Month: December 2010

The Deficit Commission like President Obama lacks the one critical attribute guaranteed to get this country out of the current economic depression and that attribute is VISION. Since I am older than dirt, I have been able to look back on those programs that really worked in America’s past. For the President and those around him, free of charge, here are my two suggestions.
(1) Expedite the patent process by SUBSTANTIALLY INCREASING the number of EXAMINERS and digital processing of patent applications in the U.S. Patent office. Before Obama took office it took two years on average to just get to the “patent applied” stage of a routine patent application. To its credit, the Obama administration has recently increased the number of examiners in an effort to reduce this backlog, but in consideration of the current hard economic times this increase is still woefully insufficient. America was built on CREATIVE INNOVATION, and as a nation its fortunes are still dependent upon CREATIVE INNOVATION. The only things that will get the American economy moving again are good solid patents supported by a widely available supply of venture capital. We have an advantage over India and China when it comes to technical innovation due to the nature and character of AMERICAN SOCIETY. Indian and Chinese culture is drastically different than American society and this is the inhibitor which dramatically dulls their educational edge over creative Americans. We create modern technology and they study it. They can overtake the U.S. in technological innovation but only at the rate that their society evolves to naturally emulate the character of modern American society.

(2) American high tech manufacturers claim that the best engineers are located in India and China. Meanwhile they complain that there are not enough engineers available in the U.S. This is pure double speak. What they are NOT saying is that the reason that they shipped the engineering jobs overseas because the cost for an engineer in India or China is a fraction of the salary that they would have to pay an American engineer (when benefits are considered along with nominal salaries). So where is the incentive for American students to choose engineering as a major when the majority of engineering jobs are already located overseas? Greedy American high tech CEOs continue to publish this canard that American college students are no longer interested in engineering, hence they are forced to look for engineering talent overseas in other populations. This situation may be liken to the one where the fox, who has been put in charge of the hen house, scratches his head and wonders aloud. “Why is it that the number of chickens in the hen house keeps going down?”
The most successful engineering generating programs that I have had the opportunity to observe first hand is the CO-OP PROGRAM pioneered at North Eastern University in Boston. Undergraduate students enrolled in the CO-OP program were allowed to periodically work full time in the industry of their major. This program was conducted with the strong backing of virtually all of the corporations in the area, and was a win-win situation for both the student who had an opportunity to gain real world experience on the job, and the company picked up a solid engineer in training who in many cases joined the company after graduation. The CO-OP program also significant reduced the financial burden on the student and his/her family. Finally North Eastern credited the student for his/her time for the weeks spent working on the job in industry. Finally, I should point out that one of the better known successful students to come out of the CO-OP program was Dick Eagan, one of the co-founders of EMC Corporation. Several years before his death Dick Eagan gave North Eastern hundreds of millions of dollars as a tribute to the University and to support the Maureen & Richard J. Egan Engineering Science Research center.  

In summary, I propose a two pronged attack on the economic problems of America, specifically in regards to our ability to create and manufacture products for the world. The first is to release the patent log jam. This coupled with the freeing up of venture capital will energize the “start-up” new technology businesses across America. A significant increase in the number of these new “start-up” manufacturers will immediately start to put downward pressure on the unemployment rolls across America. You need engineers to develop new products but you need a lot of people to take the product out of the lab and into manufacturing.

In regards to American engineers, I am not interested in creating more high tech engineers just to occupy more cubicles at Honeywell or at IBM or at Raytheon. I am interested in providing more engineers to CREATE more START-UP new product business ventures, period. The responsibility for creating new American engineers is on the shoulders of America’s colleges and universities, and it is my proposal that bold initiatives for a CO-OP program enacted between the school and the business community will greatly expedite the creation and of a new generation of highly productive American engineers. Undergraduate science labs operating in such an environment could become instant incubators for new revolutionary technological developments. What I have proposed here can be easily accomplished without the support of Washington and in the tough grinding atmosphere of Congressional gridlock. Again all that is required is for local colleges and universities to seize the CO-OP vision and initiative. An aggressive concerted push of this idea by students and school faculty is bound to be successful in securing aggressive support from the local business community. I say now is the time to stop looking to Washington for leadership. Now is the time to role up our sleeves and get started building the America of tomorrow.

If Kent Conrad supports the Deficit Commission’s recommendations does that make those recommendations ‘bipartisan’? I don’t think it does. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that that commission couldn’t come up with recommendations that can win bipartisan support. The two parties disagree too much. For me to support the report, I’d need to see either Dick Durbin or Jan Schakowsky supporting it. They aren’t. I like the hardship exemption for the raising of the Social Security retirement age and I support doing away with preferred tax rates for capital gains and dividends. I think a 15-cent hike in the gas tax is a good idea, and I like this (at least in theory):

…the report recommends a legislative trigger that would raise taxes automatically unless a comprehensive overhaul is approved by 2013.

But, the proposal focuses too much on public sector benefits and not enough on the costs of private sector health care. It lowers corporate taxes and income taxes on the rich at a time when they owe all of us for the carnage they produced in our jobs markets and retirement security.

We need some kind of deal to address the structural budget deficit. I was willing to wait an see what the commission produced before I dubbed it the ‘Catfood Commission.’ But I am not impressed with what they produced. It’s not something I would vote for. So, I can’t endorse it.

We are starting December with a very heavy rain… it began around midnight last nite and was still raining five minutes ago when I brought the dogs in from their 10:30 AM walk. I expect it to keep raining most of the day. The low spots on our back lot are flooded already and I imagine groundwater rises are happening all over town. I’ll find out when I go out to the store a little later.

December begins the three or so weeks that Congress has remaining in the Lame Duck Session before all the overpaid and underaccomplishing elected officials head home for the holidays to brag about what they did or didn’t allow to get passed and beg for money. Perhaps they will leave after making at least one or two progressive legal advances get through before the Republicans take over the House and add to their seats in the Senate. Taxing the Wealthy would be one legal wonder. I don’t count on it as Obama seems, as usual, getting ready to cave. To me, the best thing would be for nothing to happen and the taxes go back in place for everyone.
I heard one Republican Congressman say on a TV interview that if the taxes go back to pre-Bush levels, the average tax increase for us poor middle-classers will be around $2,150.00.  This, of course, is not true… the average is thrown way off by the top 1% of the population whose millions-through-billions in income throw off the 99% that averages in the lower thousands. This is being done to scare the middle and lower class voters into supporting the Reps and Senators being paid off by the Murdochs of the world. I expect my taxes to go up a couple of hundred dollars at most… and the amount that would be taken from the wealthy 1% would bring in a huge amount of bucks… perhaps over a trillion dollars.

In reality, if the overall Bush tax cuts for EVERYONE are extended for a couple of years it will put us the same trillion-plus deeper into debt. And if you think that will improve our economy and increase jobs I have a great bridge to sell you.

I am not sure why James Rubin is using the WikiLeaks controversy to attack the ‘hard left.’ It seems like a distraction from the main points of his essay, which I happen to wholeheartedly agree with. Even if we place someone like Glenn Greenwald in this ‘hard left’ category, I don’t think Rubin’s critique is on target. If Greenwald is at fault in his analysis it is in his assessment that WikiLeaks wears an unambiguously white cap.

The central goal of WikiLeaks is to prevent the world’s most powerful factions — including the sprawling, imperial U.S. Government — from continuing to operate in the dark and without restraints. Most of the institutions which are supposed to perform that function — beginning with the U.S. Congress and the American media — not only fail to do so, but are active participants in maintaining the veil of secrecy. WikiLeaks, whatever its flaws, is one of the very few entities shining a vitally needed light on all of this. It’s hardly surprising, then, that those factions — and their hordes of spokespeople, followers and enablers — see WikiLeaks as a force for evil. That’s evidence of how much good they are doing.

That’s the kind of lazy manichean thinking that Greenwald usually eviscerates. I mean, sure, it sounds good to have this swashbuckling Robin Hood out there stealing from the information-rich to give to the information-poor, but many of us don’t like to see the diplomatic wing of our foreign policy apparatus disadvantaged. This is especially the case when the damage takes the form of carpet bombing rather than precision strikes.

What possibly justifies putting Greenwald in a hard left category isn’t some insistence that America leave other countries to govern as they see fit. It’s this:

In sum, I seriously question the judgment of anyone who — in the face of the orgies of secrecy the U.S. Government enjoys and, more so, the abuses they have accomplished by operating behind it — decides that the real threat is WikiLeaks for subverting that ability. That’s why I said yesterday: one’s reaction to WikiLeaks is largely shaped by whether or not one, on balance, supports what the U.S. has been covertly doing in the world by virtue of operating in the dark.

Again, the fault in this lies in its either/or structure. I don’t have to decide that there is one true ‘real’ threat, and then dismiss everything else as harmless. I do not have to support what the U.S. government has done under the cloak of secrecy to prefer the State Department’s general approach to the world to the CIA and Defense Department’s. I can enjoy and benefit from the information provided by WikiLeaks while still believing that they did more harm than good. And I can maintain my sobriety and not claim that WikiLeaks has somehow ‘subverted’ our government’s ability to do bad things behind closed doors.

Greenwald says that one’s views on the WikiLeaks controversy are “largely shaped by whether or not one, on balance, supports what the U.S. has been covertly doing in the world.” That is probably a true statement, but it ought not to be. My view is shaped by what I think was accomplished by the leaks and whether it will lead to better U.S. foreign policy.

In the short term, the State Department has taken their communication system off the classified grid, which greatly reduces how many people in government have access to what the State Department is thinking. Greenwald shows no inclination to concern himself with such details, and appears to be satisfied that the thumb of Julian Assange has been well-placed in the eyes of people who richly deserve it. For me, that’s an immature attitude worthy of a teenager in search of revenge. And, yes, it does amount to placing yourself in complete opposition to your own country’s establishment and system. If that’s warranted, then that’s fine. I have felt the same way at times, particularly in the 2002-2009 period. But I think it’s fair to call this a ‘hard left’ position when it is applied to the WikiLeaks case.

For some reason, Rubin thinks ‘hard left’ means something else.

By and large, the hard left in America and around the world would prefer to see the peaceful resolution of disputes rather than the use of military force. World peace, however, is a lot harder to achieve if the U.S. State Department is cut off at the knees. And that is exactly what this mass revelation of documents is going to do. The essential tool of State Department diplomacy is trust between American officials and their foreign counterparts. Unlike the Pentagon which has military forces, or the Treasury Department which has financial tools, the State Department functions mainly by winning the trust of foreign officials, sharing information, and persuading. Those discussions have to be confidential to be successful. Destroying confidentiality means destroying diplomacy.

See, I don’t see why this is a ‘hard’ left position. It’s my position. It seems to be a position shared by anyone with a shred of faith left in any part of our government.

Many people (primarily Republican politicians) objected to the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act last November, for a variety of reasons. The principle opposition to the bill didn’t want sexual orientation added as a protected class.

However the law that Congress passed and President Obama signed did much more than extend federal protection to the victims of crimes committed because of their sexual orientation. It also expanded the scope of the prior 1969 federal hate crimes law, which previously was restricted only to hate crimes committed against victims “engaging in a federally-protected activity, like voting or going to school.” The Matthew Shepard Act as it has been come to be known also gives the Department of Justice and the FBI “greater ability to engage in hate crimes investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue.”

That last point is critical, and we are starting to see the results of increasing federal protections for the victims of these acts of terror.

For one example, consider the case of Ronald Pudder. Pudder, a white male in Conneaut, Ohio, a small community outside Cleveland with a population that is 96% white, committed arson against a small African American church. When confronted by videotape evidence of his actions Pudder confessed his guilt. Evidence that his crime was racially motivated was not hard to find:

Ronald Pudder, 23, admitted to setting fire to the First Azusa Apostolic Faith Church of God in Conneaut in May. He poured gasoline on three doors of the only black church in a mostly-white area, before setting them on fire. Firefighters put out the early-morning fire before the interior of the church was harmed. […]

… Pudder messaged a friend that he was going to burn down a church and that he was going to kill a black person. He sent a message to another friend saying he was going to start a fire, and later told the friend he had burned a church.

As a simple arson in which no individual was harmed, Pudder faced no more than six months in jail under state law. Federal authorities, however, concerned about a rash of copycat crimes stepped in and immediately charged Pudder with two refused to prosecute the arson as a hate crime, the federal authorities stepped in and, under the provisions of the Matthew Shepard Act, charged Pudder with two felony counts back in September.

The two-count indictment against 23-year-old Ronald Pudder of Conneaut, who is white, was detailed at a news conference Friday with the nation’s top civil rights attorney, Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

He said the government was determined to deter a rash of copycat crimes.

“Hate crimes reflect a cancer of the soul,” Perez said. “They are designed not only to injure the particular victim or victims, but to send a message to the community: a message of fear, an effort to divide communities along racial or religious lines.”

On Monday, Pudder pled guilty as part of a plea bargain in which Federal authorities will seek a sentence of 41-51 months. The Office of the US District Attorney for Northern Ohio, issued the following statement about Pudder’s guilty plea:

“Crimes like these leave scars,” Dettelbach said. “Not just physical scars to the building, but emotional ones, to the souls of the congregants. Doing this attack based on the parishoners’ race is an act that does violence to who we are as Americans and Ohioans.”

Hate crimes do indeed leave scars, whether the crime is the directed against Christians, Jews or Muslims, members of the LGBT community or members of racial or ethnic minorities like this disabled Navaho man who had a swastika burned into his arm with a coat hanger among other things done to him in Farmington New Mexico.

William Hatch, 29, Paul Beebe, 26 and Jesse Sanford, 25, are said to have branded a swastika on the 22-year-old Navajo man’s arm in April using a coat hanger heated on a stove.

Prosecutors say the men then shaved another swastika on the back of the victim’s head and used marker pens to scrawl on his body, including ‘KKK’, ‘White Power’, a pentagram and a sexually graphic image. […]

Federal prosecutors say they were able to bring the case because the 2009 law eliminated a requirement that a victim must be engaged in a federally protected activity, such as voting or attending school, for hate crime charges to be levelled. […]

The swastika branding has also put the spotlight back on Farmington, a predominantly white community of about 45,000 residents near the Navajo Nation.

In the past many local authorities simply refused to prosecute such violent acts as hate crimes even if their state had an adequate hate crimes law on the books. Now we don’t have to rely upon local authorities to bring these charges when they are appropriate.

And that, my friends, is progress, small though it may seem to some.