Mythical Beings that Inhabit the Matrix, Part 2: Politicians

     Some of the world’s biggest humbugs are politicians, especially when they’re running for office.

     Suppose you were to ask a hundred people, “How are jobs created?” Chances are, every one of them will tell you that jobs are created when someone produces a good or a service at a reasonable price and needs help somewhere in production or sales—or words to that effect. Suppose you ask these same people, “What causes people to choose one tourist destination over another?” That’s a big more complex, but most people will give you a pretty reasonable answer.

     In short, most people have a fairly clear understanding of cause and effect. They know how jobs are created, they know how tourism is generated, they know that crime is caused by criminals, that dumping toxic waste into water causes the water to be unsafe to drink, and so on. Somehow, though, common sense flies completely out the window when political candidates make campaign promises.

     During every election year, politicians who have never created goods, services, or anything else of value in their entire lives promise to create thousands or even millions of jobs. Astonishingly, millions of otherwise sensible people actually believe them. Politicians who have never sat at the desk of a travel agency promise to attract thousands of new tourists each day to certain places without having the slightest clue as to why people would want to go there.

     Do you believe that swarms of tourists will want to descend on such places as Timmonsville, South Carolina; or Whitman, Nebraska? No? Would you believe it if a political candidate promised that he’d cause it to happen and didn’t even bother to explain how he’d do it? If you’re like most voters, you probably would.

     Timmonsville is my hometown. It was a sleepy little town of 2,100 people when I was growing up there, but it has recently grown a bit livelier. Now a bustling dystopia of 2,320 people, Timmonsville recently has had several murders; and the town council is playing a shell game with the town government’s debt. There are 100 women for every 70 men in Timmonsville, partly because 38% of the households are headed by women with children.

     The last time crowds of tourists descended on Timmonsville was July 14, 1955, during the centennial celebration. For the sesquicentennial in 2005, though, they seem to have figured that there was nothing to celebrate.

     According to one web site, there are 59 attractions in the Timmonsville area. Not one of them has a Timmonsville address, most are over 30 miles from Timmonsville, and a fourth of them are over 40 miles from Timmonsville. The town doesn’t have a movie theater or a newspaper, probably because town gossips can entertain and misinform you in real time.

     If murder, political incompetence, genealogical mysteries, and the articulate form of cannibalism are too taxing for your system, you might vacation in Whitman, Nebraska. It’s an unincorporated community situated about 100 miles from the nearest interstate highway and over 20 miles from the nearest crossroads town. It sounds like a great vacation spot for recovering heart patients.

     From one of the photos I’ve seen on the Internet, I see that there’s a hill somewhere within sight of Whitman, Nebraska. I’ve been through both Kansas and Nebraska, and I was taken aback by the realization that there was a hill in either of those two states. You could stand near the South Dakota border, look southward, and see almost into Oklahoma. If treated to the right kind of publicity, a million tourists from Kansas and Nebraska might be eager to travel hundreds of miles to see what a hill looks like. The brick-veneer, vacant storefront could be converted to provide travel information, in case hills are so unfamiliar to the tourists that they need someone to point it out for them.

     A politician wouldn’t have to give a reason for tourists to swarm to Timmonsville or Whitman. All he’d have to do is promise a field of dreams based on the notion, “If you promise it, they will come.”

     People also have the notion that politicians—particularly officeholders—are experts on every political issue. They’re not. Ideally, a politician specializes in one or two areas and tries to become conversant in other areas. Mostly, he relies on well-informed staff to supply the deficit in his knowledge.

     Most people have the idea that, if you want something done in (for example) Congress, you go to your congressman. That’s a dumb idea. He didn’t get elected because he understands the issues; he got elected because he’s a good actor and salesman—and has a more impressive head of hair than most men (assuming the congressman is a man) his age.  Senator Christopher Dodd, at left, was born in 1944.   At age 68, he has more hair than most men have at 48.

     You get things done by finding out which staff member knows the most about your issue and is likely to be sympathetic to your position. You won’t have to waste his time and yours getting him up to speed on the issue. Once you have the staff member on your side, keep in touch with him (or her). The staff member knows what the congressman knows and doesn’t know, and will save everyone time explaining the issue to the congressman.

     There’s another reason you should avoid seeing the congressman right off the bat, especially during an election campaign. To most people, every political issue is either a human need or a human desire. To most congressmen, every political issue is a public relations opportunity. This puts you and your congressman at cross purposes.

     If you don’t believe me, look at your congressman’s eyes when you try to explain your situation to him, and they’ll tell you what he’s thinking. He’s not listening to understand your point; he’s listening to locate your hot button. Once he thinks he has found it, he’ll reach into his bag of sound bites and spout one for you. Sound bites don’t help constituents, but they do help the congressman’s image in the eyes of the sheeple.

      Even when your congressman pats you on the back, he may be just feeling for a place to put the knife.

     One of my favorite quotes in literature comes from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Even after the little dog Toto had exposed the “wizard” as a fraud, the main characters in the story demanded that the “wizard” keep his impossible promises to them. He responded by conning them again, this time with a clock, a medal, and a diploma. After Dorothy, the tin woodman, the scarecrow, and the lion left, the Wizard of Oz said to himself, “How can I help being a humbug when people expect me to do things that everyone knows can’t be done?”

     Think about it.
     Check out other articles in this series:
     "Mythical Beings that Inhabit the Matrix, Part 1: News Reporters" and
     "Mythical Beings that Inhabit the Matrix, Part 3: Pastors,"
     "Mythical Beings that Inhabit the Matrix, Part 4: Doctors."
or check out the series "How Washington Really Works."

Differences between Actors and Congressmen

     In a recent article ("Common Sense, Benefits, and Peaceful Resistance"),  I wrote that advertisements tend to distort our sense of reality versus illusion; which distorts our sense of value and benefits. I then proposed practical solutions.

     The nature of politicians creates similar distortions.

     There are several significant differences between congressmen and Hollywood actors. Actors sometimes stop acting, but congressmen never stop. Congressmen expect you to believe that their performance is reality. Actors often venture into the real world and find out what it’s like, but congressmen rarely do so.

     Between the two, I prefer the actors. I think it’s high time that somebody stood up for actors who grab headlines for activist causes, and I think it’s high time somebody told the truth about congressmen who grab headlines for acting as if they care about causes other than themselves.

     If that sounds a mite harsh, try presenting your concerns to a congressman. I’ve spoken with congressmen many times, and the result has always been the same. Maybe your experiences with congressmen have been different.

     Congressmen, like actors, depend on cues to aid their performance. When you’re presenting your concerns to “your” congressman, take a close look at his face. Doesn’t it look more like the face of a salesman than that of someone who really gives a hoot about you? He’s not trying to understand your concern; he’s trying to locate your hot button. As soon as he thinks he’s located your hot button, he reaches into his store of sound bites, pulls one out, and plays it for you.

     He couldn’t care less about you and your problems, unless you’re a well-heeled lobbyist with a briefcase full of campaign contributions. He’s trying to boost his image in your eyes. Otherwise, he accepts campaign contributions from the malefactors of great wealth and votes from the poor and middle class on the pretext that he’s protecting each group from the other.

     It’s no coincidence that most congressmen or either lawyers or salesmen. People in both professions are noted for their acting ability; and people in both professions succeed by acting as if they care.

     Let me tell you a true story.

     A well-to-do man decided to build a second home in Wyoming and bought a ranch there. Locals were concerned about the loss of their way of life, but they were mollified by the fact that the rich man kept the land as a functioning ranch. One day, an eleven year-old boy got lost in the area of Jackson Hole, a canyon in that area. By the time he was sighted from the air, a storm had come up and rescue choppers were grounded. The boy would have to spend another night in the wilderness. The outsider would not accept this situation. He took his own helicopter and flew into the canyon, fighting strong winds to rescue the boy.

     Who was the hero in this story?

     A. Senator Mike Enzi (R-WY)

     B. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY)

     C. Representative Cynthia Lummis

     D. Harrison Ford

     That’s right. It was Harrison Ford, an actor. A congressman would never have stuck his neck out like that.

     When the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse trample innocent populations under their merciless hooves, where are the actors and where are the congressmen?

     Look at the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Haiti earthquake, and other disasters. Brad Pitt helped built temporary shelters. Angelina Jolie and Sean Penn did grunt work, hand-carrying supplies to disaster victims. They were getting down and dirty, helping people who needed help the most.

     Where were the congressmen? If congressmen step into a disaster area at all, they prefer to do it dry shod, like Queen Elizabeth I stepping from her coach onto Walter Raleigh's cloak.  Well, some congressmen were getting down and dirty, but not in the same sense of the term.

          Then-Congressman Richard Baker (R-Baton Rouge) crowed, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” He proposed what became known as the Baker Plan. Under his plan, the federal government would borrow a few hundred million dollars from the international bankers (to be repaid by the U. S. taxpayers) and lend it to real estate developers and other disaster capitalists. The disaster capitalists would use it to drive disaster victims from their property and make a bundle—all at U.S. taxpayer expense.

     That was too much even for President Bush to stomach. A million Iraqi and Afghani lives were a small price to pay for Bush and his chums to steal trillions of dollars, but Hurricane Katrina wasn’t profitable enough for him to sign on board. His Ferengi nature led him to balk at the idea.

In 2008, Baker resigned from Congress to go to work for a hedge fund. That was only a few months before the hedge funds did to the United States what they did to Southeast Asia during the Currency Crisis of 1997. (What next?)

     I said that actors often enter the real world, but congressmen seldom do. You see, successful actors work long, hard hours in bursts of about forty days at a stretch. Between exhausting assignments, they often have both the time and the money to go to the world’s trouble spots for weeks at a stretch.

     Congressmen never stop campaigning, and their so-called fact-finding missions are mainly campaign photo opportunities at taxpayer expense.

     Actors learn about starvation by visiting hungry people. They talk with the hungry people and with groups who are trying to relieve their suffering. Congressmen “learn” about starvation by attending $1,000-a-plate feasts at which speakers in Armani suits tell them that the American middle class should give up one meal a week.

          Actors learn about rainforest depletion by slipping into hiking boots and khakis and getting into the rainforest. Through translators, native guides give them the low-down.

     Congressmen travel in corporate-owned jets to international meetings in areas that used to be rainforests. That is, they had been rainforests before developers cleared away thousands of acres of irreplaceable resources to build the hotel at which the meeting took place. There, the same developers who cleared away the rainforest tell them the need to preserve the world’s rainforests.

     Actors learn about the tribulations of Gaza by venturing into Gaza. Congressmen get their information by visiting politicians—the same ones who order the shelling of civilians in Gaza. Actors get their information by visiting with real people.

     Obama? Oh, I can say a lot of bad things about him, but I’d like to wrap up by saying something good about him. When the genocide in Darfur needed to be stopped, Obama had the good sense not to send some idiot congressman on a phony fact-finding mission. He asked for actor George Clooney, who already had had his boots on the ground in Darfur for several years.

     George Clooney, Matt Damon, and other Hollywood actors, more than any congressmen could have or would have, played major roles in ending the genocide.

     Why do actors do a better job of representing our interests than most politicians do? I think it’s because of three more differences between politicians and actors:

     1. Salaries for politicians are confiscated rather than voluntary,

     2. Salaries for politicians are taken from every geographical area rather than just the area the politicians are elected to represent, and

     3. Campaign contributions, which are the only voluntary means of payment for politicians, may be given by people whose interests are at odds with the interests of the people that politicians are supposed to represent.

     By contrast:

     1. Actors don’t get salaries. They depend entirely on voluntary contributions, mainly in the form of ticket sales,

     2. People from every geographical area is a constituent or potential constituent of actors, and

     3. Actors depend on numerous and diverse individuals for their livelihoods and far less on interest groups.

     Perhaps we’d get better representation if political salaries and campaign contributions were voluntary and were limited to the price of a theater ticket.

Guest Commentary: The Eloquent Pogo

(Today, veteran radio personality John Wrisley is taking up his walking stick and giving it a curmudgeonly shake in the direction of voters who seem unclear on the concept of why we have representative government. I shall resume my crusty commentaries tomorrow.)
The Eloquent Pogo
written by John Wrisley (used by permission)
Pogo's general philosophy suited me fine, and I miss him. Every Christmas I lift an eggnog in his honor and sing, "Deck us all in Boston, Charlie! Walla Walla, Wash, and Alley-garoo." Sometimes I'm tempted to hop a bus for Waycross, Georgia and hunt for him. I'd borrow or rent a bateau and paddle around in the Okefenokee Swamp hollering, "Pogo-o-o-o! Where ARE you? We n-e-e-e-ed you!!"
You'd think we grown-ups could get along quite nicely without the advice and wise-cracks of an opossum from South Georgia, but as history is made right before my eye-bones I'm convinced we're making a grand mess of a formerly proud nation and may never straighten things up without someone of Pogo's statesman-like wisdom telling us what we're doing wrong.
One of the most important phrases of the 20th century was uttered by Pogo in 1970. "We have met the enemy, and he is US!" We have since forgiven the little critter for stealing the line from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver H. Perry who, in 1813, sent a message to an army general declaring, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours." Besides, Pogo's renowned version more accurately describes the present state of political affairs in the USofA.
Republicans would not admit to being their own enemy, nor would Democrats look in mirrors for people to blame. The poor continue to blame the filthy rich for their plight, and the bewildered middle class sees the purchasing power of the once mighty U.S. dollar evaporating in their pockets, but they have no idea whom to blame. They don't even save any of it any more. What's the point? The interest it yields doesn't keep up with inflation, so they just borrow whatever they need to keep up with their wants. "Spending money they don't have for things they don't need," one wag remarked.
Were Pogo on the scene you can bet he'd have some sharp quips about our behavior. He'd wonder why consumers and government bureaucrats are frantically digging themselves into a debt hole they can't crawl out of. "What must these idiots be thinking?" he'd remark. "They could duct tape together all the extension ladders at Lowe's and never get out of that pit."
Pogo would also be amazed that we stand still to let a full blown WAR be paid for on the credit card. Up until foolish politicians invented the "guns and butter principle" citizens of a nation that wanted to go to war had to sacrifice a big chunk of their living standard to pay for it. It was unthinkable to prosecute a war any other way. Today the political weaklings who run the country would dare not call upon citizens to pay the bills of military adventure. It's easier to borrow a couple of billion dollars a day from foreigners. Citizens aren't even asked to buy War Bonds any more!
The denizens of the Okefenokee Swamp may be peeking at us from amidst the Spanish moss and remarking about our foolish conduct. Simple J. Malarkey might mutter something about debtors becoming slaves of creditors, but wouldn't push the point. He would observe almost at once that we like being slaves, as long as our masters keep the the cable services priced within our means and brewers keep the prices low on beer.
Before he turns, sadly, to vanish into the swamp Pogo might quote his friend Walt Kelly who wrote; "There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us!"
Is there an echo in the swamp?
March 20, 2006
(To read more of John Wrisley's wise and witty remarks, visit him at his website at www.wrisley.com).

How We Created the Mess in Washington, Part 1

(This is the first of a three-part series.)
Most discussions of cleaning up the mess in Washington begin and end with a single fallacy: the belief that, if we elect the right people to the right offices, everything will be all right. I used to believe that.
When I was a young man working my way toward a baccalaureate in political science, I tried to convince others to vote for so-and-so because he would improve things. An old man said to me something like, “Even if you elected Billy Graham to Congress, he’d soon be corrupt.” I didn’t want to believe it.
In part, you and I have caused the problem of corruption in Washington. We wanted to take the easy way by finding great men who would absolve us of the responsibility of managing our own government. Now we’re faced with the task of taking our country back.
While great men often make a difference in the course of history, a greater difference is made by millions of people toiling in obscurity—or failing to toil when they should. Voters tend to elect people who are primarily actors and salesmen and expect them to be magicians and political think tanks. Part of the problem is not that voters expect too much of their congressmen but that they expect too little of themselves.
When Jimmy Carter was running for President in 1976, he promised a “government as good as” the American people. Actually, the promise wasn’t necessary because, whomever we elected, we’d get a government as good as we were. H. L. Mencken put it another way: “Democracy is based on the belief that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
If that sounds harsh, think of how we decide which “great man” is to become our Wizard of Oz in Washington. I’ve already pointed out the error of electing actors and salesmen to do the job of problem solvers and opportunity creators.
How else are our “public servants” chosen?
For one, it helps if a candidate has a full head of hair that’s well-coiffed. After the age of 25, the chances of a man experiencing substantial hair loss is around 25%.. From that point on, his age closely matches the chances of him having substantial hair loss. Since the average male U. S. senator is 66 years old, 66% of the 83 males in the Senate (or 54 senators) should be showing substantial hair loss. Remember, though, that they were first elected to the Senate when they had more hair.
Take a look at their pictures and dates of birth at the Wikipedia page. Just for fun, find the senators who are your age or older and compare your hair to theirs. What’s Chris Dodd doing with a full head of hair at the age of 65? What’s Robert Byrd doing with that much hair at the age of 93? And get a load of John Kerry, at the age of 66! Did he mug a high school student and take his hair?
I don’t have enough hair even for a hair transplant, unless I had it transplanted from a bird dog. I’m afraid that, if I did, I’d fall into the habit of pointing at everything.
Height is another factor in how we elect our officials and make other choices. Several different surveys have shown that height is a significant factor in hiring salesmen, selecting corporate CEO’s, and electing modern Presidents.
And when was the last time America elected a fat President? I believe the last one was William Howard Taft way back in 1908. Judging from the Wikipedia photos, several U.S. senators are overweight, but still more slender on the average than most people their age.
It also helps if the candidate has a face made for television and a voice made for radio.
I’m not appealing to anyone’s sense of envy. All those qualities really shouldn’t disqualify a candidate from consideration. Columbia, South Carolina, radio personality and narrator John Wrisley (in his eighties!) has all of those qualities, and I’d vote for him in a heartbeat. I’d vote for him because I know him, his abilities, and his views. No, he’s not running for political office and probably never has. It’s a shame.
What I’m saying is, we shouldn’t disqualify a candidate simply because he has a head like a billiard ball or a body like Bilbo Baggins or a face and voice like Gollum. Nor should we vote for a candidate because he’s an excellent actor or salesman. (John Wrisley has also been an actor.) Congressional candidates are running for a position in which they’ll be expected to find or make solutions and opportunities for their constituents. As voters, our criteria for hiring should fit the position.

NEXT PAGE

Officeholders and Avatars

Even when we dislike them, we like for our officeholders to be larger than life—especially congressmen and Presidents. People who cause major problems for us, the thinking goes, must be major figures.
Thus, Nancy Pelosi and her ilk are transmuted into legendary and even mythological beings. In the minds of some, she's Queen Pelosi or Marie Antoinette. One commentator wrote, “The last time anyone saw the likes of Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, and Nancy Pelosi, they were stirring a cauldron when the curtain went up on Macbeth." I'm surprised that no one has compared Pelosi to Medusa.
We can view congressmen in a more objective light if we de-mythologize them. The reality is, many of them are sub-ordinary. The real Nancy Pelosi can be more accurately compared to the late Tammy Faye Bakker—a greedy wretch who is likely to stir in us an admixture of pity and disgust.
Let's not get congressmen confused with their campaign materials. We're all familiar with the idea of the images people generate as their online personalities. It's quite common for pimpled, skinny geeks to represent themselves online as popular, chic, and a lot of other things they never were and never hope to be. They may even use images called avatars to represent themselves, and some of these images are cast in the mold of legendary or mythological beings.
That's what the public versus public images of most congressmen are like. Voters may naively elect the avatar, but we end up getting the person as he really is.
Let's take one example of a sleazy mediocrity who reached the Senate by betraying everyone who trusted him—including the prisoners of war in Vietnam—while presenting himself as the exact opposite of the person he really was.
His father, Admiral John McCain, Sr., pulled strings to get his son into West Point. McCain, Jr., finished 894th out of class of 899.
Aboard the USS Forestall, McCain earned the dubious nickname, “Wetstart” McCain. Wetstarting is a term used for (loosely, in layman’s terms) causing a fighter plane to backfire into another pilot's face aboard a ship. Yes, it was a dangerous practice.
On one occasion, McCain's plane wet started (deliberately, some believe), causing missiles to dislodge and explode. Some 27 people died and over 100 injured in the deadliest peacetime disaster in U.S. naval history. Admiral McCain's boy was quickly transferred from the Forestall before any investigation could be held. He was the only crewmember to be quickly transferred after the Forestall fire.
On the day McCain was shot down over Vietnam, he broke his arms by not following the correct procedure in ejecting.
For McCain, Hanoi Hilton was more like the Hilton Hotel than a prisoner of war camp. There, he was called Songbird” McCain. Watch the video interview with a former Vietnam POW. According to some prisoners of war, McCain always wore a clean shirt, and he'd disappear for days at a time. Whenever he returned from these unexplained absences, he looked none the worse for wear—unlike many POW’s who returned bearing signs of torture.
You may have seen the made-for-television movie In Love and War, telling of Carol McCain’s heroic struggle for humane treatment of American POW's in Vietnam. Unlike When Hell Was in Session, the story of Jeremiah Denton's imprisonment at Hanoi Hilton, In Love and War said little about John McCain. That's because there was nothing much to tell that they'd have wanted to repeat.
How McCain got the money he needed for his election to the United States Senate was another act of treachery. While his wife was confined to a wheelchair, John McCain made regular trips to Hawaii for an adulterous relationship with Anheuser-Busch heiress Cindy Lou Hensley. After Cindy agreed to marry him, McCain divorced his wife. It was Cindy's money that got him elected to the Senate on a platform that included family values.
If McCain would prefer not to have his women a la carte, it's his business. I mention this scandal only because it fits a pattern of betrayal in John McCain's life.
Once in the Senate, McCain continued his pattern of betrayal. You may know that, in the Paris Peace negotiations formally ending the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger privately agreed that the U.S. would pay war reparations to Hanoi in exchange for prisoners. Congress wasn't told of this secret agreement until years after the war. When Congress balked at war reparations, Hanoi kept at least 600 Americans they had not yet released. “Songbird” McCain has consistently blocked serious investigations of Americans still held in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Click here to see a video of McCain, as chairman of a committee on POW/MIA affairs, abusing the leader of a POW/MIA families group who had lost her brother in Vietnam. Notice how he misrepresents her actual words. Members of the POW/MIA Committee accused McCain and government officials of blocking the investigation.
McCain co-sponsored the McCain-Feingold Act, which was designed to make it more difficult for incumbents to be challenged for re-election. During the 2008 Republican primaries, however, McCain violated his own law and was not prosecuted. He accepted federal matching funds in his campaign and won several primaries by that system. Once his campaign contributions and spending exceeded the legal amount, he opted out, as he was allowed to do. His violation was that he didn’t return the matching funds, and he didn't release the delegates he had previously won, as the law he'd co-sponsored required him to do.
There are also serious questions regarding election fraud, but I'll address that in an article on the Diebold vote-counting machines and other easily-rigged electronic voting devices.
McCain’s current act of betrayal is his sponsorship of a bill to treat American dissenters as “enemy combatants.” At the determination of the President, anti-war activists and other dissenters can be deemed enemy activists and be subject to the type of “aggressive interview” techniques found at Guantanamo. Please write a polite letter to your congressman and ask him to vote against this assault on the Constitution.
When we consider a candidate, we should look beyond the public image the campaign has presented. We don't elect the image; we elect the person.

Joe Stack, the IRS, and Our Congressmen

By now, just about everybody and his house cat has had something to say about Joe Stack fueling up a Piper four-seater and crashing it into a Texas office of the Internal Revenue Service. Stack has been labeled a murderer, a terrorist, a hero, a narcissic loser, a tax protester, and who-knows-what else.
Yeah, he was a murderer. He wouldn’t be a hero to me, and I’d rather not associate myself with anyone who’d consider him one. “Tax protester” as a label is too facile and dead wrong to boot.
The terrorist label came from those who define anyone who commits an act of violence against the government. Ironically, the first use of the word terrorist applied to a government committing acts of violence against its own citizens during the 1920’s. If terror was his motive, then, by definition, he was a terrorist.
Since I couldn’t find his blog on the Internet, and since his critics haven’t seen fit to quote it at length, I have no way of knowing whether he was a narcissist or whether terror fit into his motives. From what has been made available, I’d say that revenge for perceived harassment, rather than terror, was his motives.
Considering that Stack’s bone of contention stemmed from Section 1706 of the so-called Tax Reform Act of 1986—passed by our congressmen in Washington. The word reform, by the way, implies that something has been improved. In a nutshell, Section 1706 pulled the rug from under self-employed computer contractors and gave big businesses a weapon for putting them out of business. Most of them did go out of business or relocate overseas—more American jobs lost because of Congress. For details on this travesty called Section 1706.
For many years, Joe Stack tried to work within, through, and sometimes around, the system that our congressmen created. The bean counters at the IRS just kept on shuffling papers and counting beans, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were dealing with real, flesh-and-blood people.
And how do people react when they’re ready to scream, “I’m as mad as—“? Well, you know the rest. When you push an East Asian too far, he thinks about suicide. When you push an American too far, he thinks about murder. Joe Stack thought about both. Vernon Hunter, who, for whatever reason he may have had for working for the IRS, was also a husband, father, Vietnam War veteran, and murder victim.
Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas 25), an implacable enemy of the small businessman, said that Joe Stack’s act was “a cowardly act of domestic terrorism.” Actually, Doggett’s voting record in Congress closely fits the description of a “cowardly act of domestic terrorism” against small businesses and independent contractors. Before looking at Doggett’s voting record, you’d better get a barf bag:
Spending & tax issues
Government Reform (including government waste)
How does your congressman stack up? Is he an enemy of the hundreds of thousands of “regular Joe’s” who struggle to make ends meet, working long hours as small businessmen and independent contractors? What’s your congressman been doing in that granite-and-marble casino on Capitol Hill?
Check it out. This November, we’ll have our opportunity to drive the money changers from the temple, and your congressman may be one of them.

An Honest Look at Bigotry

     Probably everyone has practiced some form of bigotry whether they recognize it or not. Practically everyone has at some time been a victim of bigotry. It’s as natural as it is unhealthy. Bigotry is one of many forms of happiness even when those who practice it find entertainment in it.

     Like all other forms of unhappiness, bigotry is caused by unfulfilled expectations. We expect that someone else should conform to our notions of thought, appearance, or behavior. When they don’t, we’re unhappy with them.

     Sometimes our expectations are reasonable. After all, I started this blog because I thought that our congressmen should represent the people who elected them. Given my bias in favor of representative government, I think that it’s a reasonable expectation. Most of them have sold themselves to the highest bidder, and I’m upset with them over that. (I do mean most of them. If corrupt congressmen were cockroaches, Riverdance couldn’t stomp all of them.)

     Bigotry differs from righteous indignation in that expectations are unreasonable. Often, innocent people are harmed as a result. This harm can range from a mild slight to genocide.

     A few years ago, some residents of New York City surveyed people from about three dozen cities around the world to determine which city had the most polite residents. Not surprisingly, the survey concluded that the city with the most polite residents was New York City. Those conducting the survey made the mistake of using the standards of New York City to judge three dozen cities all over the world. It never occurred to them to find out how politeness was expressed elsewhere. At business establishments in East Asia, it’s expected practice to personally greet everyone who comes in. In homes in East Asia, one of the first things someone says when a person visits his home is, “Have you eaten yet?” I’ll bet that those forms of politeness weren’t found on the survey.

     Maybe you recall Rex Harrison’s bigoted remark in My Fair Lady, “Why can’t women be more like men?” One person I knew responded with the equally bigoted rhetorical question, “Well, who’d want to marry—“and he gave the name of a fellow student he regarded as mannish. Contrary to his expectations, someone eventually did want to marry that student.

     Let’s admit it. We’re not all alike, and sometimes those differences cause us to get on each others nerves. Sometimes we get on each others nerves for reasons that have nothing to do with our differences, but we often blame those differences anyway.

     Have you noticed what kind of people bother you when you’re driving and someone else makes a mistake? About half the drivers who get us upset are women drivers. What about the other half? If they’re not racial minorities, they’re people who are too old to be allowed to drive, too immature to be trusted behind the wheel of a car, trashy looking, snooty big shots who seem to think they own the road, yankees, foreigners, idiots, or just plain crazy. What about those drivers from the frozen wasteland farther north? Oh, the Canadians. They’re yankees who aren’t even Americans. Why should they be driving down here?

     Do you see how it works? We refuse to believe that “people like us” can cause problems, so we look for differences we can blame.

     Mark Twain famously said, “A cat that has sat on a hot stove lid will never sit on another, but he won’t sit on a cold one either.” Shouldn’t we be smarter than cats? If someone with a Spanish surname commits a crime, should we then prohibit all future immigration?

     I once worked with a Panamanian-American whose surname (due to marriage) was King. At the same job another co-worker was named Rodriguez because that was her husband’s name. The Myrna Rodriguez’s employment satisfied the Civil Rights Commission, but Cookie King’s didn’t. I was listed as their Native American, although most of my Native American blood comes from a group that was assimilated before the Bureau of Indian Affairs existed. Do you see how ridiculous it can get?

     What’s really behind America’s illegal immigration problem? The Mexican government has effectively closed its southern border to illegal immigrants to Mexico from farther south, but they pressure the U.S. not to hinder Mexicans from illegally entering the U.S. Allowing dissatisfied Mexicans to leave Mexico is a kind of steam valve protecting Mexico’s oligarchs from facing a second Mexican Revolution. American congressmen are thwarting attempts to deal with the problem because illegal immigrants give politicians opportunities to buy votes with tax dollars.

     Closing the door to legal immigration would do absolutely nothing to solve America’s illegal alien problem. America’s illegal alien problem isn’t a reason to hate immigrants or to put an end to legal immigration. It’s a reason to close our borders to illegal traffic and close our Congress to corrupt congressmen.

     As long as the powers that be can keep people divided against one another, they can continue to feather their nests at our expense. That’s reason enough for the American people—native and new—to unite and take our country back.

What's All this about the GOOOH Movement?

By now you’ve heard a thing or two about the GOOOH Movement. GOOOH, pronounced, “Go,” stands for Get out of Our House. GOOOH is a non-partisan, grassroots movement to replace all 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and elect citizens who, presumably, will serve for only one term of office. It’s the brainchild of Jim Cox, a computer specialist who quit his day job to devote all his time to GOOOH.
I won’t go into the details of how the GOOOH process of candidate selection and election is designed to take place; nor will I try to get you fired up for or against the movement. I’ll refer you to the GOOOH web site for the details and the rah-rah stuff. As I write these words, I’m listening to one of the You Tube videos (of seven) answering that question.
This article is a discussion of the pros and cons of a movement to remove every member of the House of Representatives in a single election. I’ve often heard that the Chinese word for crisis is a composite of two words, one meaning danger, and the other meaning opportunity. In the present crisis, the GOOOH movement represents both.
The greatest danger is that we have an unelected, extra-constitutional (some would say unconstitutional) branch of government in the regulatory agencies and other areas of the federal bureaucracy. In the face of an entrenched bureaucracy, newly elected congressmen are babes in the woods. Rather than getting true representatives in Washington, we may be exchanging poor representation for no representation.
The greatest misconception of the GOOOH movement is that we can solve the problems of Washington by electing “the right people” to Congress and leaving them alone to do good. The late Milton Friedman said that congressmen are, in effect, businessmen who will do the right thing or the wrong thing depending on which is more politically profitable. (Perhaps a more apt word, given his rationale, might be mercenaries rather than businessmen.) While his view may have been overly simplistic, he makes a vital point: If the voters don’t monitor their congressmen’s behavior, somebody else will, and probably not for the better.
Another shortcoming of the idea is that it’s not sustainable. Let’s say you throw half the bums out. The other half will probably figure that GOOOH will never be able to give a repeat performance. Not only will they feel less vulnerable, they’ll also know that, with their experience, they can run roughshod over these newcomers.
On the plus side, the voters themselves will feel a sense of empowerment that they’d never felt before. They’ll have seen that they can make a difference. We probably would see a higher degree of citizen participation in government. With that higher degree of citizen participation, we may see a higher determination to throw crooks out of office.
For reasons I described in the series “How Washington Really Works,” the problem in Washington isn’t a case of a few rotten apples spoiling the barrel. It’s a case of a rotten barrel that spoils the apples. Very few academic papers have been written on the Rotten Barrel Theory; but, in certain areas, fundamentally decent people are corrupted by the systems in which they function. I believe that Washington is one such system.
The movement to get the crooks out of office is laudable. That, in fact, is the main reason I started the American Action Report. The GOOOH movement provides some of the direction for the excitement generated by the Tea Parties. The GOOOH movement also should provide some of the incentive and sense of empowerment necessary to watch congressmen once they’re elected.
I know of no movement—and certainly not the American Action Report—that can promise to deliver everything needed to clean up the mess in Washington. I believe, though, that the GOOOH movement is worthwhile for at least two reasons: the immediate gratification we expect to see in removing a significant number of corrupt congressmen, and the sense of responsibility I expect it to generate among its participants.
Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s not an end; it’s a beginning. The more difficult part will come after the election.

Towards a New Paradigm, Part 1

Probably all of you have seen the outmoded political spectrum that puts all voters at some point along a straight line. Reading it from left to right, we see communists, socialists, liberals, moderates, conservatives, fascists, and Nazis. One of the major problems is that the spectrum presumes that all political behavior is based on political philosophy; but most people aren’t political philosophers. It also presumes that all people are motivated by the stated rationale for political positions rather than attitudes about freedom.
In recent years, the sort of grid you see below has come into vogue. For simplicity, I've left out the numbers and lines that are supposed to show—based on how you answer a set of questions—where you fall on the grid.

This grid is an enormous improvement on the straight line because it more realistically addresses the attitudes that citizens have concerning the government’s place in their lives. It’s still lacking in one area in that it labels the people in the center of the grid as populists. This label presumes political motivation for a group that is noted for its lack of political interest.
The classic explanation of the word populist is, “Us against them.” Owing to a lack of political interest, most people who are considered political centrists can't be called populists or moderates.
Most of them are politically oblivious until a couple of months before an election. Then they listen to the rhetoric and vote for the candidates who offer the best rhetoric. Never mind that everything a candidate says may be a lie; they don’t know it because they haven’t bothered to look for the facts. Never mind that candidates may completely contradict themselves by, for example, describing themselves as fiscal conservatives and social moderates (government actions cost real money regardless of how they’re packaged.) They’re like thin reeds that sway with every gusty speech and are often most influenced by who most recently spoke to them.
The illustration below more accurately identifies the voter in the middle of the illustration.

According to the paradigm we’ve heard all out lives, pandering to swing voters is the key to winning elections. In my opinion, pandering to swing voters is the main reason that freedom has lost out in the overwhelming majority of elections.
Think about it in terms of Game Theory. Everyone has some understanding of Game Theory even though very few people call it that. Most voters view each election as a one-time, zero-sum game. Understandably, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians would rather give up some of what they’d wanted in order to avoid losing all of what they’d wanted. As a result, voters occupying each position choose the centrist candidates just to keep the other two groups from winning.
That's why authoritarians gain ground with each election. For one thing, there will be other elections. For another, the position defined as the “moderate” position—“centrist” is more accurate—is a lobster trap that moves the electorate closer and closer to the authoritarian position.
The authoritarian strategy is a combination of “The Prisoners' Dilemma” and good cop/bad cop. Two suspects are kept apart and each is given reasons to suspect the other of ratting on him. Although each prisoner knows that it’s to the benefit of both prisoners to remain silent, each incriminates the other in order to get what he's told is a better deal.
The good cop/bad cop scenario is played out like this: “Conservatives” get elected and deprive the people of some of their personal freedoms. “Liberals” loudly oppose the move. Swing voters and everyone else are offered false alternatives. Instead of voting for a principled liberal, the liberals settle for someone who is considered "less conservative." Why? The “less conservative” candidate is presented as most agreeable to swing voters;thus, he's said to be most likely to win. If the “conservatives” lose power, the “liberals” come into office and do nothing to change the injustices wrought by “conservatives.” Instead, they deprive the people of some of their financial freedoms, which the “conservative” officeholders ratify when they get into office.
The old paradigm of the swing position being used to play liberals, conservatives, and libertarians against each other—to the benefit of the authoritarians—has caused all three groups to lose their liberties. What we need is a new paradigm in which liberals, conservatives, and libertarians unite against the authoritarians.
There are three major challenges to that idea. The three groups aren't communicating with each other, and I see no reason to hope that they'll learn to do so in time for the 2010 congressional elections. The three groups don't trust each other, and I don't expect that situation to change any time soon. Lastly, each group realizes that, in cooperating with each other, the gains and losses will not be equally distributed among the three groups.
How do you coordinate three groups that aren't communicating, don't trust one another, and see an uneven distribution of rewards and costs coming from cooperation with one another? I'll answer that question in my next article.

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