"We Have Met The Enemy, And He Is Us"

Walt Kelly's famous "We have met the enemy" quote dates back to the 1950’s. The line was first uttered by "Pogo", a 50's and 60's cartoon creation of Kelly's. Pogo was before my time, but as best as I can tell it seems to me he could have been Bloom County's "Opus" the Penguin's forefather. The brilliant quote was revisited again in 1970, as it became the poster tag line for the first “Earth Day”. A few thinkers have borrowed the clever thought since then, including Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and Woody Allen. But I think it is strange that we don’t hear the sentiment often enough. We have to admit, we spend a lot of time and energy hunting down culprits for problems we categorically blame others for, or at best, we partially “soft-blame” ourselves (“I was too nice and let them take advantage of me”, or “I voted for him, what a mistake.”)

Accountability is most certainly not an easy thing. And yet, great men and women believe it is the key to happiness. So why the resistance? I’m sure psychologists and sociologists have a few good theories on the subject. To keep my point short I won’t dig those up, but my bet is that it all has something to do with a vicious circle. Since we’re wired to frequently be on a blame witch-hunt, putting ourselves on the wrong side of the hunt is unacceptable.

Mainstream religions tend to teach some level of humility and repentance. That is great – if it weren’t for the fact that most faithful approach religion like they might approach spectator sports: it stirs up empathetic passions every Sunday, but less than 24 hours later our weekly descent into the dark side of the force is complete. Which makes you wonder: was it some kind of miracle that 39 men once signed a document that began with “We the people”, and it became one of the greatest documents in the history of mankind? I may be reading too much into it, but I always thought what was intended by “We the people” was fairly self-evident. Surely if the founding fathers had meant “They the people”, they would have written so.

Yet every couple of years, aspiring young American politicians find a stump, rally up a small crowd by engaging in an “us vs. them” rhetoric, and offer up a speech that invariably ends in something like this: “Let’s send a clear message to Washington, we will not tolerate their (whine, bitch, or moan of the day.)” Poor George, if the old expression “turning in his grave” were literally true, he would have drilled his way from coast to coast several times by now.

So it turns out that besides sending a politician or two from every state to Washington every couple of years, a group of guys in business suits and dark glasses board the same DC-bound flight. No, they are not security: they are the lobbyists that funded the politicians’ campaigns.

The reported expenditure in 2012 by Washington DC lobbyists was $2.5 billion, according to the Center for Responsive politics (OpenSecrets.org). That figure also happens to be slightly under the ten-year average. On a simple, linear math: during the official two-year term of congress representatives, that amounts to $5.3 billion; during the four-year term of a president, the expenditure reaches $11.3 billion; during the six-year term of senators lobbying adds up to $16.9 billion, and during a two-term president it reaches $22.6 billion. Senators are favored targets of lobbyists, given their significant influence, lesser spotlight than the president, longer terms, and more predictable reelection. Six years is also the threshold of pain for Wall Street, in terms of how long it is willing to wait for results. For perspective, using the six year total of $16.9 billion, lobbying represents 1.9% of the healthcare spending in 2011, and for the same year: 2.5% of defense, 20% of transportation, 37% of energy, 44% of justice, and 150% of interior, or commerce, or the EPA (source OMB – Office of Management and Budget.)

So here’s the trillion dollar question: is there anything about lobbying that is adding value to our quest to build a more perfect union? My answer is fairly uncomplicated (for a change): no. There are only two official reasons for lobbying in Washington: access to taxpayer funds, or access to special rights. Both of those accesses should not be unduly influenced by unelected interests. With all due respect to my senator, when $150 out of every $1,000 I make goes to Washington, his mandate on how to best spend that money should not come from the lobbyists who financed his election. The conflicts of interests are so blatant, I am left wondering how long are we going to simply stand there with a tear running down our cheek.

For every year that goes by and I do nothing about this, I certainly only have myself to blame. I am, it seems, my own worst enemy.

Why Republicans Are Half-Right About The American Entitlement Problem

The fateful remarks made by Mitt Romney at a private fundraiser during his 2012 presidential bid stirred up quite a controversy, as many of us recall. The one word that most people remember from that hidden camera video is “entitled” – which sums up the intention of his remarks: too many Americans feel entitled to something that they have not fairly earned. The 47% figure may have been over the top, but to be fair, who hasn’t exaggerated in private when frustrated by the dysfunctional behavior of too many people? Yes, I know. Just like Facebook’s amusing “Privacy Notice”, presidential campaigns come with the same disclaimer: if it’s private, don’t open your mouth.

I can’t cast stones in the exaggeration department. It has taken me many years to realize that exaggeration is a display of intellectual laziness. Meaning, you are trying to make a point that is not as valid as you say it is, so you stretch the truth beyond distortion to suit your agenda. Surely, “6.5%” of Americans that feel they are entitled to your money without contributing a cent does not stir up rage as much as “47%”. But we have to admit, the pre-exaggeration issue does raise an important question: who are the entitled ones, and how much value are they destroying?

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank, with the majority of its members coming from Republican administrations. On a recent testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives (Committee on the Budget), Robert Rector, Senior Research Fellow from the foundation, shared a total welfare figure for FY 2011: $927 billion -- proportionally almost one trillion dollars. 

Dissecting the trillion-dollar figure we find that only $717 billion is at the federal level, since $210 billion are state programs. That translates to an allocation of $1,400 per federal taxpayer last year going towards federal welfare programs -- which further translates to $117 per month. Mr. Rector breaks down welfare into three general sub-categories: health (50%), cash, food, housing related (38%), and training related (12%). Let’s set aside the training impact, which even the Heritage Foundation considers an enabling program -- the opposite of entitlement. That brings our monthly, average taxpayer welfare impact to $105.

So who is sucking just around $100 per month from the average taxpayer, and feeling entitled to it? Well, the Census Bureau reports there are 40 million Americans that live in poverty -- meaning, they do not contribute to revenue.  Out of those 40 million, the Heritage Foundation recognizes about a quarter of them as being disabled adults, and another quarter as being children living in poverty. That would mean that there are roughly 20 million adult and able Americans that have become entitled to taxpayers’ funds, without any economic contribution from their part. That is in essence the entitled poor, at 6.5% of the American population.

Six-and-a-half percent of the American population is not a small amount of non-contributing, entitled citizens, compounding into a three-quarters of a trillion dollar burden. But at 5% of total GDP, that might still be a manageable number -- IF only that were the only source of entitlement.

Every time the board of directors of a major corporation lobbies Washington for entitled privileges that too easily enable job destruction, predatory competition, and regulatory manipulation, it inevitably results in the destruction of billions and ultimately trillions of dollars -- in favor of a few entitled rich. In terms of population, they are a relatively insignificant number, even less than the so-called 1%. But it’s not the population number that is of concern when it comes to the entitled rich: it is the impact and drain they have on the economy when they destroy more than they create. As an obvious example: between 2007 and 2009, U.S. homeowners lost a total of $7.3 trillion dollars in value. A few but deadly entitled rich created the bubble, enabled by Washington, and cashed-in before the bubble burst -- the oldest trick in the book.

Thankfully for the U.S., the vast majority of individuals, AND corporations, are value creators. Between the two, the U.S. is producing over $15 trillion dollars in value per year. When one of the entitled segments takes away 6.5% of the value, it hurts – no doubt. But when the other entitled segment takes at least another 6.5% chunk, on average, we are now at 13% destruction of value – and rising. Like unemployment or inflation, we may be able to handle a 6.5% bleed. But we cannot go on indefinitely with a double-digit destruction of value. It is too disruptive, and inconsistent with our claims to a first-world nation.

All Founding Fathers Are Created Equal (But Some Are More Equal Than Others)

Over the past few weeks, I counted at least two or three made-up quotes on different social media sites, attributed to the founding fathers on the matter of the right to bear arms. The most painful one is the "Liberty Teeth" speech attributed to George Washington -- jibberish that not only was never uttered by our first president, it actually insults his intelligence. No such worries in the past for both Playboy magazine and the NRA, both having published made-up George Washington quotes, only to retract them when asked to produce their sources (each other apparently).

Let's settle the founding fathers' "RoboCop Directives" debate once and for all, shall we? If anything is self-evident to me it's that nothing kept the founding fathers up at night more that the paradox of establishing and running a commanding government, while allowing its citizens to be armed to the teeth. George Washington's successor, who was also Thomas Jefferson's advisor on the Declaration of Independence, said it best:
  
"To suppose arms in the hands of citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense, or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and ever for the support of the laws." 

  
        -John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States”, 475 [1787-1788]

I believe this statement to be accurate, but I encourage its verification. Nothing threatens freedom more than blind zealousness. I am reminded on that note of a famous pig named Napoleon...

The infamous altered commandments from George Orwell's "Animal Farm" (1945)

How Much Is That Six Year Old In The Window?

Allison

What a tangled web we weave. The day we allowed industrial and corporate lobbying to buy their way into government was the day we sold our world-envied constitution to the devil. In other words, we figured out a way to legalize government bribing. We thought we were being so clever, so first-worldish, by institutionalizing bribery and making it "transparent". Or as we call it today, Political Action Committees (PACs). Yes, we transparently disclose the amount of money being used to buy politicians. Clever indeed, if not the constitutional confidence game of the century.

The problem is much bigger than the NRA, as much as they are the latest center-stage reminder of what we've done. The tobacco lobby is a perfect example: against overwhelming evidence that tobacco is one of the biggest killers of Americans, it is still being protected by elected officials. 443,000 people are being killed by cigarettes every year in the US, according to the CDC. So how much “legal bribing” does it take to allow the federal government to protect the right to kill people? Apparently about $3.4 million dollars every two year election cycle (source: Center for Responsive Politics). That translates to $3.84 per human life killed.

There are limited statistics on how much private gun ownership protects individuals. The closest number I could find is an FBI report stating that between 2005 and 2010, 213 homicides were recorded as legitimate self defense. That's 42 per year. We also know that the proportion of non-fatal to fatal shootings is roughly one to one (Source: CDC Study, 1993 – 1998). So in lieu of a direct statistic, let’s extrapolate and say that another 42 legitimate self defense cases result in non-fatal injury. That only leaves claims where a gun owner legitimately deterred or turned away an assailant -- a statistic that simply does not exist. But I would be hard-pressed to believe that for every fatal and non-fatal incident there are more than TEN times the number of legitimate deterrent incidents -- LEGITIMATE meaning not a deterrent by the mere fact that there is a firearm in the house. That benefit of the doubt would bring our count to about 1,000 incidents a year where private guns save lives. And that would reduce our yearly firearm homicide count from 8,583 per year (source: FBI, 2011) to just about 7,500, rounded. Yes, the logic seems a little twisted, since it trades a life saved for a life lost. A more logical approach would be to say that for every innocent life a private gun saves, it destroys eight. 

Speaking of lopsided logic: if you want to blow your mind for a moment (figuratively, please), consider the following simple math: the United States has been involved in 75 war-scale conflicts since its birth (1776 - 2011); about 20% of those wars were waged against North American natives; the total number of US deaths in all 75 conflicts adds up to 1.3 million (estimate varies by sources, but most credible sources agree that it is well over 1 million); out of the 1.3 million US deaths, about HALF of them were self-inflicted (Civil War - does not include so-called friendly fire). On the domestic crime front, a very conservative estimate puts US homicides since 1776 at 1.5 million (almost a million alone since World War II). So the grand total of Americans killing Americans, in the history of our great nation, is well over 2 million. On the flip side, just over half a million Americans have been killed by foreign enemies. Which means that three out of four American casualties, killed in wars or domestic crime, have been killed by Americans. Talk about our own worst enemy.

So back to our count of recent years: at 7,500 lives per year lost, how much does the NRA value life?  The NRA has been contributing towards the election of congress, senators, and presidents at a rate of $1 million per election cycle (source: Center for Responsive Politics, 2012). All for the right of private firearms to be used to kill over eight times the lives they save. Combining both figures, the NRA actually values life at $66.66. 

For the record: I am not against hunting for food, or against a well managed approach to the private ownership of non-automatic or even semi-automatic firearms (for definition of "well managed", see U.S. Constitution, Second Amendment, under well regulated.) Just because I don't own a gun does not mean that I need to impose my personal beliefs on everyone. But an institution like the NRA offers me no respect in return, when they consistently ignore the overwhelming evidence from over twenty other free and developed nations. Their transparent agenda to maintain the sale of automatic / assault firearms to practically anyone is criminal in itself. The moment they put a $66.66 price tag on the head of little Allison in Newtown, Connecticut, it is time to hold them, and the politicians they purchase, accountable.

What Americans Do Every Four Years

Americans vote for a leader every four years -- presumably. It may work out that way "on paper", but nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, a president is actually elected, not so much by popular vote, but by something called an Electoral College. About 100 Americans actually know what an Electoral College is, and yet 100 million Americans argue about politics every four years, until their common sense falls out. But while the Electoral College system may be part of the complication, it is not really the heart of the problem. After all, the Electoral College has disagreed with the popular vote only three times in 236 years. The heart of the matter seems to lie in a collective anxiety of what freedom actually means.

All in all about 120 out of 195 countries are officially democracies, representing roughly 58% of the world's population. But only 25 out of the 120 are stable and consistent democracies. The rest are considered "flawed" democracies. Which brings our freedom count to about 15% of the world's population. That's about one billion people who can truly sing, "well at least I know I'm free". The fact that there are 24 other free countries out there may come as a shock to country music fans, but such is life. There's a reason why humans thought for millions of years that the sun revolved around the earth. We're just wired that way.

Which brings us back to the matter of freedom. In the U.S. we have essentially a two-party system, open to any other interested parties. Each of the two main parties has a set of convictions about economics, national security, and social issues. They typically add up to ten issues or so, making up the famous "platform". For the most part, Americans tend to vote much more so on a platform than for an individual leader (and/or representatives, judges, etc.). To complicate matters, many of the platform-driven Americans are really only interested in part of the platform, and in some extreme cases they are arguably only interested in a single issue. As well-intentioned as the system is, it does leave you wondering what exactly it is we're electing every four years: a leader or a principle? "Both" is a tempting easy-way-out answer, but it is not necessarily the best answer.

No doubt that having the satisfaction of choosing anything of importance is important. About 50% of the world longs for a taste of that choice, and as many as 85% of the world is not sure whether they have ever had that choice. So why do we American voters feel so dramatically anxious every four years? Could it be that we're living vicariously through our principles? The fact is, for every issue on a platform, many Americans already have the freedom of choosing to live up to that particular issue. But it’s never easy, and like anything else in life, it often comes at significant cost. 

So we do what we can to survive or prevail, then we anxiously hope that the majority of Americans agree with the rest of our principles. But with each day that brings an election closer, our hope turns to demand. And there's the problem: we're free to arrive to our principles by choice, but we demand that others agree with ours immediately. 

What we Americans do every four years is realize that it's time once again to confront our convictions, and be challenged in a major way by more than 50 million people. Then we take it all very personally, to the point of distortion. Yes, there are party-line policies that eventually go through, and they do have a real impact on many people's lives. There are social injustices that call for government to intervene and make right. But every time an American utters the words "our way of life", he/she should try substituting "our" for "my" as an honesty-check. Every time a politician says "the American people have spoken", he/she is talking about half of voting Americans -- at best.

Dissent is part of the democratic process. Not understanding that it is, or how to live with it is an unfortunate misunderstanding of democracy -- and a threat to our destiny as a relevant nation.

My Uncle Discovered America. You Have a Problem With That?

The “discovery” of America to this day is a subject that seems to elude us Americans, for reasons I can’t comprehend. It’s not really that complicated: to begin with, America wasn’t “discovered”.  Not anymore than a band of gypsies helping themselves to leftover burgers at your picnic, while you went out for a hike. Yet here we are, more than half a millennium later and we’re still telling prior occupants that we “discovered” them. Now, no one’s giving anything back, slow down there Tea Partiers and unapoligists before you hurt yourselves.  But to quote Jon Stewart, stop trying to make Bullshit Mountain any higher than it already is.

To be fair, most recent school textbooks have stopped using the term “discovered”.  Instead, they’re using the more politically correct term “fucked over”. Which means, now the tide has turned against my great-great-great-great-great uncle Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus).  You see, uncle Cristoforo was born in Genova, (Genoa) Italy, like my daughter, her great grandfather before her, his great grandfather before him, and all the way to uncle Cristoforo.  My daughter, by the way, was born in Genova exactly five-hundred years AFTER her great uncle Cristoforo discov… uh, fucked America over.  Oh the humanity.

OK, so somewhere along the line the conversation shifted from “Who discovered America?” to “Who fucked America?”  Fair enough.  But I’m not about to let that conversation go gently into the night… oh no.  As luck would have it, 25% of my family was native American, the other 75% was Italian.  Native South American to be precise.  Apparently a tribe so tough (the Aymaras) that even the mighty Incas said, "we’re not fucking around with them."  I asked my dad one day about this, and he told me something interesting.  He said, “You know son, my great, great, grandfather was probably not much nicer than Genghis Khan.  We idealize native American tribes quite a bit, but the truth is, they had their own demons and atrocious behavior at times.”  And there it was, the moment of Zen in the “who fucked America more” pissing contest.  There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys.

So just for fun, let’s re-shift the conversation to “Which very-white guy arrived to America first?”  Now THAT race belongs to three great European explorers: Leif Ericson, Uncle Cristoforo, and Giovanni Caboto (Giovanni later changed his name to John Cabot, like all immigrant explorers who were bullied at explorer school in the New World).  To be fair, let’s start chronologically: Ericson was a mighty Norse Viking Icelander, which basically means he drank a lot and wore a steel helmet – probably because he drank a lot.  Keep in mind, for someone that drank a lot he didn’t just beat Columbus by a day or two:  we’re talking about five-hundred years BEFORE uncle Cristoforo.  So why was old Leif robbed of the historic honor of “the very-white guy who first fucked America”?  Well, minor technicality, as always: Leif’s trip actually started in Iceland.  That's like saying you discovered Canada and you live in Detroit. 

Icelanders and Scandinavian in general are a little sore about this subject, by the way.  If you ever want to have a little fun, bring that up at a bar in Reykjavik, in Oslo, or in Copenhagen.  I will say this for the old Viking: he actually called the new found land  “Vinland” (“Wine Country”).  Awesome name if you ask me.  But Canadians many years later had a better idea.  They thought the new found land should be called Newfoundland. Those wild and crazy Canadians can get out of control sometimes. 

Five-hundred years later, uncle Cristoforo borrowed a few bucks from the queen of Spain and told her he would pick up some tea for her in Japan.  He landed instead in the Bahamas. Now to be fair to uncle Cristoforo, if you look at any wall map, the Bahamas is only three feet away from Japan.  Slightly off course, little did he know he had just set the official precedent for all Italian modes of transportation over the next five-hundred years.  If you don't believe me, grab a taxi in Rome some time and give the driver the exact address of where you're going. Let me just help you with his reply here: “N’do cazzo??” is just Roman for “Where the fuck is that?”

Which brings us to John Cabot.  I have to say, this one I don’t get. A few historians have a beef with uncle Cristoforo because technically he only made it to the Caribbean and Central America.  So they give the honor of the discovery of NORTH America to John Cabot.  That’s just great.  Except for one minor detail: the only record of John Cabot ever landing on the shores of North America was in NEWFUCKINGFOUNDLAND.  Yeah, exactly five-hundred years after Leif Ericson.  Talk about Oldfoundland.

So there you have it. I have vindicated my family by doing what every good patriot in any God-fearing country does best: re-writing history.

Happy uncle Cristoforo day.