Shel Gloger's Op-Eds

# 171. Napoleon Hill, not Ayn Rand is the spiritual leader of Conservative Republicans.,

2011-12-05T02:35:00.000-08:00

# 171. Napoleon Hill -- not Ayn Rand -- is the spiritual leader of conservative Republicans.

It is publicized that Atlas Shrugged, a novel by Ayn Rand, inspires today's conservatives, because its hero saves the world and succeeds in business by making government collapse. But Conservatives don't read novels -- they are not real. Instead, they go for the top ten lists and such, the way Napoleon Hill made them, in his Think and Grow Rich, which extols sexual activity, even hinting that extra-marital sex helps men succeed.

# 170. Herbert Hoover, Barack Obama, Herbert Obama, Barack Hoover.

2011-11-13T11:59:00.000-08:00

# 170. Herbert Hoover, Barack Obama, Herbert Obama, Barack Hoover.

President Hoover presided during the start of the Great Depression. He honestly believed it was a natural part of normal cyclical economic life, so that its solution is not to interfere; the problem will heal itself. Surely, he was a capable problem solver if he wanted to be, as engineer and later as leader to prevent post-war starving Europeans from going communist. Hoover had the ability of creating government-led solutions to the Depression, but he believed doing so would be wrong.

Barack Obama also believes in the status quo, which did him well all his life. He does nothing because he secretly is sure nothing will lead to healing; that surgery will make the patient worse -- just as Herbert Hoover felt.

And so, Obama counts on the same bankers in charge when trouble came, to lead us out of the trouble. Obama appoints the same guys. Rather than have his attorney's actively pursue those the public wants to blame, he assigns them to chase poor owners of small marijuana shops in California. That way, Obama keeps the status quo.

Two methods so far, that Obama uses to keep the status quo without the public realizing it, are: keep the same people in government ; and two, have his government attorneys chase their own tails.

# 169. Urban settlers need a leader.

2011-11-10T21:18:00.000-08:00

# 169. Urban settlers need a leader, that's why they group together and want to be noticed -- they are advertising for a leader, just as people in Muslim countries gather in their streets and plazas, also advertising for the leader to give them a just society in which to live, work and raise families.

In the USA, gatherers are searching for a young Ralph Nader, but none seem to be known. Americans used to be proud that in times of emergencies (Revolution, Civil War, Depression, Fascism) we were wise enough to find the right leaders (George Washington & friends, Abraham Lincoln, FDR) always appeared.

But not this time. So far. This is the sad, simple truth just as the sad, simple possibility exists that a false messiah, might rise to lead; to fool us as one did to the educated, sophisticated, modern German People, circa 1933.

#168. Neville Chamberlain, Barack Obama, Neville Obama, Barack Chamberlain.

2011-11-10T20:53:00.000-08:00

# 168. Neville Chamberlain, Barack Obama, Neville Obama, Barack Chamberlain. Further explanation of what should be self-explanatory, can be found in the page 4 Connecting the Dots essay of Newsweek magazine, August 22 & 29, 2011, titled Oval Office Appeaser, by William Broyles. This proclaims the need for Progressives to nominate a leader other than Obama in the upcoming Democratic Party primaries for president.

# 167. Stupid company decisions prove CEOs are overpaid.

2011-11-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

# 167. Stupid company decisions prove CEOs are overpaid. Take for example, the decision of FedEx's execs to sue the kid who used FedEx's mailing boxes to build furniture. The public will side with the kid who showed creativity in these economic hard times. The mailers are for taking in all FedEx's sores (also the USPS's mailers). Taking them is viewed as legal or semi-legal. A top exec worried about the cost of mailers lost by kids building furniture, should instead, have put a price tag of $1on each box with the advertised policy of returning (refunding) that $1 when mailing, the cost of which will be reduced by $1.

Another example that proves high-paid execs aren't worth their salaries: A chain of restaurants just announced a free slice of pie with any dinner bought, as if new customers are going to rush in to pay $10 for a dinner they disn't want in the first place, to get a small, 75-cent piece of pie!

About 15 years ago, when MacDonalds was down and under its competition, the fools of execs then decided to give away a small portion of fries if the customer would buy a BigMac or two. The dummies put conditions on the bargain that ordinary people would see through as an insulting gimmick. To really work, smart CEOs would announce the give-aways as with no strings attached. They would risk the promotion. New customers would come in for the fries (and the slice of pie) appreciating a real bargain, and human nature being what it is, the customers would buy something while still in the restaurant -- buying freely without having to. CEOs that could not see that are/were too stupid to deserve high salaries; undeserving of being the 1% that economically overpowers the other 99% of Americans..

# 166. Central heating is a waste.

2011-11-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

# 166. Central heating is a waste of non-replaceable resources (oil, coal, gas...) for all that is needed is warmth around the body and machinery that needs temperature control.

Help lesson the waste by following the example of the British Isles up to World War II and years after until it discovered North Sea gas. The Brits wore sweaters, long johns and thick Harris Tweed outer clothing.

Look at and read about life in Victorian London (Charles Dickens, Sherlock Holmes ... ) and rediscover the value of Four-Poster Beds with curtains on four sides and on top -- heat is kept in the area of the sleepers. Energy is not wasted by heating the wholr room, and since heat rises, all space over six feet does not need to be heated. Bed clothes included head caps.

Rented units should all have meters that charge the tenants. This should also be the case of water which is now wasted because it comes "free" to renters. Water meters should be in each and every rental unit.

# 165. Eleven reasons to accept the flat tax.

2011-10-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

165. Eleven reasons to accept the flat tax are:

(1) flat tax impoves on the present US Tax Code, the latter being the very worst. Almost anything would be better;

(2) Easy to replace. Its infrastructure to replace what exists can be put in place almost overnight. Existing US tax laws can be thrown out almost immediately, easily For the very next April 15, citizens could be sent a one-page tax form to fill out and send with a check representing that citizen's tax burdon;

(3) Flat tax has the means to improve itself most easily. If it starts as 19% to duplicate revenue collected with today's tax code, goal with efficiency will be to change it to 18% and then 17% ;

(4) Cost of new programs easy to determine in advance. If US bridges need to be repaired, cost is determined and that cost calculated as a per-cent of national flat tax, so that we the people will be told that if we want our bridges repaired, then our tax for next year will be 19.5 % , up from 19 %. Do you want it, then a referendum will decide. A new war with invasion of another country? it will cost us 2% more on next year's (flat) income tax. A universal health care program? Then our tax rate will be up from 19& to 21% Is it worth it? We the people will decide.

(5) Well-to-do Americans will no longer resent the poor for getting for free what they, the upper middle class had to work hard and sacrifice for. Everone pays. The poor will pay an extra 19 cents for a dollar loaf of bread. The poor will have to come up with that 19-cents. Maybe a charity will give them 19 cents for every loaf of bread they need. The rich and upper class are citizens also, needing to feel they are not being ripped off by the poor.

(6) Flat tax can most easily become more perfect, can improve itself, while thw present tax code only gets worse with a new page or paragraph.

(7) Flat tax can be replaced in part or whole by incorporating national sales taxes. With each sales tax, slowly and carefully added, the flat tax rate can go down since the goal is to maintain the revenue needed. Nineteen per cent might go down to 18 % with the first round of sales taxes put in place.

(8) Since some form of consumption (sales) tax is best, it is too hard to have it replace the present tax code directly. It is easier to first abolish the tax code by replacing it with a flat tax and then replace the flat tax with a sales tax, slowly, step by step.

(9) A national sales tax would be too complicated to put into effect over night. At what level collect it? Who will police the collections?

(10) In the early 1980s, serious studies were conducted to determine the fairest method of national revenue collection. The whole country got involved. Two congressmen went around the country together debating. The consensus was that there were only two feasible alternatives to replacing the awful tax code, and that would be the flat and sales tax. The traveling debaters took up those two, the senator advocating a flat tax, while the congressman, with as much enthusiasm, pleaded for a national sales tax, both however, agreeing that even his opponent's way was better than what existed;

(11) Perception of fairness will be high with a flat tax for collecting revenue. Public confidence for fairness will be high. Citizen morale is now low for the American Way for it is perceived that a group are cheating, not paying their fair share.

# 164. Myth: Obama is a great speaker.

2011-10-23T17:38:00.000-07:00

# 164. Myth: President Barak Obama is a great speaker. He is not even a good speaker. He sounds like a professor talking down to us, his stupid students. A great speaker for a president is one who relates to the people by convincing them of his wise friendship.

A great speaker inspires. Look at a president who truly was a great speaker: Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR). "My fellow Americans" he would begin, in a warm, soothing voice speaking believable thoughts to listeners he treated with respect. His talks were lectures but came across as non-lectures because of their warmth. Americans readily accepted them as "Fireside Chats" for they could imagine the president as a house guest joining the family after dinner in the living room having a fire going in the fireplace. Listeners could relax listening to him even though he was teaching. Noone relaxes listening to Obama speak coldly because they feel as if being in a classroom where they will be tested on the lecture, so pay attention!

Progressives want so much to have Obama be their perfect leader that they can't admit they were wrong to elect him, and so they create the myth that he is the right leader who is great at this and that and as a speaker -- myths all.

The harm is that progressives will be blind to the opportunity to find a real leader in the upcoming presidential Democratic primary -- another FDR or Abe Lincoln or George Washington or a young Ralph Nader.

# 163. 10-10 is better than 9-9-9.

2011-10-17T19:28:00.000-07:00

# 163. 10-10 is better than 9-9-9, but the idea is the same: Completely replace the present Tax Code with a combination of flat and sales taxes.

What exists is awful, for it is massive, complicated, full of loopholes with its means of improvement (add new pages) just adds to all its awfulness. But either flat or consumption (sales) tax improves itself by merely changing the per-cent (from 10% say, to 9 or 11%).

The present awful tax code continues to rule because people look at the imperfections of the alternatives instead of starting with the truth that sales and/or flat tax is better.

# 162. Hebs still control Hollywood -- the world to follow.

2011-10-07T17:53:00.000-07:00

# 162. Hebs still control Hollywood -- the world to follow, after the US.

Charlie Chaplin (secret Jew) sucked us into war against our German brothers with THE GREAT DICTATOR and Al Jolson (true Jew) made race music kosher, paving the way for race mixing with THE JAZZ SINGER.

The unfinished job (guided by the 18 Jewish Elders who meet secretly every 25 years) has been most recently passed on to the Coen (Cohen) brothers who responded with SHIT HAPPENS (more politely, Stuff Happens or Things Happen) which will brainwash America's dumb goyim to let the Jews kick out Jesus and all the Christian stuff that goes with the guy.

SHIT HAPPENS does this by a powerful film story (actually a series of stories) proving that what happens in life has nothing to do with Jesus; that he neither rewards good deeds or punishes evil. Jesus has no power. Christianity is worthless; a waste, so says this film, which will convince goyisha viewers. Then, it will be easier for Jews to take over.

Oh, by the way, the real title, SHIT HAPPENS, has to be hidden. The sanitized title is: A SERIOUS MAN, directed by Joel & Ethan Coen, 2009, starring a bunch of unknown Jews.
www.filminfocus.com/ASeriousMan

The hero has a series of good things happen to him -- none of which is a reward from Jesus or anyone else. At about the same time, bad things also happen to him, and none of them is punishment from the Christian god. As a matter of fact, all those things are purely accidental. So, who needs Jesus? No good American, that's who. Fuck Christianity. Make way for the Jews, who have the answers.

SHIT HAPPENS has already allowed the election of a president not expected to do anything meaningful, and so he doesn't, and he gets away with it, allowing the country to break apart, weaken, making it easier for the Jews to take over. This is the simple truth.

# 161. Obama lost Congress because he failed to lead reform with precise solutions.

2011-09-27T21:19:00.000-07:00

# 161. Obama lost Congress because he failed to lead reform with precise solutions, so that his followers had no clear path to follow. The populations were split and showed their disappointment in the next election, two years later.

Had President Obama proposed a dramatic solution to each of the nation's outstanding problems, the voters would have empowered him by supporting that solution (even if not their first choice for a solution). He might have failed to win over Congress but the voters would have then given him a huge majority in that next election, two years later, so that failure would have become success in his last two years.

Evidence for this theory is that the huge majority of voters are and were deeply dissatisfied with the government that existed during the previous 20 years. They didn't/ don't know how to fix things but were willing to give a new guy with new ideas a chance, just as FDR was given a mandate to really lead in 1932, with a renewal of confidence in 1936, 1940 and 1944.

Here are some concrete examples of what would have worked; what the voters would have let Obama do:

(a) Real tax reform by completely replacing the US Tax Code with a combination of flat tax + sales tax. This would greatly solve the problems of deficit, payment for infrastructure projects and, most important, revive faith in our country's fairness towards her people.

I remember in the 1970s when everyone realized that our tax system was corrupt, with its loopholes and lobbyist driven special interest exemptions that made for a downtrodden class of people. Possible solutions were discussed on all levels of society with the result that two new systems to replace the corruption emerged: the flat tax and the sales (consumption) tax. Two famous congressmen toured the country, debating before live audiences, one advocating
the flat tax, the other, the sales tax. Each showed the value of his favorite and pointed out the faults of the other, for neither was perfect. Both debaters, though, agreed that even his opponent's choice was better than what existed.

Because of lobbyists' tactics of diverting interest to other topics, nothing was done. The reformers were split because the president did not pick one of the two replacements to lead with. Without a united front (flat or sales or a combination) no any one reform replacement had enough votes.

When elected, we would now have a fair revenue-gathering system if Obama would have forcefully said,

" I will totally eliminate all the unfair taxing, all the loopholes and special interests, by completely replacing the tax code with its thousands of pages, by replacing it with a simple flat tax of 19% on all incomes plus a VAT on all imports of goods made with USA raw material. I ask you to support this, even though not perfect, for it has the means of improvment once it is the law. We can tinker with a flat tax, even have it lead to a total sales tax. But we cannot tinker with what exists, for such would just add to the pages of loopholes and special interest exemptions."

That speech, followed by action by the president, ould have given him the support to make it happen -- if not right away, for sure after the next election two years hence, for we the people had a leader with a new idea that might work.

I was sad a few weeks ago, when I listened to a progressive radio show that had the Vermont senator, B. Sanders, as guest. When a caller asked him about the flat tax, he quickly ended the conversation by saying it was regressive, and Sanders moved on to another subject. The end. This told me the need for a president to come out for the flat tax or sales or something definite. Otherwise, all his potential supporters, like B. Sanders, will pick apart all plans that are not 100% perfect, allowing what exist to continue.

(b) Another dramtic solution to America's problems could have been adressed by Obama that would win the approval of enough voters to give him a vast majority in congress two years later. It would be this, as I imagine his speech:

(b) " Fellow Americans, I propose the end to our current 'Prohibition' of marijuana just as Presient Roosevelt proposed the end to the prohibition of alcohol. I will end the federal laws against the growing, selling and use of that plant, leaving such laws up to the individual states. This is a States Rights issue, just as alcohol, gambling and even prostitution is.

" This end will allow the sick among us to have another means to allleviate the pain they suffer. It will allow stressful people to relax before they show violence to others. It will give our country a new source of income, for it will be taxed heavily, just as alcohol and tobacco are now taxed. Follow me, my fellow Americans. Trust me and allow this to happen.

(c) a third dramatic solution to our problems would be addressed by this speech:

" Fellow Americans, I will propose a citizen's component to our professional military to guarantee that it will always be under control of your elected leaders and never be so powerful, as in other countries, that generals could take control of our Republic. Part of the law I will present will be a draft that no one within the age and health guidelines will be exempt from with this addition: The first drawing for every draft will be the names of all sons, daughters, brothers and sisters of current US senators and House Representatives and even those serving who are young enough.

We, the People, elected Barack Obama, to be a revolutionary president, to make fundamental changes in a democratic way, because we, the people, sense our country is in deep trouble and going in the wrong direction. We can't quite put our (collective) finger on it, what actually is wrong or how to correct it. But we thwe people, know that if we elected the right president, he could lead us to make things right again.

# !60. WHAT IF Obama refused to run in the next presidential primary election?

2011-09-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

# 160. What if -- what would the USA be like if -- President Obama would have the courage to admit that he was the wrong person for the job of leading Progressives and Independents at this time, and so he would resign, following the wisdom of Neville Chamberlain 75 years ago, and do this before the primaries, what would the next president be like?

Answer: He or she would be like Winston Churchill. He/she would define important issues, pick one solution for each issue and then fight hard for that solution until he got it without compromise, knowing that the public was behind him to do that; to be like Winston Churchill or Franklin D. Roosevelt.

# 159. WHAT IF there was no minimum wage laws, how would the USA be different?

2011-09-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

# 159. What if there had not been any minimum wage laws, how would the USA be different today? Answer: Factories would be still in every city making every product our 250 million people want to buy. China would still be a backward, poor agricuktural society struggling to feed her people while Americans would be fully employed, inventing in our facries, improving our products, giving our teenagers part time jobs, adults work while striving to get better jobs paying more, getting educated so they would leave low-wage jobs. A thriving busuness in the USA would be agencies that recruit workers from China and Mexico to come hereto factories here to work with 2-year contracts in the low-wage jobs Americans don't want or need anymore since they are trained for better jobs.

It is not too late to make this happen.

#158. What if we retained control of all the burning Iraqi oil wells near Kuwait to pay for the war?

2011-09-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

# 158. What if USA retained 100% control of all the Iraqi oil wells near Kuwait to pay for the first Gulf war + 20% service fee, how would the USA be different today?

Our national deficit would be much lower and the principle of to the victor belong the spoils would be an established principle of our foreign policy. In that case, we wouls still be owning those wells and all the income coming from the sale of the oil they produce would be used to pay for all the costs to us and our allies in both wars so far. If we fight a country without oil to capture, we would take ownership of whatever asset they do have to pay our bills. That could be mineral mines or a tax on its people. We would be careful not to overtax too fast, which was the mistake of ww 2 when making Germany pay. The principle then was correct, only the timing and amount needed adjustment.

# 158. Pay-as-you-go advocates + tax reformers should join forces to support FLAT TAX.

2011-08-30T08:40:00.000-07:00

# 158. Pay-as-you-go advocates + tax-reformers should join forces to support the FLAT TAX principle.

Pay-as-you-go means that for every new program needing tax money, must have a new program to pay for it. A FLAT TAX in place would have a specific per-cent of incomes to be taxed. maybe that would start off as 19%. Everyone would know that 19% of everyone's income would pay for all needs at the time. Therefore, if a single-payer system for health coverage is advocated, the cost for this program would be calculated as a percent of income. if this is shown to be 1 % of income, then everyone would know that the cost for that program would be met by changing the flat tax base from 19% to 20%. Take it or leave it is the only question for voters. Is that program worth changing the flat tax from 19 to 20%?

All expenses would be determined by this realistic pay-as-you-go system, whether a new state bridge or a city's need to fill potholes or money to fight a new war.

Flat tax is one of the specific plans to replace what exists. It is not perfect, nor is the consumer (sales) tax idea, but either is a big improvement over the current tax system of thousands of pages of rules. If there is a third plan to replace the current tax system, then consider that also. But a generation of brain-storming has resulted in seeing either flat tax or sales tax as the better system, either an improvement over what now exists. Tax reformewrs must get together and support only one, even if it means flipping a coin to decide, otherwise, opposition to the present system will remain too divided to affect change.

Voters who can think of the two issues

# 157. William Broyles is my new voice.

2011-08-22T07:50:00.000-07:00

# 157. William Broyles is my new voice, expressing my thoughts about our president that I haven't been able to find the right words for. At one time, I felt this way about Ralph Nader, and still do on some subjects. DHines sometimes speaks for me.

William Broyles wrote an essay in the current issue (August 22 & 29) of Newsweek, page 4, that spoke to me, for me, 100%. The title is Oval Office Appeaser, with a photo of Britain's prime Minister, Chamberlain (1930s) alongside that of President Obama.

I will let Mr. Broyles speak for himself:

"Obama was going to be our Franklin Roosevelt, our Winston Churchill -- a visionary leader who would give America hope again. Instead, he has turned out to be the Neville Chamberlain of American politics, drifting toward national catastrophe, one compromise at a time.

" But Obama is like Chamberlain, a decent man who values peace and civility at any cost, ; he's no match for his Republican adversaries.

" If a vital new program didn't automatically have 60 votes, Obama wouldn't even bring it up. It was unilateral disarmament. and so we drifted toward disaster with half measures forged in back rooms, from the timid stimulus that was a meager Band-Aid to the timid health care bill that no one likes to the timid sellout deals on the deficit.

" After each betrayal, after each terribly bad bargain, Obama comes out waving a piece of paper, a one-sided agreement to appease the Republicans; peace in our time. And Obama is always surprised when ...

" A despair grips America today...

"Americans aren't inspired by well-meaning weakness...

" Chamberlain did one bold thing. He finally realized he was not the right man to lead Britain in dangerous times. He resigned ..."

# 156. Obama doesn't play chess.

2011-07-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

# 156. Obama doesn't play chess. He doesn't know how; doesn't want to learn; doesn't think it's of value. The best , saddest proof of this , was his handling of the important health care issue, its costs, its efficiency, its widespread universal coverage.

A progressive chess player would know that the end game must be a single-payer system, whereby everyone "chips in" to cover everything for everybody, especially the catastrophic costs of catastrophic illnesses so that no one every goes bankrupt or has his home taken away or losses his/her life-time savings.

Our president as chess player should have made moves that would at least lead to winning -- a single payer system. His moves would seem not to go there and suredly not in the immediate moves, but he would see eight moves ahead where a single payer system would be his checkmate.

However, the selfish greedy health care industry won by playing chess to win for themselves by leading away from a single-payer system. They did that and naive Obama let it happem

# 155. VAT will solve revenue and job deficiencies.

2011-07-31T11:40:00.000-07:00

# 155. VAT (Value Added Tax) will compensate for lower manufacturing costs in foreign countries and encourage making things here instead of there.

This is the simple truth. Why isn't VAT on the table of possible solutions?

# 154. Inventions and/or discoveries that need to be invented and/or discovered: Nuclear FUSION.

2011-07-17T19:43:00.000-07:00

# 154. Inventions and/or discoveries that need to be invented and or discovered: Nuclear fusion from the water molecule that will release great energy cheaply, abundantly with no harmful waste.

# 153. Inventions and/or discoveries that need be: water-soluble birth control chemicals.

2011-07-17T19:37:00.000-07:00

#153. Inventions and/or discoveries that need to be invented and/or discovered: Water-soluble birth-control chemicals that are safe and cheap.

# 152. Celebrate July 4 on Sept 6/

2011-07-17T19:25:00.000-07:00

# 152. Celebrate July 4 on Sept 6 by posting on the wall near the classroom flag, a copy of the US Constitution so that the children on that first day of school can recite, "I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands..."

# 151. father's Day is to beware of paternal harm because the father lets the evil mother have her way.

2011-06-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

# 151. Father's Day is a warning against bad fathers who let the mother ruin their children's lives.

Sometimes it is plain ignorance because ssociety has brainwashed the man to believe the mother is best at raising kids; that it is more natural, as with other species, to let the birth mother control the next generation's upbringing.

But with humans, the evil mother has to be balanced by a more normal father that the children can turn to for an alternative role model. "My mother was crazy," I have heard a successful well adjusted adult say. So how come this adult saying it overcame the evil? My interview told me that the guy had a normal father that he turned to, compared his mother with; and chose the normal.

Here is a real- life example of when the bad father let the evil mother have her way and so both together raised screwed up children that lived wasted lives.

Example: my sibling. The father dreamed of a son to follow in his honest footsteps by being a pharmacist. OK That's normal if done in the right way, not by forcing it but by gently letting the kid want to be a pharmacist and make it easy to happen. With an evil mother, the pharmacist father had to counter her craziness which in this case, was to make the son be like an uncle that was slave to his mother with absolutely no ambition to be a pharmacist or anything else.

Evil mother made the son visit the evil grandmother anf her slave every Sunday. Jerky father gave in, but he could/should have countered it by either have the kid do something else; go soewhere else and not be dragged to evil grandmother. OK he was weak and could not do that.. But on the way to Sunsay horror, the family in the family car passed the famous NY Botanical Gardens. Botany is the foundaton of pharmacy. The gardens even has a section devoted to medicinal plants. So, jerky father could have driven into the Botanical Gardens, on the way to evil mother's obsession with her mother, and firmly sai, "It won't hurt to spend an hour here on our way to you mother's. You can wait in the car if you want."\\

Also, in high school, evil mother just had to show off to her mother that her son was also going to pharmacy school at the same time her sister's son was going. Evil mother lived for each Sunday; what she could do then. She was too stupid to see the big picture and see ahead. Father was supposed to counter her shortsightedness, so when she insisted her son had to skip senior year just so she could show off, father shoukd have realized that his son wasn't a genius and could use that last year in high shool to better prepare and make that first year of pharmacy easier. But he let evil mother have her way.

Jerky father showed that he too was shortsighted when his son, in pharmacy, asked if he could join the fraternity, AZO. Dumb father said no, that it was a Zionist organization, as if that was bad. He used that letter Z to deny something that would have helped son succeed at his first year, for the main reason pharmacy students join fraternities is to get help to pass exams. All fraternities keep old exams that only members can use, and before exams, there are study sessions with the old exams, going over all the possible exam questions. Father's shortsightedness denied that edge for his son.

Then there is the subject of self-esteem. Evil mother made that low as a requirement to shape her son into a slave as her brother was to his mother, evil grandmother. Son needed high self-esteem to give him the mental power to succeed at pharmacy. Bad father let that happen and even helped evil mother give son a very low self-esteem. He let this happen throughout childhood by constantly telling son that he was a shmigheghi shmigheghi shmigheghi over and over again. That was good for shaping a slave; a castrated, lobotomized Uncle Irving slave, but not a pharmacy student that needed to call up his reserves of high self-esteem to tell him that he could do that; that he can pass; that guys dumber than him have passed first year pharmacy.

Other examplea of how bad father let his son down by letting evil mother have her way: Too many to write down now. I have better things to do. Just let me mention this: Comparison with a cousin whose father protected the son from a potentially evil mother (sister to his own evil mother). Cousin had a hobby, which was to whittle and make things out of wood. His father encouraged this and even gave him a workshop. In time, when cousin had to think of his future, he knew he wasn't a genius but was good with his hands, as his woodwork proved. So, he decided he would make a good dentist, and it came to pass. In contrast, my sibling with a bad father who let his evil wife make a slave (can have no hobbies) of the boy by suppressing every sign that the boy was developing an interest that would become a hobby -- like collecting rocks.

# 150. Rapture will let the earth leal.

2011-05-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

# 150. Rapture Judgment Day Doomsday will give the earth time to heal after human abuse. So don't laugh. Let it happen. By their increasing harmful waste, humans have forfeited their right to dominate. A million years without humans will let all other species evolve in proper balance.

It will happen even without religious help. The ingredients will be (1) the time when weapons of mass destuction become commonly available; (2) when a country able to obtain such weapons will be ruled by an absolute dictator; (3) that ruler knows he is approaching death from old age or fatal disease; and (4) that ruler has no respect for posterity so that he will let all others die with him. He will believe in mass suicide. That day will be Doomsday for the human species and other equally weak flora and fauna. It is bound to happen someday.

# 149. Mothers Day should be to consider an evil grandmother.

2011-05-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

# 149. Mothers Day should consider an evil grandmother to explain a bad mother. A decent person who survived a bad mother will spend an adulthood wondering why his/her mother did those awful things, not being able to make sense of it.

An evil grandmother could be the explanation not visible to that third generation. The mother respected her mother by imitating her ways of raising children as it was remembered by her. (The child would be unaware of what happened before he was born. He would only know grandma as an 80-year-old, bent-over, white-haired, frail, seemingly helpless, harmless old lady.)

I experienced this epiphany when realizing it fit into my own personal family history. Here is just one incident from my chilhood that supports this shocking theory:

From the age of 11 to 17, I spent summers in a bungalow colony, where, by sheer good luck, the very next bungalow was owned by a family with a son my age having a similar agreeable personality. If we had been allowed to be buddies during those important years around puberty, I would have had someone to talk to about life, love, college, trade school, growing up and the future. We might have developed hobbies that would last a lifetime. I would have had a companion to go places with; to do things together with. Mitch and Shel would have been Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. From the age of 10 until 17.

But it didn't happen. Tragically, it didn't happen. This positive, life-changing event spread over seven years didn't happen. Why not? Because my mother stopped it.

Our first summer was great. Mitch and I did together as much as 10-year olds could be expected to do on their own. Swimming in the lake, playing handball and hiking to other bungalow colonies, talking about our dreams and all sorts of things. We exchanged letters that winter. I read an article about raising fishing worms in Popular Mechanics (or was it Popular Science?) and we planned on doing it and selling the nightcrawlers to tourists. We would get rich with nickels needed to play the pinball machines and buy super-high, cherry-topped ice-cream sundays at the popular fountain!

When summer finally came again, we were ready for a great time as buddies. It rained the first week, so we took turns playing cards in each other's bungalow. The end came after the second time in my bungalow, when Mitch left for lunch. As I was smiling, ready to sit down to the lunch my mother prepared, she began shouting at me. She must have been experiencing a slow burn watching Mitch and me happily playing together. In a tirade of nasty words, she forbade me from ever again have Mitch enter our bungalow. He smelled bad, she insisted, but even worse, Mitch's mother was a bad person. My mother loudly listed a long list of reasons why Mitch would be a bad influence on me.

As a dutiful 11-year-old son, I obeyed my mother, even trusted that she knew best. Mitch was stunned the next day when I made an excuse for not hanging out with him. From then on, I avoided him. When we passed, we exchanged a polite hello and that was all. This went on all summer and for the next seven summers. I did things alone and stayed on the grounds of my bungalow, always close to my mother, ready to answer her call. She approved. She was happy. I thought myself lucky to have such a wise mother.

It took me years to understand why my mother ruined my childhood -- this summer incident was only one of many awful events. To make this book-length story short, let me summarize:

My mother was one of four sisters and one brother. She adored my Uncle Irving and wanted me to grow up to be just like hime. Irving was the role model, the only role model I was to follow. I had no other. I knew no other. So who was my saintly Uncle Irving? Let me describe him: He ignored me except to ask if I was good to my mother. He was forever close to his own mother (my mother's mother also; my grandmother). Irving lived in the same flat as his mother and a divorced sister raising her daughter because her ex-husband displeased my grandmother. Irving never married. He had no profession or trade. He had no friends, male or female. He had no hobbies. He was a chain smoker who I always saw holding a tabloid daily newspaper. His conversations with me were about what I was doing to be a good son. Once, when nobody was around, he asked me to count the hairs on his head as he sat in a chair and positioned me next to it. He told me in a serious tone that it was important for him to know. He never touched me.

So, this explains my mother's destructive behavior toward me: She imitated her mother's way of raising her son. Irving's evil mother trained him to be her life-long slave. Until he died, a few years after his mother, he continued to adore her memory. He never knew that she ruined his life; that she both castrated and lobotomized him. One of her tricks was to prevent him from having any friends, boy or girl. I can imagine him coming home to their tenement flat in the densely-populated poor neighborhood walking from school with a bunch of kids and his mother watching from a window. When he entered the apartment, his mother was ready to condemn him for the company he was keeping. She screamed at him about how bad those kids were. They smelled bad, she shouted, and their mothers were just as bad. (My mother, then a little girl, heard, saw and learned how to be a mother.) From then on little Irving was to walk home alone from school and stay inside helping his mother. He only left to accompany his mother going shopping.

My mother remembered how her beloved mother raised her son, Irving. When my bad mother saw me with a kid, her memory of her mother yelling at Irving kicked in, and she imitated it with me. End of story of how an evil grandmother was responsible for the seemingly unexplainable bad ways of her daughter, my mother. Truth. Not so simple but true. Tragic and true. How evil continuous through generations. The wisdom of the Bible comes through when it mentions how evil lives on for seven generations.

# 148. America is headed for a Caesar.

2011-05-19T15:17:00.000-07:00

# 148. America is headed for a Caesar because of its citizens' mounting frustration, democracy's unashamed corruption and the increasing number of citizens who recognize those problems as unsolvable by traditional methods.

A benign dictator -- a Caesar -- will be seen as the only solution; the one who will jail corrupt politicians, outlaw all lobbyists, take the wealth away from all the very greedy rich, and institute torture and capital punishment for those who interfere with his rule, which will last for as long as the citizens go along.

This will happen when a critical number of citizens see it as the only solution to their problems that are supposed to be solved by constitutional means. This almost happened a few times in the USA, from the birth of the Republic until the Great Depression. The latter escaped a Caesar (or a Hitler) because there weren't enough citizens who blamed their bad leaders. The American citizens, then, blamed themselves, for society's wrongs. This won't happen again.

# 147. Tax reform now can solve deficit also.

2011-05-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

# 147. Tax reform now can solve our national deficit now by adopting either a national sales tax or a flat income tax. In either case, the rate (%) is flexible and so would begin with a few percentage points higher than it would be had we no deficit. Simple truth.

# 146. Tom Clancy's prescience is astonishing.

2011-05-06T18:02:00.000-07:00

# 146. Tom Clancy's prescience is admirable and scary.

In the film version of Tom Clancy's Patriot Games, after the approval of an anti-terrorist attack at a north African desert training camp, we see our high-level government officials monitor "in real time" the event at CIA headqurters. We saw this in 1992, a few years after reading it in the novel.

Now, 20 years later, we see a photograph of President Obama, Secr of State Hillary Clinton and a group of CIA and milirary leaders intently watch a monitor of a satellite broadcast, in real time, a team of US Navy Seals "take out" a terrorist building, killing their objective, Osama bin Laden.

The intensity of these real watchers seems to imitate Harrison Ford, James Earl Jones, and other actors in that scene. We, the cinema goers, saw what the monitor showed: low flying helicopters landing near the compound, going into tents, shooting figures lying in bed, a fire confrontation, and a quick withdrawal, all within minutes.

Even earlier, I saw in Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October, a top secret mini-submarine attach itself to a Soviet sub and transfer operatives. A few years later, when a real Russian sub failed to return to the surface, I read in the newspapers of a formerly secret US mini-sub going down to try to rescue the Russian sub.

What's scary? In a later Jack Ryon adventure, Tom Clancy depicts the explosion of a terrorist nuclear device at a pscked sports stadium. It is the hope and prayer of all good Americans that the prescience that Tom Clancy is so admired for in other cases, failes him this time.

# 145. Mothers Day should be a reminder of bad mothers who ruin lives.

2011-05-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

# 145. Mothers Day should warn of bad mothers trained by their awful mothers -- evil grandmothers -- to ruin the lives of their helpless children.

Here's a true story to be an example: My evil grandmother was evil because she believed the purpose in life of her children was to serve her as slaves serve their master who own them. My evil granddmother had 4 daughters and one son. Her control over the daughters was limited because they married and the husbands weren't trained by her to serve her. But the son -- ah, that was different. His evil mother made sure he would be her slave for life -- and like it because he would know no better -- by cutting him off from normalcy: no friends allowed, boy or girl, from early chilhood on; no hobbies; no trade or profession; no marriage, and not wanting any of those normal things. He had nothing but his evil mother. He was her willing slave in all things. He did whatever she wanted him to do and he thought that was normal and right. That was his whole life. He died not knowing different. He died adoring the mother who enslaved him; who both castrated and lobotomized him.

Now comes the next generation, following one of the daughters who had sons. She believed that her brother, the slave, was the perfect role model of a son, so she raised her sons to be like him: slave to her the way her brother was slave to their mother. This daughter imitated her evil mother's way of bringing up a son so he would also be a slave. Bad mother learned from evil grandmother to raise her sons to have no friends, boy or girl, have no hobbies and no interest in a trade or profession other than what would serve her.

One young son discovered a liking for pretty and unusual rocks that he found in the yard he had to take care of. At 10 years, he already knew this interest would be laughed at, so he hid his rocks in a box behind the cellar stairs. Sure enough, mother (along with henpecked father) found them, threw them away, yelling at the boy, "Rocks! You got rocks in the head. Rocks in the head. Rocks in your head..." That ended that beginning hobby which could have led to friendships with other "rock hounds" joining clubs, reading rock magazines, leading to becoming a geologist employed by oil companies -- or maybe a professorship.

When this same son -- future slave to his evil grandmother and mother -- had a knack for designing the sets of school plays, evil mother put an end to that by calling him a sissy like the man who fixed store window displays. Yet that beginning was not unlike the beginning hobby for Nicholas Roerich, Alfred Hitchcock and Norman Bel Geddes -- whose parents encouraged their sons' early interest in designing that led to the original Rite of Spring set, draftsmanship for advertising , photography, film, the NY Met Opera and World's Fair.

Mothers Day is a warning. Mothers Day is a reminder; a reminder that the Good Mother is a myth proven by the fact the world gets worse with time; that new generations produce new evils for worse destruction than ever before.

# 144. America needs a president who will support one of the possible improvements.

2011-04-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

# 144. America now needs a president who will support one and only one of the possible choices for improvement.

BAD LAWS BAD LAWS BAD LAWS... ... There are always several alternatives to existing bad laws, but they will not change because the voters are split in their preferences. Without a united front supporting just one of the choices, things will stay the same. Only a determined president can lead a united front.

TAXATION TAXATION TAXATION TAX TAX. .. ... for example. Everyone agrees our present method of collecting revenue for needed services is awful. It can't be worse. But it doesn't change because the public is divided as to which suggested improvement is best. FLAT INCOME TAX and SALES TAX are two popular alternatives, each of which would be an improvement. But half the voters favor a flat tax, say 17% for everone, while the other half support a sales tax which would 100% eliminate income tax. Each side is passionate about his favorite so that neither one improvement gets enough support to overcome the greedy, selfish lobbyists who gain from the corrupt status quo. A bummer.

FORCEFUL PRESIDENT PRESIDENT PRESIDENT. ... ... .. But if we had a president who will get behind one of those -- it doesn't matter which -- he can convince 100% of reform-minded people to form a united front behind him to affect needed change. He must be forceful. He must be single-minded.

BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT . ... ... .. But this president doesn't get it. He only knows how to get along, go with, compromise, see all points of view and so he will go into history as the do-nothing president; letting things go on as before. We voted in a beurocrat; a civil servant who thinks like a beurocrat; like a civil servant. He doesn't know how to lead a united front to affect change. He doesn't want to lead. Ralph Nader was/is right. The Democratic Party with leaders like Abama, isn't worth spit.

# 143. April 8 -- today -- is the birthday deemed happy by the evil parents of their child born then.

2011-04-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

# 143. April 8 is the happy birthdate when the parents were evil and their child born then turned out as they planned. This was the case of parents Sol J and Helen B Gloger. ....HELEN B.HELEN B. HELEN B. Her plan was for a son that would be devoted to serving his mother as a slave, having no friends, boy or girl, no hobbies, no real profession. Her role model for the son would be her beloved brother, Irving Begun. She would raise her son the way she observed her beloved mother raised Irving. Helen could only tolerate the presence of those who treated her as a princess; as a slave owner ....SOL J SOL J SOL J. His plan was for a son that would be less than he was in all ways, especially less smart. Sol J only felt good in the company of people he could feel superior to. His role models were his wife's semi-literate, poverty stricken relatives. ... BOTH BOTH BOTH. Sol J and Helen B weren't 100% successful but they were close enough. (The greatest hitter never batted 1,000.) She died young, before truly able to shape a full slave. The boy lived long enough to overcome being a complete shmigeghi. So, on this day, April 8, both Sol J and Helen B Gloger can rejoice from their graves. They came close to producing a stupid slave. Their success was greatly helped because each supported the other; their individual agendas helped the others. .... .... Nice people would recognize the evil of Sol J and/or Helen B and stay away. Those two likewise sensed nice people who would not help and so they avoided them. But Sol J and Helen B's children were captives; prisoners. ... .... ....EXAMPLES EXAMPLES. Many examples supporting this conclusion will be described in the "comments" part of this blog, this # 143 as time goes by and the mood hits me.

# 142. 50-year high school reunions are bad.

2011-03-04T21:16:00.000-08:00

# 142. High school reunions uncover the woulda-coulda-shoulda that is best left in its grave.

I thought that I had lived as good a life as I was capable of living, considering all the circumstances beyond my control. My memory kept alive the few good things while inventing some things when none existed. A safety valve in my brain mercifully buried the horrors.

Then came the 50-year reunion, when it was too late to change anything, but the truth was revealed as reflected in the faces and lives of my classmates.

The worst truth that I had to face, that I supressed for over 50 yearts, was that both my parents were evil. Each separately was an evil parent and when combined, 1+1 = more than 2 as the combined evil was a super-evil that made their own lives a waste and wasted the lives of their children.

# 141. Using a cane brings out the best in Ameicans.

2011-03-04T20:22:00.000-08:00

# 141. Using a cane brings out the best in Americans and maybe others but I have no first hand knowledge of the latter.

It's been a year of walking in public leaning on a cane to compensate for hip joint pain. On each day, people approach me wanting to help. All ages, both sexes. Today, there were two memorable incidents, one a cab driver who wanted to take me free when I explained I had no taxi money then.

I want to know other ways to bring out he best in people and advice for how to respond to encourage more goodness. The right behavior makes for a better world. That is a simple truth.

Yesterday, at my favorite pizza parlor, I was finishing up with a last filling of cola with a handful of coated peanuts from the globe-shaped 25-cent dispenser. I heard a guy in the next table loudly say (to no one in particular it seemed)
"I'd like to know how the blue one tastes."
I looked down at my paper plate and saw that my bites were yellow, brown, orange with one blue piece. Without saying anything, I got up, hobbled over with my cane with the plate in my other hand, and slid the blue peanut onto his pizza plate. He said nothing. A minute later, he got up, went to the globe and stared at it.
"I have a quater in my coin box you can have" I said and I shook the small old vitamin container I use for loose change, making it jingle.
"I've got a quarter" he replied, as he worked the machine and got his handful of covered peanuts. He put a blue one on my plate. Not a word was spoken. Before he left, he went over to the machine, put in a quarter and placed his whole handful on my plate, then put some coins in my vitamin box that I left open on my table. Then he left. I think I mumbled something like "You didn't have to...thanks ... have a good day."
What's that expression about little acts of kindness?

Alistair Cooke used to describe good decent people as those wanting no more than to live "tidy lives." I think that doing simple acts of kindness is part of it. There's a Hebrew word for it: "Chesed." It is found in the Bible as the name for one of God's attributes.

# 140. Ping-pong was for China as Piano was for USSR as doctors should be for Cuba.

2011-01-30T21:26:00.000-08:00

# 140. Ping-pong was to China as Piano was to USSR as doctors could be to Cuba.

The political thaw between the USA and China began with friendly table-tennis tournaments between champions of the two nations. The political thaw between the USA and the USSR began with a classic piano competition between international artists that made US van Cliburn famous.

A needed thaw between the USA and Cuba could begin with medical and dental clinics from Cuba visiting poor areas in the USA that need medical care. The need was shown recently when volunteer USA medical and dental groups set up in parts of Virginia and North Carolina and good American patients came from hundreds of miles around for the free medical and dental treatment.

Cuba is famous for having provided medical and dental care for its citizens, mostly poor, from the Revolution of 1957 until now. The country went from zero care for its poor then to excellent full coverage now and colleges to train them, with a surplus of doctors, dentists and nurses. That could be models for doing the same in the USA and shaming the US medical establishment for withholding those things from USA citizens.

# 139. Cyprus and Falklands are ticking time bombs.

2011-01-24T00:11:00.000-08:00

# 139. Cyprus and Falklands are ticking time bombs that will eventually explode if not dealt with now. We know just how explosive by their recent past histories which surely will be repeated. We also should have learned the lesson of World War II that it could have been avoided if the problem would have been dealt with just three years earlier. What's the matter with democracies that they ignore easy problems until they are life-threatening?

Both Cyprus and the Falkland Islands are territories controlled by nations far away while the nearby lands crave for ownership, the latter committed to changing things in their favor.

# 138. The idea of America is to be a place where a citizen can do whatever he/she wants to do.

2011-01-21T19:16:00.000-08:00

# 138. The idea of America is to be a place where he/she can do anything he/she wants to do, make as much money as she can, have any hobby he desires, learn any trade he dreams of, have whichever friend he wants, practice any religion she believes in and smokes as much of whatever he chooses -- with one condition.

That one condition limiting an American's complete freedom is that he/she does not interfere with any other American's right to do the same thing. In other words, take whatever you want as long as you don't step on your neighbor's right to do the same thing. To ensure that one condition, laws are made, and police are hired to enforce those laws and a military is developed to protect the idea of America from jealous, greedy outsiders. The basic reason for each and every law in the land is to protect that one condition limiting an individual's complete freedom. This I believe. This is my guideline for judging the value of our laws -- all our laws. This I believe is simple truth.

# 137. VAT is an invisible solution to very visible outsourcing.

2011-01-21T18:28:00.000-08:00

# 137. VAT is an invisible solution to very visible outsourcing. To the rest of the world, VAT is visible, known as Value Added Tax. Anyone who has lived in Europe or visited Europe will press his buzzer while the American contestant will be silent, unable to correctly pick the right answer, "VAT or Value Added Tax stands for the amount of money added on to the price of an imported product.

Every European country has this to compensate for the difference in labor costs to manufacture that product in that country compared to the labor cost to make it in Bangladesh or wherever it actually was made. VAT levels the playing field. VAT keeps Italian shoe factories in Italy.

Since the cost of labor is the main reason why goods desired by Americans are not made in America any more, then a VAT for goods imported to America will discourage American manufacturers from moving their factories from Buffalo to Mexico or Bangladesh.

This is a real solution. This is the simple truth. Why is this not done? Why is VAT kept off the table; erased from the minds of Americans? One answer: America's corrupt (or very stupid) labor union officials never linked their demand for minimum wage laws with a VAT -- closing the legal loophole used by foreign interests to bring manufacturing to their countries.

# 136. American voters, even progressives, showed wisdom for rejecting Democrats in the last election.

2011-01-15T14:37:00.000-08:00

# 136. American voters, especially progressives, showed wisdom for rejecting the Democrat incombants in the last election because their wise message to politicians was,

" If you don't give us what we voted you for, then you are fired no matter who you are and no matter who your opponent is. "

" You can't blackmail us with the message that we progressives have nowhere else to go but the Democrat Party; that the other party is a lot worse; that this is not the election to be choosy in. You need us! "

This follows the advice of the early 20th century progressive, Upton Sinclair, who wrote that the only way to get elected officials to do the will of the electorate is to vote them out of office; and if the replacements don't do the right thing, then vote them out whoever they are, and replace them in turn if they do not deliver, and so on. That way, the politicians willl get it through their thick greedy skulls, that the only way to keep their elected jobs is to pay attention to the will of the voter; that they will no longer win by comparing themselves to the opposition, assuming that progressives have nowhere to go but the official (even though corrupt) Democrat party.

# 135. A good story can be told over and over again.

2011-01-15T14:04:00.000-08:00

# 135. A good story can be told over and over again without losing its appeal. That answers the question "Is the new True Grit movie as good as the earlier version with John Wayne?" The answer is that both are just as good because the story is a good one, whether as a novel or as the two films.

I am a Sherlock Holmes fan and relish every interpretation of the 60 or so stories written by Arthur Conan Doyle because those stories or so very good. They are retold in cinema form and for the radio, each time told slightly differently. The stories that Shakespeare told are also good enough to have actors dreaming of reinterpreting them and audiences enjoying them again and again. I watched True Grit yesterday, enjoying every scene, even though most of them were almost identical with those that John Wayne played in. I enjoyed seeing the story again. The different ending added to my enjoyment. It was neither better or worse, only different.

While at the cinema-plex at the mall, I also saw the new Green Hornet in 3D. That was fun, for I knew the Green Hornet stories from Old Time Radio when they were fresh and heard weekly on my family's radio, circa 1945. They were good stories then and this one in 3D is also a good story, although the main characters and the mood have been changed. I look forward to seeing another version of Shane. A good story is a good story. This is simple truth.

# 134. DHines is needed to keep our Internet democratic.

2011-01-05T11:42:00.000-08:00

# 134. DHines is needed to keep the Internet democratic -- the voice of all the people. DHines -- he or she -- comments on Shel Gloger's Op-Eds, telling him that he is not talking to a wall; assuring him that he is not just talking to himself; that someone out there is listening, reading and thinking about what was written. DHines then responds, encouraging Shel Gloger to continue, to refine, to change his mind if convinced to do so.

The writer of this blog, Shel Gloger, makes the effort to share his views, much like he would at a town meeting, if he went to town meetings; if town meetings still existed in his town. But if no one reads his views, that would be like talking at an empty town hall meeting. He'd be talking to himself, for which he would feel stupid and sad. He would leave the hall in silence, not to return; not to participate in real democracy again.

Thank you, DHines, and others who read my points of view. You help democracy by telling this sharer that he is not alone, that his input counts. Many DHines's commenting on many blog voices fill every seat in their town so any one standing up to speak knows that his voice counts; that it is listened to. The Internet is the new town hall, so far the place where true democracy can reign.

It is the hope that those making comments then get up to offer their own thoughts. Democracy will be the sharing among all participants. I invite DHines to include his own blog address whenever he comments on mine, so that we can all gain by ideas going back and forth.

The "idea" of a democratic America needs the Internet. The "idea" of a free democratic Internet needs every citizen contributing to it and commenting on it by way of the blogs (= homesites) on it. Democracy needs lots of Shel Gloger op-eds and lots of DHines's. This is simple truth.

# 133. Import only products made from foreign material.-- to end outsourcing.

2010-12-28T16:20:00.000-08:00

#133. Import only products made from foreign raw material -- to end outsourcing. If the product US citizens need or want is made mostly (over 50%) of US raw material, then it has to be made in the USA. Simple truth.

We fought a Revolutionary War because of the British mercantile system of demanding that the colonies send their raw materials to English factories to make things to send to the colonies to sell. Outsourcing today is reviving that system. (Read China instead of England).

# 132. Billionaires win by "taking off the table" what they really want.

2010-12-04T20:18:00.000-08:00

# 132. Billionaires win by TAKING OFF THE TABLE what they really want. When health care was the issue, the wealthy health insurance people most feared a single payer system that would put them out of business. They also feared a "public option" because that would lead to a single payer system as most Americans would have flocked to it.

So, they got the naive opposition (led by Obama) to agree to take that "OFF THE TABLE," so that what was left was minor -- something far away from a single payer system -- something that they could afford to lose if it came to that.

Now, billionaires fear they will be asked to pay a lot more than anyone else -- a sort of surcharge -- because the need for public money is great and they, the very wealthy, have the money.

So, the billionaires take the surcharge OFF THE TABLE by concentrating on a minor issue of whether they should get an extention to their tax relief -- something they can afford to lose if it came to that. Chicken feed. The real deal, a surcharge, is OFF THE TABLE; ordinary people aren't even thinking about it. They are being tricked again.

The tactic is nothing new. It is as old as the desert shuk: The seller's asking price is much higher than the seller really wants, so that during the bargaining process, he gives in (seeming reluctantly) to a lower price which is really what he wanted in the first place but this way the buyer is happy thinking she earned a bargain.

What the country needs, and what the billionaires happily were able to avoid, was this speech by the president:

" Fellow Americans, we are in the midst of a financial crisis. We need money to win the two wars we are engaged in, plus the fight against terrorists, and the financing of domestic programs to provide all of us with the services we are accustomed to having. All that takes money which your government does not have. We could get the needed money by raising taxes. But there is another way: This other way is to ask you, our wealthiest of citizens, to give your government the money it needs -- for one time only. Consider it charity, patriotic charity that your fellow Americans will be forever grateful to you for giving. My economic advisors tell me that if you give an additional 3% of your income plus 1% of your declared assets, then we can pay for the needed repair of our worn out infra-structure of bridges, tunnels, federal highways and university research projects that need renewing. Your "surtax" will be channeled to those needs and nothing else. Each project will have a plaque of thanks with your names on it. They will be plaques of thanks from your appreciative fellow Americans. "

# 131. America will be the playground for all the world's billionaires.

2010-11-19T21:27:00.000-08:00

# 131. The USA has a great future as the clean, safe home and playground for all of the world's billionaires who work elsewhere. After getting dirty in their native lands, they come home to their mansions in America to relax, enjoy their families, watch their children do their homework for the best schools, get a physical checkup from their doctors in the world's best hospitals.

In their USA, they will pay no taxes, not have to serve in the military, and employ servants who gratefully work without unions or minimum wages. Their friends and neighbors will be other billionaires. Their children will befriend the children of other billionaires. Order will be kept by police and military loyal to the billionaires who pay their salaries. All of America will be a Las Vegas. The army, navy and air force will be dedicated to keeping non-billionaires out -- no illegal immigrants allowed.

This is the new USA as imagined by today's conservatives, tea party members and all the others who today vote for tax breaks for the wealthy, against the draft needed for a citizen's army, against universal health coverage and other progressive programs. This is the simple truth based on the direction to which the country is now going.

Imagine! A whole country just for billionaires! A land that has mountains and oceans, deserts and snow, all the means to grow all the favorite foods of billionaires, having all the raw material to manufacture whatever the billionaires desire, and a work force of servants grateful to be employed by the billionaires. God bless America, Land of the fabulously wealthy.

# 130. Progressive's solution is a 3rd party.

2010-11-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

# 130. Progressive's solution is a 3rd party, just as Ralph Nader said. He early saw that most Democrats were just as reactionary as Republicans so that progressives should not vote for either. Liberals rejected this on the grounds that the present election was too important to throw to the GOP. Maybe the next election. However, the same was said for every "next" election. Now progressives should follow Nader's wise council: Build up a 3rd party that will eventually be America's real 2nd party, the GOP and Democrats blending together as one party. Now is the time to act. Always vote for the 3rd party, a progressive party, and help build it up. Obama fooled you. Ignore him. he will only distract you from forming a real alternative to the conservatives.

# 129. Obama laughed at Ralph Nader, for which he is being punished.

2010-11-04T14:16:00.000-07:00

# 129. Obama laughed at Ralph Nader, which was early proof that he is/was not a real Democrat or a progressive of any party.
After Obama won the primary, he got a call from Nader. At the next interview with the press, a reporter asked Obama about that. Obama laughed, saying that Ralph wanted him to support the progressive base of the Democratic Party. Obama laughed again condescendingly, telling the reporter that Nader thinks he knows everything. Ha ha.

# 128. Obama not a real Democrat

2010-11-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

# 128. Obama is not a real Democratic Party member. The latest proof, this day after the 2010 mid-term election, is his announcement to first meet at the White House with the new Senators and House reps, both Dem and GOP. BOTH? A real leader of the Democratic Party would call together just his fellow Democrats for strategy and offer of support. This is simple truth.

# 127. Insource workers from China.

2010-10-14T02:48:00.000-07:00

# 127. Insource workers from China to operate US factories here in the USA that can't afford to pay its workers American minimum wages. This will eliminate the desire of American factory owners to outsource their American factories, keeping thousands of US towns humming with factories that use local American raw material to manufacture American goods that bear the label, "Made in America" that Americans want to buy. This will solve the problem of businesses leaving the USA. Simple? Of cource. It's the simple truth.

# 126. God bless book stores.

2010-10-02T12:24:00.000-07:00

# 126. God bless book stores and their book-loving owners who have to struggle because of the unfair competition from public libraries. [see also letter-to-editor # 113] Nineteen-century English book stores were showing the way by loaning books from their stores to customers not ready to buy them. The store owners even convinced authors like Charles Dickens to serialize so their customers could afford to buy or borrow (at a small fee) a volume at a time. Book store owners, then and now, love books and have the feeling of kinship to other readers that is unsurpassed.

Libraries trick the book-loving public into giving them the money (via bond issues) that book store operators need to survive. The powerful library officials take the money given them and build high-ceiling reading rooms so they still keep most books hidden in the cellar. Rules are made suitable to the employees/librarians. Hours open are shortened to pressure the public to give noney. This is what I see in Portland, Oregon where book store owners struggle not to close down. What a shame ,for they know how to serve the reading public much better than those employed by the public libraries. A few blocks from Portland's central public library is the privately owned Powell's Book Store, the latter always more full of people than is the library. Why? Because the store owner knows how to serve the public. It displays all books along wide ailes, keeps open hours that suit the public, no days off, keep prices affordable, et al. If there were no public library, Powell's and other book stores would know how to establish "lending library" sections in their stores -- not a free service but affordable. What a shame that that service was not allowed to evolve from the 19th century London role model.

Ben Franklin was wrong in this one case (although right with fire departments and postal service). Progressive liberals are wrong in this one case of pooling public assets for the public good (although right about universal health insurance coverage). Next time there is a bond issue for your county's library, think of the struggling book store owner in town and how you can help her and by so doing, help yourself and civilization.

# 125. Haiti no! Haitian-Americans Si!

2010-10-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

#125. No billion dollars to Haiti. We don't have money for charity anymore. Sorry.To print paper money is to devalue the hard-earned savings of thrifty Americans who put their real dollars in the bank. The USA has no real money anymore for charity. To argue that we give billions to other countries is to argue that two wrongs make a right.

# 124. Wrong Black guy got elected president.

2010-05-26T11:44:00.000-07:00

# 124. We voted for the wrong Black guy. ... ... (repeat of Simple Truth #102 but now to my thought about the awful Gulf of Mexico oil disaster). ... ... Obama's type would be hired to develop a birthday party for your six-year old. He is definitely not the person you would want in charge if the kids started a fire or if the asthmatic little girl had an attack at the party. ... ... ... BTW, where are the leaders of the other 15 or so South and Latin American countries bordering the Gulf and the island nations surrounded by the Gulf? They are like the vacationers on the cruise ship that is sinking not worried because the leak is in the other end of the boat. .. ... ... ... See my comment to DHines comment to #123 about us being wasteful. His memories triggered mine about every housewife hanging out her laundry on the line to dry. Hope is that we are not alone. In the Oregonian just a few months ago was an article about a young lady in SE Portland wanting to bring back the clothes-lines. ... ... There was a large laundry across the street form my father's drug store that specialized in "wet-wash." I would bring in from home a large laundry bag full of dry dirty clothes. The clerk would weigh and charge me by the pound. In a few days, I would pick up the bag, this time full of heavy washed wet clothes for my mother to hang out to dry on the back yard lines that filled every back yard of the neighborhood in every neighborhood. ... ... ... No, Obama is the wrong Black Guy for the job we gave him. He doesn't have the will or the ability to kick ass in the banks, insurance companies and oil/petroleum industry or in Congress. He's a party giver for 6-year-olds.

# 123. We are a wasteful species.

2010-05-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

# 123. We are a wasteful species.

# 122. We are a wasteful people.

2010-05-21T15:56:00.000-07:00

# 122. We are a wasteful people. Gas, water, food, energy, lumber, gasoline, water, food.

# 121. Devil's advocate for pharmaceutical industry: USA list prices should be the same elsewhere.

2010-05-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

# 121. The Devil's Advocate for the American pharmaceutical industry proclaims, in humility, that the USA list prices should be the same elsewhere, everywhere outside the USA, but they are lowered out there because so many poor people live out there, outside the USA. Drug prices in foreign countries are too low; they should be much higher to be fair. But our blessed pharmaceutical companies sacrifice the profits they deserve from foreign sales in order to reach the peasants. God bless America. God bless Pfizer, Abbott, Smith, Kline et al for their charity work.

# 120. If same sex marriage is legal, then so is polygamy.

2010-05-10T15:26:00.000-07:00

#. 120. If same sex marriage is legal, then so is polygamy. Think about it. It's a simple truth. Where a guy can get a legal license to marry another guy and call him his wife, that is where a guy will be able to legally marry another woman in addition to his first female wife and so have two wives -- both female. Simple truth.

# 119. Truth can be found in popular culture, like movies and comic books.

2010-05-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

# 119. Truth can be found in popular culture, like movies and comic books, not just in the pages of leather-bound classic-looking volumes, written by recognized scholars.

For example, the truth that explains why the USA is at war in Iraq is eloquently revealed in a speech by the fictional CIA bureau chief Higgins when confronted by the good guy, Condor, after the latter discovered that a maverick CIA group murdered a dozen innocent Americans in order to keep secret its plans to start Middle East wars for oil.

That powerful speech is heard in the last scene of the film, Three Days of the Condor, as Condor (Robert Redford) asks Higgins (Cliff Robertson), "Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?" and Higgins angrily answers:

" We have games. That's all. We play games. What if...? How many men...? What would it take...? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime...? That's what we are paid to do!

" Fact is, there was nothing wrong with the plan. The plan was alright. The plan would have worked. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15 years -- food, plutonium -- and maybe even sooner.

" Now, what do you think the people are going to want us to do then? Not now, then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there is no heat in their homes and they are cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry! Do you want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it for them! "

# 118. I predict the next honest American multi-millionaire will be a Mexican American.

2010-05-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

# 118. I predict that the next honest American multi-millionaire will be a tourist agency owner of Latin American descent who establishes branches in select Mexican villages for tourism and employment, builds a fleet of buses and airplanes, contracts laborers from the villages and contracts US businesses (ranches, factories, farms) to supply the businesses with needed workers, arranges transportation, housing, salaries, takes its commission from the salaries, operates banks in each village branch for depositing the salaries, currency exchange, paying all expenses, operates consulates in his branches for the efficient issuing of passports/visas. This new multi-millionaire will be honored by the USA government for keeping American factories on US soil, supplying factories and farms with cheap labor, helping with legal exchange of citizens, and ending illegal immigration (no longer a need). Our new millionaire will be honored by the Mexican government for bringing US currency legally into Mexico, taxing that money properly, collecting those taxes, distributing the local taxes honestly to the villages who need the money, establishing businesses in poor Mexican villages and ending unemployment there. This new multi-millionaire will be honored with a Nobel Peace Prize.

# 117. Devil's Advocae says that lobbyists are good.

2010-04-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

# 117. The Devil's Advocate says that lobbyists are good, for they have more brains, education and depth of understanding on a subject than do the ordinary voter, or even the congressmen who have to legislate on those subjects. Our legislators are dummies by comparison. They are greatly helped by listening to the lobbyists, their superiors. On the other hand, some citizen from his district back home wastes time by visiting the elector's office to show pictures of the grandchildren. How foolish! The baby looks like a monkey, but the senator has to force a smile and keep the lobbyist waiting in the outer office. Mr. Dopey Citizen hasn't the depth of knowledge that the lobbyist has. The lobbyist saves his senator from wasting time researching by doing it for him and telling him how to vote, so the senator can leave early Friday for his long weekend in Bermuda! Lobbyists are good. With them, we don't even need elections. (What a waste.)

# 116. Devil's Advocate says that OUTSOURCING is good.

2010-04-30T15:10:00.001-07:00

# 116. The Devil's Advocate says that outsourcing is good, for it distributes the wealth of the world more evenly, the USA being the hero. Compared to the starving, underemployed billions throughout the world, we Americans are the select few living the rich lives that only kings lived previously. We have the world's riches; we spend the world's riches, squandering without guilt, wasting without shame. Very uneven. Very unfair say true Marxists. ... ... But wait a minute. We now, unilaterally are tightening our belts; giving up our wealth and jobs by outsourcing them. We are spreading our wealth to the poor. We are sacrificing our advantage by throwing it all away for the raggedy poor to catch. We Americans pay the price. What is ours legally we give to the less fortunate in other countries. We buy from them what we don't need from them., what we can make ourselves -- just so they will have our money, our charity. It is charity, for we can make those things better, like the woven rugs from the Amazon that we buy so that those poor Indians won't starve. God Bless America.

# 115. War must pay for itself.

2010-04-26T15:42:00.000-07:00

#115. War must pay for itself. Winning a war means to make a profit from it. All the Caesars knew that. Ganghis Khan and Alexander knew that. They invaded a city that had gold, food or jewelry to pay the soldiers, enrich the generals, repair and replace weapons.

All those winning warriors would laugh at us for beating Iraq but then giving back the oil wells. They would have guarded the oil fields for as long as they could sell its oil and got a return on its investment plus some. They would have had Iraqi oil pay for all the expenses of the war and then kept taking oil as profit and money to prepare for the next war. They would not have bothered with Afghanistan at all because it had nothing of value to take home. Not worth spit. They would have taught that at West Point: Motive for Going to War 101.

# 114. Obama's first mistake as president was to think his mandate was to include the GOP.

2010-04-26T15:30:00.000-07:00

# 114. Obama's first mistake as president was to think his mandate was to include the GOP. No. Voters who were not usually Democrats voted Obama to undo the damage of the previous eight years and to do that drastic change was needed and that meant change from the left. For at least one term, the country overwhelmingly decided to let the liberals-socialists-progressives -Nader's Raiders have a go at it.

# 113. Public libraries prove that Progressives make mistakes.

2010-04-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

# 113. Public libraries prove that Progressives make mistakes, even the grand-daddy of them all, Benjamin Franklin. The proof lies with the multitude of private book stores, some small, some struggling to exist.

The British network of bookstores in the 19th centuty were providing inexpensive reading for the budget-minded as well as the poor by having publishers serialize their books. Then, the bookstores would rent (loan) sections (volumes), one at a time, for a small fee. Bookstores could rent one book to five people at the same time, if that book was split into five volumes. For example, the monumental (1500 pages) best seller of 1836, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, by David Friedrich Strauss was translated and published in three volumes, and sure enough, it was borrowed, one volume at a time for a small fee and the book seller rented three at the same time (anad charge three fees) even though it bought only one book from the publisher. The shop owner would even sell one at a time to buyers who only had the money for one at a time.

And with time, the system of borrowing would have improved by the shop owners, making public libraries even less necessary.

Now that there is a need for personal computer use, which could pay the rent for struggling book sellers, public libraries rush in and use taxpayers' money to buy PCs and then rent out time on them. That is unfair competition. A poor person can afford a dime or a quarter to use a PC at a bookstore (or coffee shop) for an hour.

Instead, the taxpayers pay for libraries to take the services away form the struggling book store owner. Unfair. Except for reference libraries, there is/was no need for the hundreds of town and county public libraries. There have always been hundreds of independent-minded book lovers willing to use the free enterprise system to fill the needs of book (and PC) users.

# 112. Tough love from USA to Israel: Charge $1 million for settlement's every new apartment.

2010-04-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

# 112. Tough love from USA to Israel: Charge $1 million for every new apartment built in the Settlements. $1 million will be deducted from the next loan or gift from the USA, making sure extra money isn't added to the previous or next aid package to compensate.

Tough love is passing a linkage law with no loopholes: $1 million deducted from the next US/Israel aid package for every new apartment occupied by a Jewish settler. (If $1 million only makes a small dent, then have the penalty be $5 million.)

# 111. Biggest BAILOUT continues to be the baby factory.

2010-04-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

#111. Biggest bail-outs continue to be the baby factories where irresponsible, uneducated, underfunded parents give birth at will and enjoy the benefits while the taxpayers bail them out by paying for feeding, clothing and caring for them.

#110. Physicians should use their own single-payer (all-chip-in) plan.

2010-04-12T14:14:00.000-07:00

# 110. Physicians should use their own single-payer (all-chip-in) plan to dissolve their two worst nightmares: being sued for malpractice and being billed unaffordable insurance premiums.

Docs would form their very own non-profit insurance company that every physician must join as a prerequisite for getting licensed to practice medicine. That way, the cost of each doc's insurance would be as low as possible -- no CEO taking home millions -- and there would be doctor-to-doctor social pressure against the bad doctors to have them clean up their acts and so lower the insurance rates on the good doctors.

Another good result would be the lessened pressure to join an HMO that many now join only for the protection against lawsuits and expensive insurance. A doctor's original dream of opening his own practice would happen more often, giving America more family doctors (that are sorely needed) in remote areas (where they are sorely needed).

# 109. Improve your spoken English by imitating Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson.

2010-04-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

# 109. Improve your spoken English by emulating the speech patterns of Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson, whose combined eloquent elocution is superb. Whatever your goal, it will be enhanced if you can communicate better orally than with the tarnished rhetoric you now use.

Those two English gentlemen are available now because in 1954 they had their voices recorded during 15 hours of conversation. Those tapes (or CDs) are available from Radio Spirits, Cedar Knolls NJ; from High Bridge, Minneapolis MN, and probably from other places.

Oh, by the way, the conversations between those two masters of oral eloquence are in the form of Sherlock Holmes stories, Gielgud reading Holmes and Richardson, Watson. Other British actors worthy of imitation play the supporting roles. One American, whose speech pattern is acceptable, is included: Mr. Orson Welles was in London at the time, and he volunteered to read the felicitous phrases of Professor Moriarity.

#108. "Single-Payer" means "All-Chip-In."

2010-04-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

# 108. Single payer means All-chip-in, so let's call it that to get better results. Birth Control Inc. took off like a rocket AFTER it changed its name to Planned Parenthood. Single payer doesn't convey the clear message that everyone pays into a common pool of money to be used for a single purpose. The term, "single payer," did not help the cause of health care reform. It did not say that insurance against illness is best for everyone when everyone adds to the pool of money to be dipped into when anyone needs it. "All-chip-in" does the job much better.

Progressives should sponsor a contest to come up with a name for its single-payer plan that they will continue to fight for until it is adopted. They don't like "all chip in?" How about the musketeers' slogan, "All for one; one for all!" or "Healthy Americans: the people who come in from the cold" or return to the classic, "Socialism," which works in some countries. Americans who moved to a "kibbutz" would not have made a "commune" their home.

We Americans need an all-chip-in program to solve our health care crisis. Its adoption is handicapped by calling it single-payer. This, I believe, is the simple truth.

# 107. Med schools and hospitals will be OUTSOURCED next in a big way.

2010-04-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

# 107. Med schools and hospitals will be the next big items to be outsourced. The owners (Boards of Directors) will first naively examine the cost of expanding what they now have where they have it -- to meet the coming huge demand for their services. A new wing in Boston, a nursing school in Detroit, hire more nurses aids in Baltimore, start a new med school in Wyoming. But then, these clever US medical/industrial entrepreneurs will consider what the Boards of Directors of factories did to solve their labor and building problems and get rich at the same time.

Why pay construction workers union wages to build a new wing when they can get a loan from AIG to build it in China on the cheap and then staff it with low wage nurses, aides and orderlies instead of dealing with the growing power of unionized hospital workers of the USA? Why indeed!

US doctor-owners are watching their potential patients go to Mexico and India with the money that US doctors should pocket. Why not sign up the American sick to go to US-owned hospitals built and run there and maybe put their US dollars in secret Mexican bank accounts owned by the US doctors who will take a few of those dollars out to pay the native doctors with.

Existing US med schools -- even non-profit ones -- will notice that accredited US colleges have been operating branches in foreign countries for years, at first encouraged by their foreign language departments happy to teach in the countries of origin. They are reading now how NYU is creating an entire university in an Arab Emirate so that it can enroll a flood of Arab students having trouble getting into the USA.

This thought is an outgrowth of simple truth # 106: about eliminating pre-med as one way to solve the coming doctor shortage crisis. In his comment, DHines mentioned the med school doctor-owner from the Caribbean thinking the reverse to get himself richer: Open his own branch in Wyoming. Great idea! A better idea is for a group of Wyoming doctors to build in the Caribbean!

So, we can add outsourcing to the list of ways to solve the coming shortage; a way better than eliminating pre-med students whose tuition fees are needed to keep Bachelor degree programs healthy.

DHines also brings up the argument in favor of pre-med: that the kids need to broaden their minds in order to be better doctors. Daa. A highly educated doctor will most likely use his higher education to be a better lobbyist than a better surgeon. I would prefer that the guy operating on my coronary arteries takes his work home with him and has no other hobby, collects no works of art, or belongs to no clubs which a B.A. degree prepared him for doing, collecting, belonging.

It is only natural that the outsourcing of raw material from the USA to make manufactured goods in China to sell in the USA market will be followed by the outsourcing of medical schools and hospitals. This is simple truth -- isn't it?

# 106. End "pre-med" to get the additional physicians needed.

2010-03-24T11:16:00.000-07:00

# 106. End "pre-med" to get the additional physicians needed to serve the additional 30 million patients that any US health care reform program will add to your waiting room. Yes, you who have good health care insurance will have to share what you have now with 30 million more -- in the waiting room, on the list for an operation. to see your favorite physician or any MD.

It will upset you even effect your health to see that those in the waiting room ahead of you are those who spent their excess income on beer, movies, cars and vacations, while you deprived yourself of those luxuries by putting that money into health insurance. When you see them laugh in the waiting room, know that they are laughing at you for having sacrificed over the years while they enjoyed life. Ha ha.

If you believe this, then realize that the shortage must be overcome quickly and the best, cheapest, quickest way to do that is to eliminate the expensive 4-year-long obstacle put in front of all youngsters wishing to become doctors so that must will drop out. Too long a time; too expensive; too many other opportunities will present themselves.

Circa 1933: The AMA decided that the bad experience of the 1930s Depression should never be repeated. That was when physicians couldn't make a good living. They suffered along with the general population. Doctors' organization (unions?) decided to limit the number of doctors as the best way to solve the problem and they could best do that by requiring (and discouraging) all enthusiastic smart high school students wanting to be doctors at the age of 16, to first go to a regular college for four years, at the end of which only a small percent will want to go or be qualified to go or afford to go to med school.

FACT: In Europe, a high school student gets accepted into medical school after high school. He/she is "in" and lives without the anxiety of having to qualify again in four years. He/she knows that he/she will be a physician. .... No one has complained that those resulting doctors are not so good.

FACT: During World War II, the acute shortage of doctors in combat forced the AMA to make doctors in five years (instead of the eight that pre-med forced). All tests afterwards showed that those doctors turned out just as good as the 8-year med students.

FACT: Pre-med contains only three courses needed for the study of medicine. That tiny number is easily taught in the first year of medical school itself.

FACT: Every good large-city hospital operating today -- and there are hundreds -- could be a medical school. The material is there. The staff/teachers are there. Therefore, it is easier to expand the number of US medical schools than, say, the number of engineering colleges, where one has to start from scratch.

Study Cuba, where universal coverage became law overnight and the country needed doctors desperately. In a few years, the country went from a shortage of doctors to a surplus. Today, hundreds of poor Spanish-speaking New Yorkers go to Cuba to become doctors. That brings up another problem: the cost of becoming a US doctor, which the elimination of 4 years in pre-med will greatly overcome.

Let me repeat two simply truths: 30 million new patients will demand the services of the same doctors now serving those of us with insurance; and pre-med is a big obstacle to getting us more doctors.

# 105. "It's off the table," is the most dishonest, disrespectful statement an elected offical can say to you.

2010-03-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

# 105. "It's off the table," is the most dishonest, disrespectful statement an elected official can tell a citizen to explain why he/she did/didn't do what you wanted him/her to do. The basis for democratic law-making is to consider all possibilities and narrow down from that starting point.

When deciding the form of new governments in the oil-rich desert lands, those decision-makers of 1919, replied to Lawrence of Arabia's plan for democratic Arab rule, with, "It's off the table."

In the beginning of today's health care reform debate in the US Congress -- when all possible solutions should be considered -- when asked about "single-payer ' -- the powerful Senator Max Baucus of Montana said, "Single-payer is off the table," denying in advance that very interesting possible solution. Not even a discussion was allowed in his committee.

# 104. Doctors spoil health care reform.

2010-03-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

# 104. Doctors spoil health care reform because there are not enough of them. Thirty million new patients will be in your doc's waiting room when you show up for your appointment. You have to share the physicians that you have now with a whole bunch more patients -- patients who did not sacrifice the way you did to have the insurance you have. The same for hospital beds, organ transplants and waiting time for surgery or simple office visits.

#103. Tax-free reforms are best.

2010-03-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

# 103. Tax-free reforms are best. They require the most work; the hardest thinking; the longest-lasting; having the least bad side-effects. Reform that does not cost the taxpayers is the most challenging.

It is easiest for our lawmakers to throw money at something; to make a law that is paid for with taxpayers' money. You can have anything if money is no object.

Let's look at the problem of the need for promotion/publicity when running for office in the USA. A candidate needs exposure on television, the radio and in the print media in order to get his case before the voters. This is hugely expensive, especially TV time.

The money needed now comes from corporations, millionaires, and vested-interest organizations with deep pockets. The serious problem, of course, is that the candidate must show his/her appreciation by paying attention to the interests of the donors.

The leading solution to this problem is for the taxpayer to give money to every candidate equally and forbid special interest groups from contributing. The flaw in that solution is that clever lobbyists for the special interest groups will find a way -- call it a loophole -- to take the taxpayers' money and still use the influence of the deep pockets; that the public funding will be an addition not a substitute for what they do now, and the lolbbyists will laugh all the way to their clients -- laugh at the naive taxpayers who checked off on their income tax forms to give part of their refund to the greedy.

But if our reform-minded law makers try extra hard and not take the easy way (throw taxpayers money at the problem) they will find tax-free solutions. In the case of candidate money for TV, they will see that a law requiring media companies that use our "public air-waves" pay for the privilege by giving free and equal air time to all candidates. Simple, isn't it? Simple once you get your brain thinking a tax-free solution

# 102. Wrong Black guy elected.

2010-03-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

# 102. Wrong Black guy elected. Millions of Whites (who would not want their daughters dating Black) voted for Obama thinking they were electing a Bad-ass Black from the toughest 'hood to beat the shit out of the bankers, foreclosure crooks, bankruptcy lawyers, health insurance CEOs and go-along Democrats who messed up the past eight years.

Instead, they got skim-milky white blood wrapped in chocolate skin who brings with him sissy blacks -- just look at his attorney general -- and tell me you don't see him as a weakling sissy kid running crying to his momma because some real Black kids in class beat him up.

Obama needs these Whites to get reelected, but he will not get them unless he becomes a Real Black.

This is not a racist talking, for I would not say these things ever or even think them. I am putting myself in the minds of those multi-million non-liberal Whites who joined in to elect Obama the first time. I become them to think this out and come up with this simple truth. What you read here, Simple Truith #102, is just that: the gosh darn simple triuth.

# 101. Single-payer with a large deduction is the answer.

2010-03-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

# 101. A $5,000 deductible will make the single-payer health insurance plan successful. A large deductible should please almost everyone needed to make it law. This is the simple truth.

A $5,000 deductible (with today's prices) may cause pain, but it will not bankrupt anyone. Everyone (including illegal immigrants and tourists) will be 100% protected from the catastrophic costs of catastrophic illnesses. No family will have its home foreclosed on or its business closed down. Our greatest fear: the catastrophic cost of a single illness will be met.

Even those involved in the abortion controversy will be satisfied when they realize that $5,000 is enough for a woman to go to Mexico or India to have the operation without help from the US taxpayer. Even in the USA, competitive abortion clinics run efficiently will see a profit in $5,000 for the simple operation. This is a simple truth, not childish simplicity.

This simple plan will have one exception: the annual deduction for prescription drugs will be $50.

Anyone who wants coverage for the first $5,000 / $50 can have it by buying insurance against those costs from the private companies who will make a lot of money on volume (almost everyone will want it to protect savings meant for college, vacations or retirement). The competitive companies can set the premiums very low because no costly illnesses will ever be involved.

# 100. V.P. Biden should remember his earlier plan for Iraq.

2010-02-12T21:13:00.000-08:00

# 100. V.P. Biden should remember his earlier plan for Iraq and teach that logic to his leader and keep reminding the American People of it. It was the principle of self-determination of Peoples that see themselves as separate from their neighbors. In other words, the land that colonial powers named Iraq, is really three separate countries, Sunni-Land, Shiite-Land and Kurdistan, each having its own ancestral leadership and customs for governing its people. Wars and ruthless dicatatorships are the inevitable result of trying to bind the three together as if they should be one but only can be one with unpopular force.

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#99. Believers in Free AM/FM radio need Howard Stern.

2010-02-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

#99. Believers in Free AM/FM radio need the return of Howard Stern. We lost him five years ago when he switched to private-enterprise, make-a-buck, get around the concept of airwaves-belonging-to-the-people so-called "Satellite" or cable radio.

All right, he deserved the 500 million dollars given him as he did not deserve all the government hassles he had to suffer. But his 5-year contract is up and so he should consider the many millions of devoted fans who have been left out in the cold because they could not buy a new car with Sirius radio installed or buy a $150 Sirius boom-box along with a $20 monthly fee.

There are hundreds of morning-drive-time broadcasters who owe their jobs to the vacuum that Howard created by leaving the public airwaves. They are awful. They don't have that combination of entertaining plus informing that we 200 million listeners yearn for. Once in a blue moon, a genius comes along in every field to improve our lives. Howard Stern is today's genius in broadcasting. He makes us laugh and think and start the day positively to bring out the best of us all. There is nothing like it. There is no one like him. A genius we 200 million are being denied access to. Those hundreds of morning-drive-time incompetents now working? Let them bake bagels.

Howard wants more money than we little people can afford? Then this is a worthy cause for single-payer, public option. It will be good medicine. We should all chip in and pay for his brand of health insurance. Where do I sign up? Which Congressman has the wisdom to spearhead this plan and get my vote?

# 98. Free speech in court means the RADIO, not TV.

2010-02-01T14:47:00.000-08:00

# 98. Free speech in court means the radio. An ongoing debate -- at least since the O.J. Trial -- is whether television should be allowed in the court during a trial. It is the wrong debate. Television is the wrong medium. AM/FM Radio carries free speech. Television is merely radio plus some graphics -- graphics that distract from free speech.

A trial that is "on the radio" allows any citizen to hear the words spoken -- all the words spoken by judge, lawyers, witnesses and defendants. Any citizen tuned in to the correct AM or FM radio station, experiences free speech. That viewer will hear what it takes to decide on a fair decision. What does television add to that? Nothing. What does television subtract from that? Everything meaningful to free speech, for all parties involved in the trial will be concerned with his/her appearance, a distraction from free speech.

The judge knows he could become famous and rich because millions of viewers will see him. His/her boring life will have meaning. The milliions won't remember what he said as judge. What clothes the witnesses wore will influence the viewer. Whether the defendant cries or laughs in his seat will influence the viewer.

Every statue of Lady Justice that I have seen has her blindfolded. Her eyes are covered, not her ears. There is no sound buffer over her ears. Lady Justice hears everything as she weighs the scales of justice. She sees nothing so that she can concentrate on listening. Lady Justice has the radio turned on and the TV set off. That is the simple truth. those opposing that simple truth try to convince themselves that it is not simple truth, but rather simplicity.

PS: Read the remarkable 96-page trade paperback, I Love Radio: The Complete AM/FM Guide to the Bay Area. Among other things, it "proves" that the American citizen gets his/her news from the radio and not from TV or the newpaper or the magazine. I Love Radio takes one market (of 60 local radio stations circa 1976) to tell the story of all USA radio markets, past and present.

#97. All for one & one for all -- to pay for wars and health insurance.

2010-01-30T08:12:00.000-08:00

$ 97. All for one and one for all -- when it comes to paying for costly programs like fighting a war, building a national coast-to-coast highway, and insuring all citizens against all health care needs. There is no shortcut. Those national programs are/will be very very expensive.

About universal comprehensive health care coverage, the only difference of opinion will be who should administer the massive amounts of money collected, a government agency or the existing insurance industry. An argument can be made that the latter will be more efficient and that we the people should let it do the job, just as sometimes a government subcontracts a private company to do a job, like fight a war (the Blackwater Company, for example) or take bids to build a bridge or feed prisoners. We the People can hire the insurance companies and pay them a fee for doing the job.

I suggest that this is a new way to look at the insurance companies' need to run the thing, and maybe this outlook will get everyone behind the reform which must recognize that everyone has to chip in (single payer) (all for one/one for all) in order for to it be 100% affordable for 100% of the population, and cover 100% of their health needs.

Let the insurance industry win the bid to run the program for which we the people will give it a commission, just like with any other sub-contractor hired by a local, state or the US government. (Hey Will Shakespeare, is this a simple new idea? A simple truth that will be miscalled simplicity?)

#96. Ralph Nader will probably say that it's too late.

2010-01-20T17:15:00.000-08:00

#96. Ralph Nader will probably say that it's too late to save the Democratic Party as the party of progressives. We have to weed out the traitors by developing a brand new party, the Progressive Party, demanding that so-called Deomocrats choose it or join the regressive Republican Party. Barach Obama will have to lead the way and be the very first to choose one or the other for himself.

#95. Massachusetts punishes Obama for disrespecting Nader,

2010-01-20T16:55:00.000-08:00

#95. Massachusetts punishes President Obama for disrespecting Citizen Nader. Soon after Obama clinched the Democratic Party nomination, the interviewer asked him about rumors that Ralph Nader called him on the phone. True? If so, what was the call about?
Yes, it is true, candidate Obama admitted. The nation then saw a close-up of Obama's face as he laughed; as he laughed off Mr. Nader's attempt to give him advice. Ralph thinks he has all the answers, Obama told the reporter, indicating that Nader will have to join the other progressives at the end of the line.

All is not yet jost. President Obama has to ask Nader's forgivness; request his advice on all matters, honor him with awards and beg him to attend policy-making meetings and hope that Nader doesn't think it is too late.

# 94. Speed-reading with comprehension taught in elementary school is needed.

2010-01-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

# 94. Speed-reading with comprehension taught in elementary school is needed so that our future senators and legislators will be able to read all the bills they have to act on and not complain that they don't have the time boo hoo.

Evelyn Wood classes made this program famous for adults. College adopted the system for less-qualified incoming freshmen so they won't flunk out. But by then it is mostly too late.

I request all of you who are asked to approve of more money for local schools, to first demand the answer to the question, "What are you doing to implement speed-reading with comprehension in the elementary grades?" How much of the money you want will be directed to that basic educational need?

#93. Where is Osama Bin Laden's HAITI tape?

2010-01-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

#93. Where is Osama Bin Laden's Haiti tape instructing his Al Qaeda admirers to help the suffering people of Haiti? I await Bin Laden to declare a Jihad against natural disasters, like earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes that hurt innocent people. What is it about terrorists that make them specialize in bombing instead of building up? ... in destroying instead of creating? What a waste!

# 92. Simplicity should be required for law making.

2010-01-10T13:42:00.000-08:00

# 92. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity should be a must for writing laws. The ideal would be that there be no amendments, attachments, loopholes to any proposed law which must fit on one page, 8 1/2' x 11" double-spaced typewritten, 14 pt. size type. What would have been an amendment must be proposed as a separate law, it following the same one-page rule.

An impractical ideal? One of the great thinkers (I can't remember which) said this about an ideal: It is like a star that sailors use to guide them to safety. They know that it would be absurd to think they could touch the star or come close. The star (ideal) shows the direction in which to go.

And so, we the people should hope that laws made would be simply written so that everyone can read and understand it and not be tricked by a cleverly placed word or two that changes the intent. Each law written in plain English confined to a single sheet of paper is the ideal to aim for. Right?

# 91. A voter (the boss) pays his elected official (public servant) his/her salary.

2010-01-06T12:49:00.000-08:00

# 91. You or me, a voter (the boss) should pay his elected official (public servant) his/her salary. That's the way it should be. If it could be, much would improve, from mere attitude to actual better government.

Here is how. It might seem simple and so impossible, but if you keep it in mind and decide it would be good and help refine it, then someday, when the need becomes very great for change, then this plan will appear fresh and ready to go quickly. So here goes:

On every ballot on every election, beneath the selection for office holder, would be the choice: "This job's salary & benefits will (a) remain the same; (b) be 5% more; (c) be 5% less."

Simple, isn't it? What the electorate will understand before filling out his ballot, is what he read about it in the newspaper or heard about it on the radio is this:

Besides picking the job holder, the voter determines his/her salary by changing it 5% either way or keeping it the same, depending on how the voter feels about the job, be it mayor or governor or US president. If the voter feels the senator is overpaid, he votes for a 5% reduction in pay and all benefits that come with the job no matter who gets the job. If he feels the same way two or four years later, he can vote another 5% reduction and the trend can go on until the electorate feels the salary is just right.

The candidate will realize that the voter is more important than he otherwise thought. When campaigning, the candidate will make a plea not only on the issues, but also for why he should get 5% more and surely not 5% less. The candidate will calculate that a 5% increase comes out to more than what a lobbyist gives him.

The new salary (determined by a simple majority of votes) will go into effect when the office holder is inaugurated and will stay until the next after-election inauguration.

This new system is almost cost-free. It uses the same ballot and the same elections. Only a line is added under the choice for office holder being elected. This will probably happen first in local elections, say for mayor or state senator or city attorney or county executive. The success at the local level will be the best advertisement for spreading to state and national elections.

Practical & Simple? ... ... or ... ... Impractical & Simplistic?

List all the good that can come from this innovation in government. Can you list bad things? If so, OK, let's work on them, so that the innovation will be perfect for implementing when the time is ripe (when the critical mass of voters demand an end to office holder arrogance and demand a return of the servant in public servant.)

The voter will feel more empowered. He/she will be more empowered. Voter turnout will increase, for the ability to determine an office holder's salary will be very appealing. At a town meeting, the candidate will see money in the face before him, just what he sees now on the face of a lobbyist entering his office. The town folk sitting in the audience when the candidate enters, will see a servant begging for a job.

William, isn't this idea a simple truth miscalled simplicity that you were thinking of when you wrote Sonnet 66?

#90. Servants do not give themselves raises.

2009-12-30T12:07:00.000-08:00

#90. Servants do not give themselves raises in salary. That our members of congress do, is an outrage. It is a slap in the face, the servant slapping the face of the boss who hired him.

When we read in the newspaper that the US Senate has just voted itself increases in salary & benefits, the senators are announcing to us -- we the people -- that the USA is no longer a representative government of the people, by the people, for the people. The elected officials have taken over. Reading about this is the arrogant statement from them that they don't have to steal; that they shall take what they want openly without shame.

Publicly announcing that they gave themselves raises, is really a test run. The elected officials know that it is wrong but doing it repeatedly without challenge will give it respectability. Their takeover becomes legal when it becomes accepted custom. This is why this test run, sometimes annually, must not be ignored. It must be challenged with the might of challenging a general attempting to be commander-in-chief.

We the People must determine the salaries of our elected officials. They must come to us for biweekly paychecks, just as the house servants stood in line for their pay envelopes. thanking the lord of the manor giving out the envelopes. Simple truth.

#89. Emphasize SERVANT in Public Servant as a first step.

2009-12-30T11:16:00.000-08:00

#89. Emphasize servant in Public Servant as a first step in the re-education of our elected officials and the public itself into realizing that the official is the servant and that the electorate is the boss.

BAD: Whenever some congressman is interviewed on the radio or TV, the interviewer profusely thanks the congressman for agreeing to the interview. "Thank you for your valuable time ... We appreciate ... honored ... You must be very busy... We owe you..." and the congressman accepts the praise; acknowledging the favor he has bestowed on the interviewer.

This must be changed. The servant is obliged to answer to his boss who hired him. It is the servant's job to explain himself when asked. Simple truth.

Both elected official and those who voted must imagine the elected official as the person hired to come into the home and cook, clean, garden, repair, remove garbage. We, the people, must conjure up the image of one of those familiar workers and then transfer that image to the elected official in the spotlight.

Those of us who are TV fans and remember the British series, Upstairs Downstairs, must associate our elected officials with the Downstairs people: the butler, cook, chauffeur and maids who knew their place in society. The wealthy blue-blood family living Upstairs didn't have to remind the servants what was expected of them. We, the People of the USA, must think of ourselves as Upstairs blue-bloods and our elected officials as the Downstairs servants we pay well to serve us.

This attitude must become ingrained in all of us before we can expect proper behavior from our elected officials. This I believe is an essential first step in having our officials be responsible to the electorate rather than special interest groups or themselves. This I believe is simple truth.

#88. Will $10,000 make me feel better if/when Progressives lose?

2009-12-23T09:59:00.000-08:00

#88. Will $10,000 make me feel better if/when Progressives (health care reform) lose? I will see and you will also, for I will take my carefully saved $10,000 from my savings account and buy into the enemy of health insurance reform.

Will my $10,000 grow more than it would in the bank savings account? and will I feel better when health care reform loses because I personally, selfishly gain?

How human nature in me expresses itself may givea clue as to why originally well-meaning US Senators and US Representatives sell out and turn on their constituents.

PS: My $10,000 shows me, who talks the talk, that I am willing to walk the walk. Yet I have lost an early battle, for a recent Ralph Nader message asked me to donate to his Public Citizen, Inc. Why don't I give it my $10,000. ... ... I'll make that a different project, maybe donate the profit I might make above and beyond the $10,000.

#87. How to love Dr. Strangelove's bomb and health insurance companies.

2009-12-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

#87. How to love Dr. Strangelove's bomb and health care companies also? ANSWER: Buy stock in companies that supply war material and that sell health care insurance. You can't lose! This is advice especially for bleeding hearts upset at every inevitable progressive lose which will be cushioned by rise in the value of the stock. When progressive causes fail, you personally gain. Isn't that the American way. Won't you feel better when being sold out by your so-called representatives? Simple truth again miscalled simplicity.

#86. Lobbyists play chess; progressives play checkers.

2009-12-16T12:08:00.000-08:00

#86. Lobbyists play chess to win, thinking three steps ahead, while Progressives play checkers, seeing only the one step in front of their noses.

Health insurance companies knew that "single-payer" would kill them but to only fight it would result in "public option" as the compromise end game, but the latter would lead to the former -- no good.

Thinking three steps ahead, the chess players decided that they must eliminate single-payer before the fight, so that they could even avoid public option. And they did it. They got the checkers players to agree to "take single-payer off the table," before the negotiating, thereby making public option the point to compromise from, ending with something less -- less than public option.

While lobbyists play chess and progressives still play checkers, frustrated Ralph Nader has to watch, helpless, not listened to when he points out checkmate in three moves. A third party is his only option. Intelligent progressives would have followed him in droves.

#85. Not enough docs; not enough medical schools.

2009-12-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

#85. There are not enough docs and not enough medical schools to serve the large increase in patients which health care reform would create.

If their dream package of health care reform would happen, the progressives would be the first to complain that it was much harder for them to visit their own doctors. Progressives have had a blind spot to the needed foundation of reform: greatly increase the number of doctors and med schools to turn them out.

A most powerful -- although invisible -- lobby is that of the medical doctors and dentists who were scarred during the Great Depression along with other workers. In order to prevent that from happening again, the lobby decided to limit their numbers.

(My father used to feed free lunch to the starving doctors from the local hospital in his drug store-luncheonette from the time he opened in 1933 until they enlisted in 1941).

Before any other health care reform to succeed, America must create med schools from the many good hospitals in the country (the way Cuba did) and allow any students who want to, to enroll. When the USA is flooded with US-citizen doctors, then there will come affordable health care for everyone and the docs will not command salaries much higher than that of their patients. The horse before the buggy; Doctors before universal health care.

#84. Tax reform circa 1982 = health care reform 2009. Failure again?

2009-12-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

$84. Tax reform was a big issue in 1982 the same way health care reform is today. The resemblance is astonishing. I wouldn't believe it had I not lived through it. Should we all prepare for nothing happening this time also?

Much of the population was fed up with the thousands of pages in the tax code, the loopholes, exceptions, benefits for special groups, the lobbyists and the summer of town hall meetings to do something about it all.

The lobbyists then were just as powerful and manipulative as they are now. Then they represented the legal and accountant professionals. I even remember a representative of a legal secretaries association giving a talk against change. I remember Max Baucus at a town meeting in Missoula MT then dismiss tax reform and ask for the next question, shaming the citizen asking. I think he was a US House Rep then. I heard with my own ears, him repeat, parrot-like, an argument that a lobby group used, word for word.

It was the opinion of most, that any of the proposed solutions would be better than leaving the problem the way it was. Two congressmen traveled the country debating which of the two most popular remedies was best, the "flat" income tax or a national sales tax that would eliminate income tax altogether. I think Dick Army was one of the two. He was a good guy then. The congressmen agreed with each other that even the proposed solution that they argued against would be better than just leaving things the way they were. And yet, that is what happened. The terrible tax system stayed the way it was; the way it still is and no one seems to be upset about it any more.

Is this a hint that the health care reform proposals of today will go nowhere? that the unthinkable will happen today? that health care will stay the way it has been? By the way, just why did tax reform fail circa 1982? I can't remember. Will the same thing happen today with health care reform? for the same reason?

#83. Imagine the good if drugs were legal.

2009-12-12T18:09:00.000-08:00

#83. Imagine the good if drugs were legal: Several states would be full of the prosperity that Virginia and North Carolina used to experience. California, Washington and Oregon would be chock full of factories producing the new legal product alongside the fields growing the crops, for domestic use and export.

Just as American tobacco products were preferred world-wide (because of unsurpassed advertising, promotion, packaging and additives), so the new products would be demanded everywhere. Grown and made in the USA would be the desired mark on all products.

All the towns with the factories would gain much employment and taxes, the latter flowing also into state and federal governments,

Police would be released to fight real crime. Aggressive persons would be kept calm and law-abiding by taking the calming non-aggressive new products, as cookies or in other foods or as chewing tobacco.

To gain the support of those elected officials needed to pass the new laws, certain restrictions would go along with the legalization:

(1) for the first 10 years, the product would be chewing and eating, and not smoking, so that no one would suffer from second hand smoke.

(2) all factories must be within the USA and their owners must register as USA companies to pay all US taxes. .... This is the simple truth -- miscalled simplicity.

#82. Imagine Tiger Woods if prostitution had been legal.

2009-12-12T18:01:00.000-08:00

#82. Imagine Tiger Woods if prostitution had been legal.

This great achiever overflowing with the testosterone normal for a 20-year-old man would not have had to get married young just to relieve himself without getting into trouble with the law. He would visit one, 10 or 20 prostitutes, as his need dictated -- or 365 a year.

Twenty years later, when his need changedfrom raw sex to children and a woman to talk to, he would get married -- at age 45.

#81. Decriminalize prostitution.

2009-12-10T14:07:00.000-08:00

#81. Decriminalize prostitution.

#80. End prohibition of all illegal drugs.

2009-12-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

#80. End Prohibition (decriminalization) of all so-called illegal drugs for the same reasons drinking alcohol was decriminalized in 1933 (the end of "prohibition").

A few thoughts: I wouldn't want my surgeon to be "high" for my operation, so that every professional organization that issues licenses to practice should have the right to prohibit certain drug use for granting its licenses.
Also, the decriminalization will be a federal law that overrides all state laws with the exception of individual towns and cities, each of which can decide on its own for itself only, if it wants to be drug free -- dry.
There might be other minor exception to the new law, but nothing that will sabotage the general intent.

#79. Gain dollar surplus by ending foreign aid for one year.

2009-12-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

#79. Gain dollar surplus by shrinking foreign aid in a way that doesn't hurt our friends, to whom we say,

"Dear recipients of US foreign aid, As we Americans have helped you, we now ask you to help us with our dollar problem by doing without any foreign aid from us for a one-year period. You have two years in order to make other arrangements and you cannot ask us to compensate by getting more from us before or after."

"For just one year, please do without our assistance. We Americans are asking this of all countries; no exceptions. This act will restore billions of dollars to the US Treasury. Thank you kindly. How well you cooperate will be taken into consideration when you next ask us for help."

#78. Grant the US President 100 votes in the House of Rep and 25 votes in the Senate.

2009-12-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

#78. Grant every president more power over senators and representatives by allowing him to vote with them, his "vote" being the equivalent of 100 votes in the US House of Representatives and in for every vote in the US Senate, let the president have the equivalent of 25 votes to weigh in with the others.

The point being that we Americans need to strengthen the presidency in relation to the US Congress in order to get things done This necessitates greater responsibility on us, the citizens, to elect the right president.

Yes, this proposal changes the relationship between the checks & balances that we all cherish -- a change that will be an improvement. (Maybe also give the president the equivalent of two Supreme Court justices.)

#77.Incompetent Congress demands dictatorship.

2009-11-25T22:35:00.000-08:00

#77. Our grossly incompetent, corrupt US House of Representatives and US Senate, prove that we need to elect an absolute benign dictator every four years so that he/she can lead us as we elected him/her to do. Events prove that it is impossible to reform Congress which blocks the president from carrying out the will of the people. Congress is a cancer that must be eliminated; amputated; pruned.

#76. Bank execs deserve huge bonuses because.

2009-11-14T16:30:00.000-08:00

#76. The CEOs and top executives of the banks deserve huge bonuses from their stockholders now in appreciation of their ability to trick the US taxpayer (even those losing their homes and those going bankrupt) to bail them out with no-condition blank checks valued at billions of dollars.

#75. Bring back our factories by exempting new ones from minimum wage laws.

2009-11-12T13:15:00.000-08:00

#75. Bring back our factories by exempting all new factories that manufacture consumer products from all minimum wage laws. No exemptions. No bottom to wages.

This is what the USA will look like in a few years: In every city, town and village, will be a factory started up by an ambitious business person whose expenses will be small because the wages in his/her factory may be $1 an hour or less -- just what it would be in China making the same product for sale in the USA.

The workers will be from 4 sources: (a) junior and senior high school students who will get school credit for their work on Saturday, Sunday, summers or other holidays. Before the new rules, they spent that same time in the malls, skate- boarding, playing computer games or working in fast food. The experience of working in the factories (besides the 50-cents an hour) will be to see how things are done there. Some will get the idea that they can do better, streamline things or even invent better machines. They will grow up to be the sturdy fine Americans who we were proud of because they spent their free time on the family farm helping out. Those hardy Jack Armstrong all-Americans will have a come-back.

Other workers will be (b) the unemployed who have to take the low paying jobs to qualify for any other unemployment benefits. They too will be happy being occupied. Otherwise, they would just collect their unemployment checks and sulk.

Other workers will be (c) the new immigrants who are settling in. The factory jobs will be part of their package of government and charity help. They will be getting the experience from the low paying factory work and learn English and be in positions to see how things can be done better or how they too can have a factory.

The bulk of the workers needed to work in the new factories making things will be (d) foreigners -- migrant workers -- from China, Latin America, Asia -- the same workers who now work in the same type of factories but in their own poor countries. A new American industry will be the service of bringing the workers in and taking them out after their one or two year contracts are over -- for 50-cents an hour. These new companies will bring the right workers to the exact factory needing them. The companies will build worker's villages to house the migrant workers -- much like is done with USA migrant farm workers or servants brought in to the rich Arab emirates or by Halliburton to serve the US military in Iraq.

American factories now in foreign lands will gradually come back, but on their own so that the foreign countries will not get mad at America. The USA will not have to impose tariffs to accomplish Come Back.

America will look great with all the factories under control by inspectors to makes sure they are clean, green and don't abuse workers. Factory management will be happy enough paying 3rd world wages. Some of the Americans working in the factories will see ways to make his/her factory cleaner and greener and invent things the way Americans used to invent and discover. The students working will suggest to their teachers projects for improving the factories.

USA will be chock full of factories. The USA is one of the few countries in the whole world that has all the raw materials within its borders to produce all the products that its many citizens need and want to buy. It will be natural and right and very enriching to see the USA bursting with factories making every town and village prosperous, happy with all its inhabitants busy.
Made in the USA from raw material in the USA will be the proud mark on every product that American citizens will buy and use to live the good life that will be the envy of the whole world. Amen.

# 74. Recalculate cost of health care reform with neglected figures.

2009-10-15T15:03:00.000-07:00

# 74. Recalculate the cost of health care reform with the forgotten figure of the amount that Americans spend every year for their insurance premiums.

Enemies of health care reform rely heavily on the supposed high cost of a change in US health care. They have the figures. They recite the figures that scare many voters. But they leave out the money that already goes for that purpose and will continue to go there if they get their way -- the total amount of dollars that Americans pay to the insurance industry for their coverage -- the premiums; that amount of dollars that make multi-millionaires of the industry's executives.

Take that number (800 billion dollars?) and subtract it from the estimated amount of the cost that the industry cites to scare people. Whenever the estimated cost is mentioned, a spokesman for reform must speask loudly the dollar value of annjual premiums and subtract it from the scary figure. Always do that. The new figure will not be scary any more.

The message, of course, is that when we all chip in to cover everyone (single-payer option) everyone will choose to switch away from giving premiums for insurance policies that may not pay off when needed and give that money instead to the single-payer plan that will be watched over by civil servants who will not try to deny coverage.

#73. How to weed out a wasteful insdustry.

2009-10-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

#73. How to weed out wasteful indutry? Three methods have worked in the past: (1) Natural Selection, as when the car replaced the horse as the family means of transportation, with auto mechanics replacing blacksmiths: (2) Legislation, as when laws were passed prohibiting the manufacture of drinking alcohol, closing breweries; and (3) military action, as when police airplanes spray fields growing poppy.

So, we see from the past, that natural selection, legislation and military action were effective in weeding out smithies, breweries and illegal plants.

Does that past experience teach us how to get rid of today's waste -- the health insurance industry -- the most wasteful industry of all? Can we pass a law to make it disappear? Or should the Commander-in-Chief authorize the US Air Force to bomb their headquarters (after the buildings are evacuated)? Or let Natural Selection have it disappear, which will happen with a single-payer system that will have everyone switch to it? Or what?

And how soon? Natural selection will take the longest time. Yet with people's health and very lives at stake, time is of the essence. Legislation can also take time, because that very industry can delay action with its huge profits spent on corrupt legislators. Bombs will eliminate the offices, buyt with collateral damage.

Which of the three proven methods of getting rid of unworthy, unneeded industry will be the most effective to help society destroy its most wasteful, dangerous business, the health insurance industry, which does not manufacture drugs or treat patients or distribute vaccines. What is the answer?