Economics
WEALTH AND MONEY PART XXVI: WHO IS BANKRUPTING AMERICA?
U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said: “Because of Obamacare, Medicare is going broke.” But the Medicare trustees themselves, along with a host of experts, say the Affordable Care Act’s changes to Medicare – including holding the line on spending and raising taxes [a surtax on high income earners] – actually puts Medicare in better shape than before the law was adopted. That’s a long way from making Medicare go broke. We rate Ryan’s statement Pants on Fire. - - Tom Kertscher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Pants on Fire” has become standard operating proced...
Looking Forward to 2017
The turn of the calendar to 2017 brings us hope for better prospects in our public affairs. I am particularly inspired this season for the many who wrote with solutions to problems facing our state.
The many letters from readers gives me optimism for a coming bloom of civic mindedness. Certainly your notes and letters bring a fresh approach to lingering problems.
I do see signs on the horizon that our state may be stumbling.
Deep budget cuts have affected the forward progress of our University of Wisconsin System. Faculty have left UW and taken their research ...
Logging the Brule Part 2: The Economics
“Politics: a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.” Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce was a late 19th - early 20th century journalist and short story writer. He is best remembered for “The Devil's Dictionary,” a collection of satirical definitions of American society. Last week I discussed the changes to the Brule River State Forest to increase the acreage available for logging. The state has mandated that 75% of state forests be managed for logging. This mandate certainly fits Bierce's ...
WEALTH AND MONEY Part XXV: COMEDY WERE IT NOT TRAGEDY
“Paul Ryan was born into a well-to-do Janesville, Wisc. family, part of the so-called “Irish mafia” that’s run the city’s construction industry since the 19th century. When his lawyer father died young, sadly, the high-school aged Ryan received Social Security survivor benefits. But they didn’t go directly to supporting his family; by his own account, he banked them for college. He went to Miami University of Ohio, paying twice as much tuition as an Ohio resident would have. “After his government-subsidized out-of-state education, the pride of Janesville left ...
WEALTH AND MONEY PART XXIII: PIE IN THE SKY??
“Powerful enemies must be out-fought and out-produced. It is not enough to turn out just a few more planes, a few more tanks, a few more guns, a few more ships than can be turned out by our enemies. We must out-produce them overwhelmingly, so that there can be no question of our ability to provide a crushing superiority of equipment in any theatre of the world war.”
- - President Franklin D. Roosevelt speaking to Congress and the nation after Pearl Harbor.
The United States Army ranked thirty-ninth in the world in 1939. It had a cavalry of fifty thousand ...
WEALTH AND MONEY PART XXII: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PEOPLE OF PLANET EARTH
Preamble
We the People of Planet Earth, in Order to form a more perfect World Unity, establish Universal Justice, insure Global Tranquility, provide for the peaceful common defense, promote the general and Universal Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty and ongoing Operational Planetary Integrity to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for Spaceship Planet Earth.
Article I
Hereafter and henceforth, the ongoing operational integrity of Planet Earth shall be central to all human decisions and actions. We have but one Spaces...
Economic Justice and the Wisconsin Uprising
Since the uprising in February 2011, Wisconsin’s legislature has implemented a raft of legislation that denies basic rights for all working people, not just unions. The agenda advances corporate power over the interests of average families, including corporate takeover of public resources such as education.
The real occupy movement today is found in state houses across this great land where big money interests aided by faux journalistic outfits, think tanks, and lurid amounts of campaign funding run roughshod over the rights of working men and women. Ultimately, many ...
WEALTH AND MONEY PART XXI: THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF PLANET EARTH
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people – the people of Planet Earth – to dissolve the economic manipulations and predations which have divided us, and to assume our intellectual and ethical responsibility to protect the ongoing integrity of Spaceship Earth for ourselves and our posterity, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to their actions.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator and the ...
WEALTH AND MONEY PART XX: SOLUTION
“There was a house made of dawn. It was made of pollen and of rain, and the land was very old and everlasting. There were many colors on the hills, and the plain was bright with different-colored clays and sands. Red and blue and spotted horses grazed in the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond. The land was still and strong. It was beautiful all around.” - - N. Scott Momaday
The picture painted by Momaday is of grace and dignity and beauty. It is a picture of what was and what might be. It is a picture of us and our planet Earth, our ...