Willful Ignorance: The New Lead-Lined Piping

It's been postulated that the fall of the Roman Empire was due, in part, to the mental decline of the people caused by the willful consumption of lead and the resulting long-term lead poisoning.

Their plumbing was usually lead-lined, their drinking and eating utensils were often coated in lead and even their spices contained lead. Long-term exposure to lead leads to a lot of ugly things:

• Abdominal pain and cramping (usually the first sign of a high, toxic dose of lead poison)
• Aggressive behavior
• Anemia
• Constipation
• Difficulty sleeping
• Headaches
• Irritability
• Loss of previous developmental skills (in young children)
• Low appetite and energy
• Reduced sensations

The long-term social and physical complications include:

• Behavior or attention problems
• Failure at school
• Hearing problems
• Kidney damage
• Reduced IQ
• Slowed body growth

In short, the use of lead in the diet isn't recommended unless you want to take a world dominating empire and reduce it to ruins in a really, really short amount of time.

Now, whether it actually WAS the lead or not isn't the point. The point is lead COULD HAVE BEEN the cause of the kind of behaviors, issues and troubles the Romans experienced as their empire crumbled from within and this is where Willful Ignorance comes in. Today, I believe this is what will cause the destruction of the United States (and probably the rest of the world) as we know it. Maybe destruction is too harsh of a word. Perhaps transformation is better, though I don't think it will be a peaceful one.

Willful Ignorance is pretty much what it sounds like: The conscious choice to refuse to learn about or believe in anything that does not comply with religious, political or ideological dogma. It's a choice made by a person to be ignorant. Defining ignorance, it means a lack of knowledge despite the opportunity to learn what could have been taught.

A naive person isn't ignorant. They never had the opportunity to learn. A naive person becomes ignorant by not seizing or taking advantage of the opportunity to learn when it becomes available. A knowledgeable person becomes willfully ignorant when they refuse to believe what is being taught and refuse to find conclusive evidence to support that belief.

So why would someone want to avoid knowledge? Well, denial isn't only a river in Egypt. It's a constant companion with the human race. And denial is often easier to accept than the truth of a thing. Denial can be beneficial, but most of the time it's a roadblock to a full and meaningful life. But it's WHY someone denies something that makes the difference between a simple mental step on the road to acceptance and what I'm talking about here. If someone denies it due to religion, politics or ideology, instead of, for example, a psychological inability to process the information, its willful ignorance.

Willful ignorance goes a step further than denial. Denial usually takes the "avoidance" road - they don't want to discuss it, act like it never happened, refuse to think about it. Willful Ignorance attacks it, actively encourages others to attack or deny it, will seize upon the thinnest shred of fluff and blow it out of proportion in regard to its true relevance to "prove" their point and will become hostile toward those who don't agree with them.

Sounds a lot like lead poisoning, doesn't it? Irritability, lowered IQ, behavior problems...

I wrote about global warming not long ago, which probably exemplifies the issue of willful ignorance the best, but it's not the only place this willful ignorance can be found. It's everywhere. In schools where administrators and school boards try to thrown in pseudoscience and mythology as part of a science curricula. Science class is supposed to teach, in part, logic and critical thinking. Adding garbage to that process handicaps people in their educational processes. I don't mind magical thinking in a class like philosophy, writing, fantasy or art, but it doesn't belong in science classes.

In business, allegedly knowledgeable people engage in undermining the science of climatology strictly to earn a profit. It SEEMS like they're so focused on the next quarterly forecast, they can't see more than three months ahead. They seem utterly blind to the consequences of their businesses practices. (And if you think I'm just talking about the oil companies and global warming, then I'll have to ask what rock you were under when the entire global economy melted down due to the mixing of sub-prime mortgages into investment packages which were sold to investors and investment firms who lost pretty much everything when the housing market collapsed leading to the Great Recession - which is still on-going.)

In politics, ideology has become so entrenched, that the business of running the government is now at a standstill while politicians pose and preen for their supporters. The partisanship is so deep, the United States credit rating was LOWERED mostly due to the inability of the politicians to actually work together. Willful ignorance is making politicians play a high-stakes game of chicken and it's OUR livelihoods at stake - not theirs. (I don't expect any politician will ever miss a meal because they can't afford it or worry about whether they'll have a roof over their heads ever in their entire lives.)

When so many people are so willing to be blinded to what is out there, the ONLY way back is through radical change. Something has to cut through their determination to remain ignorant. It has to undermine their religious, political or ideological prejudices to the degree that they stop defending them and start listening with real interest. But given that man is an irrational creature, this can't be done, in my humble opinion, without violence. The really sad part is that this willful ignorance will most definitely lead to violence. It already has in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Ignorance always leads to violence. And the belligerence of the willfully ignorant, who defend their ignorance angrily and violently, is why I don't think the transition from willfully ignorant to knowledgeable will be a peaceful one.

Like lead-lined pipes may have brought about the fall of the Roman Empire, willful ignorance will bring down civilization as we know it. A lot of people are going to get hurt. The terrifying part is that so many people are so willing to embrace the ignorance, they may win out in the end. I've always thought mankind has the potential to be great. I still do. But I've come to the conclusion, based on this mass embracing and active defense of ignorance, that while mankind has the potential to be great, he doesn't have the strength of will. Ignorance is too easy, and too volatile, to guarantee survival, let alone greatness. It would appear that mankind's potential to willfully embrace ignorance is greater than his willingness to embrace his potential greatness.

Without something that can reach the willfully ignorant and turn them back toward the path to greatness, I don't think mankind will survive long enough to reach his potential. What's really got me down about it is that the Romans didn't know any better than to eat lead despite the constant health issues that arose from it. Today we've seen the consequences of willful ignorance over and over and over again and have not learned enough to see where it will lead. So like the Roman Empire before, I believe we are heading for a collapse brought about by our own willingness to embrace and defend our ignorance.

Why Rednecks Are So Stupid

I can't help but wonder why the average "conservative" supporter is so adamant about voting against their own best interests so constantly. I mean, from a bottom line point of view, every time they vote for a conservative, their lives get worse.

Conservatives believe in "fiscal responsibility", but exactly what does that mean? Not spending more than you make? No, that's not true because when it comes to military spending, conservatives are more than willing to print a bunch more dead presidents to finance a war. The same goes for subsidies of industries and businesses (what we also refer to as "corporate welfare"). This has come at the expense of the average taxpayer - and more so from those who traditionally support GOP policies. Far more of the budget is spent on military spending (including veterans benefits, research and whatnot) than on any three "welfare" programs, but the way "rednecks" talk about it, all the government wants to do is tax and spend on "socialism".

Given all the things the right-wing does (outside of advancing repressive social programs), it's patently obvious that they are catering to the rich at the expense of the poor, but the poor vote for them anyhow.

Case in point: GWB's proposal to privatize Social Security.

I don't think anything gives the rich a hard-on more than thinking about all those tax dollars being invested in their companies instead of the insurance policy that is Social Security. But let's face it, had GWB's plan been implemented, most people's retirements would have been wiped out due to the proliferation of subprime mortgages in investment packages, causing those packages to tank.

The rich, of course, were never hurt by this. They only got richer.

Another case in point: The number of government subsidies going to Big Oil. These are supposedly to offset the costs of finding and developing new reserves of oil. But when a company is making hundreds of billions of dollars in PROFITS (not just revenue, but extra cash that hasn't been spent that year), investors and executives get paid off, but the tax payers get left holding the high gas prices and bill to subsidize the oil company's search for more of what made them rich to begin with.

Taxpayer money going to increase oil company profits while the average American gets financially hammered at the pumps.

Another case in point: The GOP's adamant refusal to extend gas mileage requirements on new vehicles. Way back when, the Auto Industry predicted bankruptcies and millions out of work - over seat belts. The same was predicted over air bags. The same was predicted for improved auto safety standards. None of these predictions materialized due to those improvements. But again, they're bleating to the GOP about improved gas standards cutting into profits and the government backtracked.

FYI: Improved gas mileage saves you money, and cuts down on the amount of gas sold, which means smaller profits for Big Oil, but more green in your pocket, and possibly, in your back yard, too.

EVERYTHING the GOP and political conservatives have done has benefited big business at the expense of the people. Even creating jobs hasn't been terribly beneficial because the GOP's job creation method has always been to start a war (In fairness, Johnson continued the Vietnam war to finance his Great Society, but he was from Texas, so he was a conservative liberal - if there is such a thing these days).

And despite all the evidence that the conservatives favor the good of business and the enrichment of the wealthy over the good of the people, the most desperate and least wealthy of the people in the country still vote for them.

I believe it has to do with a carefully crafted campaign to misdirect them into this behavior. And with this "class" of people, it's a fairly simple thing to do.

Now before I get anyone's patched long johns in a twist, I'm using the Jeff Foxworthy definition of a Redneck: A person with a glorious lack of sophistication. They are not bright, but they are steady. They aren't quick, but they are stubborn and reliable. They aren't well educated, but they make their own way. They come from a culture where a man's word is his bond and a handshake is as good as gold. There is much to admire from this culture. In many ways, it's the backbone of the country. They are the "salt of the earth" types, who are, sadly, easily misled due to that lack of sophistication.

This lack of sophistication translates into a very narrowly focused understanding of the world. They want things simple, traditional and the way "god intended things to be". This, in and of itself, is fine and dandy. But with a simple point of view of things, they are very easily manipulated.

A typical conservative candidate is against abortion, pro guns, against "gay marriage", is all for a strong military, against "socialism" or "welfare", in favor of low taxes and less government in your life. Some go further, but we're going to use a "middle of the road" conservative as an example.

The typical redneck believes in all of these. Some because it's part of his culture. Some because it's part of his religion. But the typical redneck doesn't want anything to do with helping the rich get richer unless the rich are working hard for the money and earn it the old-fashioned way. This is where conservatives are very quite about what they do when they're in power. And this is why conservatives are in power at all: Money.

The conservative fiscal policy makes the rich get richer at the expense of the poor. And it's a policy which perpetuates itself. For example, a strong military is a conservative cornerstone. But if there aren't a lot of poor, uneducated Americans willing to die for their country, there can't be those wars the military is being strong for.

So it becomes necessary to ensure a continuing supply of people so poor, their only way out of grinding poverty is the military. To do this the tax burden is shifted from those who can afford it (the wealthy) to those who can least afford it (the poor). Further, the tax dollars, rather than being used to help the poor with education or vocational training to find better jobs, are given to businesses which are already making substantial profits. This is allegedly done to stimulate job growth, but in effect only stimulates the bank accounts of the rich and the company's investors. No number of tax incentives or subsidies has stimulated a significant number of jobs. Even today, this variation on the thoroughly discredited "trickle down" hypothesis of economics is still believed by fairly bright people to work.

It doesn't. It never has. It never will.

The ways the GOP have shifted the wealth from the poor to the rich are insidious, varied and effective. They have effectively created a "pro business" mentality among their followers which worships the notion of the "Free Market" (Something I had a few words to say about not long ago). But this is a vital part of the strategy they've used. In a "Free Market" the theory is that anyone, through hard work alone, can become a rich person. This is the dream of most of our oppressed "rednecks". They believe that through hard work, a person will "make it". The day they "make it" is always next year, though. The whole system is stacked against them. The illusion keeps them going, but the reality is, none of them are going to get there.

Consider this: To be good in business you need native smarts or an education. Most people lack native smarts, so they need an education. This is the first step.

To get a good education, the average person needs good schools, good fortune and a lot of help from higher up on the food chain. Granted, there are success stories about ordinary people having a great idea nad getting rich because of it, but they're about as frequent as hen's teeth. For every success story, you have tens of millions of people left behind. The sad fact is, most Americans will barely scrape by their entire lives and few will ever elevate themselves beyond what they grew up with - if even that.

The GOP has systematically destroyed the education system, creating one so expensive and impractical, we are graduating fewer people who can actually think from high school than ever before. The GOP has used the mythology of creation as a corner stone in the dumbing-down of America. We used to graduate more Doctors and Engineers than we needed. Today, we have to import them. Why? Because the lessons science teaches - critical thinking, logical progression and rational thought - are being undermined by conservatives pushing for a religious agenda in our nation's schools. Texas tends to push harder than the rest because if the Texas school system (one of the largest in the nation) adopts a particular policy regarding the sciences (or any subject for that matter), text book publishers tend to only publish that one policy, leaving the other states to deal with the aftermath. Texas is a conservative state, its policy makers brainwashed by the powerful who cater to religious notions (because it serves their purposes of having a large number of expendable minions to serve and service the rich) in order to forward the goals of their masters, the wealthy.

But in even more direct ways, the conservatives have undermined education. They have cut funding, raised tuition, and created a public school system that is perpetually underfunded, understaffed, overworked and focused on bogus issues like "no child left behind" (an impractical, unfunded and useless policy which focuses on passing tests rather than learning a subject). The scholastic emphasis is misplaced resulting in graduates who can't grasp subject matter and focus on tests. And the atmosphere in schools has never tended to encourage thinkers in the first place.

Cut off the head and the body will die. The rich can always afford to educate themselves at private schools. The rest of us... Not so much. The brain drain has created a dumber, less capable, less insightful America who needs to bring in educated foreign workers to help raise the bar in innovation, industry and manufacturing.

But it doesn't stop there. Aside from destroying most American's ability to educate themselves (and earn a more respectable income) through dismantling the education system and making what is left almost prohibitively expensive, the GOP and their rich puppet masters have managed to be more direct in reducing the average American's options by taking money from them directly. Policies that favor businesses have been a staple of the GOP diet for decades. But only now are those policies paying off in the form of higher prices, lower wages and other impacts that cost Americans more than they realize.

Oil futures were (and still are) manipulated by the rich to ensure the price stays high. This means more money out of our pockets just to get to where we have to go. And that price has been inching higher over the last ten years - 300% higher from about $1.50 to (at times) nearly $5.00/gallon. It's expected to go higher than that. People in Europe pay more, but much of that is taxes.

Union busting has been embarked on in a big way these days, reducing the wages of workers. It also reduces their benefits, which leads them to a decreased financial ability to practice preventative health maintenance resulting in higher health care costs and increased poverty because of it.

Relaxed regulations for Big Pharma (and anything else "big" for that matter) result in skyrocketing prices for medications which, several years years later when the patents finally wear off, can be had for pennies. Pharma says they have to recoup their losses on research. Well, GOP leaders made sure the FDA streamlined approval of these drugs - many of which have been found to be hazardous to human health and life. Further, they allowed advertising of these hideously expensive drugs, and allowed big Pharma to bribe doctors into prescribing them unnecessarily. All of this reduces the money the average American needs in order to get the education, material and means necessary to better themselves.

Subsidies for companies engaged in "alternative fuel", which is neither "Green" or particularly efficient (ethanol) have cost the taxpayers billions, but what is worse is the impact switching from food to fuel production in agriculture had on food prices globally. The price of edible corn went up 400% in one year. This cascaded throughout the agriculture world, resulting in higher demand (and prices) for other foodstuffs like rice and wheat. The cost of bread alone went up 200%. And despite vast profits for big Agra, they still were subsidized with taxpayer money for doing this. We all paid more for our food, leaving us with less for other things.

Nickle, diming and dollaring us to death, our money went from our pockets, to the rich, in a barely noticed, but highly effective stream of shifting revenue unparalleled in world history.

But it's the poor who suffer the most from this - and rednecks aren't known as the most well-0ff class of people on the face of the planet.

Which means these poor sods, the redneck, is still stuck with the Army or poverty.

So why do these people continue to vote against their own best interests?

Because the conservatives have poisoned the well.

Simple people don't like anything different than themselves. They are often racist, intolerant, blindly faithful to family traditions and religions and are pretty much incapable of breaking out of that mold. But within this predisposition lies the handle one can grasp to manipulate them.

In manipulating a simple-minded culture, one must first create a scapegoat. In this case it's "liberals". Liberals have to be "the enemy". They are vilified, demonized and finally cast into a political purgatory no self-respecting redneck would ever want to visit. They are stereotyped as elitist intellectuals who don't know any better (at best). This creating the scapegoat is exactly the same thing Nazi Germany did to the Jews. Much of the impact of that scapegoating they did in the 1930's and 1940's remains today.

As long as there is an "enemy" upon which to focus their hate, these folks can be relentless. Not once will they stop to question things if they can be made to believe something is a certain way.

Next, one must cater to their culture by supporting those "traditionalist" beliefs in a socially proactive way. Promoting the banning of abortions, demanding a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, demanding that public buildings be used for religious purposes.

It's all a bunch of horseshit.

This is the distraction they use. The handle they have on the average "redneck". The smoke and mirrors the politicians pull on their followers. If they're asked a question about their support of a particular bill that gave billions of taxpayer dollars to Chevron, the crafty conservative politician will say, "I supported the rights of a baby by blocking Planned Parenthood funding when I was a state representative!". Or he could respond with, "I voted to increase military funding and saved 500 jobs!" Anything but a straight and honest answer to the question.

This is how they use their voters. They find some stupid, utterly meaningless social issue and blow it up out of proportion. "Gay marriage undermines the sanctity of marriage!" I don't know of a single straight marriage ruined or made weaker because a bunch of homosexuals want to have the same civil rights as them. There never has been. There never will be. It's a horseshit issue. The same for abortion. If you don't like abortion, don't get one. Beyond that, it's a horseshit issue. All of the conservative social agenda is for is to garner support among a people who love traditional values, and practice them. Making them a party platform is blatantly catering to them to get their vote. But with that vote comes the authority to strip them of their wealth and give it to the wealthy.

The wealthiest 20% of Americans control 85% of the country's wealth, earn 85% of the income and only pay 35% of the total taxes. The rest of us (80% of Americans) split the remaining 15% of the wealth and income available, but pay 65% of the taxes that are needed to run the country.

Now, I don't know about you, but to me, that doesn't seem like a fair and reasonable disposition of the tax burden in the country. The bottom 15% paying 65% of what it takes to run the country? And here's the kicker: The poorest 20% of Americans control 0.1% of the wealth and income and pay about 15% of the taxes.

All thanks to the misdirection and horseshit smoke and mirrors tactics the conservatives have played on them all these years. These poor slobs actually think these social programs are going to ever be put into effect despite their blatantly unconstitutional natures just because some candidate in the back pocket of some big corporation or conglomerate says they're going to do it. They say these things (and occasionally try to implement them) simply because to do otherwise would eventually be noticed and remarked upon by the rednecks who elected them.

Rednecks may be unsophisticated, but if you hit them over the head enough times with something, eventually you get their attention.

Unfortunately for the country, the damage has been done insofar as trying to bring these folks back into the political fold goes. In creating their horseshit smoke and mirrors tactics, the conservatives have managed to turn what are supposed to be (and were in the past) political issues into a religion. The faithful shall forever be voting more and more radically conservative while the rest of the "libturd", "libtard" heathens rot in their socialist hell. Or something like that. I was never very good at creating words to insult other people with. I figure the words we all already know are good enough for that.

The rednecks can now be called rednecks because they have served themselves up to be beheaded on the altar of corporate greed and the pursuit of political power, willingly sacrificing themselves on the battlefields chosen by the rich and powerful strictly to preserve the wealth and power of the rich and powerful having been tricked into believing it will make any difference or help the average American back home.

And despite mounting evidence of the detrimental nature of their relationship with and support of conservatives, there is no sign that they're going to wake up from their enchantment anytime soon. They are being beaten over the heads repeatedly, spilling their blood endlessly, almost never able to live better than their parents, believe the conservatives who say it's all the Liberals fault and keep voting for more of the same from their elected officials. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. In politics, it doesn't ever change if you vote for the same platforms over and over and over again. And yet, they expect things to get better for them each time.

And that's why Rednecks are so stupid.

Wake up, people. See what's happening. Whether intentional (which I think it is) or not, it is what is happening NOW. Conspiracy theories aside, this is what's going on and the GOP and conservative movements are all behind it. Cause and effect, whether intended or not, the GOP and conservatives are keeping you down and doing everything to keep you there. I'm not saying you need to vote for a bunch of incompetent liberals, but for your sake and the sake of this great nation, don't vote for conservatives who always say what you want to hear. The essence of politics is compromise. Absolutism is destroying us.

And you're helping them do it.

The Second American Revolution: A premortem

Disclaimer: This is a "premortem" on the Old Republic. It was written before the Second American Revolution (Or AmRev II, as it will become known) actually happened. Call it unusually prescient, but it highlights what will eventually become common knowledge in the aftermath of the coming Second American Revolution. Tenses are going to be fucked up. Deal with it.

The United States of America was created during what can be described as "class warfare" between the Haves in England and the Have Nots in the Colonies. Yes, there was a lot of talk about taxation without representation, freedom, self determination and what not, but basically, England was trying to finance its war with France by raping the American colonies of its wealth, transferring it to the Old Country to indulge a mad king's desire to expand his Empire.

Fast-forward 245 years.

In 2011, it became fairly well known that the gap between the haves and have nots in America had widened to the largest gap in history. The wealthiest 20% of Americans controlled 85% of the country's wealth, leaving the other 80% to divide 15% of the wealth of the nation amongst themselves. What was worse, is that those 85%'ers only paid 35% of the taxes, leaving the 15%'ers with a 65% tax burden. Further, corporate tax incentives, subsidies, deregulation and other conservative policies pursuing the fallacy of a "free market" oversaw more transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in 20 years than had ever happened in the history of the world.

Given this state, other things happened which finally pissed off the citizens of the country enough to incite revolt.

The first was the fact that the rich controlled Congress, the Judiciary and the Presidency. Despite popular demands for the removal of corporate and special interest group money, the right wing stacked the courts with the rich elite who sided with (naturally) the rich elite, who declared that special interest groups couldn't be curtailed in the amount of money they could spend to buy politicians. Let's face it, regardless of the protestations of innocence from the politicians who were rounded up and shot, no one honestly believed that someone could receive a large campaign donation from a corporation or special interest and still remain impartial enough to vote against the interests of that donor if doing so was in the better interests of the country. With unfettered access to special interest group money, congress was 60% millionaires and the rest certainly not hurting in any way shape or form. In short, our entire government was no longer representative of the people demographically, philosophically, socially or financially.

When one looked at tho controlled business and industry in 2011 versus 1775, it gets worse for the citizens of the United States of America.

By 2011, businesses were raking in money, but the common man wasn't. "Small business" was still very common - businesses making very little money, but able to make it in the world. The large corporations, however, gained a competitive edge over these small businesses and for the most part ended up with an overwhelming percentage of the business to be had. Regulations and other conservative policies made it far easier to create a tax loophole for a large corporation (who gave generously to the representatives voting for it) than tax breaks for small businesses. Unfair competition was rampant, despite strong lip service to the contrary on the part of business executives and politicians. While there would always be a need for "small businesses", they failed over 90% of the time in the first year.

Back in 1775, most American businesses were "small businesses". But they had the financial clout to help finance revolt and revolution. The haves didn't have 85% of the wealth of the nation. And the population didn't like being fleeced.

But by 2011, mass communications allowed the ruling elite to distort and misrepresent the truth. They started with propagandist radio, telling the masses what they were intended to think without mentioning that it was an opinion. Presented as "news" these "reports" were so biased that if they were allowed to be broadcast without the proper disclaimers today, the producers would be tried for sedition, if not executed for treason.

But these broadcasts were all done at the behest of large corporations headed by the rich elite. In short, they could control the information the masses received and when that information was slanted to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class, it was assumed by the rich elite no one would be the wiser.

The most insidious aspect of this was the attempt on the part of the ruling elite to divide the population. They did this by catering to the prejudices of the poorest. These deluded folk, who made up much of the fighting units for the rich elite until the deprogramming process was started about a third into the fighting, were led to believe that the rich, ruling elite actually had their best interests at heart. They actually thought that deregulation, less oversight of companies practices and fewer taxes on the wealthy were in their own best interests.

This brainwashing program was accomplished through overt appeals to a malignant form of nationalism which resulted in their politics being adhered to much like a religion. They became absolutists in policy: Dogmatic, unyielding, uncompromising. Obviously, in politics - which can be defined as the art of compromise - this situation led to the stagnation of American politics that marked the early parts of the 2010's. Nothing got done.

This is also why the revolution could happen - nothing got done to stop it or alleviate the situation so that the then status quo could be maintained. In short, it eventually backfired on them. But while it was in effect, the poor got poorer and the hands of the very people they voted for, and the poor thought it was the other guy's fault.

This created a ruling elite which rivaled England in the late 18th Century, along with a working class which was as equally oppressed by the ruling elite as the colonists in the Americas. Worse, the many who were oppressed had few resources to discern the truth of their predicament.

But that very phenomenon of mass communications which was usually controlled by the rich elite helped spark AmRev II. Basically, the rich elite couldn't be everywhere all the time. They could try to spin the growing dissension into something that benefited them, but in the end that failed.

The spark for AMRev II began when Warren Buffet - himself one of the "ruling elite" - called for more taxes on the wealthy. A discerning individual he knew the process of social pressure and recognized that the media could not control thought, try as it might. He knew that growing dissension among the 80% of Americans who were "have nots" would create gigantic social unrest. This declaration was pretty much shouted down by his more conservative peers, but the idea was sown. At the time, the growing US deficit and the lack of jobs had created an economy in which everyone was wathcing their money carefully, and the disparity between the rich and poor became more apparent. When then President Obama called for more taxes on the wealthy, the reaction from conservative (and generally rich) politicians was "It's class warfare!" without mentioning that the rich were grossly under-taxed.

An unfortunate choice of words, as it happened.

Their defeat of the increased taxes created a groundswell of protest. The little-noticed Wall Street "sit-in" became much more noticed. Republicans called for their forceful removal. And history has shown that when police actually fired on a protestor (whether it was by accident or not is still debated), history repeated itself with the "shot heard around the financial markets".

The descent into armed revolution happened with surprising swiftness after that. The three people shot were elevated to the status of martyrs and the rallying cry, "Remember Wall Street" helped drive a desperate population with nearly 9% unemployment to rise up and tear down the bastions of the rich.

Some called it the second civil war, but it wasn't a war so much between states or political philosophies as it was one between classes. Unfettered capitalism, aided and abetted by paid-for politicians enriching the wealthiest at the expense of the poor. It was a revolution against greed and self-indulgence. We still have a population who differs in political goals, but they're more a matter of policy than philosophy today and utterly lacks the violent rhetoric and vehemence back before AmRev II.

Unfortunately, enlightenment came at a high price.

Once the Americans revolted and started armed fighting, fighting broke out all over the Western world. Some claim that it was all part of the Arab Spring of 2011. Perhaps it was. People all over the world rose up to throw off dictators and oppressors that year and in the next few years. 100 million died in the bombings and fighting. But the bastions of the rich were torn down. Whole economic models were revamped. Democracies were revised so that no single philosophy can gain dominance over another. The standard of living for the "haves" has dropped while it has risen considerably for the "Have nots". Classes are closer these days than at any time in history. Wealth is no longer determined by things or money. People are considered wealthy if they work hard and are happy doing what they do.

Averting global destruction was a sudden, painful process, but in the end, it will have been worth it.

The Karma of Democracy

To begin with, I am in favor of democracy - in moderation. But I'm NOT in favor of the way we elect our politicians and approve (or disapprove) new laws or propositions. To be more specific, I'm not in favor of the "anyone over the age of 18 can vote and the majority wins" form of democracy (and I loathe and despise the Electoral College).

As a disclosure on this, I don't vote anymore. Nor am I registered any longer. I actually took the step of removing myself from the voter registration lists. My political affiliations went from Republican to Independent. When I was a registered Independent, it was the worst of both worlds. I got bombarded by all parties, but couldn't vote in any primary elections for any viable candidates. But it got worse and now no one represents the "middle of the road" points of view I tend to have. Since there are no candidates I respect, let alone want to vote for, I refuse to participate in what I see as a flawed system. Referendums are backed by special interests and it won't matter what my vote is if I don't vote for the side which spent the most on promoting it. The side spending the most money for or against a proposition wins 95% of the time. Go look up the facts on that for yourself.

I'm not sure where this puts me on the political/ideological spectrum, but the notion that a population can pass a law based on a popular vote is fine in theory, but it utterly falls apart in practice. There are several reasons why this theoretically good, but realistically flawed ideal doesn't really work. Many of them interrelate, but they can be separated.

The first reason is participation. In no election in US history has voter turnout been 100%. I'm not sure there's ever been a 90% voter turnout in the history of the world, let alone 100%. This means there are people who register, but don't vote. I don't get that. If you're not going to vote, why register? I know people die or move and whatnot, but still, the best voter turnout in the last 50 years was 63.1% of the voting age population in 1960 (before 18 year olds could vote). It's been as low as 49% for a presidential election (in 1996). But not everyone always participates, so the elections we have aren't truly representative of the will of the people.

The second reason is ability. I fail to see how a 60- year old functional moron (say with an IQ of about 60) can make a better political decision than a 180 IQ child of 12. Experience counts, but frankly, you have to be bright enough to process the dredge and garbage the politicians put out these days (not to mention the proliferation of shitty-smelling smoke screens from secretly funded special interest groups and PAC's). A moron can't. A genius probably can. Toss in the fact that people are often voting on a number of things in each election and you compound the problem. Those less able (or less interested) will not take the responsibility to educate themselves on all of their choices to make an INFORMED vote. Some folks utterly lack the ability to do that on all things they're voting about.

The third reason is human nature. Let's face it, Ray Bradbury was right when he said that Democracy can't work in a society that doesn't have the self discipline to NOT vote for bread and circuses for themselves (implying that they will vote to give themselves all sorts of wonderful things, but never vote for the means necessary to do it). This mostly has to do with propositions and referendums (see the last reason), but people, if given a choice between something that will feel good now, but hurt like hell later and something that will hurt a bit now, but feel a hell of a lot better later, will choose to feel good now and somehow think later will never come. Welfare, social security, Unemployment, Unnecessary declarations of war... Those are all things that feel good (or righteous) now, but really screw things up later.

The fourth reason it's going to fail, oddly, is communications. Today, we have a lot of ways to communicate. What we lack is a lot of ways to verify what those communications are telling us. Far more information is being thrown at people than most people can even hope to process, let alone make sure it's true, real and accurate. The proliferation of misinformation in the web and in our lives makes knowing what's real and what's not next to impossible. The rant I did last year about blogs, and about how blogs have destroyed impartiality in the news exacerbates this issue. Add to this the fact that politics has become a religion to people these days means that not only is the information biased, but there's not enough time in the day to verify the veracity of what is being said.

The last reason is function. Our political system is broken. It's broken because the rich have taken control. Left or right, they throw all sorts of BS at us to distract us from the fact the rich only want to get richer and damn anyone who gets in their way. (Sadly, yes, I believe this. The wealthiest 20% of the population control 85% of the country's wealth, the poorest 20% control 0.1% of the country's wealth, leaving the middle 60% a paltry 14.9% of the total wealth to deal with. Don't take my word for that. Go look it up for yourselves.) The wealthy select the candidates they want (it's mostly for the dog and pony show they sponsor we call Congress and the Presidency) and it doesn't much matter who gets in - the BS will continue unabated.

In some way, change some names and descriptions, this describes all democracies that allow "the average man" to vote. In good times, Democracies lay the groundwork for their own destruction when the bad times come (or at least the foundation for making the bad times a hell of a lot worse than they had to be). In bad times, extremism causes them to fall apart. Case in point, the formation of the terrorist group "The Tea Party" and it's acceptance as a "legitimate political movement" by the powers that be. (More about this extremist group in another blog).

The point is, while you have unfettered ability for any idiot on the street to vote, the whole system will eventually fall apart.

If each of the reasons democracy as we know it doesn't work were properly addressed, democracy COULD be made to work. And as a template, I look at Jury Duty - at least in concept if not actual form. With Jury Duty, a group of "peers" is taken from the voter registration rosters and are asked to be society's judge of the guilt or innocence of an individual accused of a crime based solely on the evidence presented in court. They vote to convict or acquit. Why not apply this basic idea - taking a pool of people to make our political decisions - to a greater extreme?

Looking at the major factors influencing the inevitable demise of democracy (at least in my humble opinion), one has to deal with them individually but with one means in order to create a democratic process which is fair, stable and unbreakable.

The first thing one must look at is participation. Why do people NOT vote, though they went through the trouble of registering? Because they can. It's that simple. So change that and make voting mandatory. The whole idea of jury duty says that if you are picked to vote, you MUST vote. Only incapacitating illness, or death, can get someone out of it. Make the penalty for failing to vote harsh enough to cause the individual moderately severe inconvenience. Make the rewards of voting better through social recognition and appreciation - a tax break or something tangible. But make it known that failing to abide by the voting laws will result in punishment.

This takes care of the participation part, but there are other things to add to this concept to make it work. Obviously we can't do this for everyone in the country. It's impractical to include everyone all the time. So, like Jury Duty, only a select few are picked. Enough to get a demographically representative cross-section of the population - based on the most recent census - which would be affected by the vote, but a much smaller, more manageable number. It won't matter if they WANT to vote or not. All must do it.

Now that we have taken care of the participation issue, we need to address ability. Some people are stupid. Some aren't. But the issue boils down to comprehension of the issues. Therefore, like in jury duty, a person chosen to participate in a vote MUST KNOW WHAT THEY ARE VOTING ON. They must be aware of the issues, the positions, all of the things that are in the voters' guide which are sent to registered voters before the vote is due to give them some idea of what is involved.

But again, we have an issue with ability, and in some elections, where you can be voting on dozens of things from the local dog catcher to the President of the United States, it can be overwhelming to a lot of people (usually about half of the population). So let's simplify it: no one will have to know about or vote on more than two issues in any one election. This keeps it simple for the stupid. And there WILL be a test to prove the voter has read the material and understands both sides of the issues. Once they pass the test, they're sent the voting forms or location to vote. The test can be done by mail or by secure website. If someone is too stupid to pass the test, they are stricken from the voting roles and will never be bothered again.

Now, by creating a demographically balanced, mandatory, focused voter base, it's next to impossible for people to be manipulated into voting for bread and circuses. They can't just vote for what appeals to them based on misinformation. They can still vote according to what they believe, but it will be an informed vote rather than one based entirely on bias. Not perfect to avoid the bread and circuses BS, but it is more effective than letting special interest groups sway large forces of like-minded politically active individuals into hijacking an election and unbalancing the democratic processes we have in the country.

This also helps reduce the misinformation out there. With only one or two issues to focus on, a voter won't be as distracted as one exposed to hundreds of other points of view on other issues.

Finally, these voters will be anonymous. They will be selected and identified by number. Each election, different voters will be selected. No one will know which voters are to vote on which issue. They won't know what markets to target, what mailboxes to fill, what people to try to manipulate. This makes it very difficult for the rich elite to manipulate legions of like-minded zombies into doing their bidding. And like a jury, it will be illegal to attempt to directly influence a voters' vote.

This will undermine the rich's ability to unduly influence the outcome of an election.

Of course, the weak points in this system are obvious. Who makes up the voter guides? How are the voters selected? Who guards the guardians? Again, I'd do this by jury duty. A Grand Jury style of selection. One per candidate/issue. A committee of 13 (no ties allowed) will come up with the voter guide based on the interest groups who submit their positions. Another committee will review the list of voters (no personally identifying information) - just to ensure it matches the demographics of the region which will be affected by the vote. They will review the census data and the selected voter's demographics and vote to approve the selection. This spreads out the risk of tampering with the system. It can still happen, but those responsible for the vote carry the legal liability of tampering. If they were found to have acted in a particular way due to outside influences, they will be charged with a state or federal crime - depending on the level of vote over which they had control.

This system is more balanced, less able to be tampered with, gives everyone an opportunity to be chosen to vote, demands that they vote if chosen, requires them to understand what they're voting about, reduces the influence of money on the vote and creates accountability to ensure a fair voting process. It also has the advantage of not being overly burdensome to people to "get out and vote". Voting can be done by mail. It will reduce the cost of setting up voting centers or holding votes in the first place, and reduce the financial overhead for strained districts.

Of course, there would be details to be worked out about implementation, not to mention re-writing the constitutions of every state in the union, but let's face it, Democracy in the United States is broken. I said it 7 years ago, and I say it again: The US is headed for a second civil war and most of the world will be involved. It will be fought by people who are tired of being manipulated by the powerful few. Maybe this idea, or one like it, will be picked up in the aftermath and put into effect to avoid the kind of manipulation of the democratic process we see today.

The only really sad part about that is how many people will die because the few want to control the many who don't want to be controlled. If our founding fathers could have anticipated the graft and greed humans would eventually come to regard as "normal", maybe they would have had more foresight in drafting the constitution. But then, the only thing they had was honor and a sense of personal responsibility. Both qualities which have been lost in the decades since their time. If people acted with honor and responsibility today, democracy would have stood a chance.

Why the Bible Ain't Tellin' Me So

The other day I read what I consider to be the best deconstruction of the entire foundation of Christian Faith by hard and fast science I have ever read.


The article, entitled "Evolution threatens Christianity", by Paula Kirby appeared in the Washington Post on Aug 24, 2011. In it, she pointed out several reasons why Christians are afraid of evolution in a no-nonsense, dispassionate, straight-forward and iron-clad manner. Like a round-world advocate in a flat-earth society, she proved beyond any doubt that the entire foundation of Christianity was not just flawed, but outright impossible.


She pointed out that science has these things called facts and that facts, no matter how hard they are to ignore (and no matter how many people choose to ignore them) can not be disproved. She even went into why a theory to a scientist (which is what a scientist would correctly call Darwinism, Mutation and other proven - but not all encompassing in and of themselves - forces influencing Evolution) is not something that is "theoretical". A layman may look at a theory as something which is untested and unexamined, like a plan yet to be implemented. To a scientist, that's called a hypothesis. When a scientist talks about a theory, that's something which is proven, has observable, repeatable data and has been subjected to intensive peer review for flaws, errors or inconsistencies. It doesn't have to be all encompassing, however. It only has to describe one aspect of a known fact in such a way that the aspect is described scientifically and is not refutable or able to be disproved.


To describe a scientific theory versus a layman's concept of a theory, Ms. Kirby used her own methods, which, I feel were a touch high-brow. So I'll provide my own way of explaining the difference.


We all know bridges exist. We see them every day. We cross over them. We go under them. They are a fact. A Bridge is defined as a structure creating a span between two or more points across which travel between those two or more points is comfortably possible. This way we all know what a bridge is defined as.


A theory of a bridge isn't so much what the bridge is made of, but the design of the bridge itself - why the bridge stays standing. In some cases it's a suspension bridge - the weight of the bridge being redirected by cables or ropes to a strong supporting area. In other cases it's a rope bridge, either planked or unplanked, which is little more than a couple of ropes stretched over a chasm, river or other obstruction. There are truss bridges, and flat bridges and arch bridges. All of them are bridges, as described, but each stays standing by a different Theory - or reason it's stays standing instead of collapsing. No single Theory describes every bridge - every reason that bridge stays standing. But each one can describe an aspect of what we have defined as a "Bridge".


The same goes for Evolution. We know it happens. We see it in the fossil record. We even see it happening in real time We have reasons explaining why it happens. Scientists call these reasons "Theories". No single theory explains everything we see happening in Evolution, but like with bridges and the reason they stay standing, it takes a number of theories (or reasons) to explain every reason evolution happens. Like trusses, suspension, arch and other theories explaining the ways bridges stand, Darwinism (Survival of the fittest or natural selection), mutation (random changes in genetic code to create a new attribute - whether advantageous or not) and other lesser-known theories all explain a part of why evolution happens. Using the term "theory" is scientifically correct, but to the layman makes it sound like there is some uncertainty about it. There isn't.


Getting back to the article, Ms. Kirby points all of this out in a more high-brow manner, but makes the same case. But she leaves out some background about Christianity which, I think, would have made a more eye-popping, "Holy crap!" case for most people.


First of all, there are those who take the Bible literally. That is, they say it explains and describes everything exactly as it happened. Then there are those who say it's apocryphal. It's a collection of parables intending us to lead a better life provided you follow the teachings of Jesus. But no matter how you slice it, there is one point of convergence for Christians and Christians in particular.


It's pretty clear, whether you believe in the literal interpretation or are a member of of the apocryphal crowd that the only reason the Old Testament exists is to set up the coming of the Christ - the Redeemer. But there's something else that's glossed over: The reason we need a redeemer in the first place. That reason is Original Sin.


All Christians believe that no man born of woman is sin-free. They are conceived in original sin, and are tainted with the sins of their fathers and their father's father and their father's father's father ad infinitum. In short, we're all born sinners. Why's that? Because of the fall of Adam and Eve - who both lived in "innocence" until the infamous Apple incident (which makes me wonder about Steve Jobs, the snake and Jobs' choice of logo, but that's another blog), after which they realized they were naked, and got busy. That was Original Sin. We needed the Redeemer to redeem Mankind from the taint of Original Sin arising from the Fall of Man. That Redeemer was Christ, and that is why Christians are called Christians: "Followers of Christ".


This is the foundation upon which ALL versions of Christianity stand. It is the bedrock upon which all Christian faith is built.


So we have the fact of evolution. It's undeniable. It's proven. Like gravity, you may want to ignore it, but like gravity, it's going to affect you even if you try to ignore it or deny it. And we have Christian faith built entirely on the foundation of Original Sin and the need for a Redeemer from that Sin.


Now, to quote Ms. Kirby's article:

"Evolution poses a further threat to Christianity, though, a threat that goes to the very heart of Christian teaching. Evolution means that the creation accounts in the first two chapters of Genesis are wrong. That's not how humans came into being, nor the cattle, nor the creeping things, nor the beasts of the earth, nor the fowl of the air. Evolution could not have produced a single mother and father of all future humans, so there was no Adam and no Eve. No Adam and Eve: no fall. No fall: no need for redemption. No need for redemption: no need for a redeemer. No need for a redeemer: no need for the crucifixion or the resurrection, and no need to believe in that redeemer in order to gain eternal life. And not the slightest reason to believe in eternal life in the first place. "

Thus falls Christianity.


Way back when, my first blog post was "The Simple Truth". It tried to explain the reason we have a spiritual side, the need for expressing spirituality, and a "better" way of addressing that need. Christianity is merely one way of addressing the need to express spirituality.


Christianity has taken on the aura of sacred over the years simply because it's been around for so long, but the fact is, it hasn't. It's changed many times, often radically. The First Church was Catholicism, and even that has changed quite a bit since the time of the founding of the papacy in Rome. (At first, priests were allowed to marry, and they had female priests - both allowances abolished by later popes). The schism that broke the Catholics was Martin Luther, creating the Protestant Church (The Lutheran Church was the first Protestant Church), which itself underwent multiple schisms as each society tried to reconcile the word of the Bible with the way they expressed their spirituality. But no matter how different their rituals were, or their administrative practices, or their costumes or their songs, they all had one thing in common: Belief in Christ as the Redeemer of Man for Original Sin.


The bottom line is Christianity can be disproved. The need to address one's spiritual side (assuming, of course, there IS a spiritual side - or any sort of afterlife) remains. Evolution isn't going to do it, nor will Christianity (and, by inference, all of the major religions since all major religions rely on biblical accounts of creation as part of the foundation of their mythology, though not to the extent Christians do). But with yet another major religion destroyed at the very root of its dogma, how many more will we have to go through before we stop putting our faith in gods and devils and start doing the work necessary to make our lives, and the lives of our kids and their kids and their kid's kids ad infinitum better?


The time will come when the Bible, the Torah and the Koran will be seen as nothing more than a mash-up of impossibilities, thoroughly discredited as paths of any kind of "enlightenment" and spiritual dead ends simply because they rely on invisible sky friends, and a strong, powerful central religious "government" which control their believers very thoughts. Science will prove them wrong about everything. When you have proof, faith is the casualty, and faith in impossible, disproved things will no longer be acceptable.


But with the utterly factual deconstruction of the foundation of Christianity, it's obvious that people will have to find better reasons to be nice to one another than because it's "What Jesus Would Do".

Is It Just Me, Or Is It Getting Hotter In Here? (Part Two)

When reviewing some of the posts I've made, I realized I've actually mentioned this one before but it bears repeating because it's getting more and more obvious it's happening: Global Warming.

Everyone has an opinion about it and most of those opinions are wrong mostly because of self-imposed ignorance. If you want to be enlightened, read on. If not, well, Ron White was right: You can't fix stupid.

Trying to explain Global Warming's nuances is like trying to explain covalent bonds to a first grader. It can be done, but you need some background first and we need to use small words.

The background:

First of all, let's talk about what global warming means. It means a change in the climate so that things get warmer overall. There is also a difference between weather and climate. The short version is that climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

Weather is the day to day stuff you encounter. Heat waves, cold fronts, storms, rain, snow, sleet, fog, etc. It's what you look for in a weatherman's forecast. When you ask "how hot is it?", you're asking about the weather. A day's weather usually has little to do with the climate of a place since it has more differences than what one would expect from the climate of a place. If you go to the desert and have it rain on you (As happens everywhere at some time), you don't think the climate of the desert is changing. It was just a freak weather pattern.

In defining a climate, there are two major ways of doing this. The first is to record the weather over a long period of time and average it over the years. The second is to try to figure out what the climate was like from things like ice layers, tree-rings and soil samples. We've gotten rather good at this, so we have a pretty good picture of what the climate was and is. What we are less clear about is what all the things that can effect it are and exactly what kind of effect those things may have on the climate.

In taking the two together, any one place, on average, has a certain kind of weather which, on any given day, may not be what the "average weather pattern" (which is to say the climate) would normally be. One can use the two ways of figuring out what the climate of a place was to see how that climate has or hasn't changed over a long period of time. It takes a lot of changes in weather to make a small change a climate.

Another thing to keep in mind is that science doesn't usually have certain answers. It has theories which are what we think is going on or how something works. The theory of evolution is often used by the ignorant, uneducated and stupid to prove that science is somehow uncertain about the fact of evolution. This is not the case. Evolution is an established fact. Just as one can determine the climate of a place by study, one can determine that evolution happens. The theories are why they happen. In evolution's case, there's Darwinism, (Survival of the fittest), mutation and others. Each one explains evolution in part but no single one of them explains it in whole. Put them all together and you have a pretty clear picture that there are a lot of things that make evolution happen.

The same goes for climate change. We can see the climate changing. Glaciers are retreating at a pace never before seen in modern history. The polar ice caps are melting more and faster than ever recorded in the last million years. The seas are rising faster than at any other time known to man. Plants and animals are dying off or migrating to new places where they've never been found before. Drought is hitting places which normally saw good rainfall while other places that were normally dry are seeing record rainfall. This isn't just a local thing. It's global. And the indications are that it's been getting hotter around the world for the last fifty or sixty years, but really getting hot over about the last 20. For whatever reason, global warming is a FACT.

(Note to you pseudo-science geeks: Yes, there are variations, but we're looking at the overall trend here. Stop nit picking the trees while the forest is on fire.)

Way back in the 1970's the word was "Ice Age" and the thought was that, according to historic trends and cycles, we should be getting a colder planet. What science we knew of at the time - at least popularly speaking - seemed to support this conclusion. But science doesn't sit still when it comes to observable facts. Unlike religion which can afford to be dogmatic and unyielding regardless of whatever nonsense it says is "true", science must always fit the facts and the facts, even then, indicated there was a flaw in the "soon to come ice age" conclusion. It wasn't widely known back then, but several climatic scientists were noticing that if the ice age was going to arrive on time, it was going to have to get a lot colder a lot faster than it was actually doing because instead of getting colder, it looked like things were really getting warmer.

But it wasn't a LOT warmer, so not a lot was said about it at the time. There are minor variations in climate over the years - cycles were very big back then because they tended to explain the periodic ice ages the Earth has experienced over the last 250,000 years or so. WHY these cycles happened wasn't really known. The theories were a longer-term cycle in the sun's activity (brightness, heat, solar storms, etc,), shifts in the planet's axis, continental drift or even differences in how the heat and light of the sun hit the earth as the solar system traveled around the galaxy.

But it takes 250 million years for the earth to orbit around the galaxy, and the changes in climate couldn't be explained on that time frame. The cycles of the sun could be measured by the traces of solar particles embedded in ice and soil over the eons. As technology improved, and global weather patterns could be modeled on computers, climate changes could be better predicted and traced.

The current reason given for ice ages is the way the earth's orbit of the sun varies in regular cycles. Called the Milankovitch cycles, it basically alters the amount of radiant energy (heat) that hits the northern hemisphere (where the greatest amount of land is at this point in Earth's life). As the cycle occurs, the amount of heat hitting the northern hemisphere changes, going up and down over the cycle. The more that hits it, the hotter it gets and the ice retreats. The less that hits it, the less the ice melts in the summer, and the more ice there is overall.

The earth's landmasses have moved around a lot which is why ice ages haven't been happening all along. Most of the last 600,000,000 years, the climate of the Earth has been a lot warmer than it is today. The next ice age is due in around 30,000 years, according to the Milankovitch cycles.

Now, since the 1970's, as has been pointed out, science has developed much better tools with which to examine our planet. This is why there's a major discrepancy between climate thought 40 years ago and today.

One of those "discoveries" made during that time is how different natural gasses effect climate. Methane, water vapor (yes, that's a gas), carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, ozone and a host of others play a significant role in how warm or cold our planet can become. Methane tops the list in warming gasses. It's about 25-33 times more "warming" than the currently talked about carbon-based gasses (CO2 and CO). Fortunately, there's not a lot of methane in the air or things would be a lot hotter. (I won't go into the Methane Hydrate thing here, though it can have a catastrophic warming effect on the planet and is becoming an increasing concern as things heat up overall.)

And in those discoveries was the amount of gasses that are not naturally occurring - man made gasses - which seem to have risen in pretty much the same way the planet was apparently heating up. It was an apparent cause and effect link between the two. It appears (and still does) that man-made pollutants (those gasses that man has pumped into the atmosphere) can and have caused the earth to start to get warmer on a planetary scale.

Now, the Earth is a complex place. It has a lot of natural things that happen to it in ways that aren't always fully understood. Like I said, science doesn't always give an exact or precise answer to questions about what's going on with our universe or even our little piece of universe.

Is mankind causing global warming?

The definitive answer is: We don't know. The scientific answer is, "We think so, but we're not 100% positive."

The whole point is that IT IS HAPPENING. Whether or not greenhouse gasses (the gasses that make the planet get hotter) are the cause, warming is happening, whether because of natural causes or not. Is man responsible? Science says "Probably", but like the theories of evolution, no one "theory" explains everything.

But the bottom line is that global warming is happening and that, regardless of the cause, adding more and more of the ingredients which WILL increase the heat - the speed at which our planet gets hotter - isn't very bright on our part.

Let's face it, even if the gas didn't start the house on fire, throwing more of it on the fire isn't going to help put the fire out. It will have the opposite effect.

So them's the facts about Global Warming. Let's now look at how those facts have been used.

We'll start with the left of the political spectrum: The tree huggers. It would seem these people would be happy if mankind were to disappear and leave Mother Earth alone. The truth of the matter is that they just want mankind to live "in harmony" with the Earth. That would be fine if we knew how to do that in the first place. We don't. There is no formula for it. There are no societies on the face of the planet that do. The best we can hope to do is to reduce our impact on the planet as much as is reasonably possible and settle for that.

The left side has taken the global warming issue, the correlation (The close relationship) between man-made pollutants and the rise in global temperatures as a clarion call proving that man's impact on the planet is bad and that we all have to go back to eating vegetables and living in communes or some terribly impractical thing like that.

But, as usual, it is the right side that has caused the most harm. They are the side which supports the status quo (remember, conservatives do NOT like change, and global warming is also known as "Climate Change"). This means they don't want anything to change. They want us to continue to buy gas, gas guzzlers and eat cows until we explode. Or something like that. The point is they have gone out of their way to discredit the link between man-made greenhouse gasses and global warming. They have hired "scientists" (another word for them are educated, paid actors) to say that mankind has had no impact on global warming. Some even go so far as to say mankind can do nothing about global warming because it's all entirely a natural phenomenon, so eat, drink and be merry, and, oh, yeah, fill up your car and buy oil products.

They both miss the point.

Global warming is a FACT. Like Evolution is happening, the planet IS getting hotter. The evidence for this is undeniable. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF MANKIND CAUSED IT OR NOT, YOU DON"T THROW GASOLINE ON A FIRE TO PUT IT OUT!

Oil is a limited natural resource. Coal is an extremely polluting one. Both produce gigatons of carbon gasses per year due to man-made machinery. Both have a heavily negative impact on our environment and the people, plants and animals therein. Oil is produced by many middle eastern nations which overtly or covertly support or tolerate terrorism and oil proceeds often are used to fund terrorism. Big Oil hired fake scientists to prove mankind isn't the cause of global warming, but no amount of fakery can disprove the fact that man-made pollutants, like gas on a fire, cause an increase in retained atmospheric heat.

The bottom line is Big Oil wants to protect itself from losing money due to more efficient, cleaner ways to produce energy. They will say that destroying Big Oil and the things that go with it will destroy the world's economy - and with the world's economy already in the toilet, now is not the time to be looking to other things to use for energy production.

Well, I dispute that completely. The fact is, now IS the time to be looking to new things. Obviously, the status quo sucks. We need a change and clean energy is the way to do it.

I don't expect any one thing to become the "new energy" of the future like oil has been up to now. There are too many different ways of producing clean energy for us to focus on one to the exclusion of all. Big Oil has gone out of its way to discredit each individual method (too expensive, too impractical for one area or another, etc), but taken together, they can actually do the job. Big Oil has ONE commodity: Oil. Energy production tends to focus on coal as a catch-all means of energy production.

Energy production isn't limited to one method, folks. But in order to produce cleaner energy, we need to get away from the "one means fits all" mentality the energy producers in the world are saying is our only option.

As for the economic impact, let's look at this like businessmen. You have an established business that performs it's role, but is extremely polluting, increasingly expensive, often unreliable, limited in what they can produce in total and inherently dangerous in that it increases the amount of global warming the planet is experiencing. It's an extremely profitable business, but if we destroy the planet in the process of running the business (or make it so miserable, millions, if not billions, of people will perish), there won't be a planet in which to spend the profits.

(Yes, there are people who are that short-sighted as to not care that this will happen).

But from a business point of view, these detriments of Big Energy are actually a business opportunity. There is a need for a clean, renewable way to produce energy for our modern society. Further, that "way" doesn't have to be limited to a single method, but can be tailored for a region if there is a particular thing about that region which lends itself to energy production. Even within that region, there's no reason to limit energy production to one particular, regionally advantageous method.

When it comes to green-tech, there's no limit, which means the opportunities for business investment and return on that investment are equally limitless. The economic boost to creating an entirely new branch of industry (Green tech in all its forms) can be what drives the economic recovery we so desperately need. All we need are enough people of vision to see that cleaving to the past will not address the future.

We need new ways to deal with global warming - new technologies that can cope with a changing climate and new ways to reduce the impact global warming will have on us. Green tech in all its variations is the way to go. Create a new industry to replace the moribund and ultimately dead-end way we deal with energy production now.

Global warming is happening. The economy sucks. In combating the former, we can fix the problems with the latter and, maybe, help make a planet that, even if it's going to be warmer, will be cleaner for all of us to live on.

The Necessary Demise of the Free Market

One of the views I tend to hold regarding economic models is often cited (when such things are cited) as why some folks believe I'm a screaming liberal. This conservatively offensive view is that a free-market economy is doomed to fail.


In essence, a free market economy is where businesses compete openly for customers without much (if any) regulatory control. Supposedly with its own built-in checks and balances it is thought (erroneously, as it happens) that the market is self-stabilizing and that any necessary corrections for imbalances will happen automatically by enlightened captains of industry and finance because it's for the good of the market. Yes, people actually believe this nonsense. But the flaws in this thinking were highlighted all too glaringly when the flaws in the free market model destroyed the world economy two years ago, the effects of which are still being felt today.


On paper, it DOES work. Then again, so do all pie-in-the-sky economic models. Paper isn't human and the human factor is why they all fail. In fact, there's only ONE human factor involved in all economic models which causes them to fail: Greed.


Dress it up howsoever you want, but greed is the nexus that breaks all economic models tried so far. Greed drives people to better themselves economically (keeping up with the neighbors' acquisition of "things", getting a better job to buy the things that mark one's status in society). No economic model so far created has ever adequately taken human greed into account.


Communism fails because people aren't interested in the greatest good for the greatest number. They are looking out for number one - themselves. Socialism fails because if you satisfy the needs of the people without requiring the people to work, the people won't work. After all, why bother? And with capitalism, if you are a have, you only want more, to the expense of the have-nots. And you will do everything you can to keep the have nots from becoming haves.

These economic theories all fail to take into account human greed.


Now, one could say we need to change as human beings, and I couldn't agree more, but realistically, that ain't gonna happen anytime in the next thousand years. Mankind is still too close to his animal roots to know when he has "enough" and that more than that is too much, not a good thing and can lead to disaster. Unfortunately, we live on a planet where the resources are limited and when one person has more than enough, it's inevitable that others don't have "enough".


So the trick here is to acknowledge greed as a driving force, but to place breaks on it so that when one has enough, they strive to be satisfied with that. All the while you have to provide incentive to continue to excel, so a reward system has to be in place for the go-getters and the doers which doesn't necessarily result in tangible rewards, but in rewards which are satisfying enough to seek none the less.


This is probably an impossible task on paper, and let's face it, there are people out there who will defy all attempts to plug them into any economic model.


So instead of inventing a new one, let's look at modifying one that is somewhat more successful in acknowledging greed: Capitalism.


The problem with capitalism is that people don't acknowledge when enough is enough. I'm not saying that everyone should have a yacht in their back yards. After all some people just aren't that motivated. Nor am I talking entitlements. Those who can't work at a conventional job should have some kind of task they can perform for an income. Regardless of one's ability, employment of some kind - even if it's just to do the work of living - by everyone is vital to the revised capitalist economic model. Everyone should have an income based on their own efforts at earning one even if it isn't derived from a standard "job".


The next thing you do is cap income and profits. There are people out there making obscene amounts of money just because their companies make obscene amounts of money. Profits should be capped at a percentage plus inflation (Say what a US savings bond would earn in total back when US Savings bonds were worth buying). Since inflation varies, call it inflation plus 15% just as an example. The idea is to target the most egregious profit mongering, not to retard the average business's incentive to earn income. It's important to note that profits are what's left over after all research and development has been done, everything's been paid and all is good and right with the company.


The excess should be funneled into building roads, schools, new infrastructure and other civil projects which require vast amounts of money no one seems willing to spend on these days.


Now, greed would ask once a company has made X amount of money above their expenses and maxed out their profits, why would they bother working any harder? After all, they can't earn any more. What's the point of continuing to push?


That's where the trick comes in. They HAVE to work harder to MAINTAIN those profits, because if they do two years in a row, the next year their profit cap is allowed to increase by enough to make the effort worth it. If they fail to meet that cap, it's maintained at the higher level, but not raised. If they fail two years in a row to reach that cap, their cap is lowered again.


This way, there is more incentive to improve profits than there are penalties for not profiting, but they're always capped.


You do this for people, too, albeit in a slightly different fashion. Income is capped at a high, but not obscenely high level. Whatever pays for government, infrastructure, education, defense and the things that taxes help pay for would be the cut off the top and the rest would be used as the way to figure the cap. An example of this would be to take the average of the actual income (before taxes) of working Americans, multiply that by 10 (or whatever number is appropriate to allow for a lot of worker bees and not so many queens based on the boss-to-worker ratio averaged over the last 10 years or something like that) and call that the income cap. More knowledgeable people than I can work it out.


Income is all actual funds gained in a year from all sources - Profits on property and personal belonging sales, inheritance, expenses that are reimbursed above actual costs, sales of stocks, etc.


Now before I go on, a word on inheritance. Inheritance is a time-honored tradition whereby someone gets someone else's stuff when that someone else dies. You can't take it with you, after all. Unfortunately, there are people out there who leech off their rich parents (or husbands/wives) who are pretty much wastes of sperm in the first place and have never really worked a day in their lives.


So here's how it would work: For those who stand to inherit anything in excess of the annual income cap, there are consequences. All monetary assets would be placed in a trust. All property assets would be allowed to transfer to the beneficiary. If the beneficiary liquidates any of that property at any time during the beneficiary's life, those assets would also go into the same trust. The idea here is to limit income to the personal cap per year using the funds in this trust. If a person continues to keep the property, it isn't considered income. A cherished family home can be passed from generation to generation without tax or penalty.

The trust into which liquid assets and the proceeds of inherited property sales are placed would be passed on to the next of kin upon the death of the beneficiary who inherited the trust in the first place.


After all, property is NOT income. It may have a great deal of value, but unless you sell it - and at a profit - that value is virtual rather than actual and it's only valued at the profit for which it was sold. Yes, it can be used as collateral, but then a business receiving the property in the event of a default wouldn't be allowed to keep the income from it if that income made the lender's profits exceed the cap.


A little on this property as income thing. The government considers property sales as "income". It does not consider the purchase of property a "loss". So you end up paying taxes on property you sell regardless of whether you make a profit on it or not. The income cap says you can only make X amount per year in actual cash. Property purchases are NOT deducted from your income, but if you sell it at a loss, you don't exceed the cap in income provided the sale is in the same year as the purchase. If it is, and you have the receipt from the purchase you're covered. If it isn't, then it's income for that year. If you get more than you paid for it, it's income for that year. A simple-enough concept to follow. People could "save" by purchasing property with their income while they are working and augment their income by selling it when they're not, or are working for less. As long as they don't exceed the cap for that year, they can keep all proceeds from property sales. Income would be based on money actually received between January 1st and December 31st for one calendar year.


The funds in the trust may be donated to non-profit organizations which provide for the public good, to venture capitalists who have not exceeded their profit cap, to non-profit medical research for incurable diseases and to other causes which promote good things for everyone rather than just a few.


Of course, this issue will have their detractors. After all, men of industry who are "worth" billions of dollars might take exception to cutting their kids/spouse down to "only" the maximum income per year, but if they still have homes whose maintenance alone exceeds the personal income cap, finding a supermarket from which to buy food would be problematic for someone whose income is capped.


I say, "Tough." If you have so much that ten million dollars a year isn't enough to cover your expenses, you have too much. Part of that "more than enough" stuff. I say liquidate the excess, keep the heirlooms and sentimental stuff and live off the trust fund if you're not making the max per year.


What this will do is get those outrageously over-the-top mansions for one person and a staff of fifty off the market entirely in a generation. They'll be torn down and turned into housing which someone making ten million a year can afford, instead. It's not exactly spreading the wealth to everyone, but it is putting a halt to egregiously "more than enough" living.


Now, back to incomes...


The personal income cap is problematic for the simple reason that once a person hits it, they tend to slack off. This means you have to keep them at it and motivated or the slackers of the world will unite. The first thing you do is monitor their performance. If they don't perform like they did in getting to the top, you don't pay them as much and they don't earn the cap. This makes salaries tied to performance.


What is "performance"? In essence, performance is doing what is expected of them for the company. It is "average". They are meeting all job requirements and fulfilling all necessary expectations. Someone may bust their ass to get to the top, then just coast. That's their right. But if their performance drops, they get less income for it.


Now, there are people who are highly motivated and want to be rewarded for a better than just an "average" performance. This is not an unreasonable demand. Performing above and beyond the call of duty must be rewarded and there are many ways of doing this that don't necessarily involve raising the cap, primarily through peer recognition and acclaim.


I fall back to the military in this aspect by creating levels of rewards for consistently high performance. You CAN reach the cap by being average in a vital field. But to go beyond that, you must maintain a higher than average level of performance for a long duration. One starts with special recognition for a couple of years. And then one starts increasing the cap, along with the special recognition. Once the cap starts being raised, the performance must INCREASE to get it to go higher again, all the way up to doubling their personal cap in $500,000.00 increments per year. Their annual evaluations will be filed with the IRS and they'll be allowed to earn based on their performance rating and years of service with a particular company.


Now, of course, not everyone is going to make it to that cap. That's fine. The cap is in place to decapitate the wealthiest and spread the wealth.


Oh, I believe I failed to mention that income, corporate and sales taxes would be abolished. In fact, all funding fees (those which are in place strictly to fund projects and programs) would be abolished as well. The government would be financed by the money that would have been paid to people who earn more than ten million a year, plus the excess profits companies make. To highlight how effective this would be, the wealthiest 10% of the country makes something like 60%-70% of the income. That leaves about 30%-40% of total income in the US to be spread among the remaining 90% of the population. There is MORE than enough money coming in to run the government, and all programs currently funded, with plenty left over for a rainy day.


The income and profit cap would also be tied to the amount of money coming into the coffers of the state, so that if more is coming in, the cap would be raised and if less was coming in, the cap would be lowered.


Keep in mind, also, that $10,000,000.00 is a hell of a lot of money for one person for one year. I used it as an example. It could be set at 5 million dollars or 1 million. How much money does one person need, after all? If they're married, the combined income would be maxed at 10 million, and 2 live cheaper than one, so it's not like anyone would be enduring any hardship. The point is there needs to be a cap that reduces the gap between the haves and the have nots. - whatever that gap turns out to be. At least 25% of the total income earned should be used to pay for government, infrastructure, social programs like education, school construction, assistance and such. Whatever is left over should be averaged for the total working population, multiplied by ten and set as the cap. The concept of "per capita" income is a fail since it relies on income reported in tax forms, including things like property values and such. They are often reported after deductions, and are not necessarily all actual income.


I don't think the average income earner would complain about this concept of mine since you get to keep all of what you earn. I also don't think too many people would be affected by the "I'm not getting enough so I'm not doing anything more" syndrome. It also provides for checks and balances for slackers.


In the end, it would be a relatively simple system to understand, if not necessarily implement.


Now, this is a "detailed plan". The concept here is to reduce the amount of earnings or profit one person or company can make on average, but still allow for the greed, "I want more" incentive. Additionally, it creates an environment where government is less intrusive (and better funded), simplifies the tax structure, helps reduce the gap between the haves and the have nots, allows someone to rise to their level of "enough" and still allows for incentive and growth. What I've detailed may have fundamental flaws, but they're merely a suggestion in trying to implement the concept. Someone with more knowledge of human nature and economic theory may have better luck.


The on-going increase in the gap between the haves and have nots is the widest it's been in history, and it's getting substantially wider. In times of relative prosperity for all, the masses aren't terribly motivated to correct this gap. Their levels of greed have been mostly accommodated. However, in times of economic crisis and recession (such as now - thanks to a government run mostly by men and women who are in that top 10% of income earners), the masses are much more critical of the fact they are getting less, while the wealthy aren't getting any less, and are, in fact, getting even more. This has a much greater potential for the outbreak of social unrest. It's happened before - many times - in human history. There's no reason to believe it won't happen again.


The sad part is that social unrest, revolution, whatever you want to call it, may be the only way to initiate this new economic model. I don't see billionaires divesting themselves of their wealth to help reduce the rising social tensions over the wealth gap anytime soon. Nor do I see investors and captains of industry willingly giving up their profits above and beyond "enough". But when the masses rise up, crying "Enough!" and tear it all down, then, maybe, some bright boy or girl will see the flaws in the capitalist economic model and finally do something to prevent such an egregiously huge gap from ever forming again.


And that cry of "Enough!" may come sooner than later.

Passing the Constitutional Muster

I wrote earlier about the need to repeal the Second Amendment. Obviously, this will never happen. Common sense isn't and, as I've pointed out repeatedly, people are stupid.

So, let's examine the Second Amendment and see if we can accomplish the same goals (reducing the number of firearms-related deaths in the United States) but still pass constitutional muster.

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

There are two parts to this: the justification and the prohibition. The justification says we need a well regulated militia. The prohibition is not infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. But as I've argued, without the former, you really can't justify the latter. We have no well regulated militia based on the right to keep and bear arms. We only have the right without justification.

Previously, I pointed out that this means the Second Amendment is obsolete (it is) and utterly unnecessary (also true) based on its justification. But in light of human stupidity, another justification for dealing with the propensity of people to use their lawfully acquired weapons to wreck havoc on their family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and loved ones, it behooves us to come up with a justification to "regulate" arms in such a way that the Second Amendment actually fulfills its purpose., and still fulfills the need to stop the slaughter.

Right now, a major threat to the security of the United States is the fact that any idiot can go out and buy or own a gun - and most do, resulting in 30,000 American deaths per year. That's a major threat to the security of the United States. The first part of the Second Amendment clearly says this is why we need well regulated militias.

So the big things here are fulfilling the mandate of the Second Amendment without necessarily regulating who can own a gun.

As I mentioned before, the Second Amendment arose due to a lack of funding in the nascent United States Government to support a standing army capable of defending itself. Obviously, we've come a long way from that point and militias aren't strictly necessary to defend the United States. However, although they aren't necessary, they are mandated by the Second Amendment.

After all, it clearly says that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a Free State.

And our militias aren't exactly well regulated nor do any of them have anything to do with the U.S. government. We have a National Guard (the modern equivalent of the Militia), but at the same time, they don't need the RIGHT to keep and bear arms outside of their duties as National Guardsmen. They have the obligation to do so while on duty as directed by their commanding officers.

So, it comes down to cases of actually adhering to the reason we have the Second Amendment: Maintaining well regulated militias. The implication is that these militias will be armed by the personal arms of its members.

The biggest problem with gun ownership is idiocy and a lack of training and responsibility.

So let's bring back militias.

Simply put, militias were required to drill and train to defend the country. It was expected of every man (women weren't given the vote till the 1920's, after all) to fulfill their obligation by being responsible, training and being disciplined by the training in their local militia. Obviously, we don't need a bunch of "citizen soldiers" acting as local militias, but according to the Second Amendment, it CAN be made compulsory for all gun owners to drill and train become well regulated.

After all, that well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a Free State, according to the Second Amendment.

But given the more modern context, these "militias" aren't really needed for defending the United States (as they once were). However, they ARE necessary to the security of our country, since ignorant, stupid, untrained, mentally unbalanced and utterly unfit people are allowed to go out and buy guns with no obligation to fulfilling the reason for the Second Amendment. There is no constitutional barrier to creating and enforcing a requirement to fulfill the first part of the Second Amendment: To create well regulated militias.

This doesn't mean arming "citizen soldiers". It means teaching these idiots how to properly use their guns - and repeating this training based on proficiency and elapsed time. One must train more than once in order to maintain and prove proficiency in the proper care and feeding of a firearm. It also makes it compulsory if you own a firearm.

Your right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. But if you own one, you will be REQUIRED to attend monthly sessions in training, use, practice, etc. You won't lose your gun if you don't. You'll simply go to jail, become a felon and by long established law, you can't own a gun if you are a felon.

Problem solved. Constitutionality is maintained and gun owners either stay good militia members, give up their guns or go to jail and lose the right to own or carry them forever.

Personally, I like this option the most.