Update from the Heartland
No.504
8.8.11 – 14.8.11
Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/
To all,
This week we finally made the journey down to Austin to see our grandchildren – Judson James and Avalon Mar . . . oh yeah, and their parents. Shalee Lynn joined us. We played a great 18-holes of golf – putt-putt miniature golf -- Saturday morning and bowling on Sunday. Judson is growing so fast and Avalon is developing quite the personality. She has a magnificent grin and quite the little flirt. We had to drive through the night to get Shalee back to make her first day of school; she was so excited. Thank you very much Melissa and Tyson. We had a delightful visit. Sorry it took us so long to get down there. We are already looking forward to our next visit.
This Update edition was a day late. My apologies.
A frequent contributor shared his letter to the local newspaper editor:
Dear Editor:
Noel Polk offers a typically well-worded criticism of classic conservative concerns ("Poor, not rich, are suffering," August 5, possibly not his chosen title). The writer he criticized complained about a perceived prevailing mentality of the near-majority of voters who pay little or no income tax and expect those who have earned comparative wealth to involuntarily share more and more of it to fund more and more welfare. I want to point out that the liberal mentality illustrated by Mr. Polk's letter, believing that there is some inherent right to "entitlements" at someone else's expense, consistently ignores the wisdom of our constitution, which was never intended to guarantee individual comfort or equality of wealth. It was structured to enhance individual freedom (from government) and equality of legal opportunity for rich and poor. Human character and achievement, like human muscle, are not strengthened by lessening resistance or removal of obstacles or compassionate enabling to make burdens easy; instead, humans are weakened by such well-intentioned but shortsighted methods, creating habitual dependence and inadvertently denying development. The poor do suffer more than the rich, but enabled by liberal idealism in government like that apparently endorsed by Mr. Polk, human beings (rich and poor) like water will seek the easiest path and that is invariably downward. Our country and our citizenry are weakened by the government "lifelines" referred to by Mr. Polk, while the Christian virtue of giving to help the poor is overshadowed and discouraged by government redistribution of wealth. Yes, the poor suffer always, more than the rich, as the Bible clearly tells us, but the truly compassionate solution is not for government to perpetuate poverty by removing incentives for our poor to strive toward individual opportunity. Mr. Polk's accusation of class warfare waged by conservatives is unfounded, but counter accusations against kind liberals would be just as counter-productive. Instead, I say, to put the principle far too simply, let's try giving away fewer fish and try offering or possibly requiring more fishing lessons for those who want fish.
. . . my contribution
I have long favored helping those who wish to be helped AND seek to better their circumstances. I am not interested in helping those who do not satisfy both conditions. Further, I think it is only fair and reasonable if you take assistance, you must abide the rules; there must be a quid pro quo; we should never dispense unconstrained monies from the Treasury. Thus, I subscribe to your “fishing lessons” conclusion.
BTW, what is the name of your local newspaper?
. . . the reply:
“The Clarion Ledger of Jackson MS (or clarion liar, as some call it) is a Gannet paper, once owned by a wealthy and prominent Jackson family who are still big in publishing. It is by far the largest in the state but has significant competition in north MS from The Commercial Appeal out of Memphis and in south MS by the Times-Picayune out of New Orleans, and has much loyal opposition from smaller local papers statewide. Fewer than 10% of my letters to the editor get published, and I have an on-going feud with David Hampton, editor, over their infuriating policy (not published by any written disclaimer at all) of editing letters that they do publish without showing that they have left out words or phrases or sentences, thus unfairly crediting the named writer with something different from what was intended. They have gutted some of my letters and made typos in others, and my complaints are to no avail. Do you know of any other paper that does this without at least showing "..." or some other indication of omissions, and without at least confessing this in a statement on the same page as the published letters?
. . . and my last comment:
I think I have roughly the same yield and same editing problem with my local newspaper – Wichita Eagle (a McClatchy paper). They’ve edited to condense, but to date have not altered the essence of my opinions.
The so-called “Super Committee” has now been selected. The leaders of each party in each chamber picked three of their members for the deficit reduction committee created by the Budget Control Act of 2011 [PL 112-025] [503]. They are:
[Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio selected:]
** Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas as co-chair,
** Representative David Lee “Dave” Camp of Michigan, and
** Representative Frederick Stephen “Fred” Upton also of Michigan.
[House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California selected:]
** Representative James Enos “Jim” Clyburn of South Carolina,
** Representative Christopher “Chris” Van Hollen, Jr. of Maryland, the Budget Committee ranking member; and
** Representative Xavier Becerra of California.
[Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has selected:]
** Senator Patricia Lynn “Patty” Murray (née Johns) of Washington as co-chair,
** Senator Max Sieben Baucus of Montana, and
** Senator John Forbes Kerry of Massachusetts.
[Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky selected:]
** Senator Jon Llewellyn Kyl of Arizona,
** Senator Robert Jones "Rob" Portman of Ohio, and
** Senator Patrick Joseph "Pat" Toomey, Sr., of Pennsylvania.
The selectees for the Super Committee speak volumes regarding the congressional leadership’s expectations and portend more of the same, as we have just endured in the past half dozen months. We are not likely to witness bipartisan solutions to pressing Federal financial issues. I truly hope I am pleasantly surprised. By the law, they have until the end of this year to solve the problem. This is going to be a very interesting and entertaining few months.
News from the economic front:
-- The U.S. Federal Reserve indicated it plans to keep its benchmark short-term interest rate at or near zero until at least mid-2013, as it substantially lowered its forecast of the U.S. economic recovery. Seven board members voted in favor of the action, with three voting against the move.
Comments and contributions from Update no.503:
Comment to the Blog:
“I comment this time only to point out that your position on Obama is wrong by your own reasoning. You state, ‘Politics is NOT the domination of one ideology or another; it is entirely about seeking compromise among widely divergent position, desires and objective; it is working with people of all persuasions to achieve a mutually acceptable compromise solution.’ I agree. Krugman’s point and mine is that Obama has not successfully compromised but has capitulated at every turn. He has certainly not achieved ‘a mutually acceptable compromise solution’ on much of anything. What we see is domination by the Tea Party as funded by the Koch brothers, which cannot be supported as either majority rule or constitutional government. The budget fiasco is only the latest case in point. After all the posturing and shouting, Obama got nothing for the progressive views of those who elected him. I voted for him and I wish I’d stayed home.”
My response to the Blog:
Oh my! Negotiation and compromise require that all parties at the table are prepared to compromise. Like any relationship, when one party becomes recalcitrant, the whole process breaks down. What we witnessed was political extortion. I saw little evidence of negotiation or compromise. To blame the President for suffering the extortion seems rather capricious to me. His choice was accept the bill as presented or veto it. He chose the only reasonable path available to him . . . in this case, something was better than nothing. If he had vetoed S.365, the consequence on the market would have been even more drastic that it already is. No, in this one, I believe virtually 100% of the culpability lies with Congress . . . specifically with the House Republicans and precisely with the so-called Tea Party malcontents. Unlike the recalcitrants, I am not willing to shutdown the government and destroy the standing of the United States in the world marketplace; clearly, they were! That said, I agree in principle with the Tea Party recalcitrants that the USG must make serious spending cuts . . . closing tax loopholes and ending subsidies for the wealthy is just as necessary as reform of the entitlements or major cuts in the Pentagon (but not the military). To continue giving the wealthy and corporations access to paying no taxes simply pushes the burden onto the middle class, which already pays a higher fractional tax rate than the rich. Fair is fair; everyone should share the pain.
My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
2 comments:
Cap, I seriously disagree with your correspondent in Mississippi. The level of poverty that we now experience in the USA is neither a Constitutional issue nor a moral one. Poverty is an economic issue. The nation as a whole, as embodied by government, must consider the ramifications of allowing more and more people to sink into poverty. My advice is to consider other nations with high rates of poverty and small numbers of extremely wealthy people, such as Haiti. Most of them are neocolonial countries, subject to the economic whims of outsiders. That is the real issue about poverty. To provide one simple example, about 14,000 people currently die here in Ohio annually from lack of health care. Even if that does not bother you, who pays to bury them? What happens when that number rises?
Of course, I disagree with your correspondent about the class warfare issue as well. Conservatives have indeed supported the wealthy in opposition to the poor. In many cases, such as Warren Buffett, the wealthy themselves object to this. Most of the conservatives are middle class or poor people consistently voting against their own interests.
I have no idea why Harry Reid would appoint John Kerry to the “Super Congress.” He’s a weak spot if there ever was one.
Calvin,
Re: poverty. Like most topics, we must first agree upon the definition. The commonly understood definition of poverty is something like, “the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor,” which is common among “Western” nations. Americans tend to use money (income) as the measure of poverty, because that is the medium of our subsistence. However, I respectfully submit that such a metric is not only unreasonable; it is also unrealistic and seriously biases our view of poverty. I use the conjunction ‘AND’ in my conditions: “helping those who wish to be helped AND seek to better their circumstances.” If both conditions are not met, then I see no reason to expend public monies on those individuals. I acknowledge the individual citizen’s fundamental right to choose for either condition, and I shall respect their choices. Also, as I previously stated, I believe public monies should have string attached – conditions that must be met and maintained; otherwise, no deal – sorry. Using income (or money) as the metric has gotten us so bloody crosswise with indigenous peoples around the world; it is wrong. So it is here. If a person chooses to kill themselves with overdosing on psychotropic substance(s) or choose to live without the encumbrance of property or possessions, I say let them be, just as we should respect the decision of an individual to accept life-shaving medical intervention. We must stop trying to induce people to live as we want them to live; it is not necessarily better. That said, I do accept your point; far too many people satisfy my constraints but still slip through the cracks.
Re: conservatives. I understand your argument. I am not sure I can agree. I know the public image of conservatives and even the Republican Party, but there are more than a few compassionate conservatives.
Re: Super-Committee. From my perspective, the selections by all four congressional leaders serve one purpose – perpetuation of the loggerhead. Neither party can tolerate “giving in,” so we select the faithful partisans, who will presumably not stray far from the party line. I do not see one of the selectees as helpful to finding a mutually acceptable solution to a very real problem. Further, I see the default position as a blunderbuss or perhaps even a scorched-earth solution. I want to be proven wrong.
Cheers,
Cap
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