Posted on by Fred

Voting Is a Moral Responsibility

It’s easy to decide that we can’t be bothered with politics.  We have our own lives.  We must make dinner, we have to get to bed on time so we can get up in the morning and go to work, and we have relationships that are more important to us than which politician said what.  Whether your boyfriend texts you back promptly is infinitely more interesting than what The Supreme Court decided about whether you can get an abortion, or religion in schools, or who can marry whom.  Regulating Health Care, whether Medicare can negotiate for better prescription prices, and who will pay for hospital stays are abstract ideas that don’t seem to matter in our practical world.  I get that.

But here’s the problem.  If we see no farther than our own backyard, we are likely to find the landscape outside of it, in which we all have to function, will be changing significantly, but slowly, so we don’t really notice it.  And sooner than you think, what’s happening outside your backyard will make its way into your home, your life, and your soul.  If we don’t think about more than 24 hours in the future, by the time we notice what’s happening, it’s likely to be too late.  When we can’t vote anymore, we will have lost the little power we have to change things, and we will watch our rights being stripped away more and more quickly.  Fascism flourishes in apathy.

I’m not saying you need to quit your job, give up your life, and go work for some political campaign.  I would like you to be aware of what’s happening so you can do what little you can to change it.  

Okay, Edmund Burke never said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” and I don’t know who first did.  I also don’t care.  It’s true regardless of the source.  I would, because I live in 2022, amend it to change “men” to “people,” but otherwise, I stand by those words.  Evil persists.  The effort to take our freedom of thought, of speech, of opinion, and, perhaps more importantly, our freedom to choose for ourselves is constant and ongoing.  Will someone else stop it?  I certainly hope so.  I can’t stop it.  What I can do is vote for those I believe are most likely to slow its course a bit. 

What would I like you to consider when you go to the ballot box?  I would begin with January 6, 2021, and the effort to keep power from being transferred peacefully from one President to the next.

I would pay attention to the efforts to restrict voting rights.  I would look at how many legislatures are trying to pass measures to invalidate the vote entirely if those in charge don’t like the results.   It’s happening here in Arizona already.  I’m including a link, and I hope you’ll take a few minutes to understand that this matters.

https://tucson.com/news/state-and-regional/proposed-law-would-allow-arizona-legislature-to-overturn-presidential-election-results/article_c2a70681-59c0-512f-ba86-2bf23128f9ee.html

I would also pay attention to Supreme Court decisions.  They have already stripped bodily autonomy from half the population.  They are going to revisit the idea that we should be allowed to marry whomever we love.  They are going to consider the possibility of banning contraception.  In short, if a woman has sex, she is required to give birth to the child, regardless of the circumstances.  I’ll remind you that a 10-year-old girl in Ohio was forced to travel to Indiana to terminate her pregnancy because after The Supreme Court repealed Roe v Wade, Ohio banned all abortions.  It’s doubtful a 10-year-old would even survive giving birth.  I won’t bother to give you links to this story.  It’s easily Googled.

This is enough to help you understand that what’s happening in America today is as important as how long it takes your boyfriend to reply to your text.  The time to stop the transformation into an authoritarian dictatorship is running out.  The least you could do is vote for those who have the best chance of stopping it. 

The Republican Party was, in my lifetime, composed of decent honorable people with whom I often disagreed.  There are still a few such Republicans.  Liz Cheney is one.  John McCain was another. 

What is called the MAGA Republican Party has none of these, or if they do, I haven’t seen them.  And that’s the party that is taking power.  If you don’t know who Lauren Boebert or Marjorie Taylor Greene are, that’s okay.  If you don’t know who Matt Gaetz is, life will go on.  But, these are the people who are elected not only to represent us, but to make laws that will have direct effects on you.   You don’t need to spend an hour a night watching the news, but you should at least know the basics.   This will allow you to be aware of the threats, and it will help you meet them.  If you just want a basic nightly rundown in five or ten minutes, read Heather Cox Richardson’s Facebook page or subscribe to her newsletter. 

When people are threatened by and refuse to engage ideas that differ from their own, they become dangerous because they can’t be swayed by conversation.  When words become worthless, all that’s left is violence.  Nothing good will come of that. 

An authoritarian dictatorship is on its way.  Many people are already coming up with contingency plans to escape America if the fascists are successful. 

It seems to me the only tool we have to fight this is our ballots. I advocate using this tool because once violence begins, it almost invariably gets out of control, and does so with alarming speed. It means, at the absolute minimum, someone will be hurt. It usually means someone dies. Whatever Good we believe we bring about with our violence is denied to The Dead. We have absolutely failed them.

Many, if not most, of us have no means of leaving America. Should it become the authoritarian dictatorship the MAGA Republicans are trying to create, we will be trapped here. We will suffer. Many of us will die.  You may be certain they won’t tolerate dissenting opinions such as mine.  Fortunately, I’m very small.  I won’t be at the top of the list of people who need to disappear in the dead of night never to be heard from again.  This is what happens in dictatorships.  It will, in fact, happen here if we allow it.  The biggest voices will be the first to go.  Sadly, I can’t afford to move out of my place at all.  Getting to another country would be impossible for me.  I would be forced to wait until they come for me.

For this one moment, we still have the power of the vote. I recognize it seems unimaginably small. But enough people doing a little thing makes a massive difference. And that power is one denied to millions around the world. It is one that was once denied to millions of Americans.

People have fought and died for that right. They have been lynched, tortured, and they have endured unimaginable atrocities for the right of all of us to go the ballot box. Failing to make use of that most fundamental right is more than a slap in the face to those who struggled so long and hard to win it for us. It is essentially pissing on their graves as we passively watch ourselves collapse into a dystopian nightmare from which, for far too many of us, there can be no escape.

Of course I’ll be voting. I couldn’t mail it in because I was in the hospital. Where I live in Mesa, there have been reports of armed people watching early voting ballot boxes. They may watch me drop my ballot in one of those boxes and shove their metal substitute penises straight up their asses. I don’t really believe they’ll shoot me. If they do, it will do more for the cause of freedom than my single vote ever would. I can think of many worse ways to die. And I would prefer being dead to living in the Hell to which they would like to condemn me.

The Road to Fascism is paved with claims that what’s happening is no big deal.  For example:

January 6 wasn’t a big deal.  Very few people died.  Everyone was fine. 

That sort of attitude normalizes the hatred, fascism, and violence that were on display that day and are swelling in America and throughout the world. 

I recognize how difficult it is to find Truth.  The Media that tells us what is happening is filled with agendas.  CNN, MSNBC, and Fox all rely on Confirmation Bias, or the idea that we tend to believe those things that best fit our ideology, and we reject those that don’t.  They make money by feeding us what we want to hear.  That’s respectable in Art.  It’s worse than worthless in Journalism.  We can all choose our own media outlets, but most of the time we must separate the Spin from the Truth. 

Since we’re not there to see what’s happening in the places where laws are being made, we are forced to rely on the Media to tell us.  You have your sources.  I have mine.  Neither of us can be entirely sure that we understand all of it. 

One of the rare exceptions is the January 6 Committee Hearings.  We could see every minute live.  Complete videos are still easily accessible on YouTube.  You don’t need to listen to media spin.  You can just watch for yourself if you want to invest that much time in understanding what happened.  Most of the participants were Republicans.  To say that it’s partisan is simply untrue.  Both sides of the aisle came together in a search for the Truth.  They’ve invited the former President to come and tell the truth.  In fact, they have subpoenaed him.  If he complies, I promise it will be worth your time to watch and listen, without Spin.

I sympathize with the idea that you don’t want to put 18 hours or so into that pursuit.  You have a much busier life than I have.  I work when I’m feeling well enough to sit at this keyboard.  You probably spend 40 hours or more at work every week.  I don’t leave the house.  You have a social life.  I get that.  I honestly do.  The best I can recommend to you is to find someone you trust to give you the basic facts.  If you don’t trust me, find someone you do trust, and try to look beyond your Confirmation Bias.  Give them more than 5 minutes to explain.  At least once.  Then… go do your most important civic duty.  Go and vote.  Do it while you still can.  You may never get another chance.  You owe it to those who fought and died for that right.  You owe it to all of us.  It is a moral responsibility. 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2lGBQHL8t1a8hld5PSmEqC?si=e8939fb4d3f54b53

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Klingons and Conservatives

“Have we become so… fearful, have we become so cowardly, that we must extinguish a man because he carries the blood of a current enemy?”

— Captain Picard, in “The Drumhead,” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, written by Jeri Taylor

Captain Jean-Luc Picard : You want to destroy the ship and run away, you coward.

Lt. Commander Worf : If you were any other man, I would kill you where you stand.

— Star Trek: First Contact, written by Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore

The source of anger, I am convinced, is fear.  I addressed this in “The Problem of Anger.”

Anger is a reaction to our fear.  I felt anger at watching the murder of George Floyd because I was afraid he would die.  He did.  I was angry at watching planes fly into The World Trade Center because I was afraid people would die.  They did.  I feel anger because I’m afraid I could die in the same pointless way.  I’m afraid someone I love might die that way.  The fear becomes anger.  The anger can be a motivation to try to change things, but it can’t be the method of making that change.  … I’m not going to change your mind by forcing you into a defensive posture.  The moment I vent my anger at you, you feel the need to protect yourself from me.  Now, instead of considering my ideas, you are preparing to tell me why I’m wrong, or you are looking for a means of escape. 

Fred Eder, “The Problem of Anger,” episode 123 of Fred’s Front Porch Podcast

Both Klingons and Conservatives, who, under the right circumstances, would kill you where you stand, are angry quite frequently.  To be fair, liberals get pretty angry, too, but not quite so often.  When we do, we have different reasons for it.  Liberals tend to get angry when we believe someone else is being mistreated.  Conservatives tend to get angry when they think someone might mistreat them.

President Biden is trying to get some relief for those who have been victimized by predatory student loans.  Conservatives are having a fit that the money is coming out of their pockets, regardless of the fact that it isn’t.  The government already has their money.  It also has mine, and, assuming you’re an American, it has yours, too.  No one is getting sent a bill for the $2,000 it’s supposed to cost every American.  But the government is spending money to help someone who isn’t them, and this is never okay. 

Breaking News: The government spends money in ways we don’t like all the time.  I would prefer we didn’t spend money blowing up people who have the misfortune to live somewhere else.  I would prefer we didn’t spend money on giving massive corporations, all of whom are doing perfectly fine making rent and putting food on the table, tax breaks and bailouts.  That’s the price of representative democracy.  It might be nice if I got to vote on every single dime the government spends, and if I could say exactly where I want my tax money to go, but it doesn’t work that way.  If there’s a way to change the government so we can do this, I’m certainly open to that idea.  Until then, we have to live with things we don’t like from time to time.

This time, we spent some money trying to ease the burden of people who are trying to learn a little more.  I’m fine with that.  I’m not going to see a dime of it.  That’s fine, too.  Why?  Because I like to help the people who need some help.  If it means one person gets to pay rent for one more month, I am thrilled we spent the money that way.  If it means a kid gets an ice cream cone Mom couldn’t afford to buy otherwise, give the kid an extra scoop.  I’m proud to have my money go there. 

Both Klingons and Conservatives are deeply concerned about who deserves what.  They are both obsessed with what they call Honor.  They both share a fascination with making judgments about people. 

I don’t deny the value of judgment.  It’s essential to survival.  It allows us to make better choices about our lives.  Our lives.  My problem occurs when people think they get to make judgments about other people’s lives.  Both Klingons and Conservatives like to do that rather frequently.  Neither of them can tolerate weakness in any form.  Only the strong should survive. 

When Worf, the most famous Klingon of them all, is injured and is unlikely to be able to walk again, he leaps to the conclusion that ritual suicide is necessary.  He’s not strong anymore, so he’s not worthy of existence.  Fortunately, he has some human friends who help him find another way.  A case can be made that they should have respected his wishes.  I won’t be the person making that case. 

When Conservatives see someone suffering, they are quick to point out how it’s their own fault.  They should have done this, or they shouldn’t have done that.  They deserve to suffer.  Conservatives don’t want to ease that suffering because it’s a sign of weakness.  “If they didn’t want to pay back the loan, they shouldn’t have borrowed the money.  If the degree didn’t get them a job that pays enough to pay back the loan, they should have skipped college and gotten a better job.  If they have a lousy job that doesn’t pay enough, they should go get a degree.  It’s their own fault.”

Both Conservatives and Klingons are fond of distractions that can help to bury the Truth.  In the Next Generation episode, “Sins of The Father,” Worf’s father is blamed for The Khitomer Massacre in which 4,000 Klingons were killed by Romulans who had inside help from a Klingon.  The Klingon who supplied the Romulans with the codes they needed to render the Klingons helpless was the father of the Klingon bringing the charge against Mogh.  Mogh is Worf’s father.  The Star Trek fandom page explains it:

Worf angrily demands an explanation for the Council judging Mogh guilty, despite the fact they knew he was innocent.  K’mpec privately explains the truth: When Klingons captured the Romulan ship with the records, they learned of the treachery behind the Khitomer Massacre; this soon became common knowledge, and someone had to answer for that treachery.  Fortunately, only the Council knew who transmitted his code: not Mogh, but Ja’rod, Duras’s father.

Beside himself, Worf violently points out that Duras should have been made to pay for the sins of Ja’rod, but K’mpec reveals that the Duras family is too powerful and to expose him would likely split the Empire and plunge it into a civil war. In order to avoid that, they decided to use Mogh as a scapegoat, believing that Worf, since he was in Starfleet, would not challenge the judgment. None of them realized that Kurn was Mogh’s second child.  But now things have progressed too far, and both sons of Mogh must die.

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Sins_of_the_Father_(episode)

At the moment, in our reality, former President Trump is likely to be indicted, not for inciting a riot and trying to stage a coup that would have made him a dictator, but for removing secured documents from The White House.  At the same time, the Trump-appointed Supreme Court has handed down rulings that have angered many voters, including stripping roughly half the population of their right to bodily autonomy.  This is likely to make the elections difficult for Republicans.  They need a distraction.  They need to find a reason for people to be angry at Democrats, and the Student Loan scandal was perfect for them. 

When Star Trek began in 1966, Klingons were the enemy.  They were simply evil, and they needed to be fought every time they appeared.  Had the ultrapowerful Organians not interfered, the Federation and the Klingons would have killed each other.  The Klingons took what they wanted by conquest.  The Federation tried to create unity with other species.  These opposing ideologies were destined for war. 

Neither Klingons nor Conservatives are all the same, however.  In the episode “Redemption, Part 2,” Worf is able to reclaim his honor and his family name by exposing the lies of the Duras family.  Duras’s illegitimate son, Toral, who intended to take over the Klingon Empire, is now held accountable for the family’s treachery.  Gowron, the leader of The Klingon High Council, gives Toral’s life to Worf.  Kurn is Worf’s brother.

TORAL: The Duras family will one day rule the Empire!
GOWRON: Perhaps.  But not today.  Worf.  This child’s family wrongly took your name and your honour from you.  In return, I give his life to you.
(Worf takes Gowron’s dagger and goes over to Toral, who braces himself for the thrust.  Worf drops the dagger on the floor)
KURN: What’s wrong?  Kill him!
WORF: No.
KURN: But it’s our way.  It is the Klingon way.
WORF: I know.  But it is not my way.  This boy has done me no harm and I will not kill him for the crimes of his family.
GOWRON: Then it falls to Kurn.
WORF: No.  No, you gave me his life, and I have spared it.

Klingons are capable of mercy.  They are not carbon copies of one another.

The same is true of Conservatives.  Just as Worf rooted out the treachery that threatened the Klingon Empire, so, too, one of the staunchest Conservatives in the United States, Liz Cheney, rooted out the treachery that threatened our freedom. 

In our hearing tonight, you saw an American president faced with a stark, unmistakable choice between right and wrong.  There was no ambiguity, no nuance.  Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our Constitutional order.  There is no way to excuse that behavior.  It was indefensible.  And every American must consider this: Can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of January 6th ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?

— Rep. Liz Cheney, vice chair of the Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the United States Capitol.  Remarks as delivered on Thursday, July 21, 2022

There is no group in which all its members are all good or all bad. 

In the 1968 episode, “Day of the Dove,” the crew of the Enterprise is trapped on their own ship with an equal number of Klingons as they hurtle out of the galaxy at high speed.  An alien entity is feeding off their hatred for one another and causing them to fight.  The Klingon Science officer, Mara, and Captain Kirk discuss the situation.

MARA: We have always fought.  We must.  We are hunters, Captain, tracking and taking what we need.  There are poor planets in the Klingon systems, we must push outward if we are to survive.

KIRK: There’s another way to survive.  Mutual trust and help.

By 1987, the Federation and the Klingons had become allies.  Worf was serving aboard a Federation ship.  Peace is both preferable and superior to war.  It requires understanding. 

The Federation learned to respect the proud Klingon tradition of honor, and the courage that accompanies it.  Worf was among the bravest men ever to show up on the Star Trek screen. 

The Klingons learned to respect the honor of the Federation in putting itself at risk to help others.  The Enterprise-C, the ship prior to Picard’s Enterprise, sacrificed itself to defend a Klingon outpost that had been ambushed by Romulans at Narendra III.  Even those who prefer peace are capable of showing courage. 

I prefer the Federation, or liberal, philosophy, which inspired the words I repeat so often on this show: “There is no Them; we are all Us.”  This doesn’t mean, however, that I have no respect for the rugged individualism that is at the heart of much of the Klingon, or Conservative, philosophy.  There are times when such power is necessary.  I would rather have Worf fighting by my side than either Kirk or Picard. 

If the Klingons and the Federation can be allies, defending themselves and each other from alien threats, and combining their knowledge to produce better lives for both groups, why can’t Liberals and Conservatives do the same?  We’re the same species.  We live on the same planet.  We share the same problems.  We all need water to drink and food to eat.  Climate change is just one example.  There are plenty of others. 

I’m sure there will be Liberal friends of mine who will tell me why I’m wrong to want to join with the Conservatives in solving our problems.  The Conservatives are the bad guys who want many of my friends dead.  I’m a sellout and a coward.  “We all know what a Klingon is,” as Dr. McCoy says while under the influence of the hatred-inducing alien entity.

I’m equally certain there will be Conservative friends of mine telling me that they have no interest in working with whiny bleeding-heart lazy Liberals who want everything handed to them for free.  Conservatives worked hard for what they have.  They’re not giving it away to people who don’t want to work.  Liberals “have no honor!”

I’m going to take you back, once more, to 1969.  Fifty-three years ago, the Klingons and the crew of The Enterprise were fighting each other with swords as they hurtled to their doom, just as we are doing as our water dries up, our forests burn, and our crops wither in the fields.

(A contingent of Federation including McCoy and Spock take on the rest of the Klingons in the corridor.  Spock cheats with his neck-pinch.  Finally Kirk gets the point of his sword at Kang’s throat.)
KIRK: Look!  Look, Kang.  For the rest of our lives.  A thousand lifetimes.  Senseless violence, fighting, while an alien has total control over us.
(Kirk throws away his sword.)
KIRK: All right.  All right.  In the heart.  In the head.  I won’t stay dead.  Next time I’ll do the same to you.  I’ll kill you.  And it goes on, the good old game of war, pawn against pawn!  Stopping the bad guys.  While somewhere, something sits back and laughs and starts it all over again.
MCCOY: Let’s jump him.
SPOCK: Those who hate and fight must stop themselves, Doctor.  Otherwise, it is not stopped.
MARA: Kang, I am your wife.  I’m a Klingon.  Would I lie for them?  Listen to Kirk.  He is telling the truth.
KIRK: Be a pawn, be a toy, be a good soldier that never questions orders.
(Kang looks at the weird light, then throws down his sword.)
KANG: Klingons kill for their own purposes.
SPOCK: All fighting must end, Captain, to weaken the alien before our dilithium crystals are gone.
KIRK: Lieutenant Uhura.
UHURA [OC]: Yes, Captain?
KIRK: Put me on ship-wide intercom.
UHURA [OC]: Aye, sir.
KIRK: Kang.
UHURA [OC]: Ready, Captain.
KIRK: This is Captain Kirk. A truce is ordered.  The fighting is over.  Lay down your weapons.
KANG: This is Kang.  Cease hostilities.  Disarm.
(The fighting stops.  The weird light turns orange.)
SPOCK: The cessation of violence appears to have weakened it, Captain.  I suggest that good spirits might make an effective weapon.
KIRK: Get off my ship.  You’re a dead duck here.  You’re powerless.  We know about you, and we don’t want to play.  Maybe there are others like you around.  Maybe you’ve caused a lot of suffering, a lot of history, but that’s all over.  We’ll be on guard now, ready for you.  So ship out!  Come on!  Haul it!
MCCOY: Yeah, out already.
KANG: Out!  We need no urging to hate humans.  But for the present, only a fool fights in a burning house.  Out!

I don’t really believe that an alien entity is causing us to fight.  I don’t think Jerome Bixby, who wrote the episode did either, but I could be wrong.  I never met the man to ask him.  Does the cause matter, though?  The rest of what Bixby wrote is true.  We can just keep fighting for thousands of lifetimes.  I know because we’ve already done that.  Kirk and Kang are characters, but they represent ideas.  Ideas can never be killed.  We will accomplish nothing by fighting endlessly. 

The world Star Trek depicts, and the one in which I want to live, couldn’t exist until humanity came together as one.  Roddenberry seemed to think a third World War was necessary first.  The Time Traveler I interviewed a few months ago agreed.  It was only after we lost so much that we recognized destroying one another was folly.  What if we recognized that now?

Is there a way we could be glad when we help those who need it, and withhold our judgments about the way others live their lives?  So long as they’re not hurting anyone, let them make their own choices, even if they aren’t the choices you might have made. 

Many generations of us grew up being taught that the only way you could be successful was to get a degree, and we worked very hard to do that.  Now we’re being told we shouldn’t have taken on the debt if we couldn’t repay it.  Ask the most important question:  Who’s better off for that?  Going to school is what makes it possible for people to become doctors, nurses, and teachers, all of whom are essential to our society.  Shall we now tell people to stop doing that?  This means either that we will have no doctors, nurses, or teachers, or that those who fill those roles will be unqualified to perform the job correctly.  As I mentioned in the previous episode, there are states that are already doing this for teachers.  Shall we do that for surgeons, too?  If so, I’ve seen every episode of M*A*S*H.  Hand me a scalpel. 

If you don’t like the way the government spent our money, stop being angry, and go to the voting booth.  Yelling at me isn’t going to change it.  I’ll be voting for those who prefer to help people as opposed to helping corporations.  You are more than welcome to vote in the opposite direction.   I will do what I can, calmly and rationally, to convince you to join me in recognizing that people matter more than money, but in the end, I won’t be with you in the voting booth.  You’ll be alone there, doing what your conscience tells you is right.  So will I. 

We’re stronger together.  We all do better when we all do better.

Live long and prosper.

Qapla!

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Freedom is Under Attack

My best friend, Stephanie, is on vacation in Norway.  She left America, and the shit hit the fan.  This is obviously her fault.

I already spent an entire episode on the January 6 Committee Hearings.  I won’t go any further into that now, but those started right around the time Stephanie left.  Since she’s been gone, half of our population has lost the right to bodily autonomy.  That’s a polite way of saying pregnant persons don’t get to choose what will happen to their bodies anymore.  They can now be turned in because their periods are irregular.  There are bounties available for turning in someone you suspect might have had an abortion. 

https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/blog/wtf-an-abortion-bounty-law-in-2021

One of The People on The Porch, whose identity I will not reveal, suffers from a condition called PCOS.  What is that?  I didn’t know, either so I looked it up.

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) is a condition in which the ovaries produce an abnormal amount of androgens, male sex hormones that are usually present in women in small amounts.  The symptoms of PCOS may include:

  • Missed periods, irregular periods, or very light periods…
  • Infertility 

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/polycystic-ovary-syndrome-pcos#:~:text=Polycystic%20ovary%20syndrome%20(PCOS)%20is,that%20form%20in%20the%20ovaries.

How is this relevant?  It makes it likely that a woman suffering from this condition could be suspected of having had an abortion.  There are places where she would have to prove she didn’t.  Is this really what we want? 

The Attack on Freedom doesn’t end there.

They have just put religion back into public schools.  The government now gets to “encourage” your religious belief.  The defense I am hearing is that it’s “voluntary” to remain when the football coach is conducting a prayer on the field.  Justice Sotomayor disagreed:

Sotomayor’s dissent, which included photographs of the prayers in question, suggested that she thought the majority was not describing accurately the factual circumstances of the case.

“As the majority tells it, Kennedy, a coach for the District’s football program, ‘lost his job’ for ‘(praying) quietly while his students were otherwise occupied,’” she wrote.  “The record before us, however, tells a different story.”

Her dissent also pointedly noted that the school district tried to accommodate the coach by offering him a place to pray, off the field.  “Again, the District emphasized that it was happy to accommodate Kennedy’s desire to pray on the job in a way that did not interfere with his duties or risk perceptions of endorsement,” she said.

She said that it was “unprecedented” for the court to hold that Kennedy’s conduct, “taken as a whole, did not raise cognizable” concerns of coercion.

Sotomayor stressed that students could have felt coerced to join in the prayer and pointed to the fact that the court in the past has “recognized that students face immense social pressure.”

She said that they look up to their teachers and coaches as role models and “seek their approval” and that players might try to gain a coach’s approval to secure a stronger letter of recommendation for college recruiting or more playing time on the field.  “The record before the Court bears this out,” she wrote.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/27/politics/football-coach-prayer-high-school-supreme-court-kennedy/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/19/politics/joe-kennedy-football-coach-prayer-supreme-court/index.html

While it’s true that no one was physically stopping players or fans from leaving, physical pressure isn’t all that is involved.  Fitting in with others is a vital part of our social development.  I hid my atheism for years because I was already enough of an outcast in public school.  I couldn’t take the chance of being any more different from my classmates.  And, yes, it happened to me in fourth grade.

“You know why it should be front and center?  It’s not the first amendment, it’s not freedom of religion, it’s not church and state.  It’s not abstract.  It’s the fourth grader who gets his ass kicked at recess because he sat out the voluntary prayer in home room.  It’s another way of making kids different from other kids when they’re required by law to be there.  That’s why you want it front and center: the fourth grader.  That’s the prize.”

– Toby Zigler, Season 2, Episode 8 “Shibboleth” in The West Wing written by Aaron Sorkin

I’m an atheist, and I can say that now because I live alone, I practically never leave the house, and the fact that lots of people don’t like me for that isn’t as difficult to handle.  If I were still in 4th grade, I don’t know how I would deal with it. 

I have no problem of any kind with the fact that many people I love have very different relationships with the universe than I do.  One of the people I love most became a minister a few years ago, and I’m proud to say I was among her biggest supporters when she was studying.  It was something important to her, and I want for her all the things that make her happy.  Her religious beliefs helped to shape her into a kind, empathetic, loving person who wants to make the world a better place.  We’re standing on the same ground about that.  We just took different paths to get here.

Now The Supreme Court is telling us we need to be a part of the majority if we don’t want to feel ostracized.

What else are they going to do?

They’ve made it clear they’re just getting started.  One of my gay friends is doing all he can to shore up his legal rights to protect his marriage because that’s on the agenda.  The Supreme Court is not only telling half of the population what they have to do with their bodies, and they’re not just saying we need to adopt the religious beliefs of those around us if we don’t want to face shunning (or getting our asses kicked at recess), but they’re also telling us who we can love, and how we can love them.  They’re going to revisit gay marriage and contraception. 

In his concurring opinion, Thomas — an appointee of President George H.W. Bush — wrote that the justices “should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” — referring to three cases having to do with Americans’ fundamental privacy, due process, and equal protection rights.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/24/thomas-constitutional-rights-00042256

One of The People on The Porch told me this on Facebook:

My marriage is about to be invalidated.  Just got off the phone making lawyer appointments to update our wills and trusts.  Technically if they repeal 14th amendment-based decisions, I’ll have to move into the spare room.

Fred Eder

Name Deleted, this is entirely unacceptable.  I don’t know what we can do beyond voting in massive numbers, and, I hope, increasing the size of SCOTUS so we can dilute the power of the fascists who have been working toward this for 40 years.

The idea that you can’t love whomever you choose should be offensive to any person with a molecule of empathy in their souls.

We are being told what we can and can’t do with our own bodies, who and how we may love, and what religious views we must have.  Any one of those is an outrage.  Collectively, they add up to the foundations of a dystopian nightmare.

I don’t have the power to fight this level of Evil.  I could never make it to Mordor to destroy the Ring.  My hopes for survival are pinned to a Frodo of whom I’ve never heard to restore what little freedom we have left.

Fred Eder, ah well I was in the streets in the 80s and 90s.  I’m staring turning 60 in the face.  I had hoped that our actions in those days would pave the way for equality, and they did….  for a while…now the fascism is back with a vengeance.  Didn’t think I’d have to, but I will pick up signs, bricks and more to stop this.  The Christian Taliban ain’t getting their way on my watch if I can help it.

Fred Eder

Name Deleted, I’m glad you’re healthy enough to do this.  I can barely stand up.

All I can do is talk to the 50 or so people who listen to my show every week.  My hope is I can get one or two of them to vote for, advocate for, and take whatever action they can to protect what little is left of our Freedom.

Thank you for all you have done to help keep us free.

I’ve seen on Facebook recently the unattributed quote that “The road to fascism is paved with people telling us we’re overreacting.”

I don’t believe I’m overreacting.  More than half of the population has lost an important right.  I understand opposing abortion.  I would prefer that no one ever needed one, but the fact is that those who get pregnant do sometimes, for reasons that are none of my business.  They’re none of your business, either. 

The idea that we get to decide for anyone other than ourselves, when, with whom, or how we should have sex is unconscionable.  What goes on between consenting adults is of no concern to anyone but them.  The Supreme Court, however, has decided that government should be just small enough to fit in everyone’s bedrooms.  You may not have sex with a member of your own gender.  You may not use contraceptives with your partner.  You must have a baby if you become pregnant.  This is what our Supreme Court wants to tell us. 

“That’s not what they’re saying at all.  They’re saying it’s up to each state to decide these things.  They’re not taking anyone’s rights away.  They’re giving rights to decide back to the states.”

Oh yes… States’ Rights.  I know I’ve heard of that somewhere before… Where was that?  Oh yes… There was a thing called The Civil War.  That was about States’ Rights, too, but in that case, it was about the rights of some states to own other human beings.  I don’t believe there is anyone listening who would be in favor of slavery today.    

I know, though, that many of us are opposed to abortion.  Some of us oppose it for religious reasons, and others simply think of it as murdering babies.  Let me be clear:  No one wants to murder babies.  I would do anything in my power to save the life of a child.  So would anyone else listening now. 

How could we reduce the number of abortions people have?  This is a question worth pursuing. 

First, we could minimize some of the reasons pregnant people feel the need for them.  This would include not outlawing, but distributing freely and everywhere, all the contraception people need.  If people don’t get pregnant in the first place, they don’t need abortions.  If you oppose abortion, I hope you would support this.

Next, we could ensure that all the prenatal help a pregnant person needs is freely and widely available.  If you oppose abortion, I hope you would support this.

We could also improve the financial circumstances of pregnant people so they can afford to raise a child.  We could get them all the diapers, food, formula, day care, and any other assistance they need to be able to raise a child.  If you oppose abortion, I hope you would support this.

Will this end all abortions?  No.  Of course not.  These are only some of the reasons people get abortions.  But if they keep even one person from having an abortion, isn’t that closer to what you want?  Isn’t something better than nothing?

And, making abortion illegal in roughly half of the country won’t stop abortions, either.  Wealthy people who become pregnant will still find places to obtain their safe and legal abortions.  Poor people won’t have as many options, and I think these are the people The Supreme Court is targeting.  They can’t afford to run off to another state at will to get their abortions.  They will need to get dangerous illegal abortions, often performed by people who are not qualified. 

I would prefer, too, that no one needed an abortion, but there are any number of times when they are necessary.  And it’s nothing any pregnant person wants in the same way they want an ice cream cone.  It’s something they need for any number of reasons that I have no right to judge.  What scares me the most is that the fascism won’t end with the freedoms that are being curtailed for ever-growing segments of the population.  It’s that the people who want to restrict our freedoms are not exactly known for their loyalty.  They wanted to hang one of their own on January 6, 2021.  If you’re thinking that this isn’t going to affect you because you’re straight, or male, or Christian, I would like to remind you that Mike Pence is all those things, too.  Please don’t believe that when the violence begins, you’ll certainly be spared.

One of my most intelligent friends, Greg Smithwick, pointed out today on his show, “So Local Live” that once the violence begins, it’s difficult to control.  This is important to remember.  Yes, I want to stop the attacks on Freedom while we still can.  No, I don’t advocate violence, although I know many of you feel it may be necessary.  I hope you’re wrong. 

One of the things that I believe is going to help us to avoid a Second Civil War is our diversity.  There are people of differing political views in every state in the nation.  There is no exclusively Republican or Democratic state.  There are liberals in Arizona.  (Hi, I’m Fred, have we met?)  There are conservatives in California.  I lived in one of their trailers for a couple of months.  I don’t see our two states going to war because there are enough people on the opposing side in every state. 

Every night at 6:05 PM (It used to be 7:37 PM, but Mom is falling asleep earlier now) I talk to my Mom.  We have nearly the same conversation every night, and it ends with me saying, “Now you know I’m okay, and I know you’re okay, so we can both relax and get a good night’s sleep.”  What I fear most is the day when I won’t be able to make that call, or to tell her I’m okay.  I don’t feel confident that I will be able to do that indefinitely.  Fascists don’t like people like me very well.  The only thing I have going for me is that I’m so small I might escape their notice, at least in the beginning of the rounding up of enemies of the state.

Regular listeners know that on The Front Porch, I like to leave you with hope.  I want us to continue to Shine.  This week, that hope comes from one of The People on The Porch who posted this on Facebook last week when I said that freedom is under attack, and that I’m terrified:

It’s more likely that this measure will prompt a backlash that institutes some needed reforms.

1) Now a constitutional amendment securing the equality of women as well bodily sovereignty has become urgent.  It can be worded in a way that makes it dangerous for even the most obstinate senators to vote against.

2) The Supreme Court will now come under heavy and sustained political fire for a very long time, and so perhaps term limits (18 years?) will gain support.

3) Gay marriage, contraceptives, interracial marriage, and so on cannot be subject to surprise attacks, because everyone is on alert now and no one can be caught by surprise.  There’s a paradox that when you think you’re safe, you’re not, and when you’re on high alert because your guard is up, the vigilance actually means you’re in less danger.

Fred Eder

Thank you for giving me a little hope.  This terror does horrible things to my depression.  There’s a part of me that just wants to find a way to run as far from here as I can, but I have no way to do that.

This is not the America I grew up believing in.  This is no longer the great shining beacon of Freedom that made me so proud as a child.  We have been watching it happen slowly for 40 years.  Now it’s coming to fruition, and if we don’t stop it now, we will never be able to survive.

Fred Eder, it is still that shining beacon.  There is simply nowhere else for the people of the world to turn to for a vision of the future.  Russia?  China?  Europe?  Japan?  They’re all in demographic decline, and have a small, narrow, ethnocentric interest and perspective.

America remains the last best hope for the world – a multi-ethnic democracy where cults of personality must eventually lose out to and be subordinate to the rule of law.

We’re being tested.  Although it is difficult to see in the darkest of night, the version of America that’s worth fighting for is still winning.

So… without violence, what can we do?

Greg suggested getting 10 people all the help they need to be sure they’re registered to vote.  You’re my 10 people.  If you need help, you can ask me.  I’m not any sort of expert, but I can do the Google Search for you if you have difficulty. 

I don’t have any money to contribute to the people or causes that might lead us out of this nightmare.  I barely have enough money to make ends meet, even though I’m getting the greatest deal on rent I ever could hope to have, a friend sends me money for groceries sometimes, and I get support from The People on the Porch.  My Disability check wouldn’t even pay the rent on the smallest apartment in my town.  I rarely have triple digits in my account at the end of the month.  There are times I don’t even have double digits.  If you’re someone with extra money to support the causes in which you believe, please donate to them.  While I don’t like the fact that our world is based around money, that doesn’t change the fact that it is.  Money helps get things done.

The last time I attended a protest was, I think, 3 years ago.  My former roommates could correct me on this.  They were there.  My memory is not to be relied upon for accuracy.  When we got home, I was throwing up for most of the night.  There was some discussion about whether I needed to go to the ER yet again, but they gave me some sort of pill that stopped the vomiting, and I was all right.  I think it was heat stroke and exhaustion.  I was healthier three years ago than I am now.  I don’t have the physical strength to attend a protest.  If you do, and you can do it safely, I encourage you to go.  You don’t need to do violence.  You just need to be there.  Numbers make a difference. 

I have no skill in organizing anything.  I would make a mess of it.  Are you good at organizing?  Excellent.  Use that skill.

All I have the ability to do now is this show.  I’m hoping to rally all 50 of the people who listen to the cause of change.  Whatever you can do to help, please, please, please do it! 

Stephanie will have returned to America by the time this hits Patreon, so perhaps it will all have stopped by then, since, clearly, it was her fault all this happened in the first place.  America can’t survive without her.  But, just in case my reasoning here is faulty (you might check out something called Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc sometime), I’m asking you to help save Freedom before it is gone.

Oh, and on a side note, Greg, you said on your show today that you’ve been supporting me on Patreon for years.  If you have been, I didn’t know that.  Are you my Mystery Patron?  Has your identity finally been revealed?  If that’s you, thank you!  If it’s not, could you please send me a little of what you’re smoking?  It seems to be better than mine. 

And I want to remind you, dear listener, once more, that I love you. 

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Cameras In The Classroom

Camera in a Classroom

Iowa Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would force all public-school classrooms to have a camera that would livestream classes which parents and guardians could view online.  Under the bill, school staff who did not keep cameras active or who obstruct the camera’s view could be fined up to 5 percent of their weekly salary.

“I have a right to know what is happening in my child’s classroom every minute of every day.  If teachers have nothing to hide, there is no reason to keep cameras out of the classroom.  Let the parents know what teachers are doing to their children.  This is no different than police officers wearing body cameras to ensure they’re not doing anything wrong.  And, like body cameras, cameras in the classroom will provide evidence to protect teachers when they are unjustly accused.  Why on Earth would anyone object to Cameras in The Classroom?”

That’s an excellent question.  I asked it this week on my Facebook page after a dear friend made a request for this episode.  What I’m about to give you is NOT to be confused with scientific research, or even with a valid poll.  It’s nothing more than the responses of a few of my friends, many of whom are, shockingly enough, teachers.  I taught Elementary School for 29 years.  I made friends with a few teachers in that time. 

I won’t be using real names.  One of them already has a built-in pseudonym, and the others I will invent. 

A friend I’ll call “Jennifer” suggested:

My two cents is that if you mistrust teachers so much, keep your kids home and home school them.

The response to this would probably be that not everyone CAN keep their kids at home to home-school them.  Many, if not most, parents are working.

Another friend I’ll call Frances, who has mixed feelings about it, made a case for having cameras in the classroom.  She told us:

As an abused child that switched schools several times in order to get away from our abuser, I could see how this could go terribly awry.

On the other hand, my 6th grade teacher used to hit us with yardsticks and paddles when we were “bad”.  One time, there was this boy named Bobby that used to go rounds with the teacher.  Teacher bullied the student & the student retaliated with a disrespectful & aggressive attitude.  Bobby spouted off to the teacher this day & the teacher full on assaulted this 12 yr old boy.  It was horrifying.  As it turns out, Bobby was being abused at home by his alcoholic father only to come to school to be further abused by his teacher.  In that case, maybe a camera would have saved that boy from yet another assault from an adult that was supposed to be taking care of him.

I’m kinda torn on this one.

This is an important point.  Most teachers, like most police officers, are good, kind, caring people of decent moral character.  In any group, however, there will be bad people, and the teaching profession is no exception.  I don’t know anyone who wants a teacher like this in the classroom.  Is a camera in the classroom the only way to stop someone like this from abusing our children? 

I think we all know that it’s not.  At no time in my career was there ever a camera live streaming my class to the world.  Near the end of my career, however, cell phones were common.  I’m sure they’re even more prevalent now than they were in 2016 when I quit teaching.  You can be reasonably certain some student would record that moment.  Even if that didn’t happen, it would be discussed around dinner tables when students go home to tell their versions of the story to their horrified parents.  It would get to the administration.  It would be addressed swiftly and in accordance with the policies of the district.  The camera wouldn’t offer immediate assistance. 

There is also a legitimate legal issue of student privacy.  As Frau Bleucher tells us:

I teach 3rd grade.  I can’t even take pictures of my entire class without putting an emoji over 2-3 faces because their parents won’t give permission for their pictures to be taken.  So, it would be an issue.

I have 6 students who are currently kindergarten level, so I’m trying to fill in some deep gaps.  Therefore, they will receive different types of lessons and learning strategies than my other students.  I referred all of them for an SST (Student Study Team) meeting in September so we can see if they qualify to be academically tested.  We are currently a year behind in our intervention meetings due to Covid/distance learning.  No other parent needs to know this.

I have one who has the mentality of a 3-4 year old. (We are in the process of trying to find a suitable educational placement before she goes to 4th grade).  She also goes to speech and occupational therapy.  No one needs to know this. I have 3 students who suffer from emotional distress and go to a counselor.  No one has the right to know this.  One is absolutely brilliant, 5th grade level. But, we believe he is on the spectrum and has had episodes of extreme frustration that he gets mad and begins to tear up my classroom or throw things, or break down in tears because he can’t handle it. He also has a severe stutter, but it’s taking a long time to process for testing.  No one needs to see him trying to control his feelings and not succeed on a particular day.

She makes excellent points here.  Students’ privacy outweighs the need for parents to watch what happens all day long in a classroom.  Such a stream could easily be hacked and used for unthinkable purposes.  I’ll say the word pedophile, and I’ll leave it at that. 

A significant part of teaching is establishing relationships with students.  This is made much more difficult by having every move watched in an almost Orwellian sense. 

Another friend I’ll call Austen, who does a weekly news and commentary show on YouTube, saw both sides of it.

I am legitimately torn on this issue.  I feel like the way it is going to be implemented and used is nothing more than spying on teachers for the state.  I don’t think people can work or study in that environment.  On the other hand, I think child abuse at the hands of teachers would probably go… way down and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have an objective view of what’s happening inside of classrooms.  Really tough.  On the one hand we have this watch state, which is dystopian and disturbing.  On the other hand the constant use of cameras everywhere save(s) lives and stops abuse and exposes lies.  We would need to create a lot of regulation around them if we did.  I cannot fall on one side of this issue or the other, I am genuinely torn.

I would be way more in favor of recordings though than streaming.

This might be a more workable idea.  If we insist on putting cameras in the classrooms, the videos are locked down, and they can be opened only with just cause.  I wouldn’t want to try to determine what qualifies as just cause, but others can figure that out. 

I think she’s right, too, that much of this is because there are those who live in terror that teachers will discuss issues that they don’t want discussed.  I suspect you’re familiar with The Scopes Trial.  It is explained succinctly by History.com here:

The Scopes Trial, also known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was the 1925 prosecution of science teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school, which a recent bill had made illegal.  The trial featured two of the best-known orators of the era, William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow, as opposing attorneys. The trial was viewed as an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of the bill, to publicly advocate for the legitimacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution, and to enhance the profile of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/scopes-trial#:~:text=The%20Scopes%20Trial%2C%20also%20known,recent%20bill%20had%20made%20illegal.

Even today teaching Evolution can be controversial.  It was the cry for inclusion of religious doctrine as science that gave rise to The Flying Spaghetti Monster.  In an open letter to the Kansas School Board, Bobby Henderson wrote:

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution.  I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them.  I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design.  I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster.  It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel.  We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Open Letter To Kansas School Board

Today, many are concerned about Critical Race Theory.  They don’t want teachers to discuss anything that might make anyone uncomfortable.  Books are being banned for having LGBTQIA characters, for discussing racism, for illustrating the holocaust, or for having ideas that cause a reader to reflect, ponder, or think at all.  Cameras in the classroom would have provided powerful evidence against Scopes.  I believe this is among the reasons Republican state Rep. Norlin Mommsen, who introduced the Iowa Bill, would like to have every moment of the day recorded.  There are bills restricting what teachers can discuss in their classrooms, and the punishments for violations can be extreme.  In short, they want their ideas to be taught to the exclusion of all others.  History shows us this never works out well. 

Your ideas about religion are personal.  The government has no business telling you what your relationship to the universe, or to God, or to multiple gods should be.  Certainly, the school doesn’t have the right to do that. 

History, however, is not a matter of personal opinion.  The Declaration of Independence was dated July 4, 1776.  To say otherwise would require quite a bit of evidence that would probably require a TARDIS to collect.  Slavery was a part of America.  European Americans subjugated and slaughtered Native Americans.  These are facts.  Understanding our history allows us to learn from our mistakes and celebrate our victories.  The United States has won extraordinary victories for humanity.  We have put human beings on the Moon.  We have made an effort at having Freedom unlike any before us.  And we have made mistakes.  We have done evil.  This is all part of the canvas of our history.  We need to see all of it in the cold light of day. 

And just as we trust doctors with medicine and lawyers with legal matters, because they are professionals who have learned more about it than we know ourselves, we need to trust our teachers and treat them as professionals who know more about education than the rest of us.  They are already underpaid and insufficiently respected.  They are filling roles for which no school ever prepared them.  They have become parents, counselors, social workers, and practitioners of patience on an unimaginable scale.  They need to deal with a host of children’s challenges, whether the child is abused, neglected, homeless, or simply sad because their dog died.  They take on an enormous responsibility, and they do it for very little money.  If we would like to end what people are calling a teacher shortage, perhaps we could let them do their jobs unencumbered by the uninformed opinions of those who have, or want to have, power over them. 

No one went into teaching to make money.  We did it to make a difference.  Don’t beat the passion out of those who are still in the profession.  They’re doing the best they can with incredibly limited time and resources.  If you don’t want to support them, at least don’t make their jobs harder.  Let’s leave the cameras on cell phones.  Let’s let teachers do what they can to save the world.

Posted on by Fred · 3 Comments

Preserving Liberty

American Flag

My first idea was to call this episode “Preserving Democracy.”  The moment, however, that I refer to our system of government as a democracy, someone will shout, “We’re not a democracy; we’re a republic,” and we’re already wasting time on semantics.  I don’t want to argue about which terms we apply to the idea that our government is supposed to be about Liberty.  It’s right there in our Pledge of Allegiance: “…with liberty and justice for all.”  The only way it works is if we can all vote.  We gave up The Divine Right of Kings by 1776.  Google’s Dictionary defines it fairly well: “the doctrine that kings derive their authority from God, not from their subjects, from which it follows that rebellion is the worst of political crimes.  It was claimed in Britain by the earlier Stuarts and is also associated with the absolutism of Louis XIV of France.”

Constitution of The United States

The idea of America is that we all decide who will represent us, our values, our needs, and our concerns in government.  I welcome this concept.  I think everyone – and by that, I mean all human beings capable of understanding what it means to vote (more than, say, arbitrarily, 12 years old) should be able to vote.  If you live here, whether I agree with you or not, I believe your voice should be heard as clearly as mine.  This is true whether you are a convicted felon, an illegal immigrant, a homeless person, or the CEO of General Motors.  You have a stake in what happens in this country. 

Why do you object to someone voting?  Among those of us who have that right, well over 30% of us choose not to use it.  Do you believe a prisoner serving his sentence is going to vote for the candidate who wants to legalize robbing a convenience store or something?  Is there such a candidate… anywhere?  If those who are currently unrepresented, or, at least under-represented, can vote, the country can more accurately reflect the will of its residents.  I’m willing to bet that a large portion of us, on both sides of the aisle, would love to end poverty and homelessness.

Universal Voting has met significant opposition from its inception.  Women were not allowed to vote for well over a century.  Black people weren’t allowed, preliminarily, to vote, and when they were, laws were promptly passed to make it all but impossible.  People have died for having the unmitigated temerity of trying to cast a vote. 

A few weeks ago I talked to you about The Utopia We Could Create.  (It’s Episode 137: The Utopia We Could Create: One Dear Land if you haven’t heard it) I described Ellen Hadley’s vision of a world without poverty and homelessness, with little fear of war, with help for everyone, and with information shared all but effortlessly with anyone who wants it.  It’s a beautiful idea.  The first step in bringing it to fruition is ensuring that everyone can vote. 

While we currently live in an oligarchy, or a government run by the wealthy, we were not designed to work like this.  There are many more struggling than thriving.  If we let those who are struggling vote, they’re likely to elect representatives who will help to ease their pain.  Those who hold power now don’t seem to like this idea very well.  They’re doing what they can to make voting as difficult as possible.  I’ll give you a few examples.

Politicians often use unfounded claims of voter fraud to try to justify registration restrictions. In 2011, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach championed a law requiring Kansans to show “proof of citizenship” documents in order to register to vote, citing false claims of noncitizen voting. Most people don’t carry the required documents on hand — like a passport, or a birth certificate — and as a result, the law blocked the registrations of more than 30,000 Kansans…

Some states are discouraging voter participation by imposing arbitrary requirements and harsh penalties on voters and poll workers who violate these rules.  In Georgia, lawmakers have made it a crime to provide food and water to voters standing in line at the polls — lines that are notoriously long in Georgia, especially for communities of color. In Texas, people have been arrested and given outrageous sentences for what amount at most to innocent mistakes made during the voting process…

A felony conviction can come with drastic consequences, including the loss of your right to vote.  Some states ban voting only during incarceration, or while on probation or parole.  And other states and jurisdictions, like Maine, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., don’t disenfranchise people with felony convictions at all.  The fact that these laws vary so dramatically only adds to the overall confusion that voters face, which is a form of voter suppression in itself.

Due to racial bias in the criminal justice system, felony disenfranchisement laws disproportionately affect Black and Brown people, who often face harsher sentences than white people for the same offenses. Many of these laws are rooted in the Jim Crow era, when legislators tried to block Black Americans’ newly won right to vote by enforcing poll taxes, literacy tests, and other barriers that were nearly impossible to meet.  To this day, the states with the most extreme disenfranchisement laws also have long histories of suppressing the rights of Black people.

https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020

Voting Lines in Ohio

These are just three examples.  There are many more.  Many states are going to great lengths to ensure as few people as possible vote.  This is in direct opposition to the ideas upon which our government is founded.  If we add to this the gerrymandering that occurs in many places, it becomes clear that those in charge are more interested in maintaining power, and less interested in creating One Dear Land. 

The cynic will tell you that your vote doesn’t matter.  Both major parties are controlled by the elite, and there’s nothing we can do short of a violent overthrow of the government.  The problem with that is, in the unlikely event they were successful, we would then have a government controlled by violent people, and I have no more confidence in their intentions to help us reclaim our liberty than I have in those who currently hold power.  The odds of such a revolution working are miniscule.  The United States has the most powerful military in the history of the world.  There’s no military action a militia can launch that could scratch the surface.  Additionally, many people will die in any such plan.  I’m opposed to killing except in the most extreme cases of need. 

Fortunately, other solutions are available.  One is The John Lewis Voting Rights Act.  “The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advance­ment Act would restore the law (the Voting Rights Act) to full strength, in part by once again requir­ing states with histor­ies of voter discrim­in­a­tion to receive approval from the Depart­ment of Justice or a federal court before enact­ing voting changes.”

— https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-false-claims-about-john-lewis-voting-rights-act

The idea is that we will have more opportunities for people to vote.  More voices will be heard.  Is this necessary, though?

The Brennan Center for Justice tells us:

Voter suppres­sion remains on the rise today.  In 2021 alone, at least 19 states enacted at least 34 laws that make it harder to vote, while at least 13 restrict­ive voting bills have been pre-filed for 2022 legis­lat­ive sessions and no fewer than 152 restrict­ive voting bills will carry over from last year. Four of the restrict­ive laws that passed in 2021 are “monster” voter suppres­sion pack­ages that include dozens voting access roll­backs.  Two of these monster laws are in states that would be covered by the version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act before the Senate (Texas and Geor­gia) and a third is in a state (Flor­ida) that would have been covered by the House version of the bill.  (The fourth is in Iowa).

In 1965, states and local­it­ies suppressed the votes of people of color with poll taxes and liter­acy tests.  Today, we see insi­di­ous discrim­in­a­tion in new forms.  We see it when a state bans 24-hour voting in response to its wide­spread use in a heav­ily nonwhite county. We see it when a state sets limits on drop boxes that make them harder to access after nonwhite voters used them in droves. We see it when a legis­lator says we should focus on the “qual­ity” of voters over the quant­ity.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debunking-false-claims-about-john-lewis-voting-rights-act

One step toward ensuring full participation in our democracy is passing the latest Voting Rights Act.  There are enough votes in Congress to accomplish this, except that the filibuster keeps it from happening.  The filibuster, in modern times, is explained here by The Washington Post.

The filibuster is a Senate rule that essentially requires 60 votes to pass most legislation.

The Senate is required to follow certain procedural steps in passing legislation.  When a bill is brought to the Senate floor, any senator can bring things to a halt by speaking for as long as they wish, effectively delaying a vote to end debate on a bill.  The Senate can vote to end debate with a three-fifths majority, or 60 of 100 senators.  So any bill that has the support of at least 60 senators is, in effect, filibuster-proof, and the Senate can quickly move on to the next steps leading up to a final vote.

But most controversial legislation is passed on party-line votes these days, and it’s very rare for parties to have 60 senators.  Democrats only have 50 right now.

In the modern Senate, an objecting senator doesn’t actually have to stand there and filibuster endlessly — you might remember Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) reading “Green Eggs and Ham,” or Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) quoting Jay-Z and Wiz Khalifa, in the midst of hours-long speeches that brought the Senate to a standstill.

Those were examples of what was required of senators decades ago.  Now, a senator can simply indicate her intent to filibuster a bill and cause it to be sidelined.  That means in the current Senate, all it takes is one Republican to object to a Democratic-sponsored bill, and that bill is stopped in its tracks.https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/09/what-is-filibuster/

Ending the filibuster would allow Congress to protect our voting rights.  It’s not a panacea, but it’s a good step toward allowing us to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  There are dangers for both sides of the aisle.  Democrats will be able to pass voting rights legislation now, but Republicans are likely to regain the majority in the 2022 elections, and changing the filibuster will give them greater power to pass legislation Democrats won’t like. 

The majority of voters chose these representatives.  The majority of these representatives want to protect voting rights.  I’m a part of that majority, which is extraordinarily rare for a man known for holding minority opinions on nearly every issue. 

If the people are accurately and faithfully represented, the people can decide how to make our country, first, and our world, inevitably, the kind of place it ought to be.  We can work together to abolish poverty, to terminate homelessness, and to ensure that everyone’s basic needs are met. We need to preserve our liberty if we’re going to accomplish anything else.

Violence is unnecessary and counterproductive.  We can use our voices to make a difference.  I can’t make that difference alone.  Neither can you.  Neither can she.  But, if every person moves one rock, a billion of us can move a mountain.  I’m moving the tiny little rock that I can.  I hope you can move a heavier stone.

Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world
You

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

— John Lennon

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Without Firing a Single Shot

A Primer on Impeachment

As I write this, near the end of November, 2019, it is almost certain that President Trump is going to be impeached. It’s important to know when I’m writing this, because I would like it to live longer than this week. Its historic value, at least to me, is enhanced by understanding the context in which it was written.

For my readers who don’t follow the news closely, here is where we currently are.

On July 25, 2019, President Trump called the President of Ukraine. During that call, we know President Trump asked Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to investigate Trump’s Presidential Rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, to determine if they had committed corrupt acts. The entire call is in this link.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf

The relevant parts of the conversation, quoted from the document Trump declassified on September 24, 2019, are these:

President Trump: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation … I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible…

Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor bf New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that. The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you ·can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.

This is clearly a request for the Ukrainian President to investigate Trump’s political opponent. The woman to whom Trump refers is Marie Yovanovitch. She later testified in front of Congress. She was a United States Ambassador under 3 different presidents, both Republican and Democrat, before she was smeared by several people and removed by the President. She is an expert on Ukraine.

At the same time that the President was asking Zelenskyy for help, Trump was holding up sending nearly $400 million of military funding to Ukraine.

The accusation, which began when an unidentified Whistle-blower reported the call, is that President Trump misused his Presidential power to gain a purely political benefit for himself, while disregarding what is best for the country. He was, in effect, bribing Ukraine to get dirt on his political opponent. This brought the Latin term “quid pro quo” to the forefront of the American lexicon for a couple of weeks. The term means, simply, “This for that.” Was the President holding up desperately needed money that Congress approved for Ukraine to fight its war with Russia until Ukraine announced it was investigating Biden and the possibility that it was Ukraine, and not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election? The President has said repeatedly there was “no quid pro quo.” His Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, said publicly that there was, but it was a common technique used in foreign policy, and that everyone should “get over it.” Mulvaney walked that statement back a few hours later.

As of this writing, Congress has produced a dozen witnesses, including Ambassador Yovanovitch, testifying on national television about what happened. They corroborate the Whistle-blower’s account sufficiently that the Democrats are not calling him (or her) to testify. Republicans want to know who the Whistle-blower is. They want him or her to testify.

Preliminarily, Republicans attacked the process of the impeachment. They said it was unfair that it took place behind closed doors, and without Republican representation in the room. There were, however, more than 40 Republicans present in the closed door hearings, and the hearings subsequently were broadcast to the American people.

Mr Trump denies using US military aid as a bargaining chip with Mr Zelenskyy and has repeatedly insisted his call with Ukraine’s leader was “perfect.”

He has called the impeachment inquiry a “witch hunt” by Democrats and elements of the media.

The current Republican defense comes in three parts:

– Ukraine’s president said he felt no pressure

– The Ukrainians were unaware the aid was held back

– Us Military Aid was eventually released

The entire article from which the above was quoted appears here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39945744

It’s important, also, to understand that impeachment doesn’t necessarily mean the President will be removed from office. First, the House of Representatives must write Articles of Impeachment, in which they lay out the reasons they believe the President should be removed from office. Next, there must be a trial in the Senate, presided over by the Chief Justice of The Supreme Court, and 2/3 of the Senate (67 people) must vote to remove him from office. As this would require more than 20 Republican votes, it is unlikely, at this moment, that the President will be removed from office.

My Opinion

Whether a President should be impeached or not has nothing to do with how good the President is. The point of impeachment is to prevent any president from abusing the office. The same standards must apply to all Presidents. If JFK or FDR or any of my heroes, whose policies I liked, abused the power of their offices, I would still support impeaching them. If my current hero, Andrew Yang, were elected, and he fulfilled every one of his promises, and then he asked a foreign government to help him get reelected, I would want him impeached. It’s not whether we like the President. It’s whether his behavior warrants impeachment. There is debate on that issue. There are many different opinions. We’ll get to those next.

Opinions are not all equally valuable.

I would hope we can all agree on that. This doesn’t mean everyone is not entitled to one, but they’re not entitled to have me take it seriously. Let me explain.

If I woke up this morning, and went out to my car, and it failed to start, I could ask either my doctor or my mechanic for an opinion about this problem. My doctor is a very intelligent man. He knows much more than I do about many, many things. But, he isn’t really the person I want to ask. I would rather have the opinion of my mechanic. He knows more about cars than my doctor.

If, at the same time, I woke up feeling sick, I would value my doctor’s opinion much more than I would my mechanic’s on the issue of my health. I would think this would be obvious.

But, I’m expected to grant the same weight to the opinions of those who know nothing about climate science as I am to those who have studied it for a lifetime? I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I recognize there are a nearly infinite number of things I don’t know, but others do. I will listen to those in the best position to have an opinion. That will be those who know the most about it.

My roommate showed me an article on Facebook last week about a family that had the difficult problem of a child who was born male but desperately needed to be female. The family did what I would do in such a case. They sought the informed opinions of experts on the issue. Is this just a phase? Is this something out of which the child will grow? Is it a serious issue? How do I know? They sought the answers to these, and a host of other equally important questions, from those who know more than they do. No one knows their child better than they do, but they may certainly know more about the child’s condition. The information is available. It’s a matter of finding it, and from a reliable source.

And now we come to the point:

H.G. Wells

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe.” –H.G. Wells

Our bizarre idea that all opinions are to be treated equally is putting us way behind in the race.

The Impeachment Inquires, and the reactions of people to them, have brought this fact into stark relief. Fiona Hill, an Ambassador with decades of experience, who has studied Russia most of her life, and who has written a book about Putin told us, “Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

And yet, we are to reject her analysis of the situation as “just her opinion,” and take equally seriously the idea that Ukraine interfered with our elections because the President and Republicans have said they did. There is no credible evidence backing this claim. The Soviet Union has perpetrated this fraud on the American public, and Americans are helping it along.

We have all of our Intelligence Agencies telling us that Russia is responsible. We have experts telling us as much. And, because of ideology, many reject the opinions of experts. And this is dangerous.

We can’t know everything. We can, however, as a collective, listen to those who know more than we do. The opinions of Fiona Hill and the United States Intelligence Community are more reliable than unverified claims made by those who have a significant reason to lie to us. This isn’t a question of liberal bias. It’s a question of recognizing our own limitations, and then seeking to fill the gaps in our knowledge in the most reasonable ways.

I am beginning to believe we are no longer going to be America.

I believe we may already have been defeated by Putin, and he did it without ever firing a shot. He got a stooge in office, and he has used him to continue to divide the country, making us weaker all the time. A house divided cannot stand. I have made an extraordinary claim. I must, therefore, provide extraordinary evidence.

First, the Ukraine Scandal benefits Russia.

As Dr. Hill told us:

“The goal of the Russians was really to put whoever became the president, by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale, under a cloud. So if secretary, former first lady, former senator Clinton had been elected as president, as indeed many expected in the run-up to the election in 2016, she too would have had major questions about her legitimacy. And I think that what we’re seeing here as a result of all these narratives, this is exactly what the Russian government was hoping for.”

Next, we have at least 2 dozen examples of Trump being irrationally friendly to Russia. Here are just 7 of them.

  • We know the Russians interfered in our elections in order to get the President elected. Whether President Trump invited their help is open to question. He undoubtedly benefited from it.
  • He stood next to Putin and told the world that, even though the United States Intelligence Community said Russia interfered, he couldn’t see why it would be Russia.
  • Trump hired Paul Manafort, who has worked on behalf of pro-Russia politicians, to be his campaign manager.
  • President Trump blocked language in the GOP Campaign Platform that included sending lethal aid to Ukraine in their battle against Russia. He did, however, wind up giving the aid to Ukraine.
  • Trump has defended Putin for being a killer, asking if the reporter questioning him believed America was so innocent of killings. (This is called Whataboutism.)
  • Trump repeats Russian misinformation, or lies, about what happened in 2016.
  • Pulling out of Syria gave Putin an advantage. Turkey could move freely, and Putin took control of our military bases without any effort. He didn’t ever offer to pay rent.

The rest can be found here:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/17/politics/trump-soft-on-russia/index.html

What is there, still, that Putin could want in order to be in control of our country? He has a President who does what Putin asks.

Does anyone need to reminded that Russia is the enemy? Do we need to remember that Putin kills journalists and others who are in his way? Is there a reason we need to cozy up to them? Don’t they represent everything America opposes? I thought we all agreed Communism was a bad idea. I know that Russia is technically a Republic, but a Republic is not led by a dictator. Putin is a dictator. It was less than 70 years ago that the Republicans led the charge against anyone even suspected of being connected to Russia. What happened?? (Yes… they were way over the top during McCarthy, but that’s not really the point.)

My Opinion

I don’t expect anyone to pay attention to my opinions. I have no particular expertise. All I can do is read, listen, and pay attention. I can fact check. I’m not concerned with you agreeing with my opinion. I’m concerned with you considering your own.

I base my ideas on the opinions of those in the best position to be well informed. I want to find those whose motivation to lie is minimal, and who have spent more time learning from experience than from reading Breitbart. There’s nothing evil about actually learning something. A degree doesn’t make you an elitist. It makes you someone who has opened a book.

In these times, the myth that all opinions are equal is actually dangerous. We are on the brink of being effectively taken over by a dictator. Our own politicians are spreading lies perpetrated by Russia in order to keep power. If we choose to believe that it’s as likely as not that Ukraine interfered instead of Russia, we’re likely to make dangerous decisions.

I don’t know the Earth is round from my personal experience. I’ve never left the planet to be able to see it for myself. I do, however, know the Earth is round because people who have studied it have shown that to be true repeatedly for the last couple of millennia. My opinion about the shape of the Earth is based upon the best information available.

My opinion that we are being, or have been, conquered by Russia is also based on the best information available. I’m hearing from experts that Russia, not Ukraine, interfered in our elections. I know this because 17 US Intelligence Agencies have told me so. I know because Fiona Hill told me so.

The Danger of Propaganda

A propaganda poster from the Soviet Union in the 1920s

When people continue the myth that it was Ukraine, they are doing the Russians’ work for them. Foreign powers interfering in our elections is bad enough; getting assistance from our leaders is intolerable. When we pretend that all opinions are of equal value, we forfeit our ability to decide anything intelligently. Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes repeat the Ukrainian Interference Myth as though it were a mantra. A Republican Senator, John Kennedy (no, not the President… he’s actually dead… I also know this, thank you), said that nobody knows whether it was Russia or Ukraine who interfered.

“I don’t know, nor do you, nor do any of us,” Kennedy said. “Ms. Hill is entitled to her opinion.”

No! We have facts. Facts lead us to conclusions. We sacrifice our judgment at the price of our freedom. This will not do.

America is facing an existential crisis unlike any we have ever considered. We are being overthrown by our own voters who are being deceived by leaders who repeat what they know to be Russian lies.

We can stop that from happening, or not. If we choose not to do so, we will have lost the race between education and catastrophe. We will lose the Freedom that is at the heart of being American. If we agree on nothing else, can we at least agree that Freedom is worth defending with our votes, if not our very lives?

Posted on by Fred

How Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend Can Save The Country

I have always wanted to live in a world where we work to improve ourselves and the rest of humanity, instead of working 40 hours or more a week just to survive. I want human beings to live a life in which they can actually experience Freedom. Freedom is not simply absence of coercion. It is the ability to examine choices, the education to select the choice most likely to lead to the desired outcome, and the ability to act on the choice. And the Freedom Dividend can be a step down that road.

The Freedom Dividend is a proposal under which every American over the age of 18 would receive a check for $1000 a month. There is no means testing. If you’re an American, whether you are the homeless guy hoping to panhandle enough to get a pack of cigarettes, or you’re Jeff Bezos, you get the check. If you’re anywhere in between, it increases your Freedom by adding to the resources necessary to make your best choices.

Why is this such an extraordinary idea?

It will change lives in unimaginable ways. If you’re among the wealthy, and you don’t need it, you’re welcome to donate it to anyone or anything that does. If you’re among the poor, this gives you a chance you never had before. But it does much more.

Its benefits are not only economic. It affects the quality of life for millions. It helps to reduce the despair and hopelessness that leads to increased stress. That stress increases domestic violence and suicide. I have little doubt that it also contributes to mass shootings.

When people are poor, it just keeps spiraling downward. You can’t afford a good car, so you buy a cheap one. But that car requires constant repairs. That’s more money you spend. As Yang once said, “Poverty charges interest.” Let’s see if we can start paying down some of the bills of poverty.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/22/the-spiral-of-poverty/

Why are people poor? Isn’t it their own fault?

There are as many reasons for poverty as there are poor people. Is it the fault of the impoverished individual? I don’t know. I’m not nearly wise enough to decide who is “deserving” and who is not. I don’t believe anyone else is, either. With The Freedom Dividend, we don’t need to make that judgment. It goes to everyone. I can’t speak for all people; neither can you. I can, however, confidently speak from my own experience, and that’s why I believe in the Freedom Dividend. A minimum wage job isn’t enough, by itself. For more on that topic, see below.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/06/11/hard-work/

I really can’t work very much anymore. I’m 56, my body is shot, and my diabetes lands me in the hospital with startling frequency, almost invariably from trying to push what’s left of me too hard. If you paid me $15.00 an hour, that would be a reasonable wage, and while I couldn’t survive well on it, even at 40 hours a week, it would make it possible for me to find some decent roommates and have a shot at making ends meet. I couldn’t live alone on that. I don’t know many people who could without government assistance.

I quit teaching 3 years ago because both physically and psychologically I was no longer capable of doing it. I teach Defensive Driving now, and I’m getting 4 to 5 classes a month. I make good money, at $200 per class, but it’s clear $1000 a month is all I have to live on. If my means testing works out, I might get disability. I’m too young for Social Security. I have, quite fortunately, state funded medical care and food stamps. That’s the whole ball of wax.

I have a roommate who is on disability, and she gets a monthly check that doesn’t quite cover rent for the three of us. My other roommate makes 15 bucks an hour, 40 to 50 hours a week, at Amazon. Between the three of us, we just barely survive. And that survival is by no means certain.

If there were a Freedom Dividend, my monthly income would double. If we see the three of us a family unit, the additional $3000 a month would cover all of our rent, utilities, and gas. All the money we bring in other than that would be to pay for groceries, vet bills, insurance, gas, and car repairs. We might even be able to afford to go to dinner sometimes, or perhaps see a movie.

A person who is too lazy to work deserves nothing from anyone else. I had to work hard for what I have; so should they!

I understand that feeling too. But I disagree with it.

I believe all people, whether I agree with their life choices or not, are deserving of the basics of human survival. This means all of us should have food, shelter, appropriate clothing for the climate in which we reside, medical care, a decent education, and the opportunity to communicate with others. What would that look like? You can see here:

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/05/07/can-we-have-a-star-trek-economy/

Many people make important contributions to society for which there is no financial reward. This doesn’t make them lazy. It makes them unpaid. Instead of raising our own children, many of us need to pay someone else to take care of them while we’re at work. Wouldn’t it be nice if Mom or Dad could stay home and raise children for $1000 a month? Add to the Freedom Dividend the money they’re saving on childcare, and suddenly it starts to add up. Caregivers for their elderly parents have to find other means to survive, or spend money to put their parents into homes. They also profit from the Freedom Dividend.

What if people waste it, though? I don’t want to pay for someone’s drug habit.

This is their money. If they choose to waste it, that’s up to them. They can either use it to move forward and up in life, or not. That’s true of any money anyone gets. It’s a Dividend in the same way that Microsoft pays a Dividend to their shareholders. You’ve invested your life into this country. You’re entitled to get something back from us. You’re not paying for it. You’re getting paid by it.

Fine, but how are we going to pay for this?

First, I would like to point out that the only time… the ONLY time… this question is asked is when the money is going to be used for programs that help ordinary people. No one asked how to pay for a war that has lasted, with no idea of “winning,” for more than a decade. We decided it needed to be done, and we did it.

Having said that, he does have a plan for it that makes sense. To understand the point of the plan, it’s important to understand why this is necessary: Automation.

As Artificial Intelligence (AI )improves, and it will, there will be more and more jobs lost to automation. We’re only a couple of years away from trucks that drive themselves. We are already checking out our own groceries at Wal Mart. Telemarketers and customer service agents will be replaced by software that is so convincing it sounds like you’re actually talking to a person. Malls are closing all over the place because we order what we want from Amazon. Those are more people without jobs.

Instead of watching homelessness skyrocket as people lose their jobs, we’re providing everyone a safety net. The Freedom Dividend gives them time to find a job that is fulfilling, pays well, and is free from harassment. It puts the job applicants much more in the driver’s seat than the employers. They don’t have to take the first job that is available because they have to pay rent next week. They have that covered. Now, they can spend their lives doing something they like instead of working themselves to death for pennies.

To pay for it, Yang will introduce a Value Added Tax for corporations like Amazon. There are those who hate this idea.

That will only make things more expensive.

I suppose that’s true. However, unless you’re spending over $120,000 a year, you’re coming out ahead. Only about 6% of the population will pay more than they get.

That won’t be enough money to pay for all of it. What about the rest of it?

He’ll also make use of the end of much of Welfare. I would have to choose between my food stamps and my Freedom Dividend. I get $177 a month for food. That’s enough for almost two weeks. Take my food stamps, and give me my $1000 a month. The government will be making fewer decisions for us.

Money will be going back into the economy, creating more jobs. We’ll make more in taxes because more people are working. That pays for part of it.

If you want the nitty gritty details, check here.

What is Universal Basic Income?
What is Universal Basic Income?

https://www.yang2020.com/what-is-freedom-dividend-faq/

You Democrats want to give everyone Something for Nothing. This is just Socialism, and Socialism never works.

No… it’s not. Socialism is when the government controls the means of production. That’s still controlled by the Private Sector. This is Capitalism that doesn’t start at $0. It just levels the playing field. And we’re not giving Anyone Anything for Nothing. We’re giving it to everyone who has helped to make us among the wealthiest and most powerful nations on Earth. This is Human Centered Capitalism.

We have been trying the Trickle Down Economy since Reagan. What have been the results? Where once a single person working 40 hours a week could earn enough to support a whole family, today full time work isn’t really enough to support even one person. Giving more money to the wealthy “Job Creators” (who don’t actually create jobs at all… that’s done by supply and demand and consumers) obviously didn’t raise the standard of living for the rest of us. They didn’t invest it into their employees, and therefore into the economy. They kept it for themselves.

The Freedom Dividend is an effort at a Trickle Up Economy. Instead of raining only on the top branches of the tree, we’re watering its roots at ground level. The economy grows because the money is injected immediately back into it. Those who have more, spend more. People can now patronize little stores that are more expensive, instead of being forced into Wal Mart where the prices are lower and most of the employees need government assistance even to buy Wal Mart groceries. This keeps small business running and it encourages entrepreneurs to start their own. The Arts, which are for me the most valuable part of any civilization, will grow because artists can now afford to do their work. This isn’t Socialism. It’s a means of saving Capitalism.

So… what’s your point?

I would like to live in a world that is concerned more with people than with little bits of green paper. We have spent 200,000 years getting to the place where we can now feed, clothe, and house all of humanity. But our path here led us to believe we never have Enough. We don’t have Enough Money. We don’t have Enough Food. But, you know what? Yes… we do. We’ve made it, folks. We’re standing on the shoulders of 200 millennia of human beings struggling for survival. We’re their crowning achievement. Instead of wage slavery of the past, we can have fulfilling lives. We have invented machines to do the most tedious and dangerous work. We don’t have to hunt for food or cut down trees to build our shelters anymore. We are a remarkable species who have cause to be proud.

We’re here so very briefly. Let’s try to make a world where we can enjoy the ride.

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

The Importance of Language

I’m often referred to as a Grammar Nazi, and many of my friends take delight in finding errors I’ve made in something I’ve posted. I am embarrassed, and I fix the error promptly. But, most people are thinking, “What difference does it make anyway?” The difference it makes is greater than you probably ever imagined. We’re seeing the effects of poor language use on our country daily. It divides us for reasons we don’t understand.

If I use the word “table,” we probably have a similar image in mind. If I use it in context, you’ll probably be more certain of what I mean. If I describe it well enough, we will both have a nearly identical understanding of the word.

When, however, we misuse words, their meanings become murky. “Chill” is a somewhat benign example. It once meant to make cold. People saw that as a good metaphor for relaxing. “Chill, dude!” is not a call to put a beer in the refrigerator. It’s a plea for someone to settle down.

I got in trouble a few years ago for using the word in that context. I have a friend who is a brilliant singer, and a very beautiful woman. She is decades too young for me, but that doesn’t keep us from being friends. I saw on Facebook one day that she was having a difficult day. I behaved as I thought a friend should. I knew she would enjoy the opportunity to relax after all of her difficulties, so I texted her. I invited her to watch a movie with my new access to Netflix, and to relax, perhaps sharing a bit of marijuana. My meaning was entirely benign. The way I phrased it got me into instant trouble. “It looks like you’re having a lousy day. When you get off work, why don’t you come by? We can watch Netflix and chill a while.”

She was shocked I would send her such an offensive text. Evidently “Netflix and chill” has an entirely different meaning. She wondered if, because she wasn’t even 30 yet, and I was in my 50s, I was some sort of pervert. Without intending to, I had evidently invited her to a sexual encounter. I apologized when I recognized my mistake, and we are still friends. It wasn’t a big deal, but it could have cost me a person I enjoy having in my life.

Now, that’s a minor issue. “Chill” is not a terribly important word.

But, what about words that carry greater weight? What, for example, is Socialism? What is Communism? What does Conservative mean? What about Liberal? What is Capitalism? We all throw these words around as easily as “table” or “chill,” but their meanings seem to vary as widely as the people who use them. I will limit this essay to only one of these words, but as much could be written about any of them.

Just today, I came across this definition of Liberal:

“The Liberal: We support terrorist groups. We support antisemitism. We support thought and speech control. We support attacking people in the street for having different opinions. We support sacking people for having different opinions. We support hounding and harassing people for having different opinions. We think all white people are born evil. We teach that all white people are born evil. We support open borders. We support widespread drug use. We support the sexualisation of children. We tacitly support the mass rape of children. We support special privileges for certain groups based on gender, race or sexual orientation. We support hating your own country or your own working class. We support the cruelty of halal. We support welfare cheating. We support pulling down statues. We support you being ruled from abroad. We support everything and everyone that hates you, damages your society or blights your life. And we support you paying high taxes for it too.
The Conservative: Please stop.
The Liberal: Shut up you moron. Why did conservatives become so extreme?”

Bartholomew Chiaroscuro

If that’s the definition of Liberal you believe to be correct, it’s hardly a surprise you despise me. If that were what Liberals believe, in just that form, I would not choose to be one. However… that’s not what the word actually means.

The Dictionary at Google defines the word as follows:


“open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values.
(of education) concerned mainly with broadening a person’s general knowledge and experience, rather than with technical or professional training.”

Google Dictionary

John Dewey tells us:

“But the majority who call themselves liberals today are committed to the principle that organized society must use its powers to establish the conditions under which the mass of individuals can possess actual, as distinct from, merely legal liberty. They define their liberalism in the concrete in terms of a program of measures moving toward this end.”

Liberalism and Social Action

These are only a few of the definitions of the word. In order for us to communicate with one another effectively, we must agree on what words mean. Without that agreement, we are spitting into the wind. We can accomplish nothing because we can’t understand each other.

How do we manage this?

I think it begins by examining the context in which a word is used. While what we currently call a Conservative might agree with the first, frankly offensive, definition of the word, I know few Liberals who would. And I know many people who call themselves Conservative, in a different sense of the word than is popularly used today, who would also find that definition to be absurd.

Let’s ask ourselves why some are choosing one definition of a word but not another. What advantage is gained for them in argument? If all Liberals, or all Conservatives, or all of any other group you might wish to label in a negative way, are evil, then I don’t need to engage their arguments. I can simply call them, “Typical ___” You may fill in the blank.

I have made no argument. I’ve done nothing to convince anyone that I’m right and they’re wrong. I’ve learned nothing about the opposing point of view that might help me to refine my own. I just get the unwarranted feeling that I’m superior.

If I’m choosing a definition of Liberal that I like best, it would probably be Kennedy’s:

“If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal”, then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

Profiles in Courage

The function of language is to help us to understand one another more clearly. When we use words as epithets instead of as accurate descriptions of one ideology or another, we are unable to communicate meaningfully. I can’t solve the world’s problems alone. Neither can you. If, however, we listen to each other, understand each other, and learn from each other, together we might take a few steps in that direction.

“The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.”

Hamlet Act 1, Scene 5
Posted on by Fred

Combatting Hatred

You can’t change the world; only your corner of it.”
— My father, Alan Eder, quoting my grandpa, Enno Schuelke, September 12, 2001

“We’re on track for a million illegal aliens to rush our borders. People hate the word ‘invasion’ but that’s what it is. It’s an invasion of drugs and criminals and people. You have no idea who they are.”

Donald Trump

Invaders, by definition, need to be stopped. They are almost invariably met with violence.

Look at the examples of the usage of the word.

“To enter forcefully as an enemy; go into with hostile intent: Germany invaded Poland in 1939.” – Dictionary.com

If we believe the mythical “Others” are invaders, the logical response is to kill them, isn’t it?

This is the leadership we have. We are told we are being invaded. How can an American who believes this President be expected to act differently?

We can argue about gun control, but it’s a blind alley. We’re never going to make meaningful changes in those laws. If we didn’t do it after children… CHILDREN!… died at Sandy Hook, we certainly won’t because of a few “others.”

But, why do we have to accept the idea that those whose skin is darker, whose national origins are different, or whose sexuality, or gender identification, or religious beliefs are other than the majority are somehow bad? I’m sick to death of the argument that Mexicans are welcome if they come in legally. That’s bullshit, and the person making the argument knows it. It takes years to become a citizen, if you can do it at all. The first step is to determine eligibility for naturalization. That step alone can take 3 to 5 years. There are 9 additional steps.

The information is here:

https://www.path2usa.com/us-naturalization-eligibility

What they really have in mind is keeping America filled with people who are like them. We want only white people. If that’s not true, why are we building a wall at the Southern border, but not the Northern? We don’t seem to mind Canadians coming in.

My plea is really to give up our hatred. The most important question is who is better off for this?

I am better than some people. I am not as good as others. This is determined by my abilities and my behaviors. It has nothing to do with my race, gender, sexuality, religious or political views. The same is true for everyone else.

If you want to hate me, and there are many who do, then hate me for what I do. Hate my liberal opinions, but not the fact that I’m straight. Hate my Idealism, but not my religious views. Hate my speaking out against Hate. Hate my writing. Hate my reaching out for help. Those are all choices I have made. They are open to scrutiny. I was born male. I had nothing whatever to do with that. I was born in America. I deserve no credit for that.

Why should I hate someone because she’s female, or because he is homosexual, or because her children were born in Guatemala? Who is better off for that? How is my life better because the lives of others are worse? I don’t become taller by pushing someone else down. I don’t become richer by denying wealth to someone else.

We don’t need to be told to hate.

Hate leads to fear. Someone else is going to get something that should have been mine. I know that these people are bad because they weren’t born in America. It’s because of them that my life is no good. I am afraid of them invading and taking what is supposed to be mine.

Fear leads to violence. I can’t let them invade. I have to protect what’s mine, and what belongs to the rest of my tribe. They don’t belong in my country any more than a cockroach belongs in my house. The only thing to do when you’re invaded, is kill the invaders.

Violence leads to suffering. My mother, my son, my wife, my best friend… someone… is dead. I won’t see them again. No more laughing together at jokes that aren’t really funny. No more hugs and love. No more of the joy of seeing their eyes light up when I walk into a room. No more breathing for this person I love. And this hurts like a bitch.

Haven’t we had enough suffering yet?

What if we realized that a person had no choice about being born? No one chooses where or when to enter the planet. No one chooses the color of his skin (beyond tanning, I suppose). No one chooses her sexual orientation. No one chooses his gender. Is it reasonable to hate someone for things over which he had no control?

Hatred can be useful. I hated Osama bin Laden, not because he was from another country, not because his religious views differed from mine, and not even because of his sexual identity. I hated him for stealing my sense of security by slamming planes into buildings and killing thousands of human beings who were every bit as deserving of their next breath as I am of mine.

But I didn’t generalize that hatred to include all people who shared his religion. As it turns out, there are millions and millions of perfectly nice Muslims in the world. I have no cause to hate them. And it doesn’t do much to make me feel better to hate anyone. Do you enjoy hating others? I find it’s kind of a burning sensation in my chest that I would rather not have.

Again, it’s worth asking, before you do anything, “Who is better off for me doing this?” Sometimes, it’s something small. If I make a burrito, I’m better off for doing it because my blood sugar won’t drop, and I won’t be so hungry. But when it’s something that has the potential to hurt someone, it becomes a more serious question.

I understand, to some extent, the need to blame someone else for the conditions of our lives. I certainly don’t like mine. There’s at least a 70% chance I’ll be homeless on September 1. That makes me afraid. I would love to blame someone. But… who will it help? I still have the same problem to handle whether it’s the fault of President Trump, “The Others” (whomever you may choose), myself, my roommates, or the landlord who is selling the house in which we live. Blaming someone won’t get me a new habitation. Since I don’t like being angry, I don’t see any point in wasting emotional energy on hating someone else. I’m no better off for it. Neither is the subject of my blame.

If we can stop looking for scapegoats and start looking for solutions to our problems, we are more likely to be happier. It is intellectual cowardice to decide that someone else is responsible for our lot in life.

I’m told that there are websites called 4chan and 8chan that are dedicated to promoting Hate Speech. They have the absolute right to do this. I would never want to take away Freedom of Speech from anyone. Since I can’t stop them from spreading their message of hate, what can I do? I can fight their words with mine. I do what I can to spread a message of Love and Acceptance. Just as those sites incite violence, so I hope to incite peace.

We can legislate all day and into the night, and we won’t end the problem of gun violence because its root – Hatred – can’t be killed by laws. If we want to end this we have to stop the hatred. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it better than I can, so I will leave you to ponder his words in the context of mine.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.


Will you join me, please, in advocating Love over Hate?

Posted on by Fred · 2 Comments

Hard Work

The life of man in this world is, for the most part, a life of work. Every man worth calling a man should be willing and able to work. How can one be idle when others are busy? How maintain social respect, honor and responsibility? Work is the best of all educators, for it forces men into contact with others, and with things as they really are. If we consult biography, it will be found that the worthiest men have been the most industrious in their callings. Labor is the price set upon everything valuable. Nothing can be accomplished without it.


Samuel Smiles, Life And Labor (1887)

“…and Brutus is an honorable man…” — Marc Antony

In The United States, in 2019, there is a prevalent attitude that everyone should be required to work. Simply enjoying life is inexcusable. The idea is that if I had to work hard to survive, everyone should have to. Laziness is also sinful. I know because in about 600 A.D. Pope Gregory the First said Sloth was in the Top 7 Deadly Sins.

Another argument in favor of Hard Work is that society will break down without people working. If everyone just sits around watching TV, or more likely, Netflix or something of that sort, how will we ever do anything? SOMEONE has to work.

Finally, I’m told no one owes anyone anything. There is a blank piece of paper shown on Facebook frequently that depicts what the person posting it evidently believes anyone owes you. It’s terribly clever, albeit not terribly persuasive.

I’m going to address each of these arguments, and then I’m going to recommend that we pay a Living Wage to anyone who works full time. You’re welcome to disagree with me, but at least read my arguments before you do.

Is Sloth a Sin?

There may have been good reason for Pope Gregory to suggest that Sloth is sinful, from his interpretation of the Scriptures, and certainly, in the culture in which he was living, it was essential that everyone work hard. One’s survival was often dependent on one’s ability to grow food and create the homes in which they lived. There was no time to dawdle. The Roman Empire had fallen, and Trade was all but destroyed because roads were no longer safe. Lying around reading or watching a sunset were recipes for disaster. Sloth was, from that point of view, sinful. In Poor Richard’s Almanck, Ben Franklin told us, “Sin is not hurtful because it is forbidden, but it is forbidden because it is hurtful.” Sloth was hurtful in 600 AD. It fit Franklin’s definition. Is that still true?

Most of us now have at least SOME leisure time. It’s why I can write this. It’s what enables you to read it. Is it sinful that we’re not “working” right now? I don’t have a field to cultivate. I can go to the grocery store to get my food. So can you. We don’t need to grow our own food to survive. That’s a significant advancement.

We produce more than enough food to feed the world now. That can be shown over and over in a brief Google Search. Here are facts gathered from my search. I picked worldhunger.org because they had plenty of data. You’re welcome to check yourself. The link is included below.

“The world produces enough food to feed everyone. For the world as a whole, per capita caloric availability and food diversity (the variety of food groups in a diet) have increased between the 1960s and 2011 (FAO, 2017). This growth in food availability, along with improved access to food, helped reduce the percentage of chronically undernourished people in lower-middle-income countries from about 30 percent in the 1990-92 to about 13 percent two decades later (FAO, 2017). A principal problem is that many people in the world still do not have sufficient income to purchase (or land to grow) enough food or access nutritious food.” https://www.worldhunger.org/world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/

2018 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics

It’s not that we don’t have the resources; it’s that people don’t have the money. And that’s because they don’t work hard enough, right? I think you already know that’s not true. If it were, the little girl pictured at the beginning of this essay would be among the wealthiest people on the planet.

We all know plenty of folks who work 40 or more hours per week, but still can’t feed themselves or their families. And we also know people who hardly work at all, but have obscene amounts of wealth. Congressmen and women, for example, who have great power over all of our lives, work 138 days a year. They have 227 days off every year. They make a low average of $175,000 a year. That’s well more than $1000 a day. I don’t know anyone who makes that kind of money. But, of course, it’s because the people I know didn’t work hard enough to better themselves. They should go get a degree so they can get better jobs. You know, they could be teachers or something.

I did that. I have many many friends who did that. None of us ever made $1000 a day. There were times my monthly pay was little more than that. Today, it rarely gets above that figure.

But, hang on… isn’t the argument that we need to be working harder? That doesn’t seem to follow, does it? Those who work less, make more, in many cases.

So, can we dispense with the argument, please, that failing to work hard enough means a person doesn’t deserve a decent living? If you really believed that, you would have to accept the conclusion that follows from it: A person working 40 hours a week deserves a decent living. It’s about hard work, right? So… they’re working hard. They should be able to afford the basics. If you don’t buy into that, it’s not because you believe in hard work, it’s because you believe in Capitalism. A person’s work is worth what the Market will bear. That’s a different argument.

Will Society really fail to function if no one ever works?

Yes, I suppose it would. We need someone to grow our food. We need someone to ship it to us. We need someone to sell it to us. This is true of all commodities. We need people to work. But we’ve already established we don’t need everyone to work themselves to death. We are now capable of doing what they call “working smarter, not harder.” Hard work guarantees nothing in a Capitalistic Society.

But, let’s remember the words of George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He’s explaining why Bedford Falls needs a Savings and Loan. The evil Mr. Potter wants to get rid of his bank’s last competition, Bailey’s Father’s Savings and Loan, because otherwise we’ll have a discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty working class. “This rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?”

This is the function of a Minimum Wage. Since our world no longer requires all of us to work so hard that we can’t enjoy the Moments of our lives, it seems to me we would be remiss if we didn’t avail ourselves of the opportunities. When you spend a dollar, you can go to work and make another one. When you spend a minute, there is nothing you can ever do to get it back, even if you’re Jeff Bezos or Richard Cory. You get each one exactly one time. You may have millions of them left, or you may have only one more. But they’re irreplaceable. You sacrifice some minutes in exchange for improving other minutes. Make those leisure moments worth the lousy ones.

I’m told that the Minimum Wage isn’t intended for people to make a living. It’s meant for teenagers who still live at home so they can have some spending money. In other words, we don’t need to pay people a living wage just because they work full time. They need to do more to deserve that.

First, that argument is factually incorrect. FDR, in his Statement on The National Industrial Recovery Act, which became the basis of the minimum wage, told us, “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.” And just to be sure there was no misunderstanding, he defined his terms. “By living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level – I mean the wages of decent living.”

If you want to use Capitalism to defend the fact that there are those struggling even to survive, while at the same time, others have more than they could spend in 50 lifetimes, then let’s see what Capitalism really is. The basic dictionary definition is “an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” That doesn’t shed a whole lot of useful light on the issue. I would want to go farther, and say that it is based on what markets will bear. If someone produces goods or provide services that are highly valued, at the best price, and at a higher quality than one’s competitors, someone will profit. The rest is good business sense.

The most conservative estimates put small business failures in the first year at 20%. 30% fail in the second year. Half are closed within 5 years.

Click to access Business-Survival.pdf

Capitalism offers no guarantees for business owners. It’s the competition within Capitalism that is often touted as its greatest asset. If a business fails, it’s because someone else is doing the same thing, better and/or more cheaply, or simply because the goods or services they provide are not in demand. If a person can’t make a living, it’s for the same reasons.

Why is it unreasonable to require business owners to pay a living wage to their employees? If a business can’t afford to do that, the business is not yet successful enough to afford employees. They have to do it themselves a while longer. They’ll have to work hard and be patient.

If “work hard and be patient” seems unreasonable when directed at a business owner, why isn’t it unreasonable when it’s directed at an employee? The employee is not yet successful enough to deserve… what?…a living wage? So, for a certain amount of time, they are expected to work for less than they need to earn to have their basic needs met. Why? And for how long?

Small businesses are job creators. If they fold, it causes unemployment. Unemployment is worse than not having enough money. It means having no money at all. Small business owners can’t afford to pay a living wage. Neither, as far as that goes, can giant Corporations. This is the argument against paying a living wage? I don’t buy it.

All right, but do you really think, Fred, that a guy who works at Circle K deserves to make as much as a paramedic? A paramedic earns, on average, $36,700 a year. That’s three times the federal poverty level. They can live on that.

Can they? Maybe it depends on where.

“…the average cost of a two-bedroom in New York is around $3,789. This means that New Yorkers would need to earn a minimum of $162,386 in order to spend no more than 28 percent of their annual income on rent. If you head to Brooklyn or Queens, the average rent prices of two-bedrooms are slightly less at $3,200 and $2,660, respectively, however you would still need a substantial income to be able to afford a two-bedroom in these boroughs.”

https://ny.curbed.com/2018/7/30/17630428/nyc-rent-prices-two-bedroom-apartments-annual-income-needed

A person who works at Circle K earns about $23,000 a year. That’s twice the federal poverty level. They should quit whining. But did you notice? Neither the paramedic nor the Circle K employee is making enough to afford a place alone. They’re working 40 hours a week. They’re working hard. And they can’t support themselves effectively.

It’s not that the Circle K employee is paid too much; it’s that the paramedic is paid too little. Both should be paid at least a living wage. If you want to make the case that the paramedic deserves more, I won’t argue with you. The paramedic deserves more than a living wage. This worker should be able to have a nicer car, a nicer house, eat better food, or enjoy life a bit more. But why shouldn’t the Circle K employee make a living wage? The answer is that businesses can’t afford to pay that much.

In deciding between the need for sub par businesses or human beings to thrive, I’m going with human beings.

And, how many jobs do you think those poor people create? We need businesses for that.

Oh, no, I’m so sorry. You’re mistaken. Jobs are created by a thriving economy. When people, particularly those just barely making it, have money, they spend it. When they spend money, they create jobs for those businesses they patronize. When the Wealthy have more money, they put it somewhere else. They don’t inject it back into the economy because they don’t need to. Poor people do. The more money people have to spend, the more jobs will need to be created to help them spend it.

But, no one owes anyone anything. Remember?

If people can’t make it on their own, that’s their own fault. I worked my ass off all my life to have what I have, and I’m not paying for someone else to sit on her ass and watch talk shows all day!

First off, oh, of course you are! Your Congressmen and women have more than 200 days a year to do that. You’re also paying for the President to play golf. We’ve spent in excess of $100 million on that. That’s one HELL of a lot more than you’re paying for welfare for those that can’t afford to eat even though they live above the poverty line.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-golf-102-million-taxpayers_n_5ce46727e4b09b23e65a01bb

The idea that because you had a horrible experience, everyone else should also be required to have it, is just childish and mean. I have friends who were raped, and I promise you, not one of them wants anyone else to have to go through that.

Did it suck to have to work and sweat and strain? I feel certain it did. I’m sure it was even harder for generations preceding ours. It certainly sucked for me. Why do others have to face that horror? If we can do better, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

I would really like it if everyone had a few minutes to enjoy being alive. I would like them to be able to watch a movie, or read a book, or listen to a symphony, or do whatever it is that makes them happy. I would prefer they not need to spend the few hours they’re not working, sleeping, so they have enough energy to go to work tomorrow.

But what about the business owners?

A Modest Proposal

If we really want to help business owners, we could eliminate the need for them to pay a wage at all. Slave labor is much less expensive. We can always find a way to get slaves. We can invade a country, or we can lock up more of our citizens than any other country on Earth, and we can use the convicts we make as slaves, or we can just decide one group isn’t as good as the rest of us, turn on them, and make them all slaves. My suggestion would be Straight White Christian Males. Others may have different ideas.

Or, in the alternative, we could move toward automation, if you’re opposed to slavery. Then they don’t have to pay anyone, except the manufacturers of the machines they use. This is already happening in many places. We’re becoming our own cashiers, we use ATMs so commonly we forget they took the jobs of many many bank tellers, and talking to a human being on the phone at a business is becoming nearly impossible. There will be more automation, not less, and I don’t think it’s an unmitigated evil. Machines are eliminating jobs, but they’re working smarter, not harder. They are removing some of the burdens from human beings. This gives us time to do other things. Technology has always done this.

My mother used to have wash my diapers. She had to hang them on a clothesline. This took a lot more of her time than Pampers do. Pampers are probably more sanitary, too, although they’re arguably worse for the environment. We have dishwashers. We have cell phones. There was a time when sending a message across the world would take weeks or months, if it were possible at all. Now it takes seconds. Automation makes human lives easier.

The Need for A Living Wage as the Minimum Wage

But… as long as you’re going to employ human beings, I submit you need to pay them a living wage, as a moral imperative. If you can’t do that, you have no right to the employees.

It’s wrong to make people take jobs that pay subsistence wages. We can, and we should, have a minimum wage that accomplishes FDR’s original purpose. Let’s pay workers enough for them to have the basic necessities of life. Let’s let them have a life that’s worth living. We can afford it.

If we can agree on nothing else, I think we should be able to agree that life is agonizingly brief. Few of us get a single century. None of us gets two. Why can’t we have a little while to enjoy ourselves? If we’re working full time, we shouldn’t need to hope we can put enough gas in the car to get to work tomorrow. We shouldn’t need to worry about eating this week.

It took us roughly 200,000 years to get to the place that we can take care of everyone. We can support the entire population, now, and not just the few. Any advanced civilization would take care of its population. Aliens will think us childish if they ever get around to visiting. Let’s try not to embarrass ourselves.

Posted on by Fred

The Blindness of Ideology

It is nearly impossible to reach objective and successful conclusions if one can’t see beyond one’s own Ideology. I’m defining Ideology as a set of beliefs about the world that shape how you interact with it. Few people share identical Ideologies, at least if they’re taking the time to think everything through. Those with identical Ideologies are usually following a prescribed set of thoughts blindly. It’s possible to be Conservative in many ways while still despising President Trump. It’s possible to be a confirmed Liberal and loathe President Obama. And, it’s possible to have a set of beliefs anywhere in between.

Well, why shouldn’t Ideology shape my opinions about important issues?

I suppose it should, in some ways. At the Core of My Ideology is the belief that people should be helped according to their needs, and that every life counts. To the extent some policy is impeding that goal, I am likely to oppose it. On the other hand, if I reject facts that don’t fit the way I see the world, I am blinding myself to real problems and possible solutions to them. I can wind up working against my own beliefs.

This has happened to me several times. I was once a supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). It sounds to me like a good idea. My liberal Ideology embraces ethics. And I love animals. They oppose testing perfume and things on animals. They don’t like fur. Those are all positions with which I can agree. I thought no more about it.

Then a friend of mine showed me compelling evidence that PETA kills pets. My first thought was that this must be the same sort of Conspiracy Theory as the famous Pizzagate Scandal that nearly cost an innocent man his business. Or, it was like the faked videos of Planned Parenthood selling body parts. This was to be ignored.

But when I investigated what she showed me, I recognized the information was factual, well documented, and included statistical analysis. It included the founder saying that the idea of pets was bad in the first place. “We at PETA very much love the animal companions who share our homes, but we believe that it would have been in the animals’ best interests if the institution of “pet keeping”—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as “pets”—never existed.” For more, you can follow this link. https://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/pets/

Now, my point isn’t to try to convince you PETA is bad. I think they are, but that’s a part of my Ideology, and I recognize that there can be another point of view. That isn’t the point.

The point is that to recognize I had been wrong, I had to pull off my Ideological Blinders. I still see the world as I see it, but I didn’t have enough facts to see all I needed to see in order to decide how I felt. And, even now, I have to accept the idea that I still may be wrong. There may be other facts that I don’t know that will change my mind again. If I’m unable to adjust my views to fit the facts, I have an unsupportable view. More importantly, I can’t develop an informed opinion.

There is a danger in undue credulity. If you’re going to believe everything someone tells you, even in the face of evidence that he’s lied repeatedly, you’re not going to be able to see things in any other way. Your Ideology outweighs evidence. You are unable to change your mind. And then you can’t have an informed opinion, either.

I may still think of you as a good, close, or dear friend, but there is little point in discussing politics with you if you’re going to use Alex Jones as evidence to support your argument. The source is not credible.

And that brings us to the next argument: The Mainstream Media is unreliable… It’s Fake News! Our President has even called The News Media “The Enemy of the People.”

There may be some truth to this. Media is made up of human beings, and human beings lie sometimes. I admit that.

I don’t know, however, any other way of gathering information. And that’s why our government is designed the way it is.

The Founders of the United States were brilliant. They put together a Constitution that included three branches of government in order to keep any one branch from gaining too much strength and taking over.

The Supreme Court keeps the legislative and executive branches in check by ensuring any laws they pass fall within the framework of our Constitution. So long as The Supreme Court is made up of ethical men and women, who are committed to a reasonable interpretation of the Constitution, the Court can protect us.

The Congress can keep the Supreme Court from legislating from the bench by means of proposing amendments to the Constitution that would overturn Supreme Court rulings. (I’m hoping for one to overturn Citizens United, for example.) This was made an intentionally arduous task by The Founders to keep a corrupt Congress from destroying us. It’s been accomplished only 27 times. It’s been attempted nearly 12,000.

The President can keep the Congress from getting too strong by means of the veto. The Constitution grants the President to reject legislation, but the word “Veto” never appears. It’s simply a Latin term meaning “I forbid.”

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law…


Article 1, Section 7 of the US Constitution

There have been more than 2,500 vetoes in the last 230 years. As long as the President is an ethical person, this power can be useful.

The President appoints Supreme Court Justices. In order to keep the President from appointing unethical people the Congress has to approve them.

In short, the Constitution is a brilliant document.

In the First Amendment, the Freedom of the Press is enshrined. This amendment protects their right to gather and report facts. It also protects your right, and that of others, to tell the Press they are lying. I would be unwilling to give up either of those protections.

The Press is the most powerful check on the government. Without them, citizens have no power. You and I know what happens in Washington exclusively through the press. Neither of us will be invited to sit in on meetings. Neither of us is going to have the opportunity to ask the President, or a member of Congress what they are doing. It would be impractical. In order to keep a corrupt government from seizing power, we have a Press to tell us what is happening. Their power is to provide voters with the information we need when we go to the ballot box.

We have, therefore, a Press that does this for us. It is popular nowadays to decide that when the Press says something someone doesn’t like, the Press is lying. Ideology, however, doesn’t determine facts.

I posted an article on my Facebook page from a liberal media outlet called Occupy Democrats. They made a claim that was flat out absurd. They had no credible sources for the story. I posted it as an illustration of the concept of Ideology being separate from facts.

I am a liberal. I am a Democrat. I tend to agree with liberal ideas. On the other hand, just because I like an idea doesn’t mean that it’s true. I called bullshit when I saw it. My ideology doesn’t dictate truth. It can’t, because it’s no guarantee that I’m always right. In fact, I’m wrong rather frequently.

Fortunately, when I am wrong, I can learn why, I can change my mind, and I can be right again. If, on the other hand, I decide that only things that I like are true, then I will see the world only through my Ideological Blinders. I will be barred from learning the facts and making intelligent decisions based on them.

We don’t need to restrict anyone’s right to Free Speech. We don’t need to restrict Freedom of the Press. We need to enhance it. Far from being an “Enemy of the People,” the press is our only real representative.

There are problems with it. The majority of the Media is owned by only a few people. Independence is harder to find. Sometimes they get things wrong.

Nevertheless, real journalists continue to push for the truth, in whatever form it comes. And they do this because they have what I believe to be a sacred duty to all Americans. They have to tell us what is happening, so we may make up our own minds what to believe.

In Russia, there are fewer press outlets, and and most of them are controlled by the government. Given that, I’m amazed to find Putin has, in his own country, only an 86% approval rating. I would expect it to be closer to 98%, particularly when disapproval has wound up killing many people, including several journalists, over there. They are poisoned. They are dropped out of windows. And how do I know that? Because the Freedom of the American Press allows me to know.

Is it possible that all of The Press is lying? Of course it is. It’s also possible that Valerie Bertinelli will be texting me and asking me out for dinner this week. And both are equally likely.

If you choose to believe in a conspiracy, there is nothing that can be done to change your mind. Any evidence to the contrary is simply a part of that conspiracy.

I submit that in order for our form of government to work properly, maximum freedom is necessary in order to combat the ever growing tyranny threatening to overtake us every day. I don’t want to live in a country where the only thing The Press can report is what is approved by the government. I would find it difficult to believe anything they tell me when I know that it has all gone through an approval process.

It was the Press that showed us Nixon was a criminal. There are still those who, to this day, deny the facts. I can’t convince them that President Nixon covered up the Watergate break in, even when there are tapes in which he confesses as much. I can make the arguments against his guilt myself. “The tapes were probably faked. He’s not the only President who did lousy stuff. What about your liberal hero, JFK, who cheated on his wife and screwed up the Bay of Pigs? Why don’t you hate on him and leave Nixon alone? You liberals are all such haters.”

That’s an ideological argument that moves us not one millimeter closer to finding the truth. Such arguments are merely detours on the Path to Truth.

Again, Truth is not just what I say it is. It exists independent of my feelings about it. Donald Trump did or didn’t behave unethically, regardless of what I think. The Truth, whatever it turns out to be, has nothing to do with what I think.

I am probably more of a skeptic than most people. I reject many more arguments than I accept. I always look to see how credible a story is before I believe it. I know that The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NBC, ABC, and CBS have a history of many decades of doing their best to find and report the truth. Like all humans, they have made mistakes. Dan Rather, for example, is one of my heroes, but he reported a story that turned out to be entirely false. He was simply fooled. That doesn’t, however, mean that everything he did before or since is to be ignored. It means he made a mistake.

I would not wish to be defined only by my most public errors. I’ve made more mistakes than I wish I had. But there is more to me than my mistakes.

I wouldn’t want President Trump defined only by his mistakes, either. “Grab them by the pussy” is a mistake of epic proportions, and I think most people would admit that. However, there is more to Mr. Trump than just the fact that he said something stupid once. He is best judged by assessing the body of his work. His credibility is best assessed by looking at his own statements and seeing how well they match up with reality.

We can disagree about how often they match up, but we have only the Press to help us find out what he said and how well it matches with reality. His own statements about his reason for firing Comey, on National TV with Lester Holt, flatly contradict what his Vice President said, what his spokespeople said, and what others in his administration said.

If we can’t agree on that reality, if we just assume the Press is lying to us, then I have no means of determining what to believe. What other source do I have?

If I am to believe only the President’s Tweets, then I am likely to have a one sided view of reality. I like to see more than one side. Russia wants to show us only one. I want to live in The United States.

Let’s all try to beware of our cognitive bias. Let’s all recognize that just because we want to believe something, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Let’s all look for credible sources for our information. If we will all do all these things, we have a fair chance at saving our country from the corruption that seeks to destroy it. “We must disenthrall ourselves,” as President Lincoln told us, “and then we shall save our country.” Let’s try our best to do that.

Posted on by Fred

Human Rights

I’m not concerned with Women’s Rights. I’m equally unconcerned with the rights of People of Color, or with the rights of members of the LGBTQ community. I have no interest in the rights of this religion or that one. I have even less interest in the rights of white heterosexual males. Why? Because those are all just subgroups of the rights that interest me. I’m interested in Human Rights.

Women’s Rights are Human Rights. All rights are Human Rights. No person deserves special rights for being a member of a particular group. Too many groups, however, are denied rights by those to whom we have given the power to define the rights we have. And that is simply wrong. I’m concerned, at the moment, about laws that ban abortions from the moment a heartbeat can be detected. The claim is that this occurs at approximately six weeks, but, that turns out not to be be true in any meaningful way.


Rather, at  six weeks of pregnancy, an ultrasound can detect “a little flutter in the area that will become the future heart of the baby,” said Dr. Saima Aftab, medical director of the Fetal Care Center at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami. This flutter happens because the group of cells that will become the future “pacemaker” of the heart gain the capacity to fire electrical signals, she said.
But the heart is far from fully formed at this stage, and the “beat” isn’t audible; if doctors put a stethoscope up to a woman’s belly this early on in her pregnancy, they would not hear a heartbeat, Aftab told Live Science. (What’s more, it isn’t until the eighth week of pregnancy that the baby is called a fetus; prior to that, it’s still considered an embryo, according to the Cleveland Clinic.)
It’s been only in the last few decades that doctors have even been able to detect this flutter at six weeks, thanks to the use of more-sophisticated ultrasound technologies, Aftab said. Previously, the technology wasn’t advanced enough to detect the flutter that early on in pregnancy.

https://www.livescience.com/65501-fetal-heartbeat-at-6-weeks-explained.html

Some laws seek to prevent abortion even earlier.

There are also laws that outlaw birth control, or that won’t allow insurance companies to provide it for their customers. Birth control is only for the wealthy. There is plenty of information about this topic available here.

jhhttps://www.guttmacher.org/united-states/contraception

Why do we feel the need to deny slightly over half of the population of the Earth the basic right of bodily autonomy?

If I don’t wish to give blood, even to save the life of my relative, I can’t be forced to do that. Understand, an actual human being, whose heart has been beating for quite some time is going to die because of my choice. And yet, no one would deny my right to make that choice. Why? Because it’s my blood. It’s my body. I get to choose what will happen with it.

Why should women be denied the same bodily autonomy that I have?

If a person dies, and his organs could be harvested to save another person, the organs are off limits unless the dead person has signed a paper saying they may be used. And yet, no one would deny the right of the Dead to choose.

Why should living women, with hearts that beat independently, be denied the same bodily autonomy that a dead body has?

Well, the argument goes, she is carrying another life. Her body is no longer entirely her own. She’s sharing it with another human being.

I have a couple of problems with that argument. First, it is STILL her body. Regardless of who or what may be inside of her, the body contains her consciousness. It is her body that is going to experience whatever happens to it.

Yes, Fred, but it also contains another life. That life also has a consciousness. That life counts as much as the life of the woman.

I would argue that, first, I’m not entirely sure when what she is carrying inside her is a life. Neither are you. Certainly it’s not yet a life when the man ejaculates inside the woman. The sperm hasn’t even fertilized the egg yet. On the other hand, it is absolutely a life, worthy of all the rights, care, love, and help necessary for survival the moment it is born. Somewhere between ejaculation and birth, it probably is a human life. I’m just not sure where to draw that line.

There is no doubt, however, that it lacks a consciousness for quite some time. The brain doesn’t begin to form for six weeks. Consciousness, in any meaningful form, doesn’t begin for six months, and even then, it’s open to debate. For more on this topic, see the link below.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2018/04/19/tracing-consciousness-in-the-brains-of-infants/#12e94619722f

There is scientific evidence that tells me that human life begins at the moment of conception. Cells fuse, and this is the first step in becoming a human being.

The conclusion that human life begins at sperm-egg fusion is uncontested, objective, based on the universally accepted scientific method of distinguishing different cell types from each other and on ample scientific evidence (thousands of independent, peer-reviewed publications). Moreover, it is entirely independent of any specific ethical, moral, political, or religious view of human life or of human embryos. Indeed, this definition does not directly address the central ethical question surrounding the embryo: What value ought society place on human life at the earliest stages of development?  A neutral examination of the evidence merely establishes the onset of a new human life at a scientifically well-defined “moment of conception,” a conclusion that unequivocally indicates that human embryos from the one-cell stage forward are indeed living individuals of the human species; i.e., human beings.




https://lozierinstitute.org/a-scientific-view-of-when-life-begins/

Well, then, Fred, that’s it! Life begins at the moment of conception. The woman’s body is no longer exclusively her own. She owes those cells the opportunity to become a fully developed human being.

That sounds like a reasonable argument, at least at first blush. But, let’s follow it through to its conclusion. If the life of barely developed cells is as valuable, as worthy of rights, as the life of a fully developed human being, then we must also say that all human lives are of equal value. And, I agree with that idea. All human lives are, in fact, of equal value.

My life is as valuable as yours, and yours is as valuable as mine. The life of the homeless guy at Circle K asking for a dollar is as valuable as that of the wealthiest billionaire. And, if all lives are of equal value, then it follows all lives deserve equal rights. Women, those of different religions, those of different sexual orientations, those of different races, those of different nationalities, those from other countries all deserve the same rights that you do. If you don’t accept this, then I question whether you really believe that the value of a fertilized egg is the same as the value of the woman whose egg got fertilized. Too often those who oppose abortion also oppose helping other humans because they were not born in America. If you’re among those people, I would like you to reconsider your beliefs. How is a fertilized egg entitled to more rights than a fully formed, conscious human being with a heart that beats on its own?

Let’s explore the value of human life a bit more deeply. We have frequently heard that life – at least human life – is sacred. I don’t know why that’s necessarily true, since, finally, it’s brief. Perhaps it’s because it’s so short that it’s sacred. None of us is likely to be here for 150 years. The record, as far as I know, is 122 years. But, if we believe that all human life is sacred, then what does that tell us?

We should care for all human life. This doesn’t mean just me and the people who are most like me. We just said all human life is sacred. That means the life of a refugee from another country is sacred. It means the life of Osama bin Laden was sacred. If it’s sacred, we should preserve and care for it. But, do we?

If a mother has a child, it is, very often, her problem, and hers alone. We will give her minimal, if any, help feeding, clothing, and caring for her child. She has to pay for child care, food, diapers, clothes, doctors, dentists, and anything else the baby needs.

Well, if she didn’t want to do that, she shouldn’t have had a baby!

Yes, well, perhaps she didn’t want to have a baby, but it happened anyway. She was raped. A condom broke. Or, perhaps she didn’t have access to the information she needed. Or, maybe she just made a decision with which I might disagree. Why do I get to decide how, when, with whom, and under what circumstances a woman can have sex? Why do you? Who appointed us The Morality Police? What makes sex moral or immoral? Who am I to decide that for someone else? Morality is an incredibly fraught subject. It’s almost never clear that this is an absolute Good and that is an absolute Evil. And the times when it is clear usually involve a body count.

Forcing a woman to give birth against her will without giving her the support she needs to raise the child is simply wrong. A woman is more than an incubator for a man’s seed. She is a complete human being, with the right to choose for herself what happens to her body. She has all the rights a fetus does, and then some.

So, all human beings deserve the same rights. That includes women.

And that brings us back to my original point. Why do I have the right to decide what will happen to my body, but a woman doesn’t have the right to decide what will happen to hers? If it’s because she’s carrying a potential life inside of her, then you’ve denied her of a right that I have. I will never have a potential life growing inside of me. I can, however, get one started in a woman. And when I do, I should be required to take responsibility for the consequences of my action. The fact is that most men are not required by law to do anything more than pay child support. To believe that paying any amount of money is sharing an equal burden with the woman who is giving birth is absurd.

She will, at the very least, undergo a painful experience. Even the easiest births are no cakewalk. The worst of them actually kill women. If she gives the baby up for adoption, she will have an emotionally traumatic experience. If she raises the child, she will have a good portion of her life changed dramatically and forever.

If the pregnancy came from an experience she didn’t choose, such as a rape, the man might be able to attempt to get custody of the child the victim bore. We’ve probably all seen this meme:

It’s not entirely true that in 31 states a rapist can sue for custody, but there is no law specifically banning it. The issue is a bit murky, but Snopes did a fairly good job of sorting through it. The upshot of their research is this:

What’s True

Some states do not have laws to prevent the perpetrators of rape from seeking custody and visitation of children conceived during that act.

What’s False

No laws restrict rape victims from seeking child support from their rapists.

The complete article can be found here, for those seeking additional clarification. It’s worth your time to read it.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/rapists-and-child-support/

Rape victims often want to keep as far from their attackers as possible. How can one blame them? It is, therefore, not likely they’re going to sue for child support.

The laws being enacted now are, in my view, less about the value of human life than they are an effort to deny women of rights that I have. Alabama, Ohio, Georgia, and several other states have passed laws that effectively ban abortion, in direct violation of the Roe V Wade decision. Why are they doing this? I suspect it’s because with a very Conservative Supreme Court, they hope to be able to reverse Roe V Wade. Why do they want to do that? I won’t accept the idea that it’s because they value all lives equally. I’ve covered that above. The Alabama law, for example, doesn’t apply to fetuses in fertility clinics.

When Alabama Senator Bobby Singleton, a Democrat, pointed out that Alabama’s new law could punish those who dispose of fertilized eggs at an IVF clinic, Chambliss responded, “The egg in the lab doesn’t apply. It’s not in a woman. She’s not pregnant.”




https://medium.com/s/jessica-valenti/anti-abortion-lawmakers-have-no-idea-how-womens-bodies-work-3ebea9fd6015

If the law were, in fact, about the value of the fetus, it would apply to laboratories as well as women. That fetus is precisely as human as one carried in a mother’s womb. But a fetus in an IVF facility is not protected. What do they do with excess fetuses then? I thought this would be a simple Google search. It turns out, it’s not a simple question at all. There has been one widely accepted study done on the issue, and it found the following:

Nearly all (97 percent) were willing to create and cryopreserve extra embryos. Fewer, but still a majority (59 percent), were explicitly willing to avoid creating extras. When embryos did remain in excess, clinics offered various options: continual cryopreservation for a charge (96 percent) or for no charge (4 percent), donation for reproductive use by other couples (76 percent), disposal prior to (60 percent) or following (54 percent) cryopreservation, and donation for research (60 percent) or embryologist training (19 percent). Qualifications varied widely among those personnel responsible for securing couples’ consent for disposal and for conducting disposal itself. Some clinics performed a religious or quasi-religious disposal ceremony. Some clinics required a couple’s participation in disposal; some allowed but did not require it; some others discouraged or disallowed it.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16859369

There is no law requiring labs to divulge to the public what they do with extra fetuses. Cryopreservation is the process of freezing and preserving unborn fetuses. This is expensive and can continue for years. There have been fetuses cryopreserved for in excess of a decade. Preservation is often expensive. It is not an option for the poor.

But, please notice 60% of the labs are willing to dispose of the excess fetuses. There may or may not be a ceremony involved, but they are not required to keep it alive. The Alabama law isn’t, in any meaningful way, protecting the life of the unborn fetus. It’s restricting the choices of women.

We have lived, nearly forever, with the idea that women are secondary to men. Their function is to provide us orgasms and give us sons and daughters, and then to raise those children while we go do something else. And this idea is being challenged, frequently and compellingly, in our society. And it should be.

There is nothing that makes women less than men. There is no reason to pass laws restricting their choices while the same laws don’t apply to men. The time of the patriarchy is gone. It’s now time to recognize that women are complete human beings with all the same rights, all the same needs, and all the same value as men. They are no less important, no less deserving of making choices, and no less human than I am.

Finally, let’s be clear about something. Banning abortions is never going to stop people from having them. It’s simply going to stop them from having safe and legal abortions. It’s the same as banning guns. Criminals will still have them. If prostitution and drugs are illegal, people will still hire prostitutes and use drugs. We can just lock them up for those things. And the people passing these laws know that. What they really want is to return to the time when only white male landowners had any rights at all. There is an ancient, deeply embedded idea in the minds of many men (and some women) that males are, by virtue of being male, superior to females. And changing that idea is not going to be an easy task.

Now, what are my feelings about abortion? I wish no one would ever have one. It’s sad to keep a life from coming into the world. I do, in fact, feel empathy for the unborn child. Then, why don’t I want them to be illegal?

I don’t know of anyone who ever wanted an abortion. I want a pastrami sandwich. I want to go to dinner with Valerie Bertinelli. I want to make a living as a writer. Those are things I want.

I don’t know of any woman who feels about abortion the way I feel about pastrami sandwiches. I do know, however, women who may need an abortion. Not just because she was raped, or was the victim of incest, or for any other single reason, but because for any of 3.9 billion reasons, she may not be in a place where having a child is a good choice. The decision whether or not to have an abortion must certainly be an agonizingly difficult one. I’m relieved I will never be faced with that decision. People I love, however, have had to make the choice. Why on Earth should we make that decision any more difficult by threatening to imprison her and her doctor? Who is better off for doing that? If your argument is the unborn child is better off, I can’t agree with you. You’re condemning a child to a life in which he or she is unwanted.

No, I’m not! Do you know how many couples want to adopt children? The child will be loved in deeper ways than other babies!

I understand that feeling intimately. When I was married the first time, my wife and I were unable to conceive. We went to doctors. We went to fertility clinics. We did all we could. It simply wasn’t going to happen. So, we wanted to adopt. A relative of mine got pregnant while my wife and I were hoping to adopt, and we wanted to adopt her child. She had an abortion. I was furious with her. But, I got over it. Do you know why? Because, finally, that was her choice to make. It was her body. She gets to decide what is right for it. My wife and I don’t. My wife and I never did adopt. It turns out to be a very difficult process.

If you would like to adopt, I’m completely in favor of it. There are many children waiting for you to give them all of your love. According to The Adoption Network, “There are 107,918 foster children eligible for and waiting to be adopted. In 2014, 50,644 foster kids were adopted — a number that has stayed roughly consistent for the past five years. The average age of a waiting child is 7.7 years old and 29% of them will spend at least three years in foster care.” https://adoptionnetwork.com/adoption-statistics

There is no shortage of children. There is a shortage of eligible parents. Why? This is because the definition of eligible is narrowing. In many states, gay couples are ineligible. My first wife and I were unsuccessful in adopting because I’m an atheist, and no one wanted their child raised without a church. I would love for you to adopt if that’s your desire. It is a beautiful thing to do. It can, however, be a long, hard road.

I hope you never need an abortion. I hope you find love, you get married, you have children, and you have a family that loves you for the rest of your life, if those are things you want. But, if you do need an abortion, I hope you can find love, support, correct medical information to help you decide, and a safe and legal means of obtaining it. It’s your body, first and foremost. If you choose to share it with someone and become a mother, I applaud your decision. You’ve made what I believe to be a beautiful and deeply meaningful choice. But if you choose differently, I will support your decision, even if I disagree with it. My opinion doesn’t matter. Yours is the only one that’s relevant.

You are a human being. You have a human right to choose what is best for you.

Posted on by Fred

Is Facebook a Good or An Evil?


“Listen, Bob. A gun is just a tool. No better and no worse than any other tool, a shovel- or an axe or a saddle or a stove or anything. Think of it always that way. A gun is as good- and as bad- as the man who carries it. Remember that.”


Jack Schaefer

Facebook, for me, is exactly the same. It’s a tool. There have been many valid arguments against Facebook. It has the potential for evil. It connects groups of people who share the same small minded, often ignorant or dangerous, views of the world.


“The problem… is that there is nothing special about humans in this information system. Every data point is treated equally, irrespective of how humans experience it. “Jew haters” is just as much an ad category as “Moms who jog.” It’s all data. If Group A has a bigger presence on Facebook than Group B, so be it, even if Group A is trying to demean or organize violence against the Bs. Of course, the reality is that humans are all different, and cannot be reduced to data.” –


https://qz.com/1342757/everything-bad-about-facebook-is-bad-for-the-same-reason/

I recognize its potential for abuse. But I also recognize its potential to be a life changing force for those of us who fear actual human contact. And by no means are we the only group for whom Facebook is a significant benefit. It helps those who want to launch careers. It helps those who write. It helps those who want to share ideas.

For me, Facebook has been the difference between complete social isolation and a feeling of being connected with the world at large. I’ve reconnected with friends I haven’t seen in decades. I’ve found people who share my interests and political views. I’ve encountered ideas I would never have considered in any other way. I’ve been able to get the help I’ve needed when I have had the courage to put my shame aside and ask for it. I’ve found Love, and, being Fred, plenty of rejection.

But it has made me into someone I wouldn’t have been otherwise. It’s changed me for the better. It’s saved my car, kept me from homelessness, and sent me to a Phil Collins concert. It even made it possible for me to meet one of my greatest heroes, who happened to be playing Facebook poker at the same time I was. I’ve become actual friends with him because of Facebook. And because of him, I found more music, more friends, and more acceptance.

I’m accepted in a world over which I have more control. I have a larger audience than I’ve ever had before for my ideas, my passions, my writing, and my creative endeavors. I feel safe, confident, and respected. On Facebook, I’ve been able to celebrate my successes, mourn my losses and failures, and support causes and people that are important to me.

It’s more than just pictures of Cats. (Although, of late, I’ve even begun participating in that. When Cats love you, they change you.) It’s a safe window into the world. It’s a door that can be opened and closed as necessary. It’s a tool… no better or worse than the people using it. I surround myself with the best people I can find. That makes Facebook, for me, the best tool I have.

Posted on by Fred · 1 Comment

Can We Have a Star Trek Economy?


The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn’t exist in the 24th century… The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard, First Contact

I loved Star Trek, as a child, because of its cool technology. Who wouldn’t want to have a gun that doesn’t have to kill? Wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to beam from one place to another? And, who wouldn’t want to carry around an instrument that allowed you to talk to people thousands of miles from you? And, as I grew up, I saw some of those wonderful devices invented. You’re probably reading this on one of them.

There are parts of Star Trek that probably simply can’t exist. In fact, its most basic concept is almost impossible. We’re never going to travel beyond the speed of light. Einstein showed that to me when I was 15, and no one has ever been able to show me he was wrong. If we produce a warp engine, I will be ecstatic to admit my error. And, I will be equally excited to acknowledge my mistake in my near certainty that we will never be able to beam down to a planet as soon as we do it.

We do have weapons that are approaching the phaser. One need not fire lead bullets anymore. Tasers exist. And nearly 2/3 of the population of the planet now has a cell phone which is at least as good as Captain Kirk’s communicator. There are even cell phones that can act almost as Tricorders in their ability to measure certain functions of the body.

While some of Roddenberry’s fantasy can never be reality, much of it already is. And we’re better off for it. But what of the rest of his vision?

I love Star Trek, as an adult, because of its extraordinary society. Their greatest concerns in life truly are bettering themselves and the rest of humanity. Their physiological needs are all met. For the most part, their safety needs are met. They aren’t struggling to pay rent or put food on the table. Much, but not all, crime has been eliminated because people have no need to commit crimes to fulfill their physiological needs. I’m much more likely to go rob a store in order to feed my wife and children than I am to do it for the fun of it. If my physiological needs are met, most of my motives for committing crimes evaporate. I expect the same is true for you, and for the guy next to you, too.

The higher level needs of Maslow’s famous hierarchy are all needs to be met by each individual. How one finds love and a sense of belonging is an expression of identity; it’s not the work of the world, but of each unique person in each one’s unique way. This is also true of Esteem and “Self Actualization,” or the ability to be creative and to work for the benefit of the rest of the world. The world’s interference in those endeavors would be a Borg-like threat to our individuality.

But I believe that we live in a world in which we are now able to meet the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy for all human beings. We have the resources and the technology necessary.

It seems to me that The Economics of Star Trek that I admire and envy so much are based on three realities.

  1. A Post Scarcity Society. There are thousands of hours to be done on this subject, and the debate about the use of the Replicator, alone, is sufficient to be worthy of a Doctoral Dissertation, but I’m using this in the limited sense that the world is capable of providing all the basic human needs: food, water, shelter, medical care, clothing, and the means to participate in society (transportation, communication, and education). Our civilization is already capable of meeting the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy for every human being.
  2. A Resource Based Society. There’s a group called The Venus Project that is actually working toward achieving this goal. What is it? It begins with the radical idea that the planet is the heritage of all people. We need to work out how to use the resources the planet can produce to provide what people need as efficiently as possible. This is their basic goal, from their website:

The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalog of problems inherent in today’s world.

The Venus Project

You can learn more about them here:
https://www.thevenusproject.com/

3. An Empathetic Civilization. The idea is that we extend our empathy not just to our blood ties, or our tribal ties, or our religious ties, or our national ties, but to the entire species, and finally even to our shared biosphere. We know we have the technology necessary for this because we can all feel empathy at the same time in response to disasters. This is true when we hear of horrifying tsunamis, devastating earthquakes, or miners trapped beneath the Earth. We have global communication, and we know almost instantly what is happening to each other. Just as when one infant in a Day Care begins crying, all the others will join them within a few minutes (this is due to something we’ve discovered recently called Mirror Neurons. We are soft-wired for Empathy. There’s a neuroscientist named Marco Iacoboni who’s done interesting research on this ), so will human beings share the distress of others in trouble. Empathy is, in my view, the most important human emotion, even if “The Empath” was something less than Star Trek’s most successful episode. The ability to feel for others is what makes us human. If we have the resources and the technology to meet the first two of Maslow’s needs on the hierarchy, people can spend their lives meeting the last three. In other words, once people no longer need to be concerned with physiological or safety needs, they can spend their lives working on the others.

What would be the result of such a world?

My crystal ball ran out of batteries, so I can only guess. I believe we would see a reduction in crime (but not its elimination), we would see better and greater technologies emerging because people have the time to devote to learning instead of trying to feed their families, and we would see, most importantly, a happier world where people really, honestly can work for the betterment of themselves and the rest of humanity.

I’m told this is fantasy, and worse, it’s Socialism. I reject that idea. It can be accomplished, but it’s a question of changing our mind set. I have written quite a bit about the need to increase our empathy, and that embracing Art is an effective means of doing that. You can find that here.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/27/empathy-and-art/

I believe it is wrong to judge a person based on how much money that person earns. The Value of a Person is much more than their ability to monetize their skills, passions, and abilities. Our Value to each other is in what we can do for one another. Empathy is also a part of one’s actual value. I have also written about that, and it’s available here if you need me to make the case more strongly.

https://frededer.home.blog/2019/03/25/the-value-of-a-person/

So, will we ever live long and prosper? I don’t know. I do know, however, it’s worth it to try.

For Roddenberry to accomplish his society, he needed a Eugenics War and then World War III. The society became a barter system when we had to start over because we had destroyed a quarter of the Earth’s population and many of our resources. One of my friends, a lifelong member of Slytherin House, believes we could manage this right now by simply removing the populations of India and China and replacing them with trees and arable land. While Kodos might admire her thinking and endorse her methods, I can’t.

Can we realize Roddenberry’s vision without the need for violence and destruction? I certainly hope so. I also know that Edith Keeler believed as I do. And, when she managed to talk FDR into delaying our entrance into World War II the results were disastrous. We lost the War and with it the concept of Freedom. However…

“She was right. Peace was the way.”
“She was right. But at the wrong time.”


– Kirk and Spock, “City on the Edge of Forever”

Keeler asked Kirk, “Are you afraid of something? Whatever it is, let me help.”

Kirk answered, “Let me help… A hundred years or so from now I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He’ll recommend those three words even over I love you.”

That happened on Earth in 1930. We’re just about a hundred years from that time, now. Is it time for us to begin down Edith Keeler’s path? I don’t know.

But if you’re afraid of something…

Let Me Help.

Posted on by Fred

We Cannot Escape History

“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.”

Abraham Lincoln

We live in the most divided country that The United States has been since The Civil War. People hold strong opposing opinions about issues of great importance. Climate Change, Abortion, Vaccinations, Immigration, and the conduct of the government are just a few. I don’t want to downplay the importance of any of these issues, but there is one that seems to me to override all others. Is it right, or necessary, to impeach the President?

I understand that, again, there is great debate over this topic. There are those who believe the President is doing the best he possibly can, given the circumstances. He is as hated as he is loved, he is constantly attacked in the news media, he is being investigated over and over again, and his every word comes under scrutiny. For all of that, though, his supporters point to the excellent economy, and they tell us Mr. Trump is responsible for those numbers. They will tell us that he doesn’t behave like other politicians, and this is to be admired. Other politicians are frequently obfuscating in every word that escapes their lips. Their words are so measured that they become meaningless. This President doesn’t measure his words; he says what he feels, and many people share his feelings. They approve of his aberrant behavior. They applaud it enthusiastically.

There are others who despise the President. They point to the 10,000 documented lies he has told. They talk about the caging and tear gassing of children. They talk about the government shutdown he proudly said he would, and subsequently did, cause. They object to his payments to porn stars and Playboy bunnies, his promised, but failed, Muslim ban, his Wall, and his broken promises concerning healthcare. They’re appalled at his choices for The Supreme Court, and they believe his latest Attorney General to be a fraud. They boo him enthusiastically.

But, for me, the Heart of The Issue is whether his behavior is what we want from our President, not only now, but for all the Presidents to come. The behavior that I’m discussing is his overt efforts to stop Congress from fulfilling their constitutional duty to oversee the Presidency and provide checks and balances to keep it from becoming a dictatorship.

If the Democrats begin impeachment proceedings, they will almost certainly fail. The Republicans are the majority of the Senate, and it is wildly unlikely they will vote to uphold the impeachment. The political risk is that this will empower the President’s base, and it will help him to get re-elected. The Democrats, obviously, don’t want that outcome, so impeachment seems like a foolish idea. They accomplish none of their immediate goals. Not only does the President finish his first term, but he gets elected for a second one. The politics are very bad for Democrats.

But, we must look beyond present day politics, and consider the future. The last time we were this divided, a better President said this:


The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation… We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility.

Abraham Lincoln

The day may come when Americans look to 2019, and they decide that our country either stood up for itself, or laid down and let the oligarchy in which we’re living slide into dictatorship. If, as our Attorney General suggests, “That’s not a crime… To be obstruction of justice the lie has to be tied to impairing the evidence in a particular proceeding… If the President is being falsely accused… and he felt this investigation was unfair, propelled by his political opponents, and was hampering his ability to govern, that is not a corrupt motive for replacing an Independent Counsel.”

What does that mean for future generations? The next President, perhaps a Democrat, or an Independent, or, for all I know, an Anarchist, a Socialist, or a Nazi, can decide he can obstruct an investigation into his behavior (or hers), because he believes he has been falsely accused.

Even an ardent Trump supporter would, I think, recognize the danger in that. Whomever your Least Favorite President is, whether it’s Trump or Obama, or Carter, or Kennedy, or anyone named Bush, or even Lincoln, imagine that person, or someone much like him, being elected in 2024, or 2028…. or in your grandchildren’s lifetimes. This President can now do things you loathe with absolute impunity. Anyone who tries to investigate this President can be legally obstructed because this President believes the accusations against him (or her) are lies. In other words, the entire system of Checks and Balances will collapse. Without it, there is nothing defending us from a ruthless dictator, of any party or ideology.

I had concerns about writing this. I find myself, even now, reluctant to publish it. Just as the politics of impeachment are bad for Democrats, the politics of publishing are bad for me.

First, I have friends whose anger I’m all but inviting. I’m trying my best to stay open and objective, and sticking only to the facts, but I am certain someone who matters to me will object. I don’t care to lose friends. I have only a few, and each of them matters to me. I have friends whose opinions of my writing carry immense weight with me, and I have no idea what their political persuasions may be. I would be more than sad if they decided that we can no longer be friends because we disagree about this.

Second, I’m just stepping into the world of writing for strangers. I’ve shown my work, all my life, only to my friends. When a play of mine was performed, strangers saw it, but the script, itself, was seen only by those who know me. I’m not in a position that I can afford to alienate strangers who enjoy my work. I want them to return and read more of what I write. Losing them would also disappoint me deeply.

So, why publish this at all?

I’m publishing because, as a friend reminded me earlier this week, “The internet is forever.” I am living, as are you, through an important moment in history. My power to control what is happening in my government is all but nonexistent. I can vote. And, I can raise my voice, and share my thoughts with others in hopes of either reinforcing their beliefs, or getting them to consider new ones.

There are many writers who are both better and more knowledgeable than I who can, have, and will write better about this than I have just done. I’m perhaps half a drop of water in the Pacific Ocean of Pundits. My personal insignificance, however, will no more spare me than it did those who lived during the Lincoln administration.

I want to be able to say that, at this moment in history, I acted in the only way open to me. I’m too old to protest. The last time I tried I passed out from heat stroke. It was nearly another hospital trip for me. I can’t knock on doors; people scare the hell out of me. But, what I can do is write. And I can find the courage to share my thoughts, even at some small peril to myself.

I may lose friends and readers, but I will also be able to say I did what pathetically little I could to save the country I love.

Our leaders have the power to do much more. I’m hopeful they’ll disenthrall themselves, and then they shall save our country.