Sock it to Whom?

When legislators make noise about increasing costs to corporations, many liberals rejoice. Most of us know how the tax burden has shifted from business to worker since Ronald Reagan decided the government should get off backs in general, but mostly backs belonging to big business. Since the Democrats gained power, more of them have picked up on the fact that the American people are finally realizing that the Free Market is not equally free to all players. Therefore, it makes good political sense to rail against the bloated corporate bureaucracy even as they fend off the right-wing Birthers and Other Nuts who hate the bloated government bureaucracy.

The big secret is they know most of the charges aren't paid by companies; lots of them are paid by us. A good example might be AT&T, giant purveyor of communications. I happen to subscribe to AT&T as my cell phone carrier and I recently went on its web site to research my bill. After I finished, I noticed a severe pain in the area where I was sitting.

Let's take fees. I don't mean taxes, which I'm glad to pay to keep the government running; I mean fees to make AT&T richer. Here are a couple:

1. Federal Regulatory Fee. Don't let the name fool you. Far from a tax on the company, this fee is "designed to recover the annual fee imposed on AT&T by the Federal Communications Commission." In other words, the customer picks up AT&T's costs in addition to the monthly payment for the phone. But that's not all.

2.Telecommunications Relay Service (TRS). This is charged to recover the contributions AT&T is required to make into the Federal TRS fund. Once more, the ratepayers to the rescue!

3. How about the costs of keeping your number when you change companies? AT&T uses this as a bragging point - as does every other carrier. Well, the recovery of these costs will be coughed up by the customer, according to AT&T.

4.Of course, we shouldn't forget the Enhanced 911 and Wireless Tower Maintenance Costs. Customers are billed for these to reimburse AT&T for "enhanced technology to help emergency response agencies better determine the location of the customer calling 9-1-1" as well as helping the company recover costs associated with regulations relating to wire less towers, "including regulations imposed by the National Environmental Protection Act, Clean Water Act, endangered Species Act, etc. etc." Oh yes, we're also asked to help the company out with "inspections of marked and lighted cell towers."

There are lots more. We pay for notice requirements, network outage reporting, state-mandated annual reports, and the intra-island fee "imposed on AT&T by the Puerto Rico Telecommunication Regulatory Board." We also get to assist with payments to settle claims made by certain municipalities in Missouri.

However, the winner is the State Universal Service Fund Fee. It seems some states have asked the telecommunications industry to "ensure affordable telecommunications service for all consumers in the state, especially residents in high-cost rural areas and low-income customers." Sounds good, right? Well, nothing gets by the industry, folks. Although "all telecommunications providers are required to pay into these funds... their contributions may be recovered from customers."

Oh yes, there are also surcharges to reimburse the company for "specific government taxes or fees imposed on the company's gross receipts, sales and/or other property." These include 911 access, DEAF charges and other "favors" we read about that are bestowed on us by the benevolent folks at AT&T. We also pay for discounts given to schools and libraries out of the goodness of AT&T's corporate heart.

So when some congressperson goes into his or her spiel about "getting the big companies to pay their share," try to find out where he or she was when the loopholes got through allowing big companies like AT&T to pass on their costs to the poor suckers who are having trouble making ends meet and not, like AT&T, posting a 2008 profit of almost three and half billion dollars.

Conserberal

Are you a liberal or a conservative? If you have any brains at all, your answer should be "Yes."

I've been working for some time to get to the bottom of this question and I've had nothing but trouble. First off, while people are glad to tell me that they're one or the other, not a single person has been willing or able to tell me what it means. One woman I spoke with was convinced she was a conservative because she didn't believe in abortion. She did, however, favor government-run health care and higher taxes on the wealthy. Two hours later, a man who claimed to be a liberal proclaimed the merits of a welfare state, but defended the death penalty.

Some Republicans say that George Bush abandoned conservative principles by running up immense deficits. Democrats retort that Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt in eight years and therefore shouldn't be thought to be a conservative, either.

So what's a conservative? What's a liberal?

• boguseconomist's diary :: ::

Traditionally, conservatives have been advocates of limited government, balanced budgets with low taxes and more individual responsibility. Liberals have backed firmer business regulation, government assistance for the poor, universal health care and higher taxes on the well-off. Voters switched back and forth from one view to another.

I was born during the Hoover Administration (conservative) and raised during the Roosevelt Administration (liberal).

The definitions of both terms changed a lot after World War II. With the rise of huge corporations, conservatives gravitated to the side of the owners while liberals found themselves cheering the unions. At the same time, the racial divide in the United States caused people on the left to identify with the civil rights struggle while those on the right defended the status quo. It was around this time that people should have started to ask, "What do you call somebody who doesn't want black people to sit next to him in the movie house, but who belongs to a union?" Is that person a liberal or a conservative?

The more factors that got stirred into the American scene, the more confused the labeling got. Roe v. Wade was the biggest complicating factor and Watergate didn't help. As there became more reasons to say you were one or the other, more people began to use "liberal" and "conservative" to sell products, ideas and candidates. Pollsters jumped on the bandwagon. If you were Republican, you were conservative; if you were Democratic, you were liberal, etc.

Pretty soon, sub-labels appeared. Maybe you were a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat. Some even started to use "Republicrat," although I never heard anyone say "Demoplican." One thing nobody did, however, was explain what any of these terms meant. That's why the Bogus Economist has coined the word "conserberal."

A conserberal believes that all people deserve to be left alone if what they're doing doesn't hurt anybody else. In the case of pregnancy, the operating word is "anybody." Whether life begins at conception or at the beginning of the third trimester or at birth is a medical question that should be decided by medical people. Anything else is a matter of religion. Religion should not make laws.

Conserberals think all people who enjoy living in the United States deserve to support it with an equal percentage of what they have to lose, i.e. their net worth. No deductions.

Businesses should be free to do anything legal as long as consumers are fully informed about what they're buying and the businesses accept responsibility for their products. Conserberals do not believe in "corporate personhood." If a CEO is drawing the pay, that's the person who should be cracking the rocks.

Conserberals feel that nobody should make a profit out of war. When the nation is at risk, everyone has the duty to defend it. This means universal military service. They also feel the National Rifle Association should stick to rifles.

If somebody is accused of committing a crime, the amount of money he/she has should have nothing to do with the quality of justice he/she receives. Conserberals also believe in public financing of elections. America should not be for sale.

There's a lot more, but you get the idea. We have enough labels that don't mean anything. That's why they deserve definition. It might take a lot more time to really find out what somebody believes, but then we'd be able to discuss things intelligently. And isn't that really another name for democracy?

Sandwich Board

Once upon a time - let's say during the last depression - people, mostly men, who were down on their luck and badly in need of food money, could make a couple of bucks by parading up and down some populated street while wearing a sandwich board. This device generally consisted of two large pieces of cardboard, attached with rope or string, and worn on the shoulders, making a sandwich of the person carrying it.

In the 30's, sandwich boards usually advertised eating establishments ("Eat at Joe's") or services ("Get Your Pants Pressed at Izzy's"). Sometimes, but not often, they directed the viewer to some upper class establishment, but in the main, these boards were aimed at the lower-income consumer and were carried by the still lower-income consumer.

In other words, people were paid to advertise a product. Izzy or Joe thought it worth while to use people as billboards in order to attract customers - a clever idea. But this was strictly amateur thinking compared to what the corporate Izzys and Joes of the world came up with for today's Tom, Dick or Harry.
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Once upon a time - let's say during the last depression - people, mostly men, who were down on their luck and badly in need of food money, could make a couple of bucks by parading up and down some populated street while wearing a sandwich board. This device generally consisted of two large pieces of cardboard, attached with rope or string, and worn on the shoulders, making a sandwich of the person carrying it. In the 30's, sandwich boards usually advertised eating establishments ("Eat at Joe's") or services ("Get Your Pants Pressed at Izzy's"). Sometimes, but not often, they directed the viewer to some upper class establishment, but in the main, these boards were aimed at the lower-income consumer and were carried by the still lower-income consumer. In other words, people were paid to advertise a product. Izzy or Joe thought it worth while to use people as billboards in order to attract customers - a clever idea. But this was strictly amateur thinking compared to what the corporate Izzys and Joes of the world came up with for today's Tom, Dick or Harry.

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* boguseconomist's diary :: ::
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I use males as examples because, at first, it was mostly males who bought into the idea of using themselves as boosters for, say, baseball or football teams. "Go, Dodgers!" on a baseball cap signified support and helped the wearer identify with the team. As these became more popular, the corporate world sat up and took notice. "Why," the CEOs said in the boardroom, "can't we get people to lay out good money to advertise our product? Our shoes are certainly as important as some bunch of overpaid ball-bobblers." And it was done. Pretty soon, a nice sweatshirt with a swoosh logo could set you back twenty smackers and let hundreds of people see your preference in sneakers, whether you wore Nike or not.

It didn't take the ladies long to follow. Pretty soon, blouses, sweatshirts, caps, socks, belts and almost anything else you could think of carried some corporate logo. Otherwise dignified women could be seen wearing warm-up suits proclaiming loyalty to Bum. Their escort might be advertising Big Dogs. Millions of dollars, instead of going out to the needy in exchange for their advertising services, were coming in to the seedy in their quest for more profit opportunities.

Try to imagine the guy with the sandwich board in 1933 being told that one day, instead of being paid to carry advertising around town, he'd be lining up to pay a company for the privilege of doing the same thing. You might get hit with the sandwich board.

I suggest a revolutionary capitalist principle: pay people for doing a job. If I'm going to wear a shirt promoting a product, I should be able to charge the manufacturer. This is already done in the case of cars. If I plaster a real estate sign on my car, that's advertising and it's either a business expense if it's my company or a source of income if I just let the company use my side panel. If it's good enough for the VW, why not the guy who drives it?

Parenthetically, why are we such suckers to let companies get away with this kind of crap? Maybe because the guys who run them are a lot smarter than we are. Maybe we should adopt their kind of thinking. If they won't pay me to flog their stuff, then to hell with them. I'll buy a T-shirt and a magic marker and do my own.

I won't tell you what it will say.

Christianity 101

I welcome anyone from the Right who will explain to me the difference between someone who will blow up a bunch of people in a mosque and a person who will go into a church and murder someone in cold blood because that person has offended his values.

I suggest that the Christian Taliban is as much - if not more - of a danger to the United States than Al Qaeda because the former thinks it is acting in the best interests of America while the latter is deliberately trying to destroy it.

We've already seen what happens when leaders of the country show a disregard for the Constitution. Now we see what happens when a blind religious belief leads to murder.

"Congress shall make NO law respecting the establishment of religion." What part of this is so hard for the holy nut-cases on the Right to understand?

Or does this qualify me for the Christian firing squad, too?

History is filled with reasons for executing people. The Catholic church in the middle ages explained that killing people was far better than letting them live in a sinful state and possibly corrupt other innocent souls. Hitler believed in racial purity and used the execution of millions of Jews to make the world cleaner and better. Other deluded nincompoops have blown away innocent people to make a political point or remind others of a particular religion's superiority.

We Americans have a little problem when it comes to these reasons. First, we like to consider the people killed instead of the killer(s). For instance, there has been very little written about the reasons for 9/11 while forests have been chopped down in describing every detail about the victims, the victim's families and the hometowns, neighbors and even pets of those who were murdered. It's understandable that we would mourn the loss of innocent lives, but had we truly examined the motives of those who hijacked the planes that fateful September day, we might have gotten a better picture of the whole Al Qaeda philosophy and thus have been spared what will go down as the most idiotic decisions in our history, to say nothing of the loss of more than four thousand American lives and many times more innocent Iranians and Afghans.

We should remember this as we remember Dr. Tiller. We should leave no stone unturned in investigating the hate mongering that caused an unbalanced man to enter a place of worship and take a human life. We should ask whether the Founders intended that anyone who was not certifiable could buy an automatic weapon and wipe out a doctor as others have wiped out high school students, college students and anyopne else within range.

It's time to extend the idea of "pro-life" beyond the abortion issue and ask whether our position on haters and gunners may be too wussy for our survival.

First Things First

I suppose it's a reasonable to ask why I would write a diary about politics after spending a few hours researching cell phones and calling plans. The reason is that I have found notable omissions in discussions of each of these indispensible parts of our national identity.

In the case of cell phones, I found at least a dozen blog entries that discussed at great length the ringtones, camera, bluetooth capability and web browser of a phone without once mentioning the words "call quality." In other words, there were people who write pages about a telephone without evaluating its main purpose - to make telephone calls.

Now I understand why reading headlines, exchanging photos, texting and checking one's stocks can be extremely important. But when these worthy goals become more important than speaking with another person, there might be a legitimate query that goes like this: "Why are calling it a cell PHONE?"

Like cell phones, we have the same attitude toward people running for positions ranging from dog catcher to President. In the case of the latter, we spend hundreds of pages and gallons of ink dissecting a candidate's housing, his or her favorite hobbies, clothing, decorating ideas, favorite music, etc. without once mentioning the matter of intelligence.

Now I can see that Barack Obama's choice of a First Dog might be worth a paragraph or two, but I feel a far more important factor is the intellectual power he would bring into a White House that hasn't had a whole lot of it lately. This goes for the folks running for Congress, some of whom seem to be less than the sharpest chisel in the tool box. I've read a number of articles that claim Americans don't like smart people, but prefer the kind of candidate "you can go out and have a beer with." Or shoot a moose with.

If this is true, we'd better get over it. The world we're looking at doesn't put a high value on dummies, except as people to exploit. If the United States is to prevail, it has to have montal horsepower not only at the highest level, but all along the line. To help achieve this, I present the Bogus Economist plan, which begins with a requirement that every candidate for office pass a test of basic knowledge given to kids before high school graduation.

If someone, for instance, can't locate Afghanistan on a blank map, I would question his or her ability to serve in the State Department. People who don't know anything about the metric system might be unfit for any job dealing with international trade. Writers who don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose" or "its" and "it's" shouldn't be thrust forward as representatives of a country who claims to value education.

If you don't think there is a problem, try reading a random sample of blog entries or the results of high school tests or presidential speeches.
As Robert Preston says in The Music Man, "We've got troubles, my friend, troubles right here in River City." When high schoolers don't know how many states there are in our country, how many feet in a mile, what the Electoral College is or who becomes president when both the President and the Vice-president die, we've got troubles. When (or if) people running our government - or wanting to - show this kind of non-thinking, we've got a potential disaster.

Giving a test of basic skills might weed out some legislative morons before they can do us real damage. This would give us time to go after the ethical morons, of whom we're hearing a lot of late. This, in turn, would allow us to focus on the executive morons. Above all, publicizing the results of these tests might raise our awareness of how important it is to have leaders who know how to think, to reason and - well - to lead.

Body
In politics, we spend hundreds of pages and gallons of ink dissecting a candidate's housing, his or her favorite hobbies, clothing, decorating ideas, favorite music, etc. without once mentioning the matter of intelligence.

Now I can see that Barack Obama's choice of a First Dog might be worth a paragraph or two, but I feel a far more important factor is the intellectual power he would bring into a White House that hasn't had a whole lot of it lately. This goes for the folks running for Congress, some of whom seem to be less than the sharpest chisel in the tool box. I've read a number of articles that claim Americans don't like smart people, but prefer the kind of candidate "you can go out and have a beer with." Or shoot a moose with.

If this is true, we'd better get over it. The world we're looking at doesn't put a high value on dummies, except as people to exploit. If the United States is to prevail, it has to have montal horsepower not only at the highest level, but all along the line. To help achieve this, I present the Bogus Economist plan, which begins with a requirement that every candidate for office pass a test of basic knowledge given to kids before high school graduation.

If someone, for instance, can't locate Afghanistan on a blank map, I would question his or her ability to serve in the State Department. People who don't know anything about the metric system might be unfit for any job dealing with international trade. Writers who don't know the difference between "lose" and "loose" or "its" and "it's" shouldn't be thrust forward as representatives of a country who claims to value education.

If you don't think there is a problem, try reading a random sample of blog entries or the results of high school tests or presidential speeches.
As Robert Preston says in The Music Man, "We've got troubles, my friend, troubles right here in River City." When high schoolers don't know how many states there are in our country, how many feet in a mile, what the Electoral College is or who becomes president when both the President and the Vice-president die, we've got troubles. When (or if) people running our government - or wanting to - show this kind of non-thinking, we've got a potential disaster.

Giving a test of basic skills might weed out some legislative morons before they can do us real damage. This would give us time to go after the ethical morons, of whom we're hearing a lot of late. This, in turn, would allow us to focus on the executive morons. Above all, publicizing the results of these tests might raise our awareness of how important it is to have leaders who know how to think, to reason and - well - to lead.