for a major bank. He said the money-supply numbers were not very good, but he thought the retail-sales numbers are pretty good. The more someone knew about a given statistic, the greater the problems there were with the numbers.
Over time public perceptions increasingly varied from what the government was reporting because government kept changing methodologies, and usually tended to build an upside bias to the economic statistics of unemployment or the GDP – the broad measure of economies – and a downside bias in the Consumer Price Index, a popular measure of inflation.
When it became popularly used in auto-union contracts after WWII, the concept of the Consumer Price Index was fairly simple. But they wanted to measure changes in the cost of living, and they needed to maintain a constant standard of living. That was the traditional definition; the way the CPI had been designed.
That held pretty much in place until we got into the 1990s when Alan Greenspan and Michael Boskin, the head of The Council of Economic Advisors for the first Bush Administration, started talking about how the CPI really overstated inflation. The rationale was that when steak goes up in price, people buy more hamburger instead of steak; therefore you should reflect the substitution in the CPI.
That is not the concept of a constant standard of living; it is the concept of a declining standard of living that has no value to anyone other than politicians in Washington. They succeeded in reducing the reported level of inflation, which reduced cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security checks. Because of the changes in the 1990s, our Social Security checks are about half what they should be!
There have been different definitions over time. The government itself publishes six levels of unemployment from what they call “U-1” through “U-6.” The popularly followed measure is called “U-3.” Right now they say it is around 8.6 percent.
The broadest measure published by the government deletes “the discouraged workers” and people who are marginally attached to the economy. This is close to 16 percent. The key there is the “discouraged workers,” people who consider themselves to be unemployed. They know whether or not they have jobs. The Discouraged Worker hasn’t been out looking for work because there are no jobs to be had in his area.
Up until 1994, those discouraged workers wouldn’t have to specify how long they had been discouraged. After that, if they were discouraged, the government wouldn’t add them. I add them into my numbers, and it totals around 20 percent unemployment.
The popular number for the Great Depression is 25 percent unemployment rate and 34 percent among non-farm workers. We are mostly a non-farm economy.
HJR: During the Bush Administration, we heard all the happy talk about how well the economy was doing because of the cuts in tax rates. Is that really just happy talk or was the economy really doing well under Bush?
JW: We actually had a pretty bad recession in the early’90s, longer and deeper than popularly reported. Near the end of Bush’s first term at the time of the re-election race, a senior Commerce Department officer talked with a senior executive in the computer industry and asked him to boost the reporting of computer sales to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which prepares the GDP report. They did; it boosted the GDP, the broad measure of the economy, and George Bush touted the strong economy. But some felt he was out of touch with reality.
The average guy has a pretty good sense of reality and knows whether or not economic conditions are good, or if inflation is up or down, which is why people have a difficult time accepting the government’s numbers. They have gotten so far away from common experience that people just don’t find them credible.
In terms of the GDP, clearly retail sales and industrial production were showing us a deepening recession long before the government reported it with the GDP. In fact, you didn’t show a contraction in the GDP until the second quarter of 2008. Officially the recession, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, started back in December, 2007. If the GDP numbers accurately reflected what was happening, it would have at least shown the contraction two or three quarters before that. Other indications show that the recession really began in late 2006.
HJR: Let me get to a practical issue. What kind of economic activity should we support? For example, the conservatives will say we should cut tax rates to boost the economy. What does your research show?
JW: Cutting taxes is always a good idea. The private sector can do more with the money than the government can. Right now we are in a deep and deepening recession which will probably be called “a depression” before it ends. By depression, I mean a ten-percent contraction in overall economic activity.
When the government is reasonably solid, it can cut taxes. It can even increase spending without disrupting the system.
Right now we have a system where with the money poured into the banking system, and the “stimulus” by way of spending and tax cuts, is on top of record deficits.
If you look at the real numbers on the deficits, based on numbers published by the federal government, we really should look at it how it used to be. In the late ‘70s, the ten biggest accounting firms and congress said they could design an accounting system where the government will report its books the same way a company does. They finally got that into effect in 2000. Since then, instead of running deficits in the range of a couple of billion dollars, on a Generally Accepted Accounting Principal (GAAP) basis, the deficit has averaged $4 trillion a year. It was over $5 trillion in 2008 and will top $8 trillion this year.
This is unsustainable! You could not raise taxes enough to bring that into balance. If you wanted to bring it into balance, you’d have to eliminate Social Security and Medicare payments. It can’t be done.
HJR: Right now, Obama is spending money – I won’t say like a drunken sailor, because a drunken sailor spends his own money – but he is throwing trillions of dollars at the economic downturn, assuming it will stimulate us out. My personal opinion is that they are only stimulating government growth, and some day the average person may get a job, but his employer will be Uncle Sam.
What is the end result of creating all this money and throwing it at the problem?
JW: It will not stimulate the economy. The cost of all this is inflation. We will see inflation levels not seen in our lifetime by as early as the end of this year. Eventually we will see liabilities of $65 trillion – more than four times U.S. GDP, more than global GDP. There will be a hyper inflation where the dollar becomes worthless, where the paper is worth more as wall paper than as currency.
HJR: They couldn’t even use the money as toilet paper because it is a bad absorber of water. So we will have hyper-inflation. How can we protect the value of our assets, assuming that people have some discretionary money? Should they buy growth stocks because they are cheap, assuming “buy low, sell high?” Or are there better alternatives?
JW: We are headed into a hyper-inflationary depression that will become a Great Depression. When hyper inflation hits, it will disrupt the normal flow of commerce and turn it into a Great Depression.
What about paper assets based on the dollar? You want to get into something like gold or silver –physical gold or silver, not paper. Perhaps get some assets outside the dollar. It’s a time to preserve your wealth and assets, not to start speculating on the stock market. There is a lot of volatility ahead. Over the long term, gold and silver are your best hedges.
HJR: That sounds like the familiar tune I’ve been singing for several years. I’ve been publishing for 33 years. About 11 of those years I have been bullish on gold and silver as investments. When I abandoned gold in the early ‘80s, I was excommunicated from the gold-bug church because I was supposed to stay faithful to gold, but then the metals weren’t the right place to put your money. As a financial adviser, if I don’t have subscribers in the right investments, they will lose money and not renew their subscription to The Ruff Times. So I have a financial interest in being right. Yogi Berra said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” the same thing is happening that I saw in the ‘70s that drove the prices of gold and silver to unprecedented highs – only more so now. They are creating more money than they ever thought of creating back then. We are using words like “trillions,” which we never used before. I’m not just looking at it as an investment and a place to make money. I am looking at it as a possible way to preserve the real value of your assets so you are not left destitute with a pile of worthless paper.
You showed me a display of Zimbabwe currency, where multi-billion dollar notes started out as $2-bill notes. We could face the same thing. The world is littered with worthless dead-paper currencies with an average life span of about 75 years. It’s always the same: we make too much of it ever since we created paper currency with the printing press, and creating too much of it to buy votes, diminishing its value.
A subscriber who wrote to me recently asking me that if the government and the bankers can manipulate the price of gold and silver, so couldn’t they do that for many years and gold and silver would go nowhere?
History doesn’t record a single example when a society inflated the dominant currency even near the quantities we are creating dollars now without destroying its value. Gold and silver, not being anyone’s debt or obligation, is where people ought to put their money.
I have been watching your work now for more than two years. I am amazed that you and I have arrived at the same conclusions from different sides of the street. I’ve learned a lot from your view of the numbers, and I’m a fundamentalist.
One reason I like you is because you agree with me. We like people who agree with us. Thanks so much for sharing your time and expertise with us.
JW: Thank you very much, Howard. I greatly appreciate the interview. I also appreciate your work. Indeed, we are in very broad and general agreement on where things are headed here. I have followed your work for many years; in fact, your writings back in the 1970s were part of my education as to the nature of the real world. Again, thank you, sir!