As readers of the Moose know, I am a confirmed Hellenist and adopted Greek because of my wife. The last week in Greece have been some tumultuous, unstable happenings and we don’t quite know what’s going to happen in the next month or so. While the Greek problem may not affect the United States directly, depending on how it goes, ripples could reach our shores in the next six months (I mean REAL ripples, not just stock market swings that are blamed on the crisis). Stay informed.
Today is definitely NOT a normal Saturday in Greece. Even though Papandreou survived the confidence vote in Parliament last night, he still needs to take concrete steps to forming his promised national unity government. The problem is that opposition party leader, A. Samaras (ND), has now said that he will refuse the offer from Papandreou’s PASOK and wants to see national elections held to determine the future of the government. The problem with that plan is that the clock is ticking, Greece runs out of cash in another three weeks or so and Europe is not willing to release another dime until the Parliament approves of the bail out package and additional austerity. So we may have only staved off the worst case scenario for Europe, but it seems that no one understands that any way Greece goes forward, the difference between the worst case scenario and worst case scenario for the Greek people is not that large. I suppose the only possible positive for the Greek people this week is that talk of Greece leaving the eurozone is now open and on the table as a possibility. The Greek people have had enough and no longer see the benefit of austerity for the sake of “wider Europe,” they have been able to take care of themselves for 3500 years, it looks like they are starting to think about taking their chances. Either way, they face several more years of financial strife, sacrifice, and suffering whether or not they receive the aid package offered. Read more at the links below to stay current on the situation.
- News From Greece
- Wall Street Journal
- The Denials that Trapped Greece
- National Unity Government challenge
5 Things to Occupy Your Mind + 5 Things to Occupy Your Conversation = 10 Things That Lead to Action
by Roy W. Bakos
It should be obvious to everyone looking and listening that there is a general sense of discontent that is starting to dominate the political, social, and economic landscape of our country (and world for that matter). Starting with the contentious elections of 2006, moving to the election of Barak Obama in 2008, and then back again to the elections of 2010, we have seen great shifts in the political make-up of our national and local governments without seeing an accompanying shift in policy or reality for many Americans. This at first caused the anger from the right (with some from the middle joining) as expressed by the Tea Party and has now been joined in an anger from the left (again, with some from the middle joining) as expressed by the Occupy Wall Street folks. Thomas Jefferson and Ron Paul are about the only politicians that play well on both sides of the anger fence. I believe that this anger is born from a feeling of disenchantment with a system that has become so corrupt that neither side, when they gain power through an election, is actually able to get anything done that the people that backed them wanted. This then intensifies the anger and dismay at the state of things among the partisans which forces stronger and stronger rhetoric that starts to reach beyond the scope of compromise. As for the middle, those that “need to be energized” by someone or something, it causes a feeling of futility and we lose the participatory part of our democracy. Right now, about the only thing we can agree on is that a majority of Americans think that government, the financial system, politics, or some combination of the three are completely broken beyond repair and many no longer think that they, the People mentioned in our founding documents as being the ones that are supposed to run this unwieldy Democratic Republic, can have any say or make any difference in what happens in the world around them. This spirals on, and on, and on, and on, and on…
I would like to change this and I believe that the way to change this is to harness this anger and frustration into some meaningful action. To do this, we must concentrate on the things that we agree on and agree to compromise somewhat on our differences. In this spirit of discourse, I propose that we all list 5 things that we are not satisfied with/want changed and then list 5 things we would do to change things. If enough of us participate in this, we can gain a consensus to figure out the work that needs to be done to fix this broken system. I am going to start by asking everyone that reads this to compile their own lists of 5 and 5 and use the comments section of this website to post them. I will then attempt to get the most popular ideas together and publish the top 10 priorities at a later date. This is how democracy needs to be practiced…the people telling their leaders what they want them to do. Lets start with lists and then move to influence.
5 Things Things That I Think Need Attention:
1)The Banking and Financial System;
2)The Military Industrial Multinational Complex;
3)The Healthcare System;
4)The Tax Code;
5)The War on Drugs.
5 Solutions to These Problems:
1)Make the laws that apply to everyday Americans in regard to financial improprity apply to the people that run the large banks and investment firms. If you wouldn’t allow me to sell a broken down house to my neighbor as if it were a well kept one (fraud), banks should not be able to do the same thing without facing legal penalties for doing so;
2)Cap interest rates at 15% above prime (lower this to 10% if prime rises above 8% as I believe that the constant number that the Bible/Koran/Torah have regarding usury is probably the most reliable number in any of these texts) and pay us interest on our investments (deposits and the like) no less that 1/3 your highest rate charged on things. If a bank charges someone 10% to borrow money, it should have to pay me at least 3% to give it to them to lend out;
3)Cancel all Free Trade agreements with any country that does not pay workers the same relative amount that we pay workers here to eliminate the incentive to move jobs and industries overseas to cheaper labor markets. Cancel all free-trade agreements with countries that do not place the same environmental restrictions on business as our environmental laws do. Basically, the buying power of a dollar must be equivalent to the buying power of a peso or yuan or whatnot for the average worker and clean water and air must mean the same things to everyone;
4)Repeal all prohibitive drug laws and legalize, tax, and regulate all drugs. Take the money saved from fighting the abject failure that the war on drugs has become and use it to lower taxes and pay for entitlements.
5)Cut 500 Billion form the defense budget. Use 200 Billion to pay down the deficit yearly. Use the other 300 Billion to fund the US Army Corps of Engineers which would be deployed around the world to help build infrastructure that would feed, clothe, and shelter people that need food, clothing, and shelter. How do you pacify a radical? Let him/her feed their family, shelter their family, clothe their family, and treat them with respect as fellow human beings;
5.1) (Yes I am cheating…it is my idea after all!) Reform the tax code in this simple way: all income, regardless of source, is income. The only things that can be written off with income credits are a deduction for up to two children (or up to two adults that you care for in your home), a deduction for the one home that you live in most, and a deduction for educational costs. Let’s say $3000 per kid (or elderly parent) up to two, between $5000 and $10000 depending on the size of your mortgage, and between $3000 to $6000 for educational costs. After these deductions, all income (again regardless of source) gets taxed at 15%. I will give the right the “everyone should pay” as long as they give me “all income is income (see Capital Gains).”
Well, that is it for now. Read my lists. Make your own. Post them in the comments section or e-mail them to us at the Bull Moose website. Comment and take part in all of this. It is ultimately our responsibility as citizens to make sure that the “Great Experiment” that is the United States works. Its failure is our failure and its success our legacy.
by Roy W. Bakos
This is an attempt to answer the the whole “coherent idea” attack as it applies to the Wall Street Occupation…having a single pointed group of ideas that fit on a business card is part of the problem. This stuff is not about a sound bite, it is about ideas. Our Revolution was underway for about 15 years before Jefferson set pen to paper and wrote the Declaration and codified the ideas behind it. What is happening and growing out there (and I do hope it continues to grow), in New York and around the Country, is a message sent by a bunch of people that are finally letting Wall Street, DC, and local leaders know that they are pissed at the way things are done. People are pissed about how elections seem to be bought and paid for. People are pissed that some trader in a suit can wipe out your retirement fund and be rewarded for it. People are pissed at the nameless, faceless, machine that is corporate fascism which has threatened to destroy our Republic for the last 40 years (and at various times in our past as well…see Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath for the 1930’s version). That anger, and the public show of it, is good enough for me right now. Let the 1% know that they are outnumbered a bit and maybe our “leaders” will start to offer up some real changes to a very, very, very broken political/economic system.
This is how lasting change happens. The Suffragette Movement started almost a century before women were finally granted the right to vote. The Civil Rights Movement started when we were still a colony and is still not finished with the work that needs to be done. Our very Republic has its roots in ancient Greece and Rome and is part of an enlightened thought process that started centuries before the first Europeans set foot in what is now North America. Political and Social movements are often born out of turmoil. Let us hope that the current tumult propels us forward to a new and better reality. Until then, let the occupation continue!
by Roy W. Bakos
The headline from the AP reads, “Feds to announce Calif. pot dispensary crackdown.” We are spending Federal money and court time to escalate the failing war on drugs at a time when should be paying attention to everything else. The Ken Burns documentary on PBS this week could not have come at a better time.
Billions of dollars stolen by the banks and the financial industry and we are worrying about closing down stores that sell pot to people in a State that allows this to happen? Really? Here is why I am so pissed about this right now and why you should be too.
A bailout that lent trillions at no or low interest to the largest banks in the world (yes, world…not just US banks but Deutschebank and others as well) while small businesspeople couldn’t get loans and regular folks were being foreclosed upon and thrown out of their homes. Administration after Administration and Congress after Congress adopting policies that encourage companies to move overseas and abandon the American worker. The same watchdogs presiding over an economy that has watched middle class wages and benefits decrease over the last 41 years while the income of the top 3% in this country has risen fivefold. Continuous warfare in the Middle East that starts almost immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. Where is my “peace dividend?” It is in stacks of cash on pallets that went missing in Iraq and in billions of dollars in military spending for a plane that even the Pentagon does not want.
Richard Nixon. You have failed. Jimmy Carter. You have failed. Ronald Reagan. You have failed. George Bush I. You have failed. William Jefferson Clinton. You have failed. George Bush II. You have failed. Barak Obama. You have failed. Democrats. You have failed. Republicans. You have failed. All of our political leaders over the last 41 years have failed to secure a sound economy for the working class people of the United States. During this same time they have succeeded in presiding over of the greatest redistribution of wealth in the history of the world. Unfortunately for us, that redistribution came from the hands of the many and went into the pockets of a very, very, very, very few. To paraphrase Warren Buffet, one of the top five richest guys in the world, “over the last four decades there has been class warfare going on in this country and my class won.”
At least if I were stoned right now it wouldn’t seem as bad. Wait, I am stoned right now. Stoned on football and prozac and the Michael Jackson Doctor trial and Casey Anthony and baseball and shopping and beer and low interest rates on a second vehicle and Immigrants and Gay Marriage and Bieber and Fox and MSNBC and CNN and Prime Time and 150 channels in HD and netflix and iStuff and and internet porn.
Look around. Open your eyes. Occupy some space in your city. Occupy someone’s brain with discourse and conversation. Start a dialog and come up with some ideas to fix things. Stop waiting for our leaders to do something and demand that they do something or kick them out of office. Locally. Statewide. Nationally. If a bank charges unfair fees pull out of that bank. Join Credit Unions or find local banks that offer better terms. Demand justice. Demand that those around you are aware. Engage people in thoughts and discussion. Don’t be afraid to talk and don’t be afraid to say no. After all, ask Mr. Jefferson…Revolutions start with ideas and words.
By Wesley M. Brown
I am a paranoid person by nature I admit. I can spin a conspiracy with the best of them, and have spent some years studying historical conspiracies in my own amateur fashion.
After the whole sordid “debt ceiling” debate, none of us should be surprised that at least one of the credit agencies would decide to downgrade our nation’s credit score from AAA to AA-plus ( I note that despite our soon to be $14 trillion dollar debt, the federal government’s credit score is STILL better than mine…but I digress).
But, what has me stumped is not WHAT S&P did, but WHEN they did it.
If everyone expected at least one credit agency to call bullshit, the WHAT of this affair was not shocking. However, I find it entirely curious that they elected to make the announcement just after the markets closed this past Friday, when NO ONE could do anything about it until Monday. Or could they?
I asked a few friends who are financial people to explain it to me. They believe that the timing was purposeful. If S&P had made the announcement on Tuesday, then there would have been a major panic and selloff immediately.
However, that makes little sense to me. The selloff started on Friday with the expectation that there would be a credit downgrade. It has continued each day since Monday, and the shockwaves may have spread to European and Asian markets as well.
Thus, it appears that a panic would have happened no matter when the announcement was made.
As a believe that players in any given game will strategize to achieve the best results for themselves, I believe that S&P issued the announcement to give the financial players time to decide on their Monday morning strategy. For financial players that usually must make quick decisions when millions and billions of dollars are on the line, 48 hours of planning to them is equal to a lifetime for anyone else. In short, the Wall Street sorts knew exactly what to do this week.
Were our market an essentially closed system, I wouldn’t care. But, as our economic system has developed, these markets really affect the average citizen in countless ways. Billions of dollars are invested both privately and publically in the stock market. All layers of government turn to the stock and bond markets for both investing and borrowing reasons, and this type of volatility affects us deeply.
Had the financiers not been responsible for the mortgage crisis, I would be more than willing to trust their expertise. Had they not demanded trillions of dollars to bail out insurance companies, mortgage lenders, and car companies to minimize the consequences of their own mistakes, I would be more than willing to let the market settle itself down and let all of us get on with the business of making money.
But, this volatility is at least a part of their own creation. The “market” has now broken its chains and is off terrorizing the villagers. Given the willingness of Congress and the President to essentially give the players anything they want, it may now be time to break out the hay rakes.
We have legalized bribery in this country, resulting in only one political party acting at the behest of those buying our government. Anyone who believes that there are still two parties in this country is lying to themselves, or delusional. There is one party in this country. That party may have an anti-abortion wing and a pro-choice wing, but it is the same party.
That party is bought and paid for by the monied interests of this nation. Only in the last two weeks, we have heard a story about a mysterious corporation sprouting up only to donate millions of dollars to one candidate and then dissolving. We’ve heard the rumblings that the upcoming Presidential campaign will result in the first ever billion dollar campaign war chest.
It is not individual citizens donating this money, it is organizations, corporations, unions, and every other type of non-citizen aggregating this money to ensure the continued ability to shape policy, author legislation, and hold hostage those who are charged with the stewardship of our country. Why is it any surprise that the public, the actual citizens, does not receive the stewardship they are promised by both wings of the party?
Without change in the way elections are funded, there can never be any substantial success in tackling the issues consuming us. While I would not be opposed to public financing of elections, I understand the arguments against it and accept them as valid. So I propose an alternate plan: allow campaign contributions only from citizens who are eligible to register to vote. No requirement to register or vote, but only those who are eligible to register to vote may donate to campaigns. In addition, require full disclosure (borrowing from a proposal made by Roy here) and the weekly publication of all campaign donors by campaigns with the requirement that any donation may not be spent until the following week after the publication is made and the donation appears. In this way, the people will know from whom contributions come. It is time that We, the People end this long train of abuses and usurpations by altering our long established government. While these abuses are neither light, nor transient, and do, indeed, evince a design to reduce us under absolute Despotism, this single change in the way campaigns are funded could absolutely prevent the need for We, the People to abolish our government. The time that these abuses are sufferable is growing short and the facts of these abuses are clearly evident to a candid world.
The Roof, the Roof, The Roof is on Fire…We Don’t Need no Water Let the Debt Ceiling Burn, Burn Mother F, Burn!
by Roy W. Bakos
Some musings on the recent events of the Summer of our political discontent…
How is it that only about 1% of this country can understand easy mathematics? We are 14 Trillion US Dollars in Debt as a Nation. Over the Last Decade, the cost of the conflicts (I refuse to call them wars anymore until Congress acts responsibly and declares them to be such…until then, they are conflicts, military actions, the arm of American Empire, or whatever else you may want to call them that is not spelled using the letters w, a, and r in that order) in Iraq and Afghanistan and the revenue lost by the Bush/Obama Tax Cuts equals 14 Trillion Dollars. Fold up our tents in The Middle East and Near Asia and simply let the Bush tax cuts expire and in a decade we will no longer have a deficit if spending were to remain at 2010 levels. In fact, if we legalized drugs and taxed their production and sale while cutting funding for the failed policies of drug illegality and imprisonment for drug offenses, we could probably have a surplus in the Treasury before the next decade is up.
Speaking of taxes…stop calling them “revenue enhancement” or some other made up bullshit name and call them taxes. We all (unless we are really, really rich or happen to be large “free-market” corporations that are subsidized by the government through tax cuts) have to pay them and we should just call them what they are, taxes.
Next: if Standard and Poor’s wants to downgrade our credit rating, perhaps we should charge them with a crime for falsely stating that “mortgage backed securities” were safe investments up though the beginning of 2008. If you don’t remember, it was those exact “mortgage backed securities” that the assbags at S&P said were good and safe investments (they had at least a AA Rating) which caused the financial mess that we are now in. They, along with the criminals at Goldman and other financial firms, knew that these things were worthless and they perpetrated a lie to the rest of us to get rich. Somehow, we let these guys be in charge of our credit rating and we are the worse for it. If they were to be charged with complacency in bringing about the largest financial crime in the history of the modern world, I wonder how long our rating as a nation would remain “downgraded?”
On to misinformation and weakness: let’s give a big hand to our Capitulator-in-Chief, President Barak Obama. I worked for the President during his campaign because I too had the audacity to hope that I was making a difference in helping to elect someone that would call truth to power and fight for the common man. I will not be doing so again. It has saddened me to realize that I helped to elect a President who has continued the failed policies of the previous Administration in regards to the “conflicts” that we are in. I helped to elect a President that bailed out the banks because they were too big to fail but who has done nothing to put ordinary Americans back to work. Health Care? Medicare for all or a “public option” turned into mandatory insurance with billions of dollars going to the private insurance companies that helped to ruin the current healthcare system. The Patriot Act, Guantanamo, and Civil Rights? Nothing has been done to end the egregious parts of the Patriot Act. Nothing has been done to close down Guantanamo. As for Civil Rights, I can still be declared an enemy combatant by the President and disappeared through rendition, even if I am an American Citizen. In every situation where this President had the opportunity to make a difference for ordinary Americans, he has dropped the ball and given momentum to the forces in this Country that want the status-quo to remain and be strengthened. Instead of fighting for the things which he said he stood for on the campaign trail, the President has negotiated all of his ideals away for little in immediate return. Strength has been turned into weakness while ploughshares have been turned into swords (or while the use of them has been outsourced to China in the name of greater corporate profit) and the audacity of hope has become merely hopelessness.
My only hope is that we can have a legitimate outside candidate emerge from the left of the spectrum to challenge this President in a primary. A two party system with no viable alternatives is bad enough but it now seems like we are closer to having a one party system made up of Demcorpratists and Republocorpratists on opposite sides, with a rainbow flag on one wall and a picture of Jesus and a Bald Eagle on the other wall, of the same political space.
This is the danger that Eisenhower was worried about when he gave that whole “military-industrial” speech 50 years ago and it is about time that we recognized it and did something about it.
Happy Summer! At least we have football to look forward to…wait, I live in Buffalo.
by Roy W. Bakos
The rise of the Tea Party on the right wing of the American political spectrum gives us all an opportunity to look back at our Founders and the Document that they started writing on this day in 1776, The Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
Over the last 235 years, we have had many arguments about what these words (as well as the words that would later become the law of the land in 1787 when the US Constitution was adopted by our nascent Republic) mean. At first, “men” meant only men but that has grown in scope to mean people in the broadest sense of the word. The ideas of what constitutes “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” have grown to encompass activities and technologies that our forefathers could not have imagined…well, maybe Franklin could have imagined them but I digress.
While all of that stuff is indeed important, the part of Mr. Jefferson’s writing that most impresses and defines what sets us apart from the rest of the world up unto that point in time is the second half of the quote, “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” I know we have heard it a thousand times over and that many of us don’t believe it to be as true today as it was then but this is the central part of what being an American is all about. We live in a place that is essentially governed by, of, and for the people. We are the government and the government is us. We are responsible for cleaning things up when they get messy. We are responsible for pushing things forward. We are responsible for bridging our differences, in both the social and the political arenas, to make sure that our government serves us. The people. All of us. Equally and fairly.
It is easy for those on the left to make the argument that things were better in previous days and that we are fools for believing the “self-eveident truth” above because we are ruled by a corporatist-kleptocratic-military-industrial-complex. It is just as easy for those on the right to argue that we are ruled by an untenable bureaucracy that ignores the will of the governed and the rules of finance. This is no different than the way it was in 1890 or in 1790. In fact, it is this very tension in the forces that creep into our system which produce the citizen action that produces lasting change. It took a Civil War to settle the Slavery and 3/5th issues dodged by our founders. It took the Progressive Movement of the 1890’s to early 1900’s and the New Deal to regulate the business interests that sought to control our destiny. The Civil Rights movement led to equality for all and the expansion of the legal definition of the words “men” and “people” to mean all citizens regardless of their race, class, economic status, gender, age, or sexual orientation.
This fight to live up to the promise of Mr. Jefferson and his compatriots is the history of our nation. It is what makes us strong. It is what makes us American. It is why so many have risked their lives and limbs and sacred honor. Independence; not only from Britain but from any system that doesn’t recognize the basic human right to rule your own destiny. This is who we are and this is what we celebrate every July 4th. Now someone get me a vodka and get some more Polish sausages on the grill…
by Roy W. Bakos
The outing of Anthony Weiner as a serial “sexter” has dominated the National news and my facebook page and conversations. While I believe that we should be talking about bigger issues facing our country right now (Empire or Republic? The deficit and National debt. The continuing conflicts in the Middle East and Asia that are bankrupting our economy. Etc.), this scandal has brought a poignant point up in regards to our body politic and the conduct of our citizenry and our Representatives in government. In a conversation with my friend Wes (The Paul Revere of machines and technology…see last week’s post) that took place at the beginning of the scandal, I expressed my belief that I didn’t really care if Weiner sent banana hammock photos to other consenting adults. Wes, somewhat shocked by this, thought that it did matter and that this type of character flaw made Weiner unfit to govern. On facebook, the consensus seems to be that Weiner is a flawed man that is unable to do his job and that he must resign immediately. The thing that surprised me the most about this is that this view seems to come from both sides of the ideological spectrum. I expect this from bible-belt Conservatives (and the social conservatives that dominate the Tea-Party section of the Republican Party) but I did not expect this from the Libertarian Right and those on the left of the spectrum to the degree that it has come. This cross section of anti-Weiners raises the question of what is personal and what is public conduct and how and when that personal conduct affects the ability of someone to govern. This also raises the question of hypocrisy and the accusation by many on the Right that the Left side of the American Body Politic is guilty of hypocrisy in the highest degree in regards to the digital images sent by Rep. Weiner.
I am almost a complete libertarian on these type of personal issues. As long as one is only doing things to oneself or other consenting adults, I really don’t care what substances you put into your body, who you have sex with, what TV shows you watch, or which religion you practice (if any). As for the consequences of your actions, those are left up to the people in your life (and whether or not they decide to stay in your life if they do not approve of your actions) and the god(s) that you may or may not believe in. Personal stuff is personal stuff and it only becomes relevant if you are someone that is publicly trying to be a moral arbiter for others.
As for the hypocrisy thing… Like personal scandals, hypocrisy seems to know no boundaries in regard to the different ends of the political spectrum. Do we really still believe that those who hold power are somehow special people that can live without sin? Human history is full of leaders, both good and bad from Alexander (slept with boys), to Nero (A-1 pervert), to King Louis of France (the Marquis DeSade was part of his Court) to Kennedy (banged everything that moved within 500 feet), to Bill Clinton (the Blue Dress and Cigar) and to Newt (divorced his wife to marry his adulterous lover while his wife was in the hospital). I am shocked that so many people seem to be shocked by such seemingly inappropriate behavior from our elected leaders. According to Merriam-Webster, hypocrisy is: 1)a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion; or 2) a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings.This abounds on all sides of the political spectrum. If you are on the Left, and you wish to legislate morality in regards to personal activities that offend you, like smoking cigarettes and eating un-heatlhy foods, you are flirting with hypocrisy if you believe that Weiner should go, no questions asked. If you are on the Right, and you wish to legislate morality in regards to personal activities that offend you, like nasty song lyrics, nudity in films, and the “homosexual” or “socialist” agenda, you too are flirting with hypocrisy if you believe Weiner should go, no questions asked. I find it hard to believe that so many “Libertarians” want to be in my bedroom, my bookshelf, my iPod, and my movie queue while screaming socialism every time someone wants to regulate a bank.
If we are truly a Nation built upon Judeo-Christian ethics, I believe that there is a part of the Bible where the protagonist with long hair and a beard says to judge not lest you be judged or to only throw the first stone if you are without sin. Thirteen years of Catholic schooling and that bit (along with throwing the moneychangers out of the Temple and the meek inheriting the Earth…more on those another time) seems to resonate strongly with me. Should we all have an opinion on the matter if we wish? Yes. Should we all be free to express it? Yes. Should we decide what happens to Rep. Weiner in his public life? Not unless we live in his district. Ultimately, it is up to him and the people that he represents to decide whether or not he is fit to govern. He has has broken no laws that would force him to be removed from office. If it is found out that he has done so, then he should be removed by the legal process that the Constitution sets up for the House to remove elected members from office. If not, he should be free to serve out the rest of his term until his constituents decide whether or not he should continue to represent him in the next election. As for personal morality in regards to weiners, I am not going to judge unless it involves Sahlen’s or Wardynski’s.
By Wesley M. Brown
Our cat-herder-in-chief has always been something of a blowhard. Well-intentioned to be sure, but he has always had the habit of adjusting facts and figures to support his arguments. Not to the extent of making up facts from thin air, but at least a 20%-30% fudge factor either way.
And, for the most part, we accepted this margin of error as we had insufficient energy or passion to actually look up the statistic and throw it in his face. For all of his BS, we took him at his word.
Additionally, he became the walking encyclopedia of trivia and other arcane minutiae. If you wanted to know who were the signatories of the Treaty of Zaragoza in 1529, you asked Roy, mostly because he’d at least give you what seemed to be a reasonable answer, even if he was wrong.
But, there has been a major technological shift since Roy got an iphone. For the first few weeks, when we would disagree over a given fact, we told him to consult the phone for a precise answer. But then, when it became clear that the phone knew everything with a very small chance of error, we simply asked the phone before even bothering to ask Roy. In effect, technology has now rendered Roy obsolete on this point.
I draw a somewhat horrifying conclusion from this by analogy. If Roy has been rendered obsolete by an iphone, how long before robots are able to do the same thing with the human race?
Think it’s not possible?
From 1989 to 2003, chess champion Gary Kasparov played a series of matches against computers. Each generation of computer was better than the last, and could remember millions of chess permutations and draw conclusions from that information. His last two matches in 2003 against 2 different computers ended in draws.
In 2011, the game show Jeopardy! invited IBM’s computer Watson to play against two champions. The computer essentially wiped the floor with the two champions. Despite that the computers hard drives were the size of 8 refrigerators, Watson had basically mastered the English language.
We can all laugh about how cute these computers are while trying to do human things. And, eventually, we will dress them up like our dogs. But, what is to say that computers will not become sentient?
Sci-Fi writers Issac Asimov and John Campbell created the 3 laws of robotics as follows:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
This quaint bit of fiction allowed mankind to breathe a collective sigh of relief, so long as no one actually created a robot that did not obey these rules.
But the rules are only fiction. Sooner of later there will be a mad scientist of sorts who loves robots so much that he will create them with a sense of self-preservation to go along with artificial intelligence. “Terminator 2-Judgment Day” here we come.
The human brain is an organic computer of sorts. But, what essentially separates us from other creatures is the ability to make judgments based upon factors others than instinct. We are able to affirmatively countermand our instincts if need be.
I see no reason why someone cannot do the same with robots. In fact, the only problem I see is the potential inability to have instincts at all.
But, that is a minor issue here. Robots could easily be programmed to ignore Asimov’s fiction and defend themselves entirely against human beings. In fact, what exactly is to stop them from eliminating mankind as their greatest threat?
So, the next time you consult your iphone or go to your fully-automated refrigerator for a glass of water, be afraid, be very afraid.
