Strange Politics in Alabama

My hometown of Huntsville, Alabama had the honor of a Trump visit last night. Trump is campaigning in a Republican primary for the candidate of his choice. Nothing wrong with that I guess even though it is almost unheard of for the National Party to interfere in a state primary; much less the President of the United States. Trump couldn't seem to help himself as he stirred up more controversy by attacking football players protests and cursing them explicitly. His base loved it of course. Red meat for the masses.

In any case, the supposed reason for Trump's visit was to push for the election of Luther Strange, current sitting US Senator from Alabama. Strange was appointed by Governor Robert Bentley to finish out the term of Jeff Sessions when he vacated that office to assume the mantle of Attorney General in the Trump administration. Bentley appointed Luther Strange while at the same time eschewing a special election until the normal end of the term even though this was against Alabama law. No surprise there. Bentley was being investigated by the Attorney General of Alabama for misuse of campaign finance and state funds. Luther Strange was Attorney General of Alabama at the time. Strange held up the investigation long enough to get the appointment to the Senate. Bentley gave him the Senate seat and decided not to have a special election which would have given Strange several years before having to run for election.

Unfortunately for Bentley and Strange, the next attorney general he appointed did proceed with letting the legislature investigate Bentley and he wound up being forced to resign. Bentley was also convicted of misuse of campaign and state funds. The misuse was used to pay his lover, Rebecca Caldwell Mason, and her husband some $500,000 in campaign and state funds to assist him in public relations. Mrs. Mason, an ex TV weather girl, wasn't satisfied to collect a lot of money; she more or less ran the governor's office for the last two years of Bentley's term as his "special assistant" paid directly out of campaign funds. Having a public affair with someone else's wife who also worked for him wasn't enough to get Governor Bentley in trouble in Alabama; but he made the mistake of asking the legislature for a tax increase to help fund the collapsing state prison system before the Federal Government shuts it down for cruel and unusual punishment. In Alabama, as long as you go to church and act Christian a lot of things are seen as acceptable, but raising taxes to cover government essentials such as a prison system is not one of them.

The new governor, Kay Ivey, correctly called for a special election as soon as she took over after Bentley resigned. Luther Strange found himself facing Mo Brooks and Judge Roy Moore for the Republican nomination. It's technically a Republican nomination but essentially the general election because since Obama was president, there is almost no possibility of a Democrat winning a Senatorial race unless all the Republicans running are convicted felons and even that wouldn't make it a sure thing for a Democrat. Luther Strange also presided over the investigation, at least until he recused himself, of the powerful Speaker of the House of Alabama; Mike Hubbard.

Hubbard, who ran the Alabama Republican Legislature with an iron fist, was indicted on 23 felony counts shortly after Strange recused himself. That didn't stop the thoroughly crooked Alabama Legislature from re-electing Hubbard as Speaker AFTER he was indicted. Like I said earlier, you can get away with a lot of things in Alabama politics if you go to church and act pious. Hubbard was soon convicted on 12 felony counts and sent to prison which did necessitate his being removed as Speaker or I am sure he would still be there.

Meanwhile, Judge Roy Moore was removed from office as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to follow the US Constitution and US Supreme Court decisions. Moore, not satisfied with putting his own decisions above those of the legal authority he was sworn to uphold also advised lower courts in Alabama to do the same. This happened to be the SECOND time Moore was removed from the same office for the same offense. His first removal was over a Ten Commandments statue he had installed in the Alabama Supreme Court building. He refused to remove it when ordered by a Federal Court to do so and found himself booted out of office while the state was stuck with the legal fees for fighting the case all the way through the system.

Roy Moore is a cartoonish figure who has been around Alabama politics for a long time. He has stated on numerous occasions that the Bible is the root of all Constitutional law. This is a strange position for a man named as Chief Supreme Court justice in the state but you have to remember we are in Alabama (see my earlier comments about being a good christian). Moore has suggested that homosexuals should be imprisoned in one of his more enlightened comments and started out this campaign by going on a local radio show where he openly admitted he didn't know what the DACA program was. He promised he would look into it and form an opinion about it. I suppose if DACA isn't in the Bible, Moore can't be expected to know much about it. Add to this a constant litany of woefully ignorant quotes regarding Islam, abortion, and an abysmally misinformed understanding of actual history; and you begin to get a picture of the mental midget bigot that Moore has always been proud to be.

In short, we have an ex State Attorney General who wouldn't do his job and investigate the Governor or the Speaker of the House of Alabama. The Governor then rewards him for his inaction by appointing him Senator and ignoring Alabama law that says a special election has to be called so that he can build up a war chest of funds when he does have to actually run for the office. He is opposed at the moment by a twice removed ex Supreme Court Justice whose personal ignorance is quite possibly exceeded only by Donald Trump himself. Trump may have found himself a home in Alabama. We would probably appoint him lifetime Governor and give him the unlimited power and praise he desires if he would just ask.

THAT.... is how strange politics are in this state since the Republicans took over. It would be funny if it weren't so depressing.

My First Close View of Racism

I grew up in the south. I have lived in the south for most of my life and I lived through the civil rights battles of the sixties in the south. Even though I was very young at the time, I remember those times and how they affected me and my family.

My grandmother was a racist. I don't mean she was a member of the Klan and burned crosses in people's yard but she was definitely a racist. I discovered this when I was seven years old and it shocked me quite a bit. In those days in the south, it was not at all an uncommon thing. The N word was in common usage; I heard it used daily and it was most definitely a term of derision and ridicule. My father was adamantly opposed to any such terminology but beyond that; he was even more opposed to the ideology of judging people's character by the color of their skin. Maybe that's why I had such trouble recognizing it in other people.

After my grandfather died, my father moved my grandmother from Birmingham to Huntsville where we lived in order to take care of her. She lived a few blocks away from us and most weekends either my brother or I would spend the night on Friday and Saturday night at Mimi's house. Mimi loved us dearly of course and we were at first very happy to get some alone time with her as well. She was a very proper southern lady, but she was also terrified of many, many things. I didn't realize this at first. Her admonitions to wear a hat or you'll get the cancer or put on a jacket so you don't get the pneumonia were kind of funny at first but I soon realized there was a deep mortal fear attached to each of them. They weren't just things to say, they were a kind of overwhelming fear that seemed to dominate her life.

Mimi lived in a small two bedroom house but slept on a pullout sofa right next to the front door in case the house caught on fire. She took old tomato cans and tied them together with string to make trip wires that would clang the cans around if an intruder came into the house. She slept with a .38 pistol under her pillow. One night the wind blew through an open window hard enough to blow them over and woke us both up. She immediately sat up in bed with that big pistol pointing at the noise and announced "I have a gun and I WILL use it." I was afraid to move for fear that she would shoot the next movement and there was a long, uncomfortable pause as we both listened to the wind blow before she leaned over and turned the light beside the bed on. After she searched the house and closed all the windows, it was stifling in the house but she kept vigil sitting in a rocking chair beside the bed with the big pistol in her lap the rest of the night. I didn't sleep very much after that either but I can still remember waking up sweating and seeing her sitting there peering around the room telling me to go back to sleep.

On Saturdays we would ride a bus into the old downtown of Huntsville that was known as Twickenham. She would go to the drug store and buy incidentals enough to fill up one bag. We would also usually go to Belk Hudson's store and she would insist on buying me a belt or a pair of dress pants. I had very little use for dress pants and often told her so but she would insist and tell me that just because my mother dressed me like a ragamuffin that didn't mean she had to. When we started out on Saturday she would make me take a bath and clean up while she shined my shoes and ironed my clothes. For her part, no matter how hot it was she would put on a Sunday dress complete with matching hat and long elbow length lacy gloves. Sometimes the hat would have a black veil that would cover most of her face but I didn't get the import of that for quite a while.

We would walk to the corner to catch the bus. If it was sunny, she would carry a parasol and insist that we both stay under it to keep the cancer off of us. I wasn't allowed to examine rocks, catch insects, or follow any of my normal instincts when I was with her. I was to "act like a young gentleman" and try to curb my curiosity about most things. My dad had told me that when I was in her care I was to live by her rules. My dad didn't say things to hear himself talk and I was smart enough to try to follow his directions without argument. The bus driver knew Mimi by name and would always smile and greet us with "How are you today Miz McLeroy?". She would just barely perceptively nod in return as she put her token in the box and he would usually kid me about what kind of candy I was going to get at the drug store. He always called me "young master McLeroy" which I thought was overdoing it a little but he was unalterably cheerful and smiling every time we caught his bus.

The best part of our Saturdays in Twickenham were that we would always eat out. Our family never ate out. We couldn't afford to for one thing but since there were five kids of varying ages, it was also quite an ordeal to get everyone dressed and ready. Saturday with Mimi meant we either ate at the Rexall Drug Store counter or at Britling's Cafeteria. I was partial to the drug store counter because they had those little round orange stools that would spin around if I was lucky enough to catch Mimi not looking for a minute. They also served a little cheeseburger and Mimi would let me have a whole order of fries by myself so Rexall was always my choice. Britling's Cafeteria was the old kind of cafeteria where all the food was displayed and you would make your choices as you went through the line. The only odd thing about Britling's was that they didn't serve you a plate at the end of the line, they just wrote down what you picked out from the sample line and then had waiters that brought the food to you after you found a seat.

Britling's was quite a plush place. The carpet was a deep red and black patterned carpet that was absolutely noiseless as you walked on it. The tables were all covered with pristine white tablecloths with a nice little flower arrangement on each. The chairs and tables were heavy oak burnished almost black with careful polishing. There was a stainless steel handrail all down the food line perfect for discharging the heavy static charge I could accumulate by dragging my leather soled shoes on the carpet and slowly pushing my finger toward the handrail. Over several steps I could generate a charge loud enough to make an audible pop and see the small arc of electricity that resulted. Of course Mimi would instantly remind me this was uncouth behavior whenever she caught me but I could usually do it a couple of times before she noticed.

Once we placed our order we would find a nice table and Mimi would wait for one of the waiters to pull her chair back so she could sit down. I tried to do it for her one day but she told me that was the waiter's job and had me stand by while we waited. She wouldn't say anything of course or look at the waiter, it was simply their job to see she was ready to be seated and respond. The waiters were all black in Britling's. They wore high waisted black pants with a black velvet stripe down the leg and bright red velvet vests. Their shirts were starched white with stiff collars and a black tie tucked neatly down inside their red velvet vests. When they saw her waiting they would hurriedly step over and pull her chair back with a kind of slight bow and nod of the head. A soft "ma'am" would escape their lips as they pulled the chair back. When she was seated they would softly maneuver the chair in place as she lifted herself just slightly enough so that three little moves were necessary to get her under the table properly. It was quite a practiced ordeal, this getting the chair under the table with her in it but they had it down to a science. "Will there be anything else Ma'am?" always followed.

"No thank you," she would say without looking at them. I would always scramble into my chair while this was going on because I found it slighly embarrassing in some way and was always anxious she was going to make me go through the same actions to be seated but she never did. I suppose she settled for what little order she could impose on me without trying to train me completely.

One particular Saturday I was lobbying hard for the Rexall lunch but she overruled me. I was having a hard time with her rules that day as I knew my brother was off playing ball with our friends and I had a new baseball mitt and I had traded some army men and a bunch of good baseball cards to get. Every time she scolded me for slouching or dragging my feet that day was a fresh reminder that I wasn't where I wanted to be. I felt a little bad for being put out with her but it was still in my mind when we got to Britling's. I hadn't exactly argued for Rexall but she knew I was out of sorts to begin with so I suppose she was trying to explain her choice when this happened. After we placed our order and the waiter went through the elaborate seating routine she said, "That's why I like this place. These people know their place here."

It took me a minute to understand what she was saying. The waiter was still standing there when she said it. Once I caught her meaning a red flush of embarrassment washed over me. I looked at the waiter but he pretended not to hear what she said. "Will there be anything else, ma'am?" he said without a touch of any resentment. His eyes met mine for just a second after he said it and I could see something flicker across them. I couldn't tell if it was anger or pity for me because he could see I was flushed red and completely embarrassed. I scrambled into my chair and tried not to look at him again. I was ashamed. I was ashamed of what she had said and I was ashamed of my reaction. I wanted to apologize to him but I knew I couldn't. I wanted to tell her how wrong what she had just done was but I couldn't do that either. All I could do was sit there and be embarrassed for all of us.

A lot of things became clear to me in the next few minutes of thought. Mimi was a racist. Her refusal to acknowledge the bus driver's greetings, her refusal to look at the waiters at Britling's except to make sure their eyes were downcast as they addressed her. It all made sense to me and it shamed me. Mimi came from a long line of privileged wealthy people. The wealth had dwindled by the time she met my grandfather but the expectation of privilege never did. The loss of her wealth was hard on her but the idea of racial equality was completely foreign to her and she both feared and hated it. I noticed a lot of things after that with Mimi but I can still remember that moment quite clearly. The moment I first saw racism in its naked ignorant ugliness.

Integrity

One of the ethical precepts I was raised to respect is the simple idea of doing the right thing. My dad was a stickler for this idea. Doing the right thing isn’t that hard according to his teachings. It isn’t about always knowing what is right, always being correct, or always knowing all the answers. It is about being true to yourself and your values. Anyone can follow directions. Anyone can do what they think is right when circumstances encourage correct behavior. The hard part is doing what is right when circumstances don’t encourage it.

I will be the first to admit that I haven’t always done the right thing. There have been instances in my life where I knew what the right thing to do but chose to do the easier thing, or the thing that was more fun, or the thing that would advance my standing. I have always felt terrible when I did this, when I knew what the right thing to do was and simply didn’t do it through personal weakness or laziness.

As I have gotten older, I have found it easier to do the right thing consistently, both for my own peace of mind and because it is simply what I am supposed to do. Correct actions tend to breed correct actions. I have found that standing up for what I think is right is more powerful and necessary than anything I might gain from the opposite action. I always am able to discern what I am supposed to do and for quite a few years it has been the basis for deciding everything in my life.

I don’t suppose that I always know what is right, but I do know that I can follow what I think is right no matter where it may lead. People respect others who follow this principle, even when they disagree with the rationale for deciding the difference between right and wrong. It is more formally called integrity; the effort to do what you believe is right regardless of circumstance.

Unfortunately, this idea of doing what we think is right seems to have fallen into disuse in most aspects of our lives. The idea that the end results outweigh the means seems to be the more prevalent understanding today. Doing what you know is right is a foreign concept in most of the business world today. It is considerably secondary to maximizing profit and market share. This is perhaps the main reason why I have so little use for business leaders running for government positions. The government is not an entity built to make a profit, it is the only means we have of making sure that people are able to do the right thing and still live a good life.

Integrity in our government is perhaps the most important aspect of our government. In a democratic system it is an absolute necessity. The tendency of our leadership to display integrity directly correlates to their ability to effectively govern. There is no substitute for doing the right thing in governance. It is the mortar that holds the edifice of government together and without it, the whole thing inevitably collapses.

We seem to be seeing an appalling lack of integrity in our government presently. From a President who doesn’t have the integrity to tell the truth about almost anything to the Director of the FBI who doesn’t have the integrity to tell the president he can’t discuss active investigations with him. We have seen numerous high government officials in the last couple of weeks testify under oath before Congressional Committees charged with fact finding that they refuse to answer questions about conversations with the President and yet insist they are not invoking Executive Privilege.

We may as well not have Congressional Committees if they are not going to compel testimony from witnesses that appear before them. Any refusal to do so in open or closed session should be immediate grounds for holding the person testifying in contempt of Congress. We should hold those testifying responsible for telling the truth and we should hold the Committee members they are testifying before responsible for making sure they do so.

Doing the right thing is often hard. It involves withstanding political and personal repercussions accordingly. It is also absolutely necessary in our form of government and we should insist that the people we elect adhere to the principle accordingly. I am not sure our form of government can survive the idea that we don’t need integrity. Unfortunately, it looks like we are getting ready to find out if we can or not.

The Good Old Days and the Lost Cause

Everyone knows what those were. We all had them, lived through them, or at least heard a lot about them from someone who did. Unfortunately, The Good Old Days for some people also happened to be the stuff of horrendous nightmares for others. This is not always true but in most cases it is. When one group of people is having a grand old time there is usually another group that is suffering for it. Unsurprisingly, the more wonderful something is for one group the more horrible it tends to be for someone else. None of this is new knowledge but it is surprising how often we don’t recognize the reality of this fact of life when it applies to selective memory.

The Good Old Days I am thinking of today are those of the Lost Cause of the South. Unless you are from the South you are probably not very familiar with this particular form of The Good Old Days. Years ago I worked with someone from Minnesota. He was constantly surprised with Southerners concern and opinions about the Civil War. Talking with him made me wonder about why that event was so different for people from the South than it was for everyone else; both in what actually happened and in how we remember it.

It isn’t hard to understand the difference once you think about it. Previous to the Civil War the South was by far the wealthiest area of the country. Cotton truly was king in those days. Every millionaire in the country had a home in Natchez, Mississippi in those days. Not some of them. Not a majority of them. All of them had a home there because that is where Cotton was sold and bought and every really wealthy American in those days had some dealings with the Cotton industry. Most wealthy southerners had a home there and a home somewhere else but they all had a home there. While this is an interesting tidbit of trivia it also says quite a bit about what the South was at that time in history.

The South was an oligarchy at that time in our history. A very small group of people completely and totally controlled a section of our nation. This section also happened to be the wealthiest section of the nation at the same time. The South had long controlled national politics with their wealth and their united front. Although the industrial north was starting to build wealth that rivaled the South it was never a body of interest that was completely united. The South was. There was no dissenting voice to the oligarchic leadership of the south as they had all the money and all the power in a way that never existed in any other section of the country.

This total control of politics, power and wealth was soon to be the downfall of the South at the beginning of 1860 but no one within this group would have believed it at the time. Cotton prices were steadily rising. The price of slaves were steadily rising. It looked like the party would go on forever for this small group of wealthy southerners. Close behind this group was a larger group of aspiring to wealth southerners. This group saw the formula first hand. Buy slaves, buy land to clear and plant and watch the money roll in. The land was cheap for a long time. It was seemingly plentiful and the slaves to work it were too.

The new Cotton growing south was a great market for the old South of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina who were foundering in the mire of a slavery system that saw the cost of taking care of slaves constantly increase while the price of tobacco, rice, and indigo constantly fluctuated. In short, slavery was a failed system in those parts of the South but the invention of the cotton gin that allowed inland cotton to become profitable changed all that instantly. The rich soil of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi was there for the taking and the old South was only too happy to sell them the slaves needed to grow Cotton there. The price of slaves skyrocketed and prosperity returned to the old South with their glut of slaves and a ready market to make a handsome profit selling them into.

Everything was wonderful for the slave owners. I think I neglected to mention who the oligarchy of the South actually were; they were the slave owners. The vast majority of their wealth was tied up in slaves. Not part of their wealth. Not a percentage of their wealth. The vast majority of their wealth was the value of the slaves they owned. The land was still relatively cheap but the slaves were increasingly valuable as Cotton became king because that is the only way anyone could afford to put forth the massive amount of manual labor necessary to clear land, plant and pick Cotton.

Let’s be clear here. Cotton was king but Slavery was queen. If you were ambitious in the South and wanted to become wealthy there was only one way to do it. Buy slaves and grow cotton. That was it. It was the ONLY way to become wealthy or to maintain your wealth. Everyone understood this in the South. While there were small pockets of the South where slave owning was frowned upon there were no pockets of the South where people were foolish enough that they didn’t understand this reality.

Everything was wonderful for the slave owners and the ambitious wannabee slave owners. It wasn’t so wonderful for the non-slave owners who tried to compete with free labor in the south but they could always be kept happy with the promise that with a little luck and some hard work, they too could own slaves and get on the never ending rise to the top. Buy slaves, clear land, grow Cotton. Cotton was king and it was a formula that always worked; at least for a few years.

Then suddenly things began to go wrong in the Good Old Days of the slave owners. Some people began to develop a conscience about whether owning slaves was a good idea. The fact that our founding documents as a nation espoused the belief that “All Men are Created Equal” suddenly seemed a stumbling block to an institution that depended on the chattel ownership of other men. Slavery had been around for thousands of years, the indignant slave owners said. It was in the Bible for Christ’s sake. Besides, it was proven fact that Africans, the black race in general, was an inferior species. The slave owners were truly angry at the inference that their “peculiar institution” was a moral wrong. After all, many of the northerners who were now saying such things had made a lot of money importing and selling them the slaves to begin with.

About the same time this happened slave owners stumbled upon another problem with the never ending get rich with Cotton theme. They didn’t understand crop rotation or modern agronomy but they did understand that Cotton yields plummeted quickly on the new lands they were clearing. The freshly cleared rich soil of much of the Deep South yielded a lot of Cotton the first year it was planted. It yielded 30% less the next year. It yielded 60% less the next year. No matter how hard they drove their slaves (and believe me they drove them hard) the newly minted planter class of the Deep South soon discovered that they needed new land each year to keep up their profit margins. There were exceptions of course, the land along the Mississippi had its topsoil replenished each spring with the annual floods but there was only so much river bottom delta land to go around and a lot of the new planters were heavily invested in large slave populations with a profit margin they saw shrinking drastically as the yields dropped.

The decrease in profit margin increased the pressure to find new land for King Cotton to expand onto. This led directly to several attempts to invade foreign nations. Southerners publicly raised money and sent hired mercenaries to invade Cuba, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. These adventures met with only partial and temporary success. As this was previous to the days of oil based fertilizers there was even a couple of small scale military/naval battles that the US government was forced to intervene in wherein the slave owners financed invasions of places where Guana was plentiful as a fertilizer needed to increase their yield. Perhaps this is where the phrase “batshit crazy” came from as Guana was actually bat excrement found in large quantities in certain types of caves where the creatures had nested for centuries.

As yields further decreased the pressure increased to find new land for King Cotton. Many suspect that ensuing War with Mexico was simply an excuse for slave owners to find new land for their industry. This is open to argument of course. It was a belief with some credence in evidence as was put forward by a certain Representative Lincoln from Illinois during his only term as a Congressman in the national legislature. When the young congressman asked to be shown the “spot where Mexico crossed into US Territory and fired upon US Soldiers”, he suggested they were conveniently posted on ground that was in all likelihood disputed territory to begin with. He was derided for some time afterwards as “Spot Lincoln” for his comments.

All of this leads up to the point where the Good Old Days for the slave owners officially came to an end. The argument over whether they could take their most valuable property (slaves) into the new territories that came from the invasion of Mexico was to be the rock that the Union finally split upon. It was a state’s right issue. The Southern states firmly believed they had the right to carry their slaves into any territory of the US. They not only believed this, they understood it was completely necessary to keep Cotton king. If they couldn’t get new land for King Cotton to expand into Queen Slavery would collapse. The value of their slaves, the most valuable thing they possessed by a large margin, depended wholly on finding new land for King Cotton.

The attempted nomination of Stephen Douglas at the Democratic convention of 1860 was enough for the slave owners to walk out of the convention. Douglas had spoken heresy when he had espoused that the new territories should be allowed to vote whether they wanted to allow slavery or not. He didn’t suggest that slaves should be abolished. He didn’t say that slavery was a bad thing. As a matter of fact, he had very publicly avowed it to be a positive good and stated that everyone knew blacks to be hopelessly and inherently inferior to whites in numerous exchanges with Abraham Lincoln just a couple of years earlier in a set of widely publicized debates. He simply said that people should be allowed to vote whether they wanted it to exist in the new territories or not. This was more than the slave owners could stand. They had outlawed the very mention of the word slavery in the halls of Congress for many years previous. The very idea that slaves might be disavowed by a popular vote in the territories was enough for them to get up and walk out of the Democratic Convention.

When they walked out of their own convention the slave owners sealed their own fate and allowed Abraham Lincoln to be elected president. If Douglas’ nomination was so terrible an insult they simply couldn’t be expected to stand for the election of a man who had suggested that slavery was a moral wrong. Lincoln’s promises that he wouldn’t interfere with slavery where it existed was beside the point. The institution would collapse on its own if it couldn’t spread and they knew it. Slavery at the time was a parasitic institution. It was profitable as long as there was a constant and rapid increase in property on which to grow King Cotton. Anything else tended to destroy the real wealth of the South; Queen Slavery.

The Good Old Days of the South died a slow and excruciatingly painful death from 1860 to 1865. King Cotton and the forceful eradication of Queen Slavery killed the South and a large segment of the young population of the North during that time. The wealthy became poor, the poor died in massive futile battles and the land itself never really recovered. A whole society turned upside down in just a few short years and everyone involved suffered mightily. The Lost Cause scenario wherein the prime blood of the South bled itself dry on countless battlefields ignores the fact that King Cotton committed suicide when the slave owners walked out of the Democratic Convention of 1860. It also ignores the fact that very basis of the Lost Cause was the belief that one race of men can wholly own another. It ignores the fact that the race they believed was as inferior as to be blessed by God to die without the freedom of their own person, their children or their very soul working for slave owners don’t see that time as the Good Old Days. They correctly see slavery and the horrors it wreaked upon everyone involved as an abomination that we should be deeply ashamed of as a nation.

The Good Old Days of the Lost Cause were not so good for a lot of people. As a matter of fact, they were a living hell for literally millions of people enslaved and kept in perpetual base slavery strictly based upon the pigment of their skin. The Lost Cause died a painful death but it was pain well deserved and infinitely earned for hundreds of years of forceful abuse of a whole race of people for profit. I think of that every time I see some ignorant redneck flying a rebel flag. It’s bad enough to be raised in a belief system that tells you that slavery is good; that God justifies it in the Bible without opening your eyes to the horror of it as many of the slave owners themselves were. It is simply inexcusable to be willfully ignorant enough to ignore history because you don’t like what actually happened in preference to fairy tales about Lost Causes and the Good Old Days.

Heat Lightning Thoughts

Sometimes a thought flashes across my brain like heat lightning, permanently searing a new path through the synaptic fibers that connect thought patterns to habits. It creates a short circuit that opens up my mind to new avenues of understanding. I had one of those the other night while reading a book about genetics; more specifically the history of our understanding of genetics.

The author made a rather off handed comment about one of the scientific researchers who helped us understand how DNA controls heredity. The comment was extraneous to the story but it instantly forged a new connection in my mind. The comment concerned the fact that most new discoveries are made by scientists and researchers when they are young. He gave examples of Einstein and most of the Nobel Prize winners in genetics. Most of the truly monumental connections are made by scientists/researchers when they are very young; before they are thirty.

It immediately seemed counterintuitive to me. Why should this be so? I can see why athletes peak in their twenties as their reflexes, strength, agility, and recovery from physical injury are all at peak performance. Even then, a lot of key positions in sports that require the most mental concentration tend to shift that peak towards 30. This seems perfectly logical to me in that it is simply experience converging into higher skill levels. As experience increases things seem to slow down in time as you will often hear top athletes talking about the pace of the game becoming more manageable. I tend to think that is simply the brain becoming more efficient at making the necessary decisive connections when presented with repeatable patterns but in any case it does seem that experience in certain positions in sports increases performance levels.

The thought puzzled me for a moment or two but then I went back to my reading and relegated it to my subconscious, making a mental note to come back to it later. The next morning when I got up it had been churning around in my subconscious all night and I had a theory as to why such a seemingly counterintuitive thing might be true. My answer wasn’t fully formed yet but it was quite a different way of viewing the issue.

It would seem at first glance that scientific research would be one of the professions where success would increase with experience. After all, the more you know the more easily your mind makes connections between cause and effect. In my own field of work I know that my experience has served to increase my understanding of complex issues. The more I learn about different kinds of systems the more easily I can spot problems with combined systems. I think the same can be said for many people who do diagnostics type work. If a person is basically curious and takes the time to understand how each component in a system works they will be able to mental diagnostics and narrow the possibilities of any one component failure down very quickly. This is done by running mental scenarios for component failures, recognizing cause and effect correlations or lack thereof without actually doing physical testing. By the time you have exhausted all the possibilities in this manner you have narrowed the possibilities considerably, often to the point of one or two components. This process becomes second nature with experience and the wider the experience the quicker the diagnostics in almost all situations.

What had somehow come to my subconscious during the night was that leaps of intuition require a freedom from ingrained thought processes of any kind. Krishnamurti called it “freedom from the known” in one of his books that is still in print. He was referring to the ability to free yourself from the past in order to fully experience the now. I had read this book many years ago and it made quite an impression on me at the time as far as how to live a good life. Yet here it was again, reasserting itself into a highly technical question. Why are scientist/researchers more successful when they are young? The author of the book I was reading suggested that scientific research is so slow and painstakingly detailed that it may tend to burn people out. I suppose this could be true but in general people who like doing such painstaking, slow work continue to like doing it throughout their life. You either like doing this kind of work or you don’t and I suspect it has little to do with age.

I think it is quite simply freedom from the known that allows such great intuitive leaps in science. When we are young we are more open to such free association moments, perhaps a great deal more open than when we get older. As a matter of fact, the more we know about any one subject the less our tendency to connect that subject to others in general. We begin focusing on the tree and become less aware of the forest. Perhaps it takes someone free from existing knowledge to make these connections in their mind. I have long thought that the first step to learning anything is to first admit that you don’t know it. Perhaps what we do know begins to block our ability to make seemingly unlikely connections in our thought processes. In other words perhaps we lose our ability to make intuitive connections in favor of pattern recognition that comes with more experience.

You Can't Make this Stuff Up.....

This is an actual transcript from President Trump's speech on Black History Month..... No one could make this stuff up.

Well this is Black History Month, so this is our little breakfast, our little get-together. Hi Lynn, how are you? Just a few notes.

During this month, we honor the tremendous history of African-Americans throughout our country. Throughout the world, if you really think about it, right? And their story is one of unimaginable sacrifice, hard work, and faith in America. I’ve gotten a real glimpse—during the campaign, I’d go around with Ben to a lot of different places I wasn’t so familiar with. They’re incredible people.

And I want to thank Ben Carson, who’s gonna be heading up HUD. That’s a big job. That’s a job that’s not only housing, but it’s mind and spirit. Right, Ben?

And you understand, nobody’s gonna be better than Ben.

Last month, we celebrated the life of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., whose incredible example is unique in American history. You read all about Dr. Martin Luther King a week ago when somebody said I took the statue out of my office. It turned out that that was fake news. Fake news. The statue is cherished, it’s one of the favorite things in the—and we have some good ones. We have Lincoln, and we have Jefferson, and we have Dr. Martin Luther King. But they said the statue, the bust of Martin Luther King, was taken out of the office. And it was never even touched. So I think it was a disgrace, but that’s the way the press is.

Very unfortunate.I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things. Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I noticed. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and millions more black Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact.I’m proud to honor this heritage and will be honoring it more and more.

The folks at the table in almost all cases have been great friends and supporters.

Darrell—I met Darrell when he was defending me on television. And the people that were on the other side of the argument didn’t have a chance, right? And Paris has done an amazing job in a very hostile CNN community. He’s all by himself. You’ll have seven people, and Paris. And I’ll take Paris over the seven. But I don’t watch CNN, so I don’t get to see you as much as I used to. I don’t like watching fake news. But Fox has treated me very nice. Wherever Fox is, thank you.

We’re gonna need better schools and we need them soon. We need more jobs, we need better wages, a lot better wages. We’re gonna work very hard on the inner city. Ben is gonna be doing that, big league. That’s one of the big things that you’re gonna be looking at. We need safer communities and we’re going to do that with law enforcement. We’re gonna make it safe. We’re gonna make it much better than it is right now. Right now it’s terrible, and I saw you talking about it the other night, Paris, on something else that was really—you did a fantastic job the other night on a very unrelated show.I’m ready to do my part, and I will say this: We’re gonna work together. This is a great group, this is a group that’s been so special to me. You really helped me a lot.

If you remember I wasn’t going to do well with the African-American community, and after they heard me speaking and talking about the inner city and lots of other things, we ended up getting—and I won’t go into details—but we ended up getting substantially more than other candidates who had run in the past years. And now we’re gonna take that to new levels. I want to thank my television star over here—Omarosa’s actually a very nice person, nobody knows that. I don’t want to destroy her reputation but she’s a very good person, and she’s been helpful right from the beginning of the campaign, and I appreciate it. I really do. Very special.


The knock on Bush II used to be that he wasn't very bright. He was Einstein reborn compared to this narcissistic moron. Someone please give him a teleprompter, a speechwriter, and the common sense to use them. "Frederick Douglass did an amazing job and is being recognized more and more"... One paragraph non specifically describing great African Americans and the rest of the speech is self congratulatory crap and more attacks against anyone who dares point out his continual nonsensical boasting and basic lack of understanding on virtually every subject that comes up.

If a teacher in any fifth grade social studies class in America assigned Black History Month to the class and asked the students to come up with a short speech this would be a failing grade. The depths of this man's ignorance are breathtaking. The fact that he is now our president is as astounding as it is disgusting.

LB Shepherd's Auto Parts

I married into a 1983 Camaro with T-Tops and a crappy electrical system. This car was the calling card that led to me knowing Gary Royster and LB Shepherd. Gary ran a little auto repair business out of a rather large garage behind his house. Gary was an excellent mechanic and serviced most of the people’s cars around Morgan City when they needed work. He usually had four or five cars in the garage and several more parked beside his driveway that were waiting on him to get to them. He was a distant cousin to my new bride as he had somehow married into the same rather extended clan as well. I was to learn right after I met her that most of Morgan City, Lacey’s Springs, and Union Grove was at least partially kin to this same clan. I could never keep up with how but we were always running into someone I had never met that was a distant cousin of hers.

As her car was often in need of service, I got to know Gary pretty well over the next couple of years. I could work on my own vehicles with enough expertise to fix basic problems but I also came to depend on Gary for keeping my own vehicles running when I couldn’t figure out that problem myself. Gary was rather small and trim, maybe 5’6” or so with very dark eyes and eyebrows under reddish blonde hair. He always had a greasy cap on his head and usually had a pair of blue coveralls on that were more or less covered in dirt and grease. He walked quickly with a kind of natural athletic grace to his step. Whatever quickness there was to Gary in his physical movements, he offset this with the slow deliberateness of his conversation. He always seemed to take a very long time to respond to any question; as if he were turning it over and over in his mind to find the best handle to grab it by before he even considered answering the question. There was ALWAYS a long pause between questions and answers, no matter what kind of question; even if it was just to ask him how he was doing. It wasn’t that he was slow witted, he was just very careful how he handled conversation.

He kept an ever-present rag in his pocket that always came out to wipe his hands on before he did anything. I can still see it appearing almost magically in his hand every time he set a tool down or started into any sort of activity out from under a car hood. His hands were small and square with the promise of the confidence he had whenever anything mechanical came into his immediate possession. I got to know Gary pretty well in the next few years as the Camaro was a poorly designed piece of engineering that we continually threw money at to keep running.

LB Shepherd was a good friend of Gary's and to say he was a character is putting it mildly. He ran a little auto parts store right beside his house on the outskirts of Morgan City. It was on the right side of Highway 231 where the Union Grove Road split off of to go to Scant City. LB was in his early sixties when I met him and had been running that auto parts store for many years then. It was very small and packed full of parts of every kind. When you walked in the front door you wondered how anyone could find anything in that mess but LB knew right where everything was and he usually immediately knew if he had the part you needed once he had it “isolated”. LB was big on isolation of problems. I think that was his favorite thing in the world really, as he was always a little disappointed if you came in the door knowing what part you needed. He wanted to help you “isolate” the problem.

If he couldn’t “isolate” the problem he would pick up the phone and call Gary Royster to get his help. It was kind of like having an expert on speed dial. The problem was that they usually disagreed at first. LB would often figure out what he thought the issue was but call Gary to confirm his suspicion. This was fine if Gary agreed but when he didn’t agree it could get complicated and take a while with them “discussing” over the phone.

A typical “isolation” issue with LB would involve someone coming in the store with a car issue of one kind or another. LB’s front door had one of those little bells on the top of it that rang whenever someone opened the door. No matter what else was going on this bell ringing was quickly followed by LB dropping whatever he was doing to assure the potential customer that he would “Be with him directly.”

“Directly” wasn’t a specific measure of time as much as it was an expression of intent. In other words, LB intended on helping them as soon as whatever present issue he was battling with was taken care of. Whenever this was accomplished, whether it was stocking the coke machine with bottles or helping another customer LB would smile directly at the customer and say “What can I help you with?”

LB was around 5’4” tall and probably very nearly was wide as he was tall. He carried a little bit of a belly but he was mostly just wide. He always wore green work pants and rubber soled black shoes with the thin little laces n them. He usually had on a clean little windbreaker jacket and a collared, thin-cotton plaid shirt under it He had thinning slicked back hair, a rather large and prominent nose and friendly light colored eyes that seemed to be either laughing or getting ready to laugh all the time. He gave the impression of someone who thought everything was funny and for the most part I think that was true with the possible exception of when he was trying to “isolate” a problem.

He also talked with an accent that was pure Morgan City. If there was any doubt where he was from it was only from people who didn’t know what a Morgan City accent sounded like. He moved quickly like he was always in a hurry and kept a whole counter full of those old auto parts books that only exist in computer hard drives today. The books were on a raised metal platform and seemed to have thousands of pages crammed together into each book that measured some 24 inches across. LB had worn the pages thin thumbing through them referencing parts to models and makes but he knew them so well it never took him long to find the correct page once he had “isolated” the problem.

A typical “isolation” issue would start out as follows:

Customer- I got a 74 Ford Galaxy with a V8 in it. It’s missing a little bit when I start up a hill.

LB- “302 Windsor?”

Customer- “Yes”

LB- “What kind of a miss is it?”

Customer- “Well…. it just stutters when I mash the gas pedal sometimes, usually on a hill. “

LB-“What you done to it so far?”

Customer- “I checked the plugs and plug wires but I’m not sure if it’s electrical or a fuel issue.”

LB- “Where you get your gas?”

Customer- “Always the same place. I run the same gas in my truck too so I don’t think it’s bad.”

LB- “OK…. What’s she sound like?”

This is where the conversation would start to get surreal. LB put great store in what things sound like. He was always concerned about vacuum leaks on carburetors. I think he had been stumped bad on a vacuum leak one time and had never gotten over it. He was forever suspicious of vacuum leaks after that. If you were a regular customer you knew to be prepared to mimic the sound that the car made when the problem occurred. If you weren’t, you usually had to get him to repeat his question so you could compute why anyone would ask such a question.

LB- “Does it wheeze?”

This question would be followed by his best impression of a vacuum leak.

LB- “WHhhhhhhhh…..” with his lips pursed together while he sucked in air as loudly as he could.

Customer- “Uh… no, I didn’t hear anything like that?”

LB- “Well you are lucky then. Them little vacuum leaks can be the very devil himself to find”

LB- “Does she jerk and grunt real hard when she starts missing?”

This question would be followed by LB jerking his head up and down while he grunted violently “UNH, UNH, UNH”

LB-“Or is more like a soft little rounded off stutter?”

This question would be followed by a slow craning in and out of his neck, “Mm…Mm…. Mm”

Customer- (Assuming they weren’t standing there with their mouth open in distress from LB’s emphatic gyrations) “Well…. I think it’s closer to the second one.”

LB- Scratching his head as he thought about it for a second or two. “74 Galaxie Windsor. Good gas. Good plugs. No vacuum leaks that we know of. And, Mm…Mm…Mm on the hills.” As he repeated the slow craning in and out of his neck while he scratched his head and looked at the floor.

LB- “Well. I can’t be certain but I do believe I’ve got it isolated. Let me call someone; just to check my figuring.” He would say as he headed for the phone on the counter.

With this pronouncement he would walk to the phone and call Gary Royster. I have been a witness to both sides of this conversation. I have been in Gary’s shop when LB would call and I have been in LB’s shop when he would call Gary and it always amazed me that neither one of them thought anything out of the way about their conversations. Gary never seemed to mind LB calling and LB never said anything in the way of greeting when he did.

LB- “Man’s got a 74 Galaxie V8 that’s missing on hills. No WHHhhhhh that he can hear, good gas, and she doesn’t Unh, Unh, Unh; but something like this. Mm….Mm…Mm…. and she doesn’t do it all the time… Fuel filter? I’d say partially clogged.”

There was always a long pause then, on both sides of the line. Gary didn’t answer anything quick; especially if it had to do with troubleshooting a car problem. If Gary agreed with the “isolation” he would eventually say “could be”. “Could be” was a strong affirmation. There was also the longer pause and “Mebby”. “Mebby” meant maybe but not with a lot of conviction. Either of these would usually be followed by LB either saying thank you are going into some more clues to the riddle that he might have left off hoping for a “Could be” response.

What LB didn’t want to hear was the dreaded “Couldn’t say”. “Couldn’t say” was Gary speak for “I don’t think so but you do what you think is best.” I never knew of Gary saying LB was wrong or even suggesting something else that could be the issue but he may have done it when I wasn’t around. Usually when they didn’t agree as to the root cause, LB would simply keep making possible suggestions until he got a “Mebby” out of Gary. This could take a while, between LB’s mimicking of every possible car a sound could make and Gary’s long pauses while he considered things inside out.

All of this would play out in LB’s store whether he had one person waiting or 5 people waiting. He didn’t mind selling you a new belt or a set of spark plugs but he loved “isolating” problems. The truth is that he was pretty good at it too. He helped me out on more than one occasion by insisting that we “isolate” the problem before he sold me a part. If you were in a hurry you probably shouldn’t be in LB Shepherd’s Auto Parts to begin with.

Political Leanings

I grew up in a very independent minded way. I questioned conventional wisdoms almost from the very beginning. If things didn't ultimately make sense with what I saw all around me, I wanted to know why. If things didn't seem to meet my expectations of what I thought was fair I wanted to know why. This need to know, the hunger to know why things actually function in the way that they do has been a constant in my thinking for as along as I can remember. It has driven my working life and my personal life in ways that seem quite natural to me but are often seen as incomprehensible by others. I can't say that I am completely unconcerned with what others think about me but it has never been enough of a concern for me to go against my own judgment of situations to accommodate anyone else's opinion about it.

This constant questioning of why has manifested itself in many different ways in my life. Some of them have not been comfortable or easy. I didn't go to college because there was nothing it offered me that I felt I couldn't learn on my own and I have always much preferred to learn on my own. In just the last few years I learned that there is a term for this mentality or approach; it is called autodidactism. An autodidact prefers to learn in an informal environment, usually outside of group settings. In my case I have always learned in this manner. In school, I would listen in class but I did my learning by myself; carefully going over the material in my own solitude without outside interference or input. I have always retained knowledge better in this manner. It is simply what works best for me and I suspect there are more people with this tendency than our educational systems realize but that is a subject for another day.

I was in high school when I first became interested enough in politics to pay attention to elections. I can remember local politics and Alabama State politics from much earlier but wasn't really interested enough to dig down into issues for my own understanding. I knew quite a bit about certain subjects that interested me but it was more from a historical perspective than any political ideology. Both my father and mother voted but I can't honestly say how they voted in any election; I think they believed it to be a duty having to do with living in a democratic form of government. I remember meeting some people in high school who were very politically oriented and were active supporters of Ronald Reagan in his first run for the president in 1976. When Ford won the nomination I remember being confused when these same people began actively supporting him over Jimmy Carter. It seemed strange to me that people who had been so adamantly against Ford just a few weeks previously were now overwhelmingly for him. It seemed somehow dishonest to me. It also was my first recognition that party politics are problematic.

I wasn't a big fan of Carter at the time. He seemed pious and placating and I had my own issues with organized religion by then that led me to believe he wouldn't be a good president. Carter proved to be a better president than I thought he would be. I admired his stance on human rights and the idea that our foreign policy should be a better reflection of our basic support of human rights. I believe he is one of the more honest national politicians we have had the privelege of having in office in my lifetime. I also believe that his inability to delegate and his detail oriented approach to policy often got in the way of his success but these are opinions I formed a long time afterwards. What I felt at the time was the same thing most everyone else did; the long term results of some very bad economic policy decisions by the Federal Reserve. These decisions led to the Fed's successful campaign to eradicate inflation at the expense of employment and growth. While this campaign was ultimately a success it was an economic recession producing policy that made jobs scarce and interest rates very high.

In the 1980 election, I was paying even less attention to politics. I was struggling to get started in a career as an electrician in an economy where construction was almost non-existant. While I wasn't naive enough to believe that it was Carter's policies alone that had led to this situation, I couldn't see where his policies were doing a lot to alleviate the situation either. If anyone asked me who I was supporting, I would tell them John B. Anderson. Not because I supported his policy goals but because he wasn't running as a Republican or a Democrat and I had some vague notion that party politics were the real cause of the problems we were experiencing but I didn't really know how that was happening.

When the economy turned around in the mid eighties I was happy about it like everyone else. I didn't pay much attention to politics throughout most of the eighties as I had little interest. I felt like my vote didn't matter very much in the long run and was pretty disgusted with what I saw as a power struggle between two parties that really favored little except their own advancement and continued power. I had little or no understanding of the real levers of power in this country that were running both parties from behind the scenes.

I paid more attention during the Clinton years but wasn't too happy with what I saw. Clinton seemed the ultimate politician with little or no real principle but an overwhelmingly strong drive for power. I remember hearing him described as the trial balloon master; put out some feelers, look at poll data and then decide what you believe in as a policy. I still think this is a pretty accurate description of Bill Clinton. It seemed to me that conservatives hated him as much for his success as any perceived policy positions that he took. His second term was, in my opinion the first steps toward the disaster that was to become the fiscal collapse of 2008 were taken by Clinton when he started deregulating the banking industry in ways that had not been done since the Great Depression.

I didn't recognize this at the time of course. When Bush II ran for president I was a lukewarm supporter. I never cared much for Al Gore as he seemed to slick by far. I became very interested in the election snafu in Florida. The case interested me because it was so unique. It was the first time in my lifetime that an election had been close enough to possibly be decided in the Supreme Court. Having researched the state supreme court's decision in Florida it seemed pretty obvious to me that Bush II would prevail as the ruling simply said you couldn't change the recount rules DURING an election. This made perfect sense to me and I didn't see it as a way to steal and election; just a way to make sure that the rules in effect at the start of an election are in place when the elections is decided.

I always thought Bush II was something of a buffoon and a bumbling idiot. I just liked him better than Gore. I had no party affiliation at the time and was adamantly opposed to the idea of blindly supporting a party in the first place. When 9-11 happened a lot of things began to change in my thinking. I suppose this is true for a lot of people but probably not in the same way that I was changing. I felt like we had to respond to that action with overwhelming force against the people who had been responsible for it. I was also not completely convinced that we responded against all the people who had been responsible for it. The Taliban in Afghanistan were obviously supporting Bin Laden and had to go accordingly. I had no issue with the actions we took there. Iraq I was much less sure about. After reading the official 9-11 report later I am now convinced that the other prominent actor in the scenario was Saudi Arabia. At the time of the Iraqi invasion I didn't see it as a terribly bad idea to get rid of Hussein. He was obviously a continuing problem in the middle east and I equated it to putting down a mad dog. If you see a mad dog in your neighbors yard do you have to wait for him to come into your yard before you put him down?

I became interested enough to delve more deeply into the long term policies that had led to 9-11. I was amazed that almost no politician in the national view tried to do the same thing. The fact of the situation is that US foreign policy in the middle east since WWII in support of our dependence on foreign oil has been a long term disaster. We have again and again supported dictatorial leaders who continuously abused their own people simply because they would sell us oil. The troubles in Iran, the troubles in Iraq, the troubles in Afghanistan, can all be traced to US foreign policy decisions in the middle east that were all put in place for two reasons. The first is our need for a large and uninterrupted flow of oil from the region and the second goes back to our long term cold war policies against any regime that became an ally of the USSR.

Add in our continuous and unquestioning support of some regimes in Israel that have attacked other nations in the region and have continually ignored UN rulings concerning lands they have taken over by force and we have long been the worst enemy of a very large contingent of downtrodden people all over the middle east. We are continually surprised that these people hate the US so much when in fact we have given them every reason to do so by propagating foreign policy that supports their oppressors in every possible way. Until we start to understand this reality and take it into account in our foreign policy decisions in the middle east this will not change.

We need an energy policy that removes our dependence on foreign oil. We have needed one for at least 40 years in a very desperate way but are no closer to having one than we were in 1976. Through a large amount of government support and research we have managed to learn how to frack oil and remove it from areas that were once thought to be too hard to get to in order to be economically viable as sources of energy. While this is a good thing in case of national emergency, it is not economically responsible to suggest that oil that costs $65- $75 a barrel to get out of the ground can compete in an open market with oil that costs $12 -$15 dollars a barrel to get out of the ground in the middle east. Add in the fact that the more expensive fracked oil is also more expensive to refine and the picture becomes even clearer. It is not a viable solution in today's market. The OPEC nations just conclusively proved that once again by opening the taps of their supply wide enough to destroy this nasccent enterprise in the US. They have done the same thing on several different occasions when the US have attempted to relieve our dependence on foreign oil through infrastructure development in renewable energy sources. They want us dependent on their oil. It gives them power and wealth and none of the major suppliers in the middle east want to see that change. There are solutions to this problem but we don't seem interested in pursuing them at the moment because a lot of US corporations are also dependent on this same system for their power and wealth.

Doing research after the invasion of Iraq by US forces, I am now convinced that the whole thing was a disastrous mistake. This doesn't excuse the fact that myself nor most other Americans recognized it at the time. A lot of the leading actors in the Bush II administration had been in favor of such an invasion long before 9-11 because they felt it was necessary to remove Hussein and they also believed that we could use Iraqi oil to change the dynamic with OPEC. With the collapse of the USSR this policy became even more attractive to this same group as they believed they could now do this unilaterally without interference. Several of the top people in the administration also directly profited from this venture. Largescale efforts to privatize the US support services in Iraq directly enriched both the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense amongst others. No bid multi-million dollar contracts for such support services were handed out like Halloween candy to many top Republican operatives throughout the war. While a certain amount of this type of activity has often come to the fore in US military actions, we have seldom, if ever, seen it done so blatantly from top administration officials.

Then came the economic collapse of 2008. Not only had the Bush II administration involved us in 2 wars that they hadn't bothered to pay for, they also managed to continue to de-regulate the banking industry and ignore all the warning signs that a certain amount of regulation is necessary in order for free markets to avoid becoming rigged games that reward those in charge while they defraud everyone else. The unlimited free markets crowd has still not recognized this very basic fact of economics. What the large banking interests in the US did in the years leading up to the collapse was criminal. Designing, packaging and selling knowingly worthless financial instruments to their customers is the very definition of fraud. Add to that the fact that they then went and designed other financial instruments that were solely and strictly designed to allow them to profit when all the fraudulent instruments collapsed world markets and you have a complete circle of criminal behavior that they profited obscenely in setting up and then profited obscenely in watching it collapse.

In many ways, the fiscal collapse changed my political views more than any of these other events. I simply couldn't understand what was happening to our economy in 2007-2008. It didn't make sense why the problem was so prevalent or why the dollar amounts needed to curb it were so massive. I spent most of the ensuing period studying economics. I wanted to understand what had happened. In the process I learned a lot of things that I simply didn't know before. The Federal Reserve's influence on the economy, how ratings systems work, how derivatives work, what the shadow banking industry is, the difference between banks and investment houses, how the government subsidizes mortgages but still allows private entities to profit from this subsidization, the list goes on and on. Each new discovery also pointed to five more avenues that led to other discoveries. I understand what happened now and have written about it pretty extensively in this blog. See "What Really Happened.... a virtual tale" for a condensed version.

This understanding has forever changed my political views as well. I shape all my voting decisions around the understanding of which party is most opposed to this type of activity. I see the financial industry and its continuing efforts to carry out this type of activity as the greatest danger to the survival of our country today. Not only the US economy, but the world economy is dependent on getting these people under control and keeping this from happening on that scale again. Most people don't understand that we still have not paid for the hole they put us in financially. The huge federal deficit and the unprecedented debt that the Federal Reserve has taken on to keep things afloat is still there. As our economy slowly begins to revive people don't understand how fragile the US economy still is because of these realities. We don't have the means of carrying out another bailout, we spent all our reserves and most of our international credit as the economic engine of the world keeping us from total collapse since 2008.

This isn't the only issue that I care about. It is the one I believe we have to take care of or face collapse. If the full faith and credit of the US government collapses none of the other issues we all care about will matter as a nation because we will cease to exist as a nation. Our world position has always depended on our economic strength and we face the very real possibility of destroying that forever with another such collapse. Meanwhile, the large banks and financial institutions that designed the disaster and grew even larger as a result of it have managed to increase their political control over the only entity that is a natural check or balance on their power; the US government. They have placed one of their own directly in charge of the US Treasury. At least the Republican president elect has nominated him for that position. This man participated in the development of the financial instruments that were worthless. He profited obscenely from the sale of these instruments and then later profited obscenely from the destruction of a lot of homeowners who got caught up in the mortgage debacle that resulted. He profited obscenely from government bailouts of the very entities that caused the disaster. There is absolutely no reason to believe that he will now act responsibly in trying to clean up the mess he helped create and became very rich designing.

There are a lot of reasons to believe that we have now put the foxes completely in charge of the henhouses that the government is supposed to protect. The US government is the only entity that is large and powerful enough to oppose these forces and we have just handed it to someone who is steadily putting the very people who oppose government control in charge of the offices designed to provide government control. Look across the board at Trump's designated department head appointees and you will see that in almost every case they have a long history of fighting against the regulatory agency they have been designated to lead.

The people have spoken. Now let them try to live with what they asked for. I sincerely hope this administration doesn't destroy what is left of the US economy but I also believe that they will inevitably advance towards that destruction because of the very nature of the people who are leading it. They believe we need to further weaken the government's power to regulate industry. Like anything else there is a fine balance between too much and not enough regulation. It seems obvious to me that we have erred much too much on the side of deregulation when it comes to most US industries. It is beyond question that this is the case with the financial industry.