It seems that American government functions very similarly to its people when it comes to economics: We spent far more than we have and don’t even worry about calculating the related costs.  The consequences of the Bush Administration’s seemingly never-ending bungling are staggering.  Still, few Americans have any idea of the magnitude of the problem.  Perhaps we’re too busy focusing on having to pay an extra dime or dollar per gallon of gasoline.

A recent MarketWatch article tries to get us to focus on what’s really important.  From A $75 trillion fright fest: Eight megahorror debts chilling America:

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — America’s out of control, drowning in debt, gorging: $75 trillion and getting worse. Now we’re dumping Fannie and Freddie on America’s balance sheet. Every year we pile trillions more on future generations.

Can’t trust McCain? Obama? Time for new leadership! The best qualified for president is the same great American hero we picked as our favorite write-in candidate for the 2006 elections: David Walker, former comptroller general, chief auditor of the U.S. Government Accounting Office for a decade before resigning last spring. He is ready. See previous Paul B. Farrell.

Walker was the “voice of reason” in Washington while Congress and the White House kept wasting trillions like out-of-control drunks, digging America deeper into debt. Nobody listened. Politicians ignored Walker’s warnings, making matters worse as we went from a surplus of $5 trillion in 2000 to crushing debt that’s now $9.6 trillion.

Puns and cliches aside, I found the article to be entertaining and well-written.  keep in mind that this excessive spending that focuses on war, oil, corporate profits, and broken and corrupt systems such as our for-profit healthcare system will take their toll in time.  If you want to see some near-real-time numbers, see the U.S. National Debt Clock. 

Most of these problems are solvable, but unfortunately they’ll require people to actually think about the costs of our investments and expenditures.  History has proven that fighting issues like materialism, greed, fear, and a thirst for war are often losing propositions.  Americans seem to have drifted so far away from rational thought and have migrated toward religious superstition and “thinking” based on emotions rather than facts.  We continue to support catastrophic policies that have proven to fail time and again.  We pretend that our failing economy needs only a “few tweaks” to get it back on track.  Clearly, it will take a lot more than that.  Unfortunately, I suspect there will be no shortage of related articles for this blog in the coming years.

It seems that the United States is often seen as unique in many different areas of life.  We tend to be far more violent than other nations and have an increasing disparity in wealth.  But where to we stand on consumerism?  While I I would have guessed that per capita spending in the U.S. is among the highest in the world (and, accordingly, our savings rates are among the lowest), it’s interesting to look at where that money is going.

A New York Times interactive page, What Your Global Neighbors are Buying, provides some interesting statistics.  Here’s a sample view of spending on “Clothing and Footwear”:

Without having drilled down into the statistics all that much, the only overall obvious conclusion is that we’re big spenders: In all areas, the United States has the highest per capita spending in every category.  While this might be a dream-come-true for marketing organizations, I wonder where it will leave us in the future.

I hope it’s no secret that the Bush Administration has consistently and routinely provided large tax cuts and handouts to those who need it least.  In fact, more progressive individuals such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have publicly criticized these moves, stating that no one even asked for the tax breaks.  Yet these policies continue, as America seems be losing its middle class.  MSN Money reports on the latest statistics in Ranks of the ultrawealthy soar:

New IRS data show a 62% increase in the number of people with a net worth of $20 million or more between 1997 and 2004. Separate data list the ‘Fortunate 400.’

One of the most exclusive clubs in the U.S. has picked up more members.

About 47,000 people had a net worth of $20 million or more in 2004, the latest year for which data are available, according to new estimates by the Internal Revenue Service. While that was up only slightly from 46,000 in 2001, it was up 62% from 29,000 in 1998.

The IRS also reported increases in the number of people with a net worth between $10 million and $20 million: 79,000 people qualified for this group in 2004, up from 77,000 in 2001 and 51,000 in 1998.

Another MSN Money article, Taxpayers give fat cats $20 billion looks at the rates of pay for America’s richest people:

At the expense of you and me, tax breaks help companies hand ever-bigger paychecks to CEOs. What are the presidential candidates doing about it? Almost nothing.

As our national debt reaches new heights, some elite wealthy taxpayers get a pass when it comes to footing their share of the bill:

Those lavishly paid CEOs in their corner offices.

Thanks to five tax breaks cooked up by their friends in Washington, D.C., top executives and their companies enjoy at least $20 billion a year in income-tax breaks that are unavailable to the rank and file, according to a new study from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.

…

The cost to you, me and ordinary workers around the country is easier to figure out. Every household filing a return pays about $192 extra in taxes to cover these breaks, by my calculation.

For a lot of Americans, that’s real money. But not for this elite group.

While we’re held footing the bill for these costs, it seems that everyone is much more focused on the price of a gallon of gas.  Never mind that we’ve spent trillions on attacking Iraq and that over a million people are dead.  Never mind that our deficit is staggering and the United States’ credit rating has dropped for the first time in history.  We’ve got to focus on the gas pumps as the nation’s biggest issue.

Perhaps part of the problem is that Americans, as a whole, truly respect greed and excess.  We tend to look up to CEOs that make tens of millions of dollars in official compensation each year.  We dream about purchasing our tenth house and owning a fleet of cards and personal airplanes.  With attitudes like that, perhaps it’s no surprise that greed has become a richly rewarding national pastime.  Of course, all of this clearly defies all research on the topic that shows that money just doesn’t buy happiness. 

So here’s a shocker: Politicians sometimes tell lies!  OK, so perhaps no American would be surprised by this statement.  In fact, we reward candidates handsomely for outright deceit.  However, our sense of balance seems to be off.  Around a decade ago, we impeached a President for lying about his private life.  Today, we won’t even press the Commander in Chief of one of the largest militaries in the world to even answer questions about leading us into a manufactured and self-serving war.  The list seems endless, and Americans are getting no better at asking for truth and accountability.

A case in point is John McCain.  While there’s plenty to dislike about his decisions and checkered past, recent ads seem to have crossed some kind of line.  A New York Times Editorial titled Blizzard of lies attempts to look at the the most recent issues:

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 — my first year at The Times — trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign’s claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.

But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.

To be fair, there are some people that try to call politicians out on outright fabrications of the truth.  This article is one example, as is one from The Huffington Post about John McCain on The View.  While mainstream media continues to overlook real issues and to hold candidates accountable, it seems within reason to expect Americans to wake up, start thinking, and to stop rewarding lies. 

I have often written about the impact of a growing disparity in wealth in the United States, leading to a shrinking middle class.  The Bush Administration have been open and vocal proponents of tax cuts for corporations and the extremely rich while barely hiding their complete contempt for average working people.  If one looks at history, there’s nothing shocking about – an aristocracy seems to be the inevitable by-product of unbridled government.  But what surprises me is how the American people, in general, seem OK with this.  It feels strange that a Republican candidate could even run for what threatens to be, in the words of Barack Obama, “The Bush Administration’s third term.”  So what’s really going on?

In Where did our financial stability go?, author Jim Jubak provides some interesting insight and theories.  First, some facts from the article:

What’s so extraordinary is that this tide of anxiety has risen during a period of extraordinary national economic growth.

In the past 10 years, from 1997 through the end of 2007, the U.S. economy has grown to $11.6 trillion from just $8.7 trillion, adjusted for inflation. That’s real economic growth of about 2.9% a year. The picture looks much the same when you adjust for a growing population. Real per capita gross domestic product, which equates pretty well with per capita income, has climbed 2% a year, on average, from 1997 to 2007.

In other words, if you look at the national averages, we’re somewhere between 20% and 33% better off than we were 10 years ago. So why aren’t we dancing in the streets?

The pundits, yours truly included, have offered a variety of reasons:

• Incomes are a lot less equal than they used to be. In 1979, for example, the top 1% of earners had an income 9.4 times that of the average person in the bottom 90%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. By 2006, that ratio had climbed to almost 20-to-1.

• The economy has become more uncertain, with give-backs, outsourcing, off-shoring and downsizing of jobs. And that’s been especially true for the relatively well-paid workers in the manufacturing economy.

• Growth in national income in the past decade went disproportionately to corporate profits and not to worker incomes. Even though nonfarm productivity rose at an average rate of 2.63% from 1997 to 2007, the average hourly wage for production workers climbed just 0.79% annually. Corporate profits captured more of the national income in 2006, the peak of the recent economic cycle, than in any other year on record.

The answer?  I’m not going to steal Jim’s thunder completely, but the article talks about the variability in income and its effects on human psychology.  It’s good reading and perhaps will serve as a warning to people that can’t seem to manage their own finances responsibly.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that people outside of the United States tend no to associate American individuals with American politics.  Despite “homeland” marketing initiatives about how great our nation is, it’s clear that our spending on war and interfering with other nations’ policies is nearly unprecedented.  We spend many billions of dollars on a manufactured war in Iraq every month.  To get the same amount of funding for basic needs such as healthcare or education is almost unheard of.  Yet, Americans seem to be satisfied (or, more accurately, blissfully ignorant) of this.  We engage in “fund-raisers” for aspects of American life that clearly should be the responsibility of government.  The goal: to scrape together a few thousand dollars for causes that actually will help people.  We even have a presidential candidate who feels it’s acceptable to remain in Iraq for another 1,000 years.

AlterNet has provided some details that highlight our ignorance in The US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet, and We Simply Never Talk About It.  From the article:

At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military “sites” abroad.

The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard — that is, the population of an American town — are functionally floating bases.

And here’s the other half of that simple truth: We don’t care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial.

Now, that’s the gist of it. If, like most Americans, that’s more than you care to know, stop here.

Of course, most Americans seem to have little respect for facts, statistics, and evidence.  It’s much easier to just stand in front of (or behind) an American flag and to get bumper stickers requesting God’s support for our great nation (or at least some extremely conservative part of it).  Just don’t expect to see any mainstream media coverage about these bases.

With all of the standard political rhetoric we’re used to hearing, it’s often difficult to find out exactly what specific candidates are suggesting.  The U.S. is in no shortage of serious economic problems thanks to the unbridled spending of the Bush Administration and enormous tax breaks for our wealthiest individuals and corporations.  So how do the 2008 candidates plan to address these issues? 

CNNMoney.com provides a brief and well-organized breakdown in Your Money- McCain vs. Obama.  This section includes 21 brief summaries of major policy stances by the two leading candidates.  I’ll hold off on making detailed commentary, as the purpose of the site is to inform readers to do that themselves.  As an overall note, though, it seems perfectly clear that McCain supports reduced taxes for the rich and for large corporations while Obama actually favors supporting those who need it (something that U.S. voters haven’t heard in quite a while).  As a case in point, see the Taxing Wealth page.  You can also find a lengthy list of news articles in a special section of the site called Election 2008: The candidates and your money. 

BusinessWeek has also posted an article that focuses on economic issues.  From Obama vs. McCain: Taxing and Spending:

So where does the reality lie? According to a new analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture between the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two Washington think tanks, this round goes to Obama. The TPC took a look at the various tax proposals put forth by the two candidates and estimated that Obama’s plan would lead to a boost in aftertax income for all but the highest earners, while taking a smaller bite out of government tax revenues than would McCain’s plans.

So we all have access to important information about economic plans.  Of course, these are only promises.  If the Bush Administration has taught us anything, all bets are off once a new regime takes office.  The question, as always, is whether people will use facts and statistics to inform their votes and opinions.

It looks like we have all become so accustomed to controversy and egregious violations by our elected officials, that it hardly seems to make the news any more.  We routinely ignore or overlook important facts like the millions of deaths that have occurred since our invasion and plunder of Iraq.  Nowhere does this seem to ring more true than in the case of Sarah Palin.  There are so many potential issues with her nomination and her background that it’s almost impossible to keep track of the facts.  Much of the “news” from mainstream media will add to the confusion by implying that there are some good sides to her candidacy (though they will rarely mentioned what those are).

Fortunately, ThinkProgress has attempted to distill down the important facts, quotes, and details related to McCain’s VP pick in The Sarah Palin Digest.  The issues are clearly grouped based on areas of concern.  Here are some highlights (with sources):

Palin Believes That The Iraq War Is A Task ‘From God.’ Speaking at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in June, Palin said that “our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God.” [Huffington Post, 9/2/08]

Palin Supported The Bridge To Nowhere. During her unveiling as McCain’s running mate, Palin claimed that she said, “Thanks, but no thanks” to federal funding for the Bridge to Nowhere. But in her 2006 campaign for governor, Palin repeatedly expressed support for the bridge project, saying Alaska should take advantage of earmarks “while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.” [Anchorage Daily News, 10/22/06; Ketchikan Daily News, 8/9/06, 11/21/06]

Palin Denies Man-Made Global Warming. When asked for her “take on global warming,” Palin replied, “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.” [Newsmax, 08/29/08]

Palin Believes It Is ‘God’s Will’ To Build A Natural Gas Pipeline. Speaking to the Wasilla Assembly of God church in June, Palin said, “I think God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that,” referring to a $30 billion national gas pipeline project. [Huffington Post, 9/2/08]

Palin Opposes Abortion Even In Cases Of Rape Or Incest. In 2006, Palin said that even if her daughter were raped, “I would choose life.” She said that she would support abortion only if the mother’s life were in danger. [Anchorage Daily News, 11/3/06]

Palin Believes The Founding Fathers Wrote The Pledge Of Allegiance. In 2006, when asked by the Eagle Forum Alaska if she found the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance offensive, Palin replied, “Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me.” But the words “Under God” didn’t appear in the Pledge until 1954. The Pledge itself wasn’t written until 1892. [Huffington Post, 9/1/08; Slate, 6/28/02]

Palin Left Wasilla $20 Million In Debt. As mayor of Wasilla, Palin cut taxes while simultaneously expanding the town’s operating budget by almost $2 million. She ended her term in 2002 with Wasilla $20 million in debt. [Anchorage Daily News 10/23/06; the Politico, 8/29]

Keep in mind that all of this is just what we know now.  There’s no telling how much more will be uncovered.  The question, of course, is how Republican voters people will find a way to ignore these facts.  And, don’t worry: It might take a lot of ignorance and creativity, but they’ll find a way.

Perhaps one of the reasons people have tolerated George Bush’s bungling for so many years is that mainstream media seems to be OK with his refusal to talk to the American people.  His administration has been, by far, one of the most secretive in the history of the United States.  He’s often not even at the White House at all.  I’d assert that this works in his favor, and his advisors are providing good advice.  Listening to King George is downright painful, and much of what he says is truly an embarrassment to U.S. voters’ lack of judgment.

But what about the future regime?  It looks like we’re in for more of the same with McCain and Palin.  ThinkProgress reports in McCain Campaign Plans To Keep Palin Away From The Press:

The McCain campaign reportedly told the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder not to expect any one-on-one interviews with Palin any time soon. Despite McCain’s pledge of transparency — even proposing a regular President’s question time with Congress modeled after the British version — he has been shutting off press access for months. Yesterday, a Time reporter explained that McCain bizarrely refused to answer his questions, “like he’d been body-snatched.”

Davis insisted that “there are no strings attached” to media access to McCain. Yet just this week, McCain abruptly canceled an interview with Larry King as punishment for a tough CNN interview with one of his spokesmen. What’s more, top McCain aide Mark Salter said that “only the good reporters” would get the best seats in the new campaign plane. “You have to earn it,” he said.

Davis told MSNBC that Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) “didn’t do a single interview until a week after his nomination,” but the assertion is false. Biden and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) sat for an interview with 60 Minutes “just moments after” Obama left the stage at the Democratic convention.

Of course, the real problem here is that most American people will accept this.  They’ll vote with their stomachs, and there’s less to upset said organ if people like Palin keeps her mouth shut.

Despite all of the “We will always remember” bumper stickers, it seems that Americans have largely forgotten that three buildings were destroyed on September 11th, 2001.  World Trade Center Building 7 mysteriously collapsed many hours after buildings 1 and 2 fell.  It’s understandable that the Bush Administration would fail to investigate this – secrecy and cover-ups are daily operating procedures for them.  But shouldn’t people be asking for an explanation?  I posted about this topic a little over a year ago (see 09/11/2001: We Will Never Know?).

It does seem that now, nearly seven years later, some information has emerged.  Of course, it’s just as unbelievable as some of the more extreme conspiracy theories.  TheRawStory reports in As federal agency declares ‘new phenomenon’ downed WTC 7, activists cry foul about some opposition to the theory that thermal expansion cause the collapse:

However, Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and a member of the American Institute of Architects, doesn’t believe a word of the theory.

His group, which has swelled to over 400 architectural and engineering professionals, immediately responded to the Institute’s claim in a press conference.

“Tons of [molten metal] was found 21 days after the attack,” said Gage in an interview with a Vancouver, Canada television station. “Steel doesn’t begin to melt until 2,700 degrees, which is much hotter than what these fires could have caused.”

“There are holes in this story that you can drive a truck through,” Gage added during the press conference. His group asserts that thermite, a steel cutting agent, was used to bring the building down.

Unfortunately, few Americans will pay attention to this (we have a “War” in Iraq to focus on).  People will happily live on without any credible explanation, much as they’ve accepted the many transgressions by Bush and his cronies.  I wonder, what will we “always remember”?

The comparisons between George Bush and John McCain are hard to overlook, though it seems that most Americans have found a way.  The evidence seems to show that McCain will carry on the Bush legacy of bumbling and ignorance.  As with Bush, we have always had all the information we need to see that McCain is not a very intelligent man.  His mind seems to be clouded by religion, and he seems to have no interest in learning about things he doesn’t understand. 

It’s refreshing to see a mainstream media outlet like CNN post a valid opinion on what could be our nation’s second greatest disaster.  Jack Cafferty asks some important questions in Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush?:

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current president. When asked what his Christian faith means to him, his answer was a one-liner. “It means I’m saved and forgiven.” Great scholars have wrestled with the meaning of faith for centuries. McCain then retold a story we’ve all heard a hundred times about a guard in Vietnam drawing a cross in the sand.

…

He was asked “if evil exists.” His response was to repeat for the umpteenth time that Osama bin Laden is a bad man and he will pursue him to “the gates of hell.” That was it.

He was asked to define rich. After trying to dodge the question — his wife is worth a reported $100 million — he finally said he thought an income of $5 million was rich.

One after another, McCain’s answers were shallow, simplistic, and trite. He showed the same intellectual curiosity that George Bush has — virtually none.

John McCain graduated 894th in a class of 899 at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. His father and grandfather were four star admirals in the Navy. Some have suggested that might have played a role in McCain being admitted. His academic record was awful. And it shows over and over again whenever McCain is called upon to think on his feet.

The conclusion is concise, well-written, and terrifying:

George Bush’s record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens’ faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

Sadly, history shows that these “qualities” are what will make McCain a serious candidate in the 2008 election.

In an earlier post, McCain’s Lobbyists- An Interactive Guide, I linked to a site that shows how much money John McCain has accepted from lobbyists.  Americans seem to be rather tolerant of having corporations and private interests run our government.  This is most obvious in tax-related issues, where voters have passively accepted George Bush’s numerous tax cuts for the richest members of the population (some applied to only the .1% of the richest people in the U.S.)

A recent article from ThinkProgress shows that McCain will carry on that legacy.  From Top CEOs Give 10 Times More To McCain Than Obama; McCain Promises Huge Tax Breaks For Them In Return:

McCain has cultivated support from mega-corporations by promising to dole out huge tax breaks in return should he win the presidency. As the Wonk Room reported in June, McCain’s plan to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent would yield $45 billion in tax breaks for the 200 largest corporations:

…

Eight companies — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., Bank of America Corp., AT&T, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Microsoft Corp. — would each receive over $1 billion a year.

McCain would deliver about $4 billion in tax cuts to the five largest oil companies. He would also hand over $2 billion to the top 10 health insurance companies. Unlike the highest-rung of the corporate ladder, much of the rest of Wall Street refuses to be bought off. Those employees are giving more to Obama than to McCain.

Perhaps the most annoying part of this information is that voters won’t even challenge McCain on this.  They’ll either remain ignorant, or will passively approve of the selling of the United States to large corporations.  Perhaps it’s for the better.  If American voters were a little smarter, McCain would have to manufacture new wars and create irrational fear to divert the spotlight from his actions.

Mentally speaking, I think it’s safe to say that Bubba Dubya is always on vacation.  People who have been paying attention know that Bush rarely shows up to work, and is famous for taking time off at his ranch.  Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from criticizing others of shirking their responsibilities. ThinkProgress reports in After Returning From Four Days At The Olympics, Bush Criticizes Congress’s ‘Vacation’:

Bush’s dig at Congress for being on vacation is ironic, as he rivals Ronald Reagan for the title of “presidential vacation-time record holder.” Some highlights of Bush’s time away from the office:

• – Attended 95 sports-related events.
• – Made 74 trips to his Crawford ranch, for a total of 466 days.
• – Made 142 trips to Camp David, for a total of 450 days.
• – Attended 327 fundraising events for Republican candidates and causes.

Over the course of his presidency, national catastrophes have taken shape while Bush has been on vacation. When he was in Crawford before 9/11, Bush ignored an infamous memo about an impending bin Laden attack. Similarly, Bush brushed off warnings of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 while at the ranch.

I think it could be argued that having no one in charge of the United States would be far preferable to the decisions made by our current regime.  Unfortunately, “no one” isn’t on the ballet.  I wonder: Can you add a write-in vote and leave it blank?

One of the most popular posts on this blog was related to the myth that Democratic presidents spend more than Republican ones.  The facts show that nothing could be farther from the truth.  The original post, Spending Statistics- Republicans vs. Democrats, links to some interesting statistics.  Of course, some people can’t be bothered with that kind of information, so here’s a quick visual recap of recent U.S. Spending:

President Bush is projected to run up a national budget deficit of $482 billion, possibly a lot more. This is a fiscal conservative? In fact, the only president in the last 25 years to not only not run up a deficit, but to actually leave a surplus, was one of them thar “tax-and-spend” Democrats.

You can see more cartoons and blog posts at Steve Greenberg’s Blog, hosted by the Ventura County Star.  If I could start blogging all over again, I might invest in developing my cartoon-drawing skills to get my points across.

Laws exist in the United States that allow us to at least monitor the amounts and types of political contributions that are received by politicians.  Unfortunately, few people (myself included) take the time to look at the magnitude of the issue.  While there’s some talk about the issue in the lead-up to the 2008 Elections, at least John McCain seems to be profiting handsomely from his benefactors. 

While a table or chart might be compelling enough, the McCainLobbyists.com web site provides an interactive guide to how much money the Republican candidate has received.  You can read about he details from the site’s Welcome Page:

Welcome to McCainsLobbyists.com, a Web site we hope will become a resource for anyone — voter, reporter, blogger or activist — who wants to explore John McCain’s numerous connections to powerful Washington lobbyists and the complicated web that connects all of them together.

We decided to launch this site after seeing John McCain tout himself as a campaign reformer all while building a presidential campaign by relying on a who’s who of big money interests and lobbyists. These lobbyists have earned millions working on behalf of their clients, including Big Oil, brutal dictators, and other special interests. After sifting through the data, we’ve chosen 40 lobbyists we think best illustrate John McCain’s immersion in Washington’s pay-to-play culture.

The Internet has brought us unprecedented access to information such as federal spending, political bribes and conflicts of interest.  Now there’s one major challenge left: To find someone who’s interested enough to read (and write) about them.

I realized several years ago that one of the primary points of frustration for me occurs when dealing with people who are irrational.  I also learned that it’s futile to attempt to address an irrational idea using rationality.  If people don’t understand the power and value of logic and reason, it’s not a problem that I can solve.  At least in the United States, the political and social climate has clearly empowered the irrational members of the country.  Those are the people who openly choose not to elect a “smart” President and that feel that it’s OK to impeach a President for lying about his private life while letting an alleged war criminal run the nation, no questions asked.  It often seems that the inmates are running the asylum.

So where do these ideas come from?  The topic of morality is one that is often thrown about in the media.  It doesn’t matter if people are criticizing Britney Spears’ latest escapades or if it’s an issue of imprisoning and torturing hundreds of innocent people.  There are many who suggest that morality comes from religion, but all research points the in the opposite direction.  In fact, most thinking adults would be aghast if they only read books like the Bible (especially the Old Testament) or the Koran. 

The New York Times posted an article earlier this year that attempts to explain the basis of morality.  Steven Pinker writes in The Moral Instinct about the basis of these ideas.  For example, how can people respect the ignorance an suffering peddled by Mother Theresa while overlooking actual humanitarians?  The article is very long, but I found it to be thought-provoking.  Pinker often cites studies and thought experiments which are both entertaining and information.  Here’s an excerpt:

All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time. The five moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought in to moralize which area of social life — sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on — depends on the culture. Many of the flabbergasting practices in faraway places become more intelligible when you recognize that the same moralizing impulse that Western elites channel toward violations of harm and fairness (our moral obsessions) is channeled elsewhere to violations in the other spheres. Think of the Japanese fear of nonconformity (community), the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of Hindus and Orthodox Jews (purity), the outrage at insulting the Prophet among Muslims (authority). In the West, we believe that in business and government, fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism and cronyism. In other parts of the world this is incomprehensible — what heartless creep would favor a perfect stranger over his own brother?

The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.

Of course, there’s a strong current in modern thought that seems to imply that we should “think” with our guts rather than with our brains.  If something feels bad, we should avoid it.  And, if we can somehow rationalize it (e.g., to attack a country with no evidence or reason), then it’s OK.  Towards the conclusion of the article is another example:

Though wise people have long reflected on how we can be blinded by our own sanctimony, our public discourse still fails to discount it appropriately. In the worst cases, the thoughtlessness of our brute intuitions can be celebrated as a virtue. In his influential essay “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” Leon Kass, former chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, argued that we should disregard reason when it comes to cloning and other biomedical technologies and go with our gut: “We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings . . . because we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear. . . . In this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done . . . repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”

There are, of course, good reasons to regulate human cloning, but the shudder test is not one of them. People have shuddered at all kinds of morally irrelevant violations of purity in their culture: touching an untouchable, drinking from the same water fountain as a Negro, allowing Jewish blood to mix with Aryan blood, tolerating sodomy between consenting men. And if our ancestors’ repugnance had carried the day, we never would have had autopsies, vaccinations, blood transfusions, artificial insemination, organ transplants and in vitro fertilization, all of which were denounced as immoral when they were new.

If only we would invest more time and effort in actually learning about human nature rather than trying to defend absurd, illogical, and irrational conclusions, the world would be a far better place.  I’m not holding my breath for a positive change, but it would be a pleasant change from our current culture of ignorance.

It’s a simple fact that the overwhelming majority of people that claim to be religious know extremely little about what they believe.  In previous posts, I’ve cited statistics related to how little American “Christians” know about their Bible.  I doubt most of them could explain away the questions of a ten-year-old.  But, I can understand that group of people – they’re either not interested or are otherwise unmotivated to examine (let alone question) their beliefs. 

What tends to surprise me more are those who claim to actually research their religion and still appear to believe in it.  Just about all religious texts are filled with obvious contradictions.  They’re internally consistent (let alone completely inaccurate with respect to the real world).  Still, the majority of humanity professes to believe in a supreme creator of the universe.

Thanks to a link from RichardDawkins.net, I ran into a web site called God is imaginary.  As the title suggests, the site includes a list of “50 simple proofs” that God does not exist.  It focuses on Christianity, but many of the proofs apply just as well to any religious beliefs.  Here’s a list from the site’s Table of Contents:

1. Try praying
2. Statistically analyze prayer
3. Look at all historical gods
4. Think about science
5. Read the Bible
6. Ponder God’s plan
7. Understand religious delusion
8. Think about Near Death Experiences
9. Understand ambiguity
10. Watch the offering plate
11. Notice that there is no scientific evidence
12. See the magic
13. Take a look at slavery
14. Examine Jesus’ miracles
15. Examine Jesus’ resurrection
16. Contemplate the contradictions
17. Think about Leprechauns
18. Imagine heaven
19. Notice that you ignore Jesus
20. Notice your church
21. Understand Jesus’ core message
22. Count all the people God wants to murder
23. Listen to the Doxology
24. Ask why religion causes so many problems
25. Understand evolution and abiogenesis
26. Notice that the Bible’s author is not “all-knowing”
27. Think about life after death
28. Notice how many gods you reject
29. Think about communion
30. Examine God’s sexism
31. Understand that religion is superstition
32. Talk to a theologian
33. Contemplate the crucifixion
34. Examine your health insurance policy
35. Notice Jesus’ myopia
36. Realize that God is impossible
37. Think about DNA
38. Contemplate the divorce rate among Christians
39. Realize that Jesus was a jerk
40. Understand Christian motivations
41. Flip a coin
42. Listen when “God talks”
43. Realize that a “hidden God” is impossible
44. Think about a Christian housewife
45. Consider Noah’s Ark
46. Ponder Pascal’s Wager
47. Contemplate Creation
48. Compare prayer to a lucky horseshoe
49. Look at who speaks for God
50. Ask Jesus to appear

While there’s nothing revolutionary about many of these ideas, I found them to be particularly well-written.  I hope they’ll have the intended effect on readers, but somehow doubt it.  After all, if something is taken “on faith”, then proof really doesn’t have anything to do with it.

There seems to be no end to the damage that the Bush Administration and associated conspirators.  The Huffington Post reports about yet another national “record” set by King George and his merry men in Bush Leaving Next President Record Federal Budget Deficit.  From the article:

WASHINGTON — The government’s budget deficit will surge past a half-trillion dollars next year, according to gloomy new estimates, a record flood of red ink that promises to force the winner of the presidential race to dramatically alter his economic agenda.

The deficit will hit $482 billion in the 2009 budget year that will be inherited by Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, the White House estimated Monday. That figure is sure to rise after adding the tens of billions of dollars in additional Iraq war funding it doesn’t include, and the total could be higher yet if the economy fails to recover as the administration predicts.

The result: the biggest deficit ever in terms of dollars, though several were higher in the 1980s and early 1990s as a percentage of the overall economy.

Unfortunately, this sets our next President up for an apparent failure.  Even if we can remove Republicans from power, it will take a lot of effort to address the core issues.  I hope that it will be done and that the American people will place their blame where it belongs.

I often feel that I’m the only one that’s frustrated by the lack of accountability for what clearly is one of the most destructive administrations in the history of the United States.  Of course, polls show that I’m not alone and a large majority of Americans (finally!) support impeachment.  Some members of Congress are, however, working on our behalf.  TheRawStory reports in Impeachment a hot topic at ‘not Impeachment’ hearing:

After spending long hours, sometimes late into the night, making his case for impeachment before a nearly barren House chamber, Rep. Dennis Kucinich finally got more of an audience for his case against President Bush Friday.

Even though Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers insisted early on that the panel’s evaluation of Bush’s “imperial presidency” was decidedly not an impeachment hearing, the prospect was not far from many minds during the six hours of testimony.

Kucinich formally introduced his articles of impeachment into the record of the committees proceedings — although he did not utter the dreaded I-word, instead referring to the resolutions by their more legalistic titles “H. Res. 333, H. Res. 1258 and H. Res. 1345.”

The article includes numerous quotes, many of which attempt to directly call out the Bush/Cheney machine for high crimes, but that have to stop short due to rules of the hearing.  There’s some hope (however small) for accountability here.  At the very least, these politicians will have a response when future generations ask how we could all stand idly by as the United States was systematically dismantled from within.

Hopefully, by now, there are few thinking people in the United States that don’t agree that George Bush, his cronies, and his controllers, should be asked to answer for their numerous crimes.  There are so many violations, in fact, that it’s hard to keep them all straight.  Slate reports in Crimes and Misdemeanors: Who in the Bush administration broke the law, and who could be prosecuted?  From the introduction to the article:

What kind of lawbreaking has happened on President Bush’s watch, among his top and mid-level advisers? What hasn’t? Who is implicated and who is not? Despite the lack of oral sex with an intern, the past seven years have yielded an embarrassment of riches when it comes to potentially prosecutable crimes. We have tried to sketch out a map of who did what and when, with links to the evidence that is public and notes about what we may learn from investigations that are still pending.

We looked specifically at the White House, the office of the vice presidency, the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, and the State Department. We started with a question about whether anyone could be prosecuted for war crimes relating to the torture identified by the International Committee of the Red Cross. We soon spiraled out to trace related loops: warrantless wiretapping and the destruction of CIA tapes of the interrogations of two high-level suspects. And then we added in scandals that involve many of the same players and that have spawned investigations: the firing of the U.S. attorneys in 2006 in the Justice Department as well as politicized hirings there. In the main, the laws and treaties we concentrated on were the Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act, the Convention Against Torture, obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence, perjury, lying to Congress, the Civil Service Reform Act, and the Hatch Act.

You can access the Interactive Crimes and Misdemeanors Page to view the details.  It’s a bit overwhelming, but it’s a good testimony to the numbers and types of crimes committed during the last eight years.