Clinton, Hillary that is

When I look back at the Presidents I have known, basically Eisenhower through Obama, I wonder which one would Hillary be most like.  Of course she won't be too close mainly because the world has changed.  In her case I don't think gender is going to be an issue except for some personal issues like wardrobe.  I refuse to go there.

OK how about Eisenhower, best known for playing golf and the Interstate Highway System.  He had to add "and Defense" to the title to get it passed.  He also sent the 82nd Airborne to Little Rock to integrate the High School. In the light of history he looks better now, but I can't see HRC playing golf while there are Conservatives to annoy.

Kennedy wow Charismatic but unfortunately ineffectual against a hostile congress.  HRC definitely not charismatic, instead she gets things done often letting others take the credit.

LBJ  the one referred to more by his initials than his name.  Zero for charisma, but A plus for getting things done. Thinds that Kennedy hoped for but couldn't get through Congress.  If he had gone the other way on Vietnam he would be a roll model for HRC.

Nixon,   No one is as secretive, slippery and underhanded as Tricky Dick. Not even close.

Gerry Ford One of the nicest guys in the White House. No major goof ups (except pardoning Nixon). No leadership either.  Nope

Jimmy Carter, another nice guy.  Too nice.  Not a bomb dropped of bullet fired.  His Foreign Policy resulted in the collapse of every dictator in Latin America except Castro, eventually, but Iran brought him down. Too indecisive.  Nope

Reagan. The Patron Saint of the GOP, in spite of his crimes, like Iran-Contra, and his multiple tax increases.  The Teflon President.  Maybe Trump thinks he's Teflon too.  But HRC is the Velcro candidate everything sticks to her at least according to the GOP.

Poppy Bush.  War Hero, lifetime civil servant, victim of an economic crisis he could not fathom. HRC gets 1 of 3 on this one.

Bill Clinton lets not go there. His best move was marrying her.

Bush II He let Cheney run the country from the White House basement, you know HRC will be in the middle of everything.

Obama, the cautious deep thinker, some times slow on the draw.  HRC has already made up her mind on most issues and will browbeat anyone who gets in the way until it's a done deal like LBJ.  Some people would not take that as a compliment.

Conservatives

What do conservatives conserve?  Conserve: protect (something, especially an environmentally or culturally important place or thing) from harm or destruction. Based on their political behavior we seem to have a contradiction, but that is based on emphasizing the parenthetical.  That which they really conserve i.e. protect, is their own privilege, wealth and power.  There are basically 2 kinds of conservatives.

The conservative leadership is dominated by white, old, rich, men (WORMS).  To give them credit they are very good at raising banners that collect followers who do not fit the whole description, but meet at least one of the criteria.

The other kind, are the idealogs who believe in the conservative philosophy even if it is not working so well for them, they may be comfortable farmers, or small businessmen.  Another group are those whose work atmosphere is authoritarian: police, military.  They call for less government for themselves, but law-and-order for those that they perceive as Liberals or undeserving. Typically the conservative has not been the victim of discrimination so they do not perceive it as a problem.  Very few conservatives are a member of a minority.  They tend to support discrimination e.g. complex voter ID rules, and regressive taxation e.g. retail sales tax on food.   

Conservatives unite on anti-liberalism, without ever defining Liberal. They often give it the same inflection as vermin.   Liberal is not a species.  White American conservatism tends to unify on many seemingly disparate issues, pro-life, pro-death penalty.  Liberals on the other hand are famously disorganized, because by definition a liberal is one open to new ideas.  
Admittedly many are just as dogmatic about their individual core beliefs.  The ACLU has to adopt a vague position on the second amendment because they can’t risk losing Liberal members by supporting it the way they do the first.  Liberals often agree to disagree, unlike the GOP booing Ted Cruz for "Vote your conscience"

GOVERNMENT LIES

Or “governments lie”, the expressions are like yin and yang.  For twenty years the governments and all the self appointed safety Nazis told us the lower speed limit was saving lives.  When raising the speed limit to 65 on rural interstate highways in many states lowered the accident rate in those states, we were told oafishly, I mean officially, that the number of accidents on the rural interstates had increased.  Never mind that the traffic had increased twice as much as the accidents, or that statewide the accidents went down.  Governments lie, all governments.

Government also told us that raising the speed limit would not get us to our destination any faster.  American Association of State Highway and Traffic Officials claims a freeway carries the greatest number of cars past a given point at 30, that’s right 30, mph.  When the freeway speed limit was raised from 55 to 65mph the time from my house to the regional airport decreased from 3 hours to 2!

They ignored an important factor.  The faster traffic moves, the less time a given vehicle is on the highway.  If each vehicle spends less time on the highway, there are fewer vehicles on the highway at one time, and they all move even faster.

Government told us “Three Strikes and you're out” would be a mistake, the courts and the jails would overflow if we actually prosecuted felony repeat offenders and made them stay in jail.  The papers were full of anecdotal evidence.  Guess what, crime went down, the courts are getting caught up and the jails are doing as well as ever.  Government lies.  We were already putting repeat offenders in jail for life; we were just doing it on the installment plan.  We were giving the scum a new trial (at tremendous expense) every three to five years instead of just three times. Government insisted on ignoring the obvious:  Criminals can’t commit more crimes when they are locked up, and 80% of the crime is done by 20% of the criminals.  More crime is good for the police; more crime means bigger budgets.  More crime is good for politics; it gives lots of speech material.  More crime sells newspapers and increases television viewing too.  Everyone benefits from more crime, except the citizens, but who looks out for them?

Several states have passed laws allowing any honest citizen to obtain a concealed weapon permit.  Politicians predicted carnage and tell anecdotes about individual incidents.  Homicides went down in those states (39 states at last count). Governments lie.

We all expect politicians to lie to get elected, why do we think they will stop once in office.  It’s a lot easier to find or make up a problem to make a speech about, than it is to actually solve a real problem.  Government lies.

 “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”   (H.L. Mencken) 

The more frightening and less real the hobgoblin, the better.

Sometimes the government avoids lying by simply distorting language to the point where it is unrecognizable.  A fire becomes “rapid oxidation” (accelerated rusting?).  Airplanes don’t crash they “experience rapid energetic disassembly due to uncontrolled flight into terrain resulting from pilot induced instability.”  War is not war; it is “armed conflict.”  This becomes such a habit that it carries over into non-controversial items.  A shovel becomes a”combat emplacement evacuation device.”

Why do governments lie?  They lie because government is about governance, the exercise of power.

 “Government is not reason or eloquence, it is force...” (George Washington)

Those in power do whatever it takes to stay in power and increase that power.  So since lying is the easy way, lying is what they do.  When the liar is a foreign power, we call it propaganda.  When the liar is a dead religious leader we call it miracles.  When the liar is one of our beloved politicians we call it business as usual.

Governments rise to make laws, once empowered they become addicted and cannot stop themselves.  Laws appear for no visible reason except that someone has the power to make laws and makes a law that benefits him, or those who can in turn benefit him in one situation with no regard for how it affects everyone else.

The love of power causes all social organizations (governments, corporations, churches, and families) to deteriorate to a feudal structure; the most power hungry, ambitious, ruthless, s.o.b. rises to the top, those next in line suck up, and so on down the line.  Democracy merely tempers the way that people accrue power, so the succession is more orderly, and less bloody.  We get elected instead of assassinating the incumbent nevertheless power still accrues, not to those best able to serve mankind, but to those best able to grab it, the glibbest liars.  This is why we have a class of politicians.  Their talent is not their ability, just their elect-ability.  Why, for example, would we assume that someone who makes a good legislator, if there is such a critter, would make a good governor?  This makes only a little more sense than the old notion that the best warrior made the best king.

Today most politicians in America favor gun control. Why?  Because, an armed populace reduces government’s power.   The second amendment is about the people’s right to arm themselves in order to protect themselves.  Protect themselves from whom you ask.  Well, from rapists, robbers, muggers, murderers, looters, child molesters, gang bangers and all the other criminals that the police would like us to think they protect us from, but admit they cannot.  It is also about the people’s right to protect themselves from overzealous police officers who break down the wrong door and overzealous government in general.  Did you ever notice that while police chiefs (politicians) are consistently in favor of “gun control” police officers will often advise those with legitimate fear to “Get a gun, and learn how to use it”?

The first thing any dictator does upon seizing power is take over the broadcast stations, smash the printing presses and then go house to house confiscating guns.  The scary part is it’s happening here.  The Campaign Finance Reform act among other things puts a muzzle on independent publications. Do you think that is for the peoples benefit?   No, the thing that all politicians, especially dictators, fear is dilution of their power.  All politicians are power motivated, and fear more than anything else, including foreign invasion, an empowered populace, whether the empowerment comes from guns, or truth. 

Ironically the ballistophobic pundits, almost universally in favor of “gun control”, are encouraging would be dictators to do it in the reverse order.  First they came for the guns, but I was not a gun owner, so I did not speak out.  Then they came for the transmitters, but I was not a transmitter owner, so I did not speak out.  Then the came for the printing presses, but I was not a printing press owner, so I did not speak out....

It’s the same way with cars.  Henry Ford did more for the common man than all the political “leaders”' in history put together.  He gave us personal mobility, the ability to “vote with our feet.” at 35 mph, and bring along the family.  Politicians on the other hand feel compelled to restrict the use of cars, or add absurd requirements like arbitrary speed limits, bike lanes at the expense of traffic lanes, or zero emissions.  Why?  Because a man with a car, like a man with a gun, is a free man; he can go where he wants, when he wants, without the government’s permission, and politicians, no matter how they achieved their position of power cannot stand that.

What has this got to do with Expert witnesses?  Very little, what has it got to do with lawyers? Well, look who’s minding the store!

THE GREAT HIGHWAY ROBBERY

It is widely believed that government cannot solve problems, because most of the time government is the problem.  Often the government idea of a solution to one perceived problem is to create a new situation with problems of its own that aggravate the existing situation, and superimpose a bureaucracy to perpetuate the new status quo.   If they can't get us to do the politically correct thing by persuasion or force, then the next level is to make the efficient, but politically incorrect, inefficient by any means possible, and the politically correct, but inefficient superficially efficient, no matter what the cost.  

This isn’t about robbery upon the highway, this is about stealing our highways right out from under our tires.  A small, but politically correct, group is appropriating about twenty five per cent of our highway surface for their exclusive use.  They use politically correct irrelevant arguments and factual distortions to justify the theft.  Naturally, since their grab helps government restrict the rights of other citizens, they have the full support of government at every level.  On the other hand, more likely they are the unwitting tool, merely helping government do what it does, make life complicated, and inefficient.

Now I probably would not notice if their activities made things better, but that is not what is happening.  Entire lanes of busy roads are being set aside for the exclusive use of a small self declared elite who feel that their politically correct purpose supersedes the one for which the roads were built.  They get away with this by declaring that their way is the wave of the future.  They insist that their way will reduce traffic congestion, save energy, reduce pollution, save lives, and make the world safe for non-alcoholic beer.  Exactly how reducing the number of lanes available to traffic will accomplish any of these things takes a leap of logic that transcends even faith.  Faith, you will remember, is belief in something you know is not true.

Strangely, the beneficiaries of this “improvement” are notoriously the worst traffic violation offenders.  Traffic signals and stop signs are beneath them. Lane controls are irrelevant, as are all regulatory signs, markings and islands.  The distinction between street and sidewalk is merely an inconvenience because of curbs.  These Kamikazes can be seen running against the flow of traffic, or with it, above, or more often way below the speed limit, whatever suits them.  When below the speed limit, they prefer to travel three or four abreast so they can communicate with and be admired by one another.  The traffic jam behind them is irrelevant.  “No one has a right to go faster than us.”  They will get so close to your car that your mirrors can’t reveal them, and then sue you if they get hurt.  Even where they have commandeered highway lanes, they may use them or not, depending on what is more expedient.  Private property means nothing to them. A short cut is a short cut.

These charioteers will pay $400 for a part that weighs a gram less than the $10 one it replaces, yet prefer brakes that will not skid a wheel unless the road is lubricated.

When it gets dark, these erstwhile pilots really come into their own.  No sissy lights or reflectors for these guys.  ‘We don't got to show you no stinkin’ reflectors.”  If you can’t see black spandex in the dark, it’s your problem, and your insurance company’s, not theirs.    The latest lighting fad is a little red strobe light that, if it happens to be pointing right at you, is as blinding as a candle. More often, it’s safety pinned to a backpack, pointing at airplanes.  They have the same contempt for signaling that they have for lights. Where these guys are and what they are going to do next is none of your business, until after you’re sued.

Interestingly, these activists tend to be philosophically like the environmentalists who proclaimed 20 years ago we would all have to wear gas masks to go outside in 1995, and that we would run out of fossil fuels completely by 2,000.  Remember, “Better active today than radioactive tomorrow?”  I would suspect that they are the environmentalists of the seventies, except the way they operate, they would not have lasted that long.

If you think I'm exaggerating, go look for a place to park.  What used to be the shoulder or parking lane has become the “bike lane”, though one seldom sees a bike actually in it.  The bikes are everywhere else.  If they are in the bike lane, they will leave it impulsively and ride anywhere that’s expedient.

Anytime a municipality wants to prohibit parking without a good reason, they just call the location a “bike lane”.  The bike lane will mysteriously stop or start for no apparent reason, in mid-block or mid-intersection.  Other times bike lanes stop right at the edge of a busy intersection, or jump across lanes leading the rare conscientious rider into a trap, then abandoning him.  The few riders who do ride in the bike lane act as if there was a protective wall around them.   “You can’t hit me, nah nah, na nah nah, I’m in the bike lane”.   Come to think of it, they ride that way anywhere.  Totally oblivious to motor traffic they will weave across an on-ramp as though they were in a personal tunnel.  Let one of these self-righteous athletes crash into a car and guess who goes to a lawyer and a chiropractor, in that order.

Not that these enthusiasts are entirely to blame, the officials who consecrate “bike lanes” and the Federal Bozeaucrats that make them do it, encourage this form of Russian roulette.  Like a white line is going to keep the cars here and the bikes there.  Guess who loses no matter which one crosses the line, and whose insurance will go up.  Guess who earns a big fat contingency fee.  Hmmm, maybe it’s lawyers; excuse me, Consumer Attorneys, who are behind all this.

Let’s see how they will reduce traffic congestion, save energy, reduce pollution, save lives and make the world safe from low tar cigarettes.  Except for really short trips around the neighborhood a car is about 5 times as fast as a bike, so the bike will be in traffic 5 times as long, to make the same trip. (And exposed to five times as many accident opportunities.)   So even though they are not as wide, 100 bikes could take up as much length of road as 500 cars.  To eliminate this problem the Bozeaucrats demand that we create bike lanes.  If bikes stay in the bike lanes that are about half as wide as car lane and if the bike lane was being used to capacity, they argue, the bikes would take up hardly any space.  What’s wrong with this picture?  A lane can transmit up to 2,000 cars an hour.  Except for an organized event, have you ever seen 2,000 bikes pass a single point in one hour, one day, or even one week?  They want to take a lane that can convey 2,000 cars (about 3,000 commuters) an hour, and dedicate it to maybe 20-30 bike riders an hour. Of course if there were a bike lane, there would be more riders, maybe 100 per hour.  So there, take that, a bike lane could reduce car traffic up to 3%, while reducing the available road by 25% or so. 

Such a deal!

Safety?  According to the Department of Transportation statistics (guesses), bicycles accounted for 2% of highway fatalities last year, yet they have no idea how many miles are ridden.  Most agree bicycles are less than 1% of traffic.  I'll bet it isn’t even 1 tenth of a percent.  How many cars did you see on the highway today?  How many bicycles? How many bikes were going more than a mile?  The Feds admit that the average usage for all bicycles is less than 10 miles per month, and that 9% of bicyclists crash or fall each year.  That is one accident every 1200 miles!  Is this safe?  Can you imagine if someone got hurt in your car every month?  More contingency fees, higher insurance, maybe it’s a conspiracy.  Bicycle fatalities are kept in a separate database and can’t be correlated to other accidents.  Motorcycles, by the way, which are known to be 1% of vehicle registrations, represent 4% of fatalities

Fossil fuels and pollution:  Fifty billion bicycle miles instead of car miles, at 20 mpg would save two billion gallons of fuel.   They win that round.  Yeah, right.  If you consider what taking away 25% of the highway lanes does to congestion.  Remember a lane can handle up to 2,000 cars an hour. When the bikes take away a lane they force the same number of cars to use fewer lanes, so a road that could handle 8,000 cars an hour can only handle 6,000.  Where do the other 2,000 go, by bicycle?  Right again.  They’re sitting in traffic jams blocking the other 6,000 all with motors idling, burning fuel to stand still, and making more pollution.  Of those 2,000 drivers an hour we’re told should bike to work how many actually would, or could even if they wanted to?  What happens when it snows, or when the wind chill is 10 below?  Who is going to bike to work in Phoenix when its 120 degrees?  What about people who commute more than five miles, or have steep hills to climb?

O.K, bikes are easy to park.   And steal!

Run Government like a business

A common cry in election rhetoric is that government should run like a business.  There is a fundamental flaw in that logic. Unlike business, government has to provide some services that cannot be profitable unless they are corrupt for example police. How can law enforcement be a business?  Who would pay for it the 99% of the time they don’t feel they need it; or the Fire department?  There are too many things that government is expected to do, or be ready to do that can only be tax funded which means everyone must pay a share, hopefully a fair share, all the time.  You can’t wait until you are invaded then run out and buy an Army.  We all pay to educate today’s children so we will have tomorrow’s professionals.  A previous generation including those who had no children paid for our basic education.  Then there are public roads, parks, pensions, water, sewers, civil defense, zoning and so on.

True some government services, like the post office look like they can run like a business, most of the time. Even that has some limits, some things the post office does would not be done by a profit oriented business, like delivering to every single address, no matter how remote, inconvenient or dangerous.

If it could be run like a business, who would you want to run it?   A Henry Ford who created the modern middle class, or a Kenneth Lay of Enron, who made himself rich and defrauded millions?

at war

We are a nation at war. The enemy is not another super power or even another major power.  It is an asymmetric war.  This war is not like the asymmetric wars in the news where a powerful army is constantly embarrassed by the clever tactics of irregulars, sometimes called freedom fighters, sometimes called terrorists.  It is as old as civilization, and although we aspire to be fairer, we fail. The winning side is not even aware of this war; they just feel entitled to the benefits they reap without thinking about the situation of the other side. The rich and the poor are equally forbidden to steal bread and sleep under bridges.

In much of the world and much of history a ruling class, was entitled to take whatever they wanted from the lower classes, anything: food, money, sex, livestock, children, anything! The poor put up with it because they had no choice, no power, no mana. Sometimes Menehune is translated as little power. The ruling class was usually reinforced by the priest class offering the rulers moral justification in exchange for protection and a share of the loot.

Some radical came along and wrote:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

They had a little war over those words, won that war and assumed everything was OK, but it was not. Some were still slaves.   After a few more wars the words were taken a little more seriously until today we like to tell ourselves that I’m OK, you’re OK, but a lot of our neighbors are not OK.  Indeed some men (and women) are less equal than others.  The privileged have more limitations now, O.J. had to stand trial, but he could afford a legal dream team.  Still we have a legal system that is much harsher on the poor. What is a $50 parking ticket to someone making $500,000? How about someone making minimum wage? Someone who can’t afford a lawyer? Can fines be proportional to the ability to pay? Can we stop disrupting families by jailing breadwinners for non-violent offences?

We have progressive taxes that are not progressive because there are exceptions, loopholes for the privileged. Can’t we design an income tax without those special bargains?  We have regressive taxes like GET that hits hardest those who spend most of their ‘disposable’ income on things that are subject to the tax, like food, instead of investments, legal advice, aircraft service and foreign vacations.  Social Security tax has an upper limit, no matter how much you earn, after $118,000 income the effective rate goes down.

The main cause of poverty is the original sin of being born poor. Sure some people overcome it, some by hard work, some by luck and some by cheating, but the field in not level. Entry level workers have very little bargaining power, a job offer is usually, take it or leave it. Once hired it is often deemed employment at will, meaning the employer can terminate at any time.  Minimum wage has hardly changed for over 20 years, while the cost of living has increased significantly.  An increase in minimum wage is good for business.  “If they can’t buy the cars, who will?” Henry Ford. If they can’t buy the pizza, who will?

We can’t make everyone equally well off, that has been tried and it never works. What we can do is stop kicking people when they are down. I am not advocating socialism, just social justice, eliminate regressive policies, the asymmetrical war against the poor. 

I was wrong

I now see the error of my ways.  I thought of the war on drugs as pointless and ineffective. I now see it as perfect for what it is intended to do. Look what would happen if we ended the war. 

We have built the world’s largest prison system; we have to keep it and all the people and contractors it employs busy.  What would we do with all those people warehoused in prison?  Would they join the ranks of the unemployed, or become just be petty criminals?  In addition to prisons we have courts, judges and their other employees that depend on the jobs it creates.

 Without low level drug users to plea bargain prosecutors would have to work much harder to maintain their important win/lose ratio.  Thousands of defense lawyers depend on the drug trials for easily earned income with no remorse for failure 

Police at every level from local departments to FBI have become dependent on the opportunities it provides, advancement, excitement, publicity, overtime, free drugs, bigger budgets and the assets that civil forfeiture provides: cars, boats, aircraft, electronics, weapons, and cash. 

The small arms industry depends on equipment, gun and ammunition sales to police and organized crime to stay in business and employ thousands of people.

The economies of several countries, and counties in the US, are dependent on the high prices they get for crops that produce an illegal product. What will they do when cocaine and marijuana bring the same price as oregano and tobacco?  Legal drugs would deprive independent vendors of a major source of tax free income.

All the hoopla about illegal drugs distracts people from the tobacco and alcohol industries, and the pervasive and harmful effects of their products. Constant news coverage of the War pushes news about the harmful effects of alcohol and tobacco off the front page.  Celebrity scandals about illegal drug usage are almost as interesting as sex.  Rehab is so much more newsworthy when it is paralleled with a threat of jail time. 

Pharmaceutical companies can justify the high prices of their mass produced product on the comparably high price of street drugs.  How could oxycodone compete with legal codeine or even safer, more effective marijuana?  Hundreds of chemists, now busy designing drugs (prescription and illegal) around the controlled substances act would be redundant. 

The drug test industry employs thousands.  Employers need a simple reason to reject minority applicants "You failed the drug test".  Since marijuana usage is somewhere between 50 and 80% and can be detected for months, this is almost always credible, and impossible to rebut, although meaningless. 

Political contributions from all those with vested interest in the drug war would stop, then what would all the campaign service providers do without the Mothers-milk of politics?  War of any kind provides speech material for polidioticians, “We need to work harder, we're seeing the light the end of the tunnel, can't stop now.”  Gets more votes than, “300 million Americans are quietly behaving themselves.” 

In fewer words, the war on drugs has so thoroughly pervaded our culture that we, or at least our ruling class, can't live without it any more than they could live without their own hypocrisy. It is a small part of the basis of popular politics: keep the public alarmed with an endless series of boogie-men preferably imaginary, or manufactured as necessary to the needs, of the reelection cycle.

The War on Drugs has taken combat mentality into the streets of America. We need to end the insanity by decriminalizing things that really have no business being crimes in the first place, drugs, prostitution, homosexuality, and half the vehicle code.

K