Blog Archives - Marie PhD

There will always be a government

4/28/2012

One of the things government gives us is a legal system which is nice because it stops us from breaking rules, because it defines what the rules are. When the rules get blurry, we have a court system to determine what the outcome should be, to evaluate evidence and make rulings.
Government should be an instrument of efficiency. Government figures out what needs to be done while the rest of us get on with our lives. When there is a problem within a collection of people, government is supposed to fix it and prepare us for the future. It is meant to defend us, but its meant to be there to help us too.
Government is meant to maintain a level of quality for food, air and water; planning to extend the energy grid, repair roads, bridges and dams; as well protect us.

Without government we will quickly resort to killing each other if we don't like their religion or behavior or for cutting them off on the road. We'll form groups for protection from other groups, and those groups will need to be organized and once those groups are organized, in terms of getting enough food, organizing shifts people to patrol the confines of group, enforce rights and standards of behavior within the groups and once we do that there will be a government.

When government is organizing schools, roads, garbage collection etc, it means I don't have to go do it myself. I can get on with my life and let government take care of the rest.

So many libertarians trot out lame things like: govt kill communities. That I totally don't believe. If anything television kills communities, because people stay home to watch TV rather than mix with neighbors or friends. I remember great communities in my favorite Borders, until they went out of business. Capitalism killed their business.

Other nonsense arguments put forward by libertarians is that government is wasteful. Compared to what? Corporations? Now that is so funny because government does NOT have to make a profit, pay shareholders, pay outrageous salaries to CEOs, advertise, compete and duplicate services all other competitors are producing.

If government is not working as it should be, it is OUR fault. Not the fault of government. Government will always exist because we need it to.

Men owe us

4/23/2012

I had a strange dialog with a female lawyer today on twitter. She basically told me women owe men for giving us the vote and we should repay them.

This is the most ridiculous statement I've heard from anyone, including men. Women DO NOT owe men anything because if it wasn't for a woman no one, including all men would never have been born. A woman devoted years of her life to making you an acceptable member of society, teaching you manners, how to use the bathroom, how to eat, basic hygiene, how to walk and talk. A woman burped you and made sure you didn't kill yourself as you wandered about the house. Then women taught you, most likely, for the first several years of your life.

Why is women's work so completely undervalued when we wouldn't be able to function as people in society without the selfless work of a woman.

Through a mirror darkly

4/23/2012

Rammstein is a German band and one of my favorite songs from them is Amerika. There are some none too subtle references to how the rest of the world sees us, and it would seem that its not at all favorably. At the end there is a lovely reference to us following in their footsteps, frightening no?

The other troubling thing is, US corporations are going about the world selling products into every country and there we have a problem with the national debt and even unemployment back home? There is something very rotten in the US.

Meanness

4/23/2012

Don't you get tired of people bemoaning welfare payments to the poor? I know I do. Do people think it really is a joy ride being poor? This guy thinks its a choice! I can so imagine waking up one morning saying: wouldn't it be cool to be poor, NOT! Clearly the education system failed him as we can see from the abundance of misspelled words.

Being criticized as being lazy when they probably applied for every job they could apply for, if they lost their job. I can't imagine how demoralizing it would be to be out of work, and the boredom!

I would sooner they get some kind of payment so they can live rather than breaking into my home stealing so they won't starve. How do they pay for their utilities, rent, food and any kind of entertainment if they have no income at all. The combined boredom and need for money drives many into selling drugs which creates crime.

What is outrageous is we give the rich a pass when it comes to doctors and hospitals charging ten times what they would normally charge when the patient is on medicare. Same with the military industrial complex, well known for ripping off the govt.

I am all for removing regulations, specifically that government is NOT to use its bulk purchasing power with medicare. Removing that one regulation would probably allow every single American medicare, and ease the burden on every household and business across the country.

Admission to society

4/22/2012

In the past, a fetus wasn't included in society simply because there was a very good chance it would die during delivery. Medical science has improved the survival rate for mothers and babies. Nevertheless, I once calculated 100,000 women die in childbirth every year in the US, and this figure is significantly higher for babies.

Scientifically, each individual is really a genetic experiment to determine the viability of the individuals genes. Many fertilized eggs die within seconds of fertilization because the genes are not viable. Many fetuses do miscarry and very often without the mother even knowing she's pregnant. But a fetus can die any time during the pregnancy up to and including during birth. Genetically, an individual isn't deemed a success until the individual reproduces successfully. But for most societies, a fetus is admitted into society after successful birth. It is then we accord them legal rights such as citizenship. Although it is arguable they are a human being until they can act civilly in society.

Ask older couples about how difficult it can be for them to reproduce and how much money it costs them so they can. Birth and pregnancy are meant to be difficult because this is a control on the human population of the planet. The environment can only cope with so many human beings.

While parents may chose to call their baby a miracle, it is not. The baby is merely the result of a biological process. I like to say that if a baby was truly a miracle, god would turn up and hand the baby over himself. But he doesn't. Biology does the job; often with the aid of science.

However as technology improved, the development of medicine, the survival rate of infants has increased. As the human race has taken over more and more of the planet, human natural predators have subsided and when epidemics occur, our medicine is able to overcome the worst plagues.

And as technology has improved so have women's rights and education. Women have more options now and as society advances every women knows to give her children the best chance of survival she needs income to support her during the later stages of her pregnancy and while she is caring full time for her infant. This time is essential in caring for the child. After the child is born the mother must feed it regularly, burp it, clean it, regularly tend and generally care for it by playing and entertaining it even when its not crying or sleeping. These years are essential to the child because during this time, the infant will go from absolute helplessness to wandering around completely unaware of all the hazards and dangers threatening to kill it even around the household. During this time the mother is teaching it to talk and manners, lessons invaluable to its socialization.

This is a selfless role that mothers must willing take up. If they don't, they might resent, neglect and at worst abuse the child.

Demanding a women gives birth and then raise a child completely under-values the role of motherhood. It is a form of rape and punishment demanding a woman gives birth to a child she doesn't want.

Demanding a woman gives birth and not care about how the child or mother fares afterwards is totally cruel. For some reason, the right always assumes people have families to help them. This is not always the case. In the end, these children become cannon fodder. This is why the British banned abortion, so they could build armies. This is why Napoleon 3 asked the Pope to make abortion illegal, so he could build his armies. Of course the Vatican saw the benefit of keeping abortion illegal. Many catholic women in poor countries without access to education have many children and this keeps those countries poor. This also keeps the true believers numerous and the Vatican's coffers full.

What happens when children are thoroughly neglected after birth was amply demonstrated in Romania when Ceaușescu's despotic rule ended. Buildings full of children who didn't know how to speak, use the bathroom or feed themselves were found. Ceaușescu wasn't the only despot who banned abortion. Hitler banned abortion for Aryan women. Stalin banned abortion but he increased benefits to women so they could afford to raise their children. Pol Pot also banned abortion.

The first nine months, IE pregnancy, are nearly trivial in comparison to the next 20 years of raising a child. Not only does it take the mothers time and attention, it is considerably expensive.

In some countries where their birth rate is low, there is never a question of taking the mother's right to chose away from her. In such countries, they make it easy for the mother by paying her to raise her children. They give her thousands of dollars for having her first and subsequent children. These countries offer real safety nets and universal healthcare.

Because it is unlikely any of these things will be manifest anytime soon in the US, we can only assume that the Republican think tanks who engender the war on women want to build armies. The rate at which the constitution is disappearing, we can assume there will be a despot appearing sometime soon in America's future.

Women

4/17/2012

Another friend of mine says that what the Founding Fathers forgot most was, that not everyone is white and male in society. There are no Founding Mothers.

There would be no society if there were no mothers. Society needs women more than it needs men because women train each member of society to communicate, manners, what is good or acceptable behavior and what is not, individually.

As women's rights have improved, society has improved. The worst societies are those that treat women worst of all. The US also treats societies with the best women's rights, better.

The best way to fix society is to give more women more power. Undoubtedly the best societies will be run by women.

When women get to chose their partner, they get to chose the traits they value in a partner. When a woman chooses them as a partner, the man get the status symbol of a wife and children. Men often gain much more by having a wife, they get health benefits, companionship and sex. Despite all the comedy suggesting men do not want to get married, its a lie. Men get married because they want to.

Men wander around like peacocks showing off trying to impress women pretty much all the time. All you have to do is watch men and you will find them always on the look out for women.

If women are selecting rich men, men will strive to become rich. If women are selecting intelligent men, men will strive to be intelligent. If women are selecting for kindness, men will become kinder. This is why it is essential that women are educated so they can figure out what traits and characteristics are essential to be propagated in society.

Similarly, taking away women's rights is a race to the bottom. Taking away a woman's right to a safe abortion is signals the inception of a totalitarian society, ripe for human rights violation and we have abundant evidence of this as recently as even the 20th century. Stalin banned abortion in the USSR. Hitler banned abortion for Aryan women. Ceausescu's ban on contraception and abortion in Romania left buildings full of unwanted children unable to talk or feed themselves because women did not want to or could not afford to raise them.

Since the legalization of abortion in the US crime rates started falling 18 years after Roe v Wade. Crime rates dropped sooner in states where abortion was legalized earlier. Clearly, if a mother wants her child she will love and care for it, rather than being forced to raise a child she doesn't want. Women must choose the selfless role of motherhood. A willing mother easily chooses to sacrifice her wants and needs for a beloved child, an unloved child is resented as an inconvenience, who often end up homeless at an early age.

When a man sticks around to raise his children, his children have a better chance of survival, they have a better chance at reproducing in turn and passing their genes forward. The mother gets both financial support and the fathers help to raise the children.

What did the founding fathers not think of?

4/17/2012

Things are definitely going wrong in our great nation. The constitution is a great document but each day more and more of it is disappearing.
So my question is, what did the founding fathers assume but no longer exists that has let things go crazy like they have?
A friend keeps pointing to limited liability, but I think that's throwing the baby out with the bath water. For more on this, look at my post on 04/04/2012 for a reason why removing limited liability is a bad idea. In essence, what said friend wants to do is make people, once again, responsible for the mess they make.
I think that's partially what is missing, but I am not sure if its the only thing missing from the constitution.

WE are responsible for making sure our government, WE THE PEOPLE, are acting on OUR BEHALF.

From day to day we ignore the government and then finally we turn around and notice it is not handling our finances as it should. It grows departments we don't want it to have, it takes powers from us we don't want it to and gives itself powers it shouldn't have. It starts unnecessary wars on behalf of corporations profits, it lies to us and manipulates us. At its worst, it makes us and keeps us ignorant for its own purposes. Namely to keep electing the same two parties even at the expense of the future of the country.
Now we find politicians are more worried about fundraisers for their election campaign than worrying about voters rights. Hence politicians and government are acting on behalf of corporations instead of We, The People.

We can no longer ignore government. We are personally responsible for their behavior, so if you don't like what government are doing, you are to blame. But before you decide to shoot someone, think about what it is going wrong. If its because you were told this on Fox News, remember there was a good reason why the founding fathers wanted an electoral college. Our Founding Fathers were educated men.

families and austerity

4/17/2012

I like to think of the US as a giant family. We all depend on and interact with each other. If one person is hurting, then to some degree we all hurt a bit.
With the financial crisis that occurred in 2008, it was like mom lost her part time job, while dad kept his well paid job. Instead of asking dad to contribute more to the upkeep of the family, he keeps all his salary for himself, while the wife cuts spending on medicine for her parents & taking from little Jimmy's college fund to make ends meet.
Meanwhile dad continues to buy new golf clubs, while the rest of the family are making do with cabbage.

Do we really need to be reminded that the economy was thriving during 50s and 60s, when the taxation rate for the rich was at its highest, and there were still plenty of rich people who were not disencentivised to become rich by the tax rate.

Powerlessness, food and television

4/10/2012

There are many things going wrong with our society and this is most evident in the obesity epidemic. To me this signals the growing number of people who feel totally unable to control their lives.

Television is the principal cause. For a start, people spend so many hours in front of the screen, watching people they are totally unable to interact with directly. To participate, when food ads come on TV it gives them the opportunity to interact by eating too. Yes, they have a remote, they can change channels and they can turn it off, but what are they going to do instead?

They see lives on TV they can never possibly obtain, beautiful homes, beautiful clothes, beautiful locations, impossibly wealthy people who have everything. People with great friends & family and their current problem will be solved by the end of the episode. Most often people watching TV, are in sweats, on ordinary furniture possibly in a trailer park. They can never attain the home, that lifestyle.. so there is no point in trying to fit into the clothes they see on TV. They have no where to wear them to even if they could fit into them, there's minimal dress requirements to go to Walmart and the mall. Would the trouble they'd have to go to, to lose 20lbs be worth getting off the sofa for anyway?

The other problem is the quality of food these people are eating. Without a doubt, the meat that most people have access to, is battery farm raised. Most likely pumped full of hormones & fed antibiotics to make the animal grow as quickly as possible so farmers can harvest the flesh. No doubt these hormones are passed through to the consumer.

All junk food is full of sugar or corn syrup and salt. No wonder everyone is getting diabetes and heart disease.

These people are ripe with anger at their inability to change anything in their lives and are thus easy prey for fox news. Washington DC is remote and their single insipid voice unable to be heard by the television. They can shout along side the Fox commentators and agree without ever thinking about what they say, another form of pseudo participation.

It is likely these people are on some kind of welfare package and so they have no incentive to earn extra so they don't lose their check.

GOP game plan?

4/9/2012

I can imagine the GOP's think tanks, and yes they do pay their think tank very well, went into action during the Clinton years to determine how to a) get rid of Democrats from office & b) how to get rid of all the social programs they think cause taxation to be so high in the US.

First thing they did is blow the Lewinsky thing way out of proportion to what it was. For Americans living abroad this caused nothing but shame and humiliation and given that Gingrich was leading the pack, highlights the hypocrisy. This was to tip the election in favor of the GOP to win. The economy was doing fine, there was a surplus in the budget, there was every likelihood the Democrats would've carried the 2000 election.

When they finally called the election for W, the first thing he did was drop taxation rates and looked at calling for war with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan & North Korea, the so called "axis of evil".

When 9/11 occurred, this made it easy to enter war with Afghanistan and then lying to the world about Iraq to start the war there. Both these wars were put on the credit card.

My guess, is the GOP think tank estimated it would take two wars put on the US credit card, the deregulation of the banks, dropping the income of the govt all designed to crash the US economy. Hence W flushed another 700Billion down the drain by simply handing the first bailout over to Wall Street.

This was the first part of the GOP plan enacted. They knew it was unlikely they would carry the 2008 election and knew whoever would win for the Democrats, they'd make him/her a one term president, by making the economy suck so hard. The Koch Bros financed the Teaparty movement knowing the Democrats would go after changes to healthcare, with their mantras of growing govt and deficit.

Obama said he read the results of the 2010 election as people thinking the deficit was the biggest problem. I think he might have misread the public's response. Disappointment with Democrats not delivering strong healthcare reform, removing the patriot act, amongst other things.

This is exactly what i think the GOP had really been hoping for, Obama losing one of the houses, and hence the GOP were able to hold the govt to ransom over raising the income tax. This, of course, was to keep the recovery of the US economy slow. Interesting move on Obama's part was to offer the GOP all the welfare payments in exchange for increases in income taxes. The GOP refused this. Probably because they know many of the people who vote GOP depend on those welfare payments. I think they ultimately wanted to get rid of welfare payments, but they wanted the democrats to do it. And they could have done it when W was in the office but they didn't.

Between the results of the 2010 election and the behavior of the GOP in 2011, people had started to truly despair over govt. The GOP kept the national dialog moving from deficit to removing women's rights, to reducing welfare payments and back again. Meanwhile the rich got this huge bailout, get to keep their tax cuts while everyone else was losing their jobs and homes.

Then the endless debates of boring GOP gibberish, the endless distractions of Michelle Buchmann & Herman Cain.
Gloriously Occupy Wall Street happened and changed all that.

Occupy has stolen the GOPs domination of the national conversation. If it hadn't been for Occupy, it is very likely the GOP would have gotten their way and the democrats would lose the presidency in 2012, would go on to destroy all the social welfare system, destroy women's rights, unions and probably hold onto presidency for the next four presidential elections riding on the strength of 'the last time Democrats where in office, they destroyed the economy.'

Now I sense desperation about the GOP. Their rabidly going after women's rights has galvanized men into acting on women's behalf. Before it was GOP men telling women they had no right to decide what to do with their body. I can't remember the last time I heard the word "deficit" mentioned and all the GOP candidates in the primaries are proving themselves to be embarrassing losers as they scrabble for relevance.

Most people I know think the GOP couldn't manipulate their way out of a cardboard box let alone put a long term plan such as this to work, and perhaps I am in tinfoil cap land for suggesting they can. However, they do have excellent strategists, strategists the Democrats don't use. The GOP have successfully used tools such as repeating lies until people accept the lies as truth. Lies like:
    - govt is always less efficient than private enterprise.
    - Trickle down economics works.
    - Government is necessarily bad and corporations are somehow good.
    - Intellectuals are bad and ignorance is totally acceptable in a presidential candidate and the population as a whole.
    - Taxing the rich is somehow a disincentive to becoming rich.
    - That the government doesn't create jobs.
    - WMD.
    - The Founding Fathers were Christians, and
    - Republic somehow means something more than not having a monarch as a Head of State.
Words take on new meanings,
    - abortion is now the murder of innocent babies, instead of the termination of a pregnancy.
    - Communism and socialism are so evil that no one really knows what they mean.