THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
August 18,2008
Now that our two major presidential candidates have dutifully bowed before the altar of Orange County's Saddleback Baptist Church in an effort to win the votes of Christian evangelicals, perhaps we can step back and ask a couple of pertinent questions about our political system. Pastor Rick Warren, by now even more of a household word than previously, hosted Barack Obama and John McCain in the first face-to-face comparison of views on abortion, the economy and lots of other matters important to Evengelicals, including those who supposedly agree that Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.
There were lots more minutes taken up with the economy and abortion than with the war or, for that matter, God. This is understandable, since Christianity prohibits killing in no uncertain terms and mentions something about rich men and camels both having trouble getting through eyes of needles and/or into heaven. These topics are pertinent since Pastor Warren is under pressure to disavow one of his more well-off congregants, Rupert Murdoch, for his alleged ownership of a number of European porn channels (no comments) and everyone knows starting wars on doubtful grounds isn't as immoral as adultery. That said, we have to give the gold (and silver) medal to Mr. McCain for his ringing statement that life begins "at conception."
If I were a lawyer listening to the Saddleback Warren Report, I'd take my wife out to dinner and buy a new outfit for each of my kids. Nothing since Affirmative Action brought the promise of so much legal action as McCain's position on pro-life. Consider a couple of possible cases:
1. Joanne "Bubbles" Murphy and her new husband, Harold, celebrate their honeymoon by checking into the Hotel Hotshot. They reserve the Honeymoon Suite and order the finest dinner and breakfast package the hotel offers. The next morning, after a highly passionate night, they come down for their honeymoon champagne breakfast, which was served by George after being prepared by Charles. Unbeknownst to "Bubbles," she is pregnant.
Anyone who has hefted a bottle of champagne (or beer) knows what's written on the label. Drinking alcohol for pregnant women carries the risk of birth defects. Inside "Bubbles" is a human being who, because of the champagne, is at risk of being born deformed. Could Joanne be arrested for child abuse? How about endangerment? Was George an accomplice? How about Charles? Perhaps Harold could be taken in, too, for escorting her into the bar. Multiply something like this by millions. What a bonanza for the legal profession!!
2. A couple of months after the honeymoon, a group of women at Joanne's workplace decide to throw a baby shower. Ten of them get together with the mother-to-be for a couple of hours of festivity, hors d'oeuvres and gossip. Some of them are smokers and the weather is lousy, do they don't go out on the porch.
You know what's written on the pack. Cancer, emphysema and lots of other stuff. Oh, yes, there's something there about pregnant women. How many of the ladies should go to the hoosegow?
See what I mean? Lawyers of the world, unite! There's a gold mine here. If life begins at conception, there's no way of knowing how many people should be charged when a lady gets on the bus. Are all children free or only those who have been born? Where's the cut-off age? Some places charge for all children. Does a person have an obligation to declare her pregnancy before going through the turnstile?
I know some of this sounds pretty silly, but have you checked out some of the laws we have on the books? In Cedar City, Utah, it's against the law to drink beer if your shoelace is untied. You need a hunting license in Cleveland to catch mice. You can't tie a giraffe to a streetlight or telegraph pole in Atlanta. And you think people won't go crazy if Uncle John's ideas catch on?
Frankly, I'm a little tired of all the dancing about what people believe in God-wise. That's their own business. If evangelicals want to invite McCain or Obama to answer questions, let them have the candidates make a CD and distribute it at Sunday services. It would be a hell of a lot cheaper.
I'm more interested in what these guys are going to do about the skyrocketing cost of food, the colossal rip-offs by tax cheats and the insane foreign policies that are passing for leadership. I have a great idea. How about rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's?
God knows that would be a relief.
Monday, August 18, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Hope Doesn't Spring Eternal
THE BOGUS ECONOMIST August 13, 2008
I've had it.
Eery four years, I arouse myself and try to imagine we're going to have an intelligent debate about the leadership of the free world and every four years I get shot down. This time, I was actually beginning to believe Barack Obama would be different - really different - and at last we would have someone with enough guts to tell us that not only is the holiday over, but we're going to have re-thinking who we are. Mr. O is still holding back. I'm seeing expediency sliding into the campaign driver's seat and bold initiatives moving to the back of the bus.
Sure, telling the truth might not be the way to get elected, but we've seen what happens when a candidate chooses the opposite. The last eight years should have taught us a lot.
Look, everybody, we're not the epitome of civilization, nor are we the only hope of the world. Our way is not the only way, nor is it even the best way for some people. We're citizens of a country that used to be based on something besides the almighty power of "business," and that's what made us great. Under the wreckage of 9/11, some of us discovered gold. Under perhaps the most benighted leadership we've ever had, we seem to have forgotten almost every moral and ethical principle we owned and abandoned the lot to the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater. The number of people who have suffered due to the weakening of governmental regulation are astronomical, including the folks who've lost their houses because of the tentacles of the banking "business," the people who have been screwed by the phamaceutical "business" and the possible extinction of human life through the manipulation of the energy "business."
Now we find out by courtesy of the General Accounting Office (GAO) that two-thirds of large corporations with sales revenues of more than two trillion dollars didn't pay income taxes every year and some didn't pay them at all. Here's what the GAO said:
"In 2005, after collectively making $2.5 trillion in sales, corporations gave a variety of reasons on their tax returns to account for the absence of taxable revenue. The most frequently listed included the cost of producing their goods, salary expenses and interest payments on their debt, the report said. The GAO did not analyze whether the firms had profits that should have been taxed."
The report went on that probably none of this was illegal. That burns me up more than the theft. The reason it's legal is that our legislators put "good business" ahead of the welfare of the United States ppopulation.
Reminder: If the corporations don't pay taxes, guess who does? Or is borrowing better?
Mr. Obama is now experiencing what most Republican candidates knew very well: you can talk about being a voice of the people, but it's the big boys who call the shots. Contributions to the Obama campaign, most of which used to come in dribs and drabs from Charlie and Mike, are now coming in large globs from Mr.Jones or Dr. Smith. More and more names have "CEO" after them.
If "the chief business of the United States is business," as president Calvin Coolidge once said, then it seems the sacrifices we're making are really a waste of human life. The people who identify the American Dream in terms of the size of their flat screen have bought into this and shame on them.
Reading about the billions of profits being made out of American lives doesn't do much for the phrase, "Business as usual." Dammit, it's business as usual that got us into the war to begin with. Putting profits ahead of principle runs against everything this nation is supposed to be.
Mr. Obama started off as a candidate who seemed to understand this. Now I'm starting to wonder.
-30-
I've had it.
Eery four years, I arouse myself and try to imagine we're going to have an intelligent debate about the leadership of the free world and every four years I get shot down. This time, I was actually beginning to believe Barack Obama would be different - really different - and at last we would have someone with enough guts to tell us that not only is the holiday over, but we're going to have re-thinking who we are. Mr. O is still holding back. I'm seeing expediency sliding into the campaign driver's seat and bold initiatives moving to the back of the bus.
Sure, telling the truth might not be the way to get elected, but we've seen what happens when a candidate chooses the opposite. The last eight years should have taught us a lot.
Look, everybody, we're not the epitome of civilization, nor are we the only hope of the world. Our way is not the only way, nor is it even the best way for some people. We're citizens of a country that used to be based on something besides the almighty power of "business," and that's what made us great. Under the wreckage of 9/11, some of us discovered gold. Under perhaps the most benighted leadership we've ever had, we seem to have forgotten almost every moral and ethical principle we owned and abandoned the lot to the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater. The number of people who have suffered due to the weakening of governmental regulation are astronomical, including the folks who've lost their houses because of the tentacles of the banking "business," the people who have been screwed by the phamaceutical "business" and the possible extinction of human life through the manipulation of the energy "business."
Now we find out by courtesy of the General Accounting Office (GAO) that two-thirds of large corporations with sales revenues of more than two trillion dollars didn't pay income taxes every year and some didn't pay them at all. Here's what the GAO said:
"In 2005, after collectively making $2.5 trillion in sales, corporations gave a variety of reasons on their tax returns to account for the absence of taxable revenue. The most frequently listed included the cost of producing their goods, salary expenses and interest payments on their debt, the report said. The GAO did not analyze whether the firms had profits that should have been taxed."
The report went on that probably none of this was illegal. That burns me up more than the theft. The reason it's legal is that our legislators put "good business" ahead of the welfare of the United States ppopulation.
Reminder: If the corporations don't pay taxes, guess who does? Or is borrowing better?
Mr. Obama is now experiencing what most Republican candidates knew very well: you can talk about being a voice of the people, but it's the big boys who call the shots. Contributions to the Obama campaign, most of which used to come in dribs and drabs from Charlie and Mike, are now coming in large globs from Mr.Jones or Dr. Smith. More and more names have "CEO" after them.
If "the chief business of the United States is business," as president Calvin Coolidge once said, then it seems the sacrifices we're making are really a waste of human life. The people who identify the American Dream in terms of the size of their flat screen have bought into this and shame on them.
Reading about the billions of profits being made out of American lives doesn't do much for the phrase, "Business as usual." Dammit, it's business as usual that got us into the war to begin with. Putting profits ahead of principle runs against everything this nation is supposed to be.
Mr. Obama started off as a candidate who seemed to understand this. Now I'm starting to wonder.
-30-
Friday, August 01, 2008
Celebrate
Aug.1, 2008
THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
January 20, 2009 will be a great day for the United States, not to mention the world.
Not only will George W. Borrow finally leave the White House, but we'll actually get a president who can speak coherent English, listen to ideas that don't emerge solely from (Dead Eye) Dick Cheney and actually consider taxing corporations as if they were people (which the law considers them to be). Good news, indeed. But how will we (and the world) mark the occasion?
One suggestion is a sober day of thanksgiving in which we express our gratitude to God that the country we love has actually survived eight years of avarice, corruption and constitutional destruction. True, we're in a recession, our fifth year of war and seeing increasing inflation and a housing crisis, but at least we're still reasonably sane with the exception of some of our lawmakers and a couple of our Supreme Court justices. This kind of solution would satisfy the religious Left and perhaps be a rallying point for those who were seeking a good reason to return to the Fold. I, being less of a religious mind set, have an alternative.
I propose January 20th, 2009 be set aside for the world's biggest party. The name of the celebration would be the Global Goodbye Bush Bash (GGBB). In it, people from the four corners of the earth would be invited to guzzle beer, kill chickens, dance, sing or otherwise mark in their own unique cultural manner the end of the Bush era. We might see camel races in parts of the Middle East, pasta contests in Italy, wine-drinking sprees in France or bull fights in Spain. All over the world people would have a chance to rejoice in the end of Bushiness and, hopefully, the start of new era of political sanity in the leadershp of the Free World.
It's clear that not everyone is going to be happy with the GGBB. Republicans who don't remember what conservatism used to be may shed a tear or two, CEOs at firms like Halliburton may try to drown their sorrows, dictators who have been propped up by U.S. taxpayers in the name of the War on Terror aren't going to be pleased and Ann Coulter will be absolutely miserable, but that's the way the ball bounces. Some countries may not participate out of genuine confusion. China won't know whether to tell its people to be happy or sad and may settle for just telling them to shut up. Pakistan will really have a problem as will Egypt.
India may not notice since they will be too busy making money and grooming themselves for world leadership, aided by American companies who are making out like bandits thanks to India's low wages.
In America, the Bush Bash should be a real occasion. Since less than 25% of the people like the way their president is running things and even fewer approve of his VIce-president ("So?"), we should see some genuine whing-dings. It's an open question whether Texas, the home of tailgate barbeques, will join in, but there are encouraging signs. It's agreed that Tom DeLay won't participate, nor will Harriet Myers. Karl Rove isn't expected to show up, either.
In other states, we probably won't get much response from Michael ("Heck of a job, Brownie") Brown, Alberto Gonzales may stay at home and Donald Rumsfeld isn't expected to show, even though everyone knows he's the life of the party.
All together, it should be a humongous thing. Tell your friends about it. Write to people overseas, have a Goodbye Bush Bash house party, write letters to editors. Spread the word. Just remember something like this doesn't happen often.
Only when we get sick and tired of second-rate leadership, tired platitudes and lies.
-30-
THE BOGUS ECONOMIST
January 20, 2009 will be a great day for the United States, not to mention the world.
Not only will George W. Borrow finally leave the White House, but we'll actually get a president who can speak coherent English, listen to ideas that don't emerge solely from (Dead Eye) Dick Cheney and actually consider taxing corporations as if they were people (which the law considers them to be). Good news, indeed. But how will we (and the world) mark the occasion?
One suggestion is a sober day of thanksgiving in which we express our gratitude to God that the country we love has actually survived eight years of avarice, corruption and constitutional destruction. True, we're in a recession, our fifth year of war and seeing increasing inflation and a housing crisis, but at least we're still reasonably sane with the exception of some of our lawmakers and a couple of our Supreme Court justices. This kind of solution would satisfy the religious Left and perhaps be a rallying point for those who were seeking a good reason to return to the Fold. I, being less of a religious mind set, have an alternative.
I propose January 20th, 2009 be set aside for the world's biggest party. The name of the celebration would be the Global Goodbye Bush Bash (GGBB). In it, people from the four corners of the earth would be invited to guzzle beer, kill chickens, dance, sing or otherwise mark in their own unique cultural manner the end of the Bush era. We might see camel races in parts of the Middle East, pasta contests in Italy, wine-drinking sprees in France or bull fights in Spain. All over the world people would have a chance to rejoice in the end of Bushiness and, hopefully, the start of new era of political sanity in the leadershp of the Free World.
It's clear that not everyone is going to be happy with the GGBB. Republicans who don't remember what conservatism used to be may shed a tear or two, CEOs at firms like Halliburton may try to drown their sorrows, dictators who have been propped up by U.S. taxpayers in the name of the War on Terror aren't going to be pleased and Ann Coulter will be absolutely miserable, but that's the way the ball bounces. Some countries may not participate out of genuine confusion. China won't know whether to tell its people to be happy or sad and may settle for just telling them to shut up. Pakistan will really have a problem as will Egypt.
India may not notice since they will be too busy making money and grooming themselves for world leadership, aided by American companies who are making out like bandits thanks to India's low wages.
In America, the Bush Bash should be a real occasion. Since less than 25% of the people like the way their president is running things and even fewer approve of his VIce-president ("So?"), we should see some genuine whing-dings. It's an open question whether Texas, the home of tailgate barbeques, will join in, but there are encouraging signs. It's agreed that Tom DeLay won't participate, nor will Harriet Myers. Karl Rove isn't expected to show up, either.
In other states, we probably won't get much response from Michael ("Heck of a job, Brownie") Brown, Alberto Gonzales may stay at home and Donald Rumsfeld isn't expected to show, even though everyone knows he's the life of the party.
All together, it should be a humongous thing. Tell your friends about it. Write to people overseas, have a Goodbye Bush Bash house party, write letters to editors. Spread the word. Just remember something like this doesn't happen often.
Only when we get sick and tired of second-rate leadership, tired platitudes and lies.
-30-
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