Independent Caucus

English, The News, And My Grandfather

What do you think of the diminution of both print newspapers and network news channels generally viewed as just reporters of the news, and not having any particular side, at least none they let on to?

For a long time people viewed Cronkite or Roger Mudd or Brokaw that way. It started to change when they started to cave in to the craving for ratings out of those new hours (or half hours), and put in those roles people who wanted specifically to be "TV" journalists, and the celebrity that went along with that.

USA Today then was born, and caved in to both color and the seemingly ever-shrinking US attention span, with short articles, less attribution, and no words you would ever have to look up.

And instead of other newspapers thinking how sad that was, they followed suit. Now, the only newspaper that will still sometimes make me reach for a dictionary is the Times. The Journal, too, perhaps. But once they are gone, that's it: an era of top-level, honest, sourced, shoe-leather journalism will be dead. Extinct. When there used to be so many.

And young people could give a shit (please endulge that one four-letter foray, as young people would not say "crap").

They are a large reason for it. Those papers, and those news anchors, don't feed their addiction to sensationalism, and don't enable their arrested English skills. The anchors are already gone. In a world where ADD is the alien virus, news anchors have already been infected. Newspapers too, but for those two, and they will probably not survive.

I read an online news article recently, and it said something like, "The prevailing opinion was he would do better than her in the primary." Or something like that. Better than "her", I thought? "Better than she would do." "Finish the sentence", my dad told me, when I was about 11, "before you shorten it."

My God. It was a national source. You know, LA Times, Miami Herald, Washington Post. I can't recall. It wasn't caught because spell-check won't catch it, and because anyone under 35 would say it that way, and because editors have already fallen to deep budget cuts at print media, or have caught the virus and don't know any better themselves.

The English-educated in this country is way smaller than the college-educated, and nearly nonexistent among only the highs-school educated, or, say age 30 and down. What's more, no one cares. You could tell them point-blank, "Your English is remedial. 6th or 7th grade level at the very best. And your grammar is a clutter of errors." And do you know what would be the response? I kid you not. I PROMISE it would be this, "Yeah..whatever..."

They don't care. They have either given up on themselves in that respect, or they honestly and truly do not care, and have elevated "you know what I meant" to the highest level of attainment in the language.

I am soooo happy I am not one of them, and that I grew up when there was a broad-based respect for newspapers and news anchors and just news in general. European 20-somethings know more about America than American 20-somethings. And here again it is the fault of The Lamest Generation, self-important, self-indulgent, selfish, and not demanding enough of their children. It devolves from the same fault in character which motivates them to time and again put pressure on their elected representatives to "buy it now and borrow for it - do not reduce my paycheck - and take it out of my kids' paychecks later, with interest of course."

My father brought home a "C" in English one report card. His dad was a Sicilian immigrant, whose spoken English was terrible, but who regularly read The Complete Works Of Plato and other light reading, in English. His father said, angrily, "This is your country! This is your country's language! You speak and write it every day! How do you get a "C" in English?" Well, it was the last "C" he ever got.

Children, when young, and as teens, respond to the bar set for them. And it is not that challenging a bar, because it is not higher learning; it is not college; it is not graduate school; it is not doctorates and post-doctorates.

It is grade school, junior high, high school, and it takes some effort and some focus and some time to be sure, but it is not a high bar. It is the bedrock, foundational knowledge a society needs to be productive and democratic, too, since the citizens of a democracy are regularly asked to critically consider various candidates' positions and choose those who are to represent them. You simply can't be a drop-out with no capacity to make a critical judgment - because you can't really read or understand what the candidates or people at the water cooler are talking about - and be a democrat (small "d").

You are of no elective use to your country.

I can hear my great grandfather scolding them now. "It's your country! What do you mean you don't understand what's in the newspaper? It's in English! That's your country's language! What do you mean you can't tell me what that candidate stands for? Haven't you been paying attention? How can you be a citizen if you don't know? You aren't a citizen, you are simply breathing air, eating food, and taking up space if you cannot read, and understand, and tell me what you read, and what they stand for."

A whole couple generations now need my grandfather's scolding, but it won't happen. And even if he could come back and tell them I know what would be their reply, "Yeah...whatever...."

Barack Obama: Just Not What I Thought

I wanted to title it something even less flattering.  Really.  I shed the first three titles that came to me because they sounded, on their face, unkind, and too personal, things I criticize and rebel against in a media and political culture too fixated on insults and personal attacks.  And, besides, a title is just an entrance to what you want to say.  And "Not What I Thought" is a more than adequate entrance.

Still, I think it could, on substance, quite rightly be titled "Promises To Break" (sorry, couldn't help the take-off on the title "Promises To Keep" of Joe Biden's book which came out just as he started running, unsuccessfully ultimately, for President).  And, literally, part of what I want to communicate is captured by "Not As Smart As I Thought", though that is clearly inaccurate, in that, from an IQ standpoint, he's probably every bit as smart as I thought.  So, "smart" is not the right word.  "Correct" or "Wise" are probably closer.

So, you can see I'm fishing around.  Spending, so far, my first two paragraphs critiquing my own title tells you that what I am really trying to get across is a compendium of dissatisfaction that no one title fully conveys.

And I have to get on the road before the rest of the world does on this holiday travel Monday; so let me cut to the chase.

The economy is stagnating and Barack proposed yesterday to take another $30 billion loan from China, which she shall certainly grant, and use the borrowed funds to build infrastructure, much needed in this country after years of neglect and shortsightedness, mainly roads, bridges, and rail lines, as a Keynsian injection of cash into the economy, banking on a multiplier effect, of course, and a resulting jumpstart to the private sector which the private sector will then sustain beyond the period of government spending on infrastructure.

Those are all Keynsian notions.  Keynes was a great economist, and his philosophies certainly influenced Roosevelt's decision-making during the Depression to borrow (and that time, not from China, but the American people, so it was they who earned the interest, and the repayment) and spend in order to accomplish the same ends back then.

The trouble is, though there is a Nobel Prize for economics, as with physics, its formulas and theories are not as clear cut, clearly provable, or disprovable.  There are certain principles of economics (not Keynsian, necessarily, but any strain), like supply and demand, which hold true under certain assumptions - usually assumptions of "perfect" competition, when very rarely does that exist, meaning the principles themselves are defeated somewhat by the lack of meeting those assumptions.

The relationship between supply and demand is far simpler however than the Keynsian principle of multipliers, intuitively, as well as in reality.  Various assumptions need to hold.  And intuitively the concept is very difficult.  The principle basically says this.  First of all, note that GDP (gross domestic product) is like the nation's salary for one year.  It's what the nation "made", earned, collectively.  All of us.  Well, the multiplier says that if the government spends $1, then GDP goes up.  How much up depends on the size of the multiplier.  But the basic concept is this:  if the government spent money, cash money, on things like bridges, roads, or whatever, then the nation got richer.  Its "salary" went up.  The amount the U.S. collectively earned from all of our collective efforts increased.  America, in effect, got a raise.

Intuitively, you think, "Well, didn't it just get shifted?  I mean, the government doesn't 'make' anything, right?  All the money the government gets it gets from us, right?  We make some money, and then give the government some in taxes.  But it's a 'zero sum'; that is, we made less than otherwise, and the difference went to the government.  So, then, if they spend some of what we gave them, they just moved that money again to someone else.  Perhaps a bridge construction company.  But they didn't create any 'new' money, right?  America did not get a 'raise', right?  In fact, if the government borrowed the money not from the American people, but from a foreign country, where the interest on the loan will then leave our country for distant shores, then didn't that government spending actually 'cost' us money collectively, and make us collectively poorer, quite literally?"

A Keynsian economist would try to tell you, "No, no, and no...."  My point is that a non-Keynsian would counter with "Yes, yes, and yes...."  And because it's economics, and not physics, no laboratory test would prove conclusively one right and one wrong.

If those two people were witnesses in a civil case, as the jury, you'd have to throw out both of their testimony as equally compelling and directly contradictory.  In other words, one argument annihilates the other.  Matter and anti-matter, for you Star Trek fans.  What's left is the absence of both arguments.

So as respects Barack's plan to spend another $30 billion, what do we know for sure about it?  We know for sure he is not going to ask us, the current taxpayers, to pay for it.  So we know he's going to borrow it.  And he's going to borrow as he and George W. Bush before him borrowed all their money - the sale of T-Bills to foreign governments, mostly China.  So we know he's going to borrow it from China.  We know that increases our already historic debt and deficit.  We know the interest on the loan goes to China.  We know all of that for certain.

We know, therefore, that the proposal is this - that young people, many of whom are too young to vote, or even aren't born yet - shall repay the $30 billion plus a considerable interest (by the time it actually gets repaid) out of their lives.  This is a sacrifice.  He is asking it of them.  Actually, he's just telling them, because they can't vote.  He is telling them to sacrifice for their country.  More explicitly, he is asking them to sacrifice so that their parents might get a job, if currently unemployed, or have higher incomes now, because the tax being taken from them is $30 billion less than what it would need to be to pay for the infrastructure spending now.  Moreover, he is asking those congressmen and senators who represent those parents, and the parents themselves on whose vote those congressmen and senators are relying to get re-elected, he's asking all of them to live better now so that their children may live a more impoverished life later.

When did that become America's creed?

Screw your kids.

I'm am usually far, far from that blunt.  But $30 billion in borrowing to make life a little easier now is $30 billion which makes life worst later.

Unless you believe Keynes, and you assume a high enough multiplier.  If you do then $1 of spending by the government does not make us poorer (I guess the $1 is interest-free); further, the $1 is not just a shifting around of $1 a taxpayer gave the government, with a net effect of $0 change in America's income.  Nope, neither of those.  What you believe is that $1, which you have the government, and it then spent on a bridge, created $2 of earnings for someone else (if the multiplier is 2.0) or $3 (if the multiplier is 3.0, etc).  Now, how it's possible that if someone gives you a dollar and you give it to someone else, that somehow or another and extra dollar (totaling $2) was created in the transaction, is exactly what constitutes Keynes' multiplier theory.  But it's a very tough sell, is all I'll say.

Under that theory, if we can just borrow enough from China, and if the multiplier is high enough, the gain from the multiplier effect will be large enough to pay back the loan and the interest.

Who out there thinks that if we just borrow more, we can somehow completely pay off past borrowing with the Keynsian multiplied gains of the new borrowing?

Like I said, it's a very tough sell.  I don't agree with it, obviously.

I think Keynes got that one wrong.  I think someone will figure out, tough as it is to prove anything in economic theory, that the theory was fatally flawed.  Some smart person will do what smart people are often needed for - to prove something we, the less smart, knew intuitively to be the case.

And I'll finish now.  Here's why I say, "Not What I Thought".  I didn't think he was going to indebt the unrepresented like he did.  I didn't think the congressmen and senators representing the parents of the unrepresented would be rewarded with votes at the ballot boxes by those parents of the unrepresented.  I didn't think this generation - given our great history of each generation taking on the awesome responsibility of leaving a better country to their kids than they inherited - would so openly, and easily, and repeatedly, time and again and again and again so pervasively and knowingly and callously screw their kids - people with no vote of their own, and therefore no political power, and totally dependent on their parents, and their President, and their government to support public policies which will make their lives better, out of a historical tradition to do just that.

No young person should approve of their parents' politics if they support this President, or support congressmen or senators who support this President.

I am among the represented, and I deplor what this President is doing - attempting to live better now, so that later generations can suffer.  LIving better at their expense.  Barack Obama needs to lose re-election.  Democrats need to be represented by possbily Hillary Clinton or anyone repulsed by the notion of sacrifice NOW for the benefit of our children later.  It's what the Depression era did.  The Greatest Generation.  The generations subsequent are proving to be The Greatest Embarrassment.  And this President is demonstrating his membership, his inclusion in those generations.  This is not "change".  Not all all.  It's all too sadly the status quo.  It's Reagan.  It's truly everything since the era of Eisenhower, Kennday, Nixon.  Those presidents close a chapter.  To do as they did fiscally would be "change".  To do as they did in terms of investment in this country would be change (Kennedy: space; Ike: interstates; Nixon: opening of China).  To follow the already $700 billion stimulus the way Barack is by asking for another $30 billion is not change.  It's a change in national attitude from sacrifice to indulgence.  Barack is going to attempt to indulge in another $30 billion from those who can't vote.  Just watch how many of their parents...and congressmen and senators...respond with, "Amen, brother!...it's about time, because my employment is about to run out," and all array of similar reasons.