Red Lake: Columbine II?

It turns out that, as many suspected, Jeff Weisse, the teenager who went on a shooting rampage in Red Lake, Minnesota, was taking Prozac. The dosage had recently been increased just before the killings.

For those of you who don't know, Prozac and a whole host of adult anti-depressants, such as Zoloft, Luvox, Paxil and Ritalin, have been linked to most of the shootings committed by teenagers including Columbine. These drugs are psychotropics; they alter mental processes resulting in changes in behavior and perception in the subject. They relieve stress and soften moods, which in adults are usually due to anxiety over years of built up frustrations. In the success stories, they allow people to see the world without the stress. With every good, though, comes a certain amount of bad. They also release inhibitions. This is not so much a problem with adults who have learned over the years to check their behavior through various means. Children, if you ever watched them at a play ground, typically revert to the animal instinct at the drop of the hat. Before they've properly learned to harness that animal, it's not always advisable to relieve that stress which may be nothing more than restraint of dangerous impulses.

Of course, much more study needs to be committed to this subject. It could be that the prozac was incidental to "troubled" teens. However, drug researchers have already warned about these effects.

Still, I wonder what will come of all this. As I blogged on Friday, the cacophony of the extremes is likely to drown out the truth. One side would love to use this as a gun issue, a la Bowling For Columbine. The other side would love to indict the school system. One side is protecting the generally underperforming schools. The other is protecting their doctor lobby.

On the flip side, maybe this is the best way. The drug companies can study the problem in quiet. Doctors will adjust procedures and restrict dosages to teens. All this while the two sides flail away at each other.

The Last Hours of Terri Schiavo

As the cloak of death slowly covers her eyes, I'm saddened by the great anguish this has caused so many people. I'm more angered by the nuts on both sides who have used this tragedy as a club to bang the pulpit. For the shallow of mind, this is about those stupid "Bushies" or it's another sign that the second coming is descending in the next lightning bolt. As to the former point, an aside: Isn't it amazing how for some people just barely above Terri Schiavo's cognitive level that every problem can be summarized as "those evil bushies" or "dubya".

The center is once again drown out by the extremes, the religious right and fanatical left, both mirror images of each other. Think I'm kidding? The only difference between some of the anti-war protestors and the self-righteous religious nuts are the signs they carry.

There's been much rational discourse on the subject behind the cacophony of cant. Jonah Goldberg had a great article today. Hopefully, congress will do more than come up with a one-time one-person piece of legislation and sit down to create a process to deal with this. Terri should have had a full battery of tests, such as a PET scan. A panel of doctors, not Judges, should have reviewed this case and given their prognosis. At the time of your marriage, you should tell the government right then and there who will be responsible for your assets and health care decisions.

I'm laughing. I know that because of the simple-minded animosity from both sides that any attempt to fix anything will be construed as an attack. The left will fight a panel of doctors idea because it trumps their bastion of power, the courts. The right will fear any civil union contracts creeping into marriage lest gays start marrying willy-nilly.

Rest In Peace, Terri. The rest of us have to go on listening to the nonsense.

Reason.Com Article for extra reading.

Women: The Crazy Sex

How I love to pull the old bait and switch with a science story, especially with a double entendre. Sorry, I won't be talking about some new love making positions or make inflammatory remarks about bizarre behavior in females. Today's story concerns the latest results of the great Human Genome Project.

It appears that the X and Y chromosomes, the ones that dictate sex, contain some pretty significant clues to human behavior and evolution. As a refresher, women typically contain two X chromosomes and men an X and a Y. The Y chromosome, to the amusement of many misandrists, I'm sure, has really become nothing more than a lazy bum. Eroded by mutation over the centuries, it contributes very little to the make up of little boys, except that the eggs have to fend for themselves.

The X chromosome is where all the action is. It contributes 10 times as much genetic information as the lazy beer-drinkin', nascar-watchin' Y and because females have two copies, there is less chance that something gets translated incorrectly. It's one of the reasons why women are born at a higher rate (51%). However, the process of deactivating the second copy of X (so that women do not have twice the genetic activity as male embryos) does not proceed perfectly. In some 15% of genes due to be inactivated, the female embryo gets a double dose. In another 10% due to be activated missed the activation boat entirely. Further, these activation mistakes don't appear to be the same in each woman, leading to a high degree of genetic activity variability.

All this has some impact on the words of the unfortunate Larry Summers, the beseiged Harvard Dean. He submitted many reasons for why women do not turn up in the science fields, one of which was genetic. He may or may not be right. From a purely academic point of view, we ought not inactivate our minds to the scientific results and its implications, all its implications. Nor should we become slaves to actions of our beings on a microscopic level.

Terri Schiavo's Guardians

Sometimes I think the different parties draw arbitrary lines on an issue and start fighting. The minute that some issue is important to one party, it becomes paramount for the opposition to defeat it. The end result is that each side sometimes defends principles they usually assail, such as an overreaching central authority or state's rights.

I have no doubt that had the Republicans wanted the plug pulled because she was on state support, Democrats would be up in arms over preserving her life.

Somewhere hidden in the Schiavo case is the whole issue of abortion. Life is very important but I reject the opinon of Fred Barnes of Fox News that Terri has some Right to Life. That's patently ridiculous. A person wrecks their car and dies. Were their rights violated? Doctors decide daily that a patient just isn't going to make it. It's a tough decision but they are the most knowledgeable. They don't try to keep terminally ill patients alive for a few moments more, because it just wastes resources. Why? Because at some point before death, life stops.

I'm not even sure why the Democrats have a dog in this fight, especially when they are championing state's rights. They had better be careful because this guy, Michael Schiavo, isn't so clean. He got a million dollars in a law suit over his wife's death so that he could take care of her and then somehow put her on Medicaid. I certainly can sympathize with the parents (my wife used to work with Bob and, according to her, he is a nice person), but parents are too emotional. My mom would want my big toe kept on life support if I was blown up and all they found was a damaged foot. I'm sure the parents of Terri are too obsessed. Their daughter is gone and they can't face it. Most parents can't.

I've read the report of the doctor that was assigned to her. He saw no sign of cognitive thought. Still, I can only speak to the flawed motivations of both parties in this fight. I can't say what should be done because I don't know. I wish we could create a medical board that could give up and down decisions on these things instead of handing it over to lawyers where it becomes a political battle. I do know that I would in no way want to be kept alive for 15 years with people waiving balloons in my face, saying that in five years they may be able to get me to swallow gatorade. That ain't life. Isn't that one of the reasons for Operation Iraqi Freedom? We feel that people would rather die than live as prisoners.

One last point is that we, taxpayers, have been Terri's guardians for going on a decade. The majority of those taxpayers think she ought to be allowed to die. And for those that think she is being tortured by withholding food? My God. If she's in torture now what has she been through for the past 15 years?

Weapons of Media Destruction

On Hardball, Chris Matthews hosted Tim Russert in a very interesting discussion about the whole WMD "debacle". Russert pointed out that everyone believed that Saddam had WMD in March of 2002. John Kerry himself gave a speech on the floor of the senate emphatically stating such. Former President Clinton wondered aloud after the 2002 invasion why people were suddenly denying it.

In their search for a "gotcha" moment, I think a lot of people are missing the point. In the history of international conflict, it is typical to have unclear data about a foe. Open and clear communication is only between friendly countries, ones that mean no harm to each other. So bad information is just the nature of the ball game. Just ask Clinton about his mistaken bombing of an aspirin factory in the Sudan. Further, when confronting a potential danger, there are always going to be two sides of the story. Were there people who said that Saddam had nothing? Yes, but there were many more who said otherwise.

At the very bottom of the issue, you have to ask yourself if it really matters whether the threat is true or not. On one hand, the foe has the weapons and the danger is clear. On the other hand, the foe wants you to think he has the weapons and the danger is the example it gives others.

Now, we run the risk of the story of the boy who cried wolf. The point is that wolves are still dangerous. Waiting to get absolute proof of a threat is impossible and tantamount to just giving up. Being too cautious in the face of danger can get you killed.

To anyone in the Sudan upset at us for blowing up their aspirin factory or anyone who think we lied about WMD, my response would be thus: "If you have a history of trying to harm the United States or its citizens, we will assume the worst about any risk you pose. Our suggestion is that you not be our foe." I'm not saying that you go around and force every country to explain themselves. This is only applicable when a country appears to pose a major threat to you, i.e., Saddam and, in Clinton's case, the Sudan.

As Little Bill told English Bob when he put him on the wagon out of town "You know Bob, if I see you again, I'm just going to start shooting and figure it was self-defense".

Europe's Old Question

Today is the WSJ is a story concerning hegemony in Europe. It's an interesting look at the views of Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic.

Since the fall of the Roman Empire, actually a slow deterioration, politics in Europe have been dominated by who would claim and rule Europe. Charlemagne earned the title after much hard work by his ancestors, but weak progeny fell into infighting. The Germans under the tutelage of the Ottos reclaimed the throne just before the millenium, but the Moors reeked havoc and Norse invasions were the rule of the day. The French took several tries at it with the Sun King and Napoleon. The English, separated as they were from the mainland, even came close with Henry V at Agincourt, but that was a cultural thing. They eventually ruled the world, but not Europe. Heck, even the Spanish under the Hapsburgs (yes, a German/Swiss Family) had a grip on Europe at one time. The Swedes gave it a shot; it didn't last long. Lastly, Hitler tried to his and his people's utter destruction.

I've always thought that the European Union was partially an attempt to solve this problem. Why is it that people must be ruled from a central authority? And if the socialist model is really nothing more than the old feudal system warmed over as Frederick Hayek says in his book, The Road to Serfdom, are the Europeans returning to the scene of the crime? Obsessed to get right what has laid waste to whole countries and created wholesale slaughter, in the order of hundreds of millions.

Compassion vs Contempt

Yesterday, George Kennan, the "Architect" of the Cold War, passed away at the grand age of 101. There was a story on NPR's Morning Edition today. Having started his diplomatic career in the roaring 20's, he certainly has seen a lot. Peter Reddeway, the director of the Kennan Institute, spoke about his work and his philosophy, echoing the multiculturalist viewpoint which emphasizes respect and understanding.

It gave me cause to review my own meager experiences and observations of diplomacy, specifically with the UN and USAID. I started off my sojourn into the developing world with a mulitcultural view, that all cultures are relative and equal in their own right. After months of stepping in cow dung, being chased by monkeys and fending off the hoards of beggars, I wasn't feeling too multicultural. I read two books, T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillar's of Wisdom and Pascal Bruchner's Le Sanglot de L'Homme Blanc (Translated to Tears of the White Man). Lawrence taught me that multiculturalism is impossible. All you end up creating is a two headed monster that has no home. However, most people only feign multiculturalism to hide their guilt. Bruchner went through his trial by fire and came out completely disillusioned with the "third worldists". What most people from the west mistook for compassion was really contempt.

When I first arrived in India, I overpaid for everything. I stepped over myself to accomodate and understand. I noticed that each time I allowed myself to be cheated, I created not gratitude but anger. Upon reflection, I realized that in my own culture, no one really liked being "patronized". What would you think if Donald Trump walked by you, looked at your clothes, ignored the fact that he saw you noticing him looking at your clothes, and then gave you a 100 bucks. If you had any character at all, you wouldn't like it.

Giving money, i.e., large grants of US aid dollars, is not compassion. It is contempt. The UN and USAID send out armies of "third worldists" with these same attitudes. They patronize the locals, telling them that nothing is their fault, that they've been cheated, the colonial yoke still hangs on their necks, etc. In short, canting nonsense. Just because a guy doesn't know who Marie Antoinette is doesn't mean he can't spot the attitude. An author for Vanity Fair (or Harper's) some time ago wrote about the UN mission in Kosovo and rather than just interview the UN staff, he chose to also speak to the people in the street. What he found was that the UN thought they were viewed as good, but the locals had no respect for them, calling them "internationals" who drove around in their SUVs, who hung out with each other and seemed to be on vacation.

I went to Delhi to visit a German friend. We ended up going to a "hash" (not the drug but the running game/party) with a bunch of people from the UN and various European embassies. We ran through the pervasive slums of Delhi where we scared a sleeping cow who began to kick wildly and knocked down a mud wall. The locals just stared as we ran off as a Brit and an Australian yelled "on on".

I don't know who this Peter Reddeway is and I'm not sure what George Kennan did in the later years of his life but he used to speak the truth. He didn't believe in mutual understanding and respect when in the 50s he called the Soviet Union the new Nazi Germany. You show respect when you speak your mind, when you are yourself. Acting like you don't notice the other guy's faults is not compassion. It's dishonest to both of you. George Kennan lived to regret his policy of "containment". I agree. But multiculturalism certainly wouldn't have worked on the Soviets. How can you respect a society which could not admit their deeds in the Katyn Forest?

RIP George Kennan.

The Prime Directive

I had the chance to talk with a recent visitor to Venezuela and Argentina. One of the sights that struck him the most was the number of shacks that had satellite dishes. "I mean the dish must cost more than the home they live in," he observed.

I, too, was struck by the impact of western entertainment on third world cutlure (yes, most of which is American/Hollywood produced) when I traveled. An Indian woman acosted me over Dallas, the prime time soap, which apparently is very popular there. A man harrassed me at a temple in Delhi over his inability to get a beautiful wife, like he sees on American TV. One of the most shocking scenes I came across was in the hills of the Indian Ghats. After hiking all day through the jungle, I suddenly found myself staring at a small mud house with a generator and a satellite dish.

The impact of its technology on developing countries is a paradox for the west. What we forget is that our culture had to go through stages to get to this level where we can produce satellites and the media that passes through them. What happens when you bypass all of that? In the case of medicine, we caused a large amount of the world to ignore sanitation and water treatment. Western civilization was on its own when the Plague created solid waste management and Cholera instituted water treatment. Worse, the west provided an endless supply of hypodermic needles for vaccines and they ended up contributing to the spread of HIV. What's the saying about the road to hell?

Other effects are harder to imagine but are readily seen in the "street" of the third world. What kind of angst is created when young men forbidden sexual contact watch Pamela Anderson on Baywatch. I mean it was hard enough keeping my hormones in check when I was 17; I can't imagine what it would be like in Jordan (the country, not doug). Is it enough to make one drive a plane into a building? Especially if 70 virgin Pamela Andersons were waiting for you?

In the inbox is a letter from a friend in Fallujah with the Marines. He's observed that for a bunch of men who find homosexuality evil, Arab young men in Fallujah sure seem to engage in a lot of it. I'm reminded of a story I read in Generation Kill where recon marines were being propositioned by men in Baghdad.

India also has a culture which frowns on pre-marital contact between the sexes. As a result, Indian boys engage in a lot of fondling and intimate behavior. They are told that it must stop after a certain age when usually your parents find you a wife. Because homosexuality is not allowed in these cultures, it must be very tough on those gays who are suddenly taken from their comfort zone. And with the impact of satellite TV, it is very disturbing to see these alternative lifestyles expressed in the open, as a reminder to closeted gays and as an insinuation for homophobic straights. For a culture that didn't go through the sexual revolution, it's a tough way to play catch-up.

The United Federation of Planets was right to make non-interference the Prime Directive. Of course, it was impossible to keep as Captain James T. Kirk well knew. He had to kick a lot of Klingon ass over it.

So, along those lines, we have Egypt getting it's own Baywatch called "Action in Hurghada" . It's going to be low on sex. Yep, that should work. Along with the cleric's advice to lower your eyes when Baywatch comes on, this should solve the problem. I wonder if Pamela Anderson knows just how much trouble she's caused.

Land of the Free. Home of the Brave.

In the inbox today is an article explaining the differences between Americans and Canadians. The authors are husband and wife with some interesting credentials: the former is a circuit judge with the infamous 9th Circuit of the US Court of Appeals and the latter is a director of the Northern Studies Program at UA-Fairbanks. Interestingly, they touch on a harmonic of the Social Security debate. There is a trade-off between protecting life and stifling it. At one end of the spectrum, you have the Soviet Union where you, supposedly, never had to worry about anything but had little hope for an interesting life. At the other end, you have the wild west, where you made of your life what you could with what you had.

I've lived in Europe and I can tell you that there is a tedium that pervades life there. Everything is warm, comfortable and pretty but it can be boring at times. I've also lived in India where the risks to life and limb were common but there was a certain vitality and novelty in each day. I think we need a little of both to shake us up, to help us set our priorities. With too much comfort, you sink into mundane existence. Too much chaos will have you running a macabre tribe of savages in the Cambodian jungle; then one day, Martin Sheen shows up to put you down. Right now, in the US, I think we wait to live our lives at the end after we've forgotten how.

Greenspan on Social Security

I'm not a big fan of Alan Greenspan (mainly because of his proclivity of seeing inflation everywhere) but I still consider him to be a knowledgeable source. You should really read what he's saying.

Greenspan cast doubt on the ability of the United States to meet commitments to retirees and said a fix for the government retirement program would almost certainly entail benefit cuts.

"Because benefit cuts will almost surely be at least part of the resolution, it is incumbent on government to convey to future retirees that the real resources currently promised to be available on retirement will not be fully forthcoming," he said.

Social Security: The Battle Lines

From Zogby comes a great article on the divisions over Social Secuirty Reform. One of the themes that I have not touched on in this blog is that behind much of the struggles today, whether overtly violent or just political banter, hides the old conflict of capitalism versus socialism, or in my mind, the free market versus state control. And this struggle is not merely a remnant of the cold war but of a longer and more broad struggle; one that we see in the post-Renaissance struggle between the Royalty and the Bourgeois. It is one that I like to characterize, to the dismay of my socialist friends, as the Wealthy vs the Rich. Here, I should define and distinguish that Wealth is the accumulation of riches, and by Rich, I take a certain latitude to define as income, or the potential to be wealthy.

That is, the battle is between those who already have a secure life with no plans for further large gains and those who are nipping at their heels. It is, thus, of no little coincidence that the wealthiest members of congress are against social security reform.

And just where do the poor and the middle class fit into this struggle? Well, the Royalty have always found common cause with the poor and the rich have had a slightly more tenuous pact with those that nip at their heels.

More Fund with Social Security

John Fund sums this up nicely. It's worth a read. Above all, Try something.

War, what is it good for?

In the inbox today is found another missive pleaing the case for the pro-peace cause. The subject centers around the efforts of the American Friends Service Committee, or the Quakers. Their exhibit, "Eyes Wide Open", has been touring the country displaying the shoes of lost servicemen as a sort of play on the shoe exhibit in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

I'm moved to write on this subject for several reasons. First, two lines of my ancestral tree were Quakers, one of which, Anne Skipwith, was hanged in York for upsetting local religious leaders in the 17th century. Her great grandson, Preston Goforth, died at the battle of Kings Mountain, fighting against the people who had driven him from England.

Secondly, I have a little peeve with people who refer to themselves as pro-Peace. Peace, Life and the Environment are ineffable states of being, unlike the death penalty or abortion, which are clearly defined actions. Similar to the pro-Environment or pro-Life crowd, they seek to conclude a complex argument before it starts. Really, people. If your position on any topic can be summed up in two words, either your position or the argument isn't worth discussing. I mean just who is anti-Peace? What we are concerned with is whether the whole of one's proposed actions will lead to more or less peace. Forgive me, Quakers, but sitting in a circle and singing kumbayah will probably lead to more bloodshed, especially from the campers in the next site over. To me, a peace-loving Quaker decendent, I know from my own view of history that people like the AFSC exist because others fight.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.....The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill

Imagine we could rewind the clock. A dictator moves into a neighboring country. The dictator is ousted by outside forces but not defeated. Under sanctions, the dictator's people suffer. He turns on the weakest members of that society, committing mass murder in some cases. The international community hesitates but finally enough is enough and the dictator is given an ultimatum. Under protest from the pro-peace group, troops move onto the sovereign soil of said dictator. His army is routed and he and his henchmen are soon captured but not without the cost of over 2,000 allied soldiers and many more injured. The ASFC protests the horrible waste. Afterall, Germany is for Germans and Hitler had very few weapons and war is no solution.

War is a terrible thing but often times the peace-at-any-price policy leads to exactly that, an incredible price. Of course, the 80 million dead from WWII can't protest in the street and the millions that may have died from the seemingly interminable wars in the middle east will never know the price they might have paid.

The Social Security Saga Continues

A story appears today in the Kansas City Star in which a British Official speaking to an AARP group urges the US not to adopt private pension plans like England did. Of course, I don't suppose the AARP would have invited the guy to speak unless he was going to repeat their party line. I can't fault the AARP for taking the position they do, advocating for their stipend receiving members. Even if the president has decreed that no one over 55 should lose their checks, they are worried that any monkeying around with the system will eventually result in the cut of benefits or raising the retirement age. The AARP wants to use the leverage of their voting machine to maximize both the rate of payments and the amount of time they receive it. If congress proposed a plan which required the 100 million taxpayers to pony up 2 grand each in order to grant 4,000 to each of the 50 million seniors, regardless of need, they'd stand fully behind it. Actually, that's what they did with the new Medicare Drug Bill. The AARP hesitated because they thought they might be able to get more. You will never hear the AARP complain that their members did not properly fund Social Security, which is the truth.

An average retiree of 70 years of age, paid an average rate of about 9%, whereas we pay 12.4% today. In 1983, when Social Security was approaching disaster, voters had the chance to do something permanent. They opted for handing the problem off to a later generation. And I can't blame them, they were looking at the same large retiree voting block that we face today. My problem is that we allow those who abuse the system to hide behind those who need it. There are plenty of low income seniors who need the money. There are many more who don't. So why did we give all of them, regardless of assets, a big drug bill?

Lastly, Bill Turner, the Brit who spoke to the AARP group, was, at the very least, truthful to his audience. His real complaint was about the complexity of Britain's private pension plan (government creating red tape? you're kidding) and that retirement ages must be raised. So I'll revise my list of reforms for SS.

1. Partial Private Accounts, intelligently administrated, with low red tape.
2. Raise the Retirement age, encourage part time work(to the point of paying bonuses).
3. Trim benefits to the wealthy.

Note: Lest someone misconstrue that I'm attacking poor seniors, I'll spell it out. I think medical care to the poorest should be increased. I'm against helping those seniors with two houses get a new caddy every couple of years, or spend most of their retirement check in a casino. You know who you are.

Social Security And You

This isn't going to end well. Here is an interesting article from an economist at Harvard.

It's times like these that I wish we had a stronger education in Mathematics. While I don't want to go off on a tangent, away from the topic of Social Security, I have to complain: our second rate education system has let us down. I live in a country where only a few understand compound interest, where calculating a tip requires a calculator, and where Asians are thought to be better at that "math stuff". We risk making important decisions concerning a pending crisis based on emotional partisan positions rather than the cold hard numbers.

I haven't heard either side really present the whole picture to us, probably because they suspect we'd get glassy-eyed and lose interest. It really isn't that difficult. Here are some things that we have to understand.

1. There is no trust fund. Each year the government receives revenue from social security taxes. It has done so since 1935. Part of the money is paid to retirees. Whatever is left over is used for general non-SS expenditures. The trust fund is nothing more than an accounting designation of that part of the US Debt, which was covered by Social Security Taxes. That some of the notes in the US Debt are earmarked for Social Security doesn’t mean anything. If you were to take those notes and tear them up, it wouldn’t change a thing; the shortfall that will appear sometime in the next decade, when disbursements exceed revenue, will still have to be covered by tax revenue or more borrowing.

2. Social Security is already tied to private accounts. Where do Social Security Taxes come from? They come from the “private” earnings of US Taxpayers, the major portion of which is derived either directly from medium to large corporations or from their employees. And when I say private, I mean private because public federal employees, including our legislators, do not participate in Social Security. If the economy goes south, government revenues (including SS Taxes) will also. It is interesting to note that the government once allowed state governments to opt out of SS, which many did in increasing numbers until 1983 when their luck ran out. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

3. Private Accounts: It’s what FDR wanted. John Fund created a stir when he quoted FDR supporting private accounts, which jolted Media Matters into a spirited campaign to counter this assertion. Read for yourself: Remarks from FDR to Congress January 17th, 1935. Of course, FDR didn’t really spell it out clearly either way but there is this one phrase that’s hard to avoid: “It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans”. Further, FDR clearly stated “that for perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions”. It’s pretty clear that the creator saw the initial system as temporary. Some, of course, like Media Matters, have said that what FDR wanted was that people would have the ability to pay more money into the system to draw more out later. This is preposterous. The Federal Government does not generate interest. The rate it provides on its notes is merely a promise to tax the people more in the future. If you don’t believe this then take 100 bucks from your wallet and replace it with a note which says that in 10 years you will pay back $150. Let me know how you make out.

4. Know thou the History of the Calamity of Social Security. So what happened at the end of that 30 years? The system went bankrupt just like FDR said it would. What did congress do? They raised taxes. Did that fix it? Nope, less than 20 years later, it was in trouble again. Solution: Raise Taxes. Originally, it was 2% of the first $30,000 (in today’s dollars). Now, some 70 years later, it’s 12.4% of the first $75,000.

How could so many congresses and presidents have been unable to foresee what was going to happen? The truth is that they all knew this was coming. There were plenty of critics at the time and the situation we’re in now has been faced before. The basic problem is that congress is loath to fix a system which is so popular with a growing segment of the society whether it is wrong to let the pillage continue or not. As George Barnard Shaw said, "A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." And when Paul votes at a much higher frequency, Peter’s in trouble.

5. Follow the money….to Las Vegas. The real problem has been that congress and presidents have continually expanded the system to curry favor with retirees. Even now, Medicaid has been expanded to provide prescription drug coverage to retirees regardless of their need. This system will cost taxpayers over a half of a trillion dollars over 10 years.

It is clear that the initial system was meant for, and I quote once again from FDR’s 1935 speech, “to provide security, in the form of regular payments, to people who could not support themselves”. Our present system covers retirees for everything regardless of their need.

And since only a small % of the elderly rely on Social Security as their only means of support, we have to look at what happens with the rest of it. The 65+ demographic in this country is the richest demographic. They have the most disposable income of any age group. Retiree gambling accounts for more than half of casino income in Atlantic City. Click here to read the full story. Casino watch has even more scary stories.

6. And now the bad news. People are getting older and the cost of adding additional years (and even months) is growing exponentially. Does it seem reasonable that you pay 15% of your check for 45 years and then be able to live the next 20 on it? Especially if those years could be the most expensive years you’ve lived? We haven’t even talked about Medicaid and Medicare and those programs are predicted to be much more of a burden than Social Security.

This mass transfer of wealth from one demographic to another is getting out of hand. Read the remarks from a Federal Reserve Board Governor. In 1950, there were 16 workers for every recipient, now it is less than 4 and is slated to drop to 2 in 3 decades. The system has become a grab-as-grab-can game. Recipients receive as much assistance as they can, even to the point of shedding assets to their children to protect their estates from recovery. So whatever money doesn’t make it into slot machines, builds equity for children of the wealthy. Recently, I had a conversation with a man involved in a battle to keep the government from confiscating his recently deceased mother’s house. She had shed many of her assets to him to go onto Medicaid but kept the house. Now Medicaid wanted that house. He hired a lawyer and was able to keep the estate. Guess what he did with the cash? He retired early.

7. The Final Analysis. Social Security is basically a system that cheats the poor, who typically die before they draw on it, and creates a boon for those who have the means to take advantage of it. Some of Social Security is necessary. Much of it can be discontinued tomorrow and all it will mean is one less Cadillac and fewer trips to the Casinos. My plan is simple, though politically impossible:

One) Control of system has to be put in someone else’s hands. Congress cannot control the urge to bestow gifts upon the voting public. It should be turned over to the Federal Reserve for administration, or at least for the right to increase benefits or structures to the plan. This will never happen, of course, but it should happen.

Two) Means testing must be instituted to control the growth of benefits. I know Ted Kennedy will likely have a conniption fit, but the vote buying has to stop. Severe penalties must be there for asset shedding to avoid payment.

Three) Part of Social Security should be funded through private accounts. This will force retirees to remember that they are subject to the health of the economy. This part of the pie has gotten to be too big to be outside economic forces and not have the potential to cause a real disaster down the road. There are plenty of secure investments that will yield significantly better than the 1% average SS does, such as your mortgage, for instance.

Four) The work age must be raised. If you live longer, then you must be expected to work longer. The system should encourage retirees to work part time past 65. In this day and age when people are capable of working well into their 80s, it is ridiculous to not be able to have that experience contributing to the economy.

The Roots to 9/11

It is a dangerous game to take the rantings of lunatics at face value and yet, this is exactly what some historians do when they search for the cause of the Arab Terrorist Anger. Many accept as prima-facie the grievances expressed by a culture which has grown progressively self-destructive every year without assessing the value of the grievances on their own merit.

I wonder if these same historians might have lent some support to Nazi actions prior to World War II. Were they ideologically akin to those who sought appeasement based on Nazi grievances, a policy that ultimately cost millions of lives? Even today, we might worry that a just cause drove James Bird’s killers to commit that hideous crime. Wasn’t Timothy McVeigh driven by the US governments’ mistakes at Waco? What about Matthew Shepard’s killers? Perhaps they had a righteous grievance that drove them to do that unspeakable act?

Nope. Sorry. Mass murderers do not have righteous causes. These causes are merely symbolic of an internal struggle. For such monsters, their need is not to redress past wrongs but to garner attention, to assuage their feelings of self-hatred and insignificance.

Just look at the average Saudi terrorist that climbed on board those ill fated flights. What was the most troubling thing in their lives? That Palestinians are mistreated by Israelis? If that were justification, couldn’t we all find some connection to some mistreated people and start our own jihad. Couldn’t the US feign common cause with Maronite Christians in Lebanon and start our own holy war against the infidel? Could not the Balkans have been ethnically cleansed with this reasoning? Would we so easily excuse Americans with Irish heritage blowing up buses in London?

Violent mass movements, as explained in Eric Hoffer’s True Believer, typically spring from a national feeling of humiliation, of insignificance. “Power corrupts the few, but weakness corrupts the many.” The German people were led down the Nazi path to destruction not because of any great concern for the Sudetendeutsche but because of their psychological desire to overcome their national humiliation in WWI. And as is similar with the Arabs, the German people never endorsed whole-heartedly the actions of the Nazis but rather the distraught majority apathetically went along with the minority whose weak psyches wanted violence.

Similarly, the average Saudi has no real concern for Palestinians except as a cover for their own weakness. If they cared for them, they would have absorbed them into their own populations long ago like Israel did for all the Jews that were evicted from their homes in Arab lands. They certainly wouldn’t have policies that treat the Palestinians as second class citizens. They would have objected to the eviction from Kuwait of all Palestinians after the 1st Gulf War. Are you starting to get a picture of the Arab Terrorist mindset?

If not, let’s look at the particular terrorist, Mohammed Atta. Dr. Ruth Stein gives a detailed and disconcerting picture of the mind of Atta. We do not see a person who seeks to attack his enemy but rather a sick young man whose victims are symbolic. What we should be concerned with are not the distant struggles of others but with a local culture that breeds such sickness in the minds of their youth, that makes them fodder for the sick minds of others.

Ali Salem, an Egyptian playwright, penned a missive about this culture which creates “dwarfs” of their children. Within, you find echoes of Stein’s analysis. The pain of life causes them to seek a shortcut to death (and peace) through suicide. Once the course is decided, “they search for a way to ennoble it in the eyes of ordinary people who do not share their holy delusion but whose admiration they crave.” To ennoble it, they turn to the national obsession, Israel. It is no small detail that when told of his son’s participation in 9/11, Atta’s father, a father who Atta so desperately wanted to please, replied that a Jewish agent must have been responsible.

Which is why I’m so adverse to the analysis of Juan Cole who seems to ennoble this obsession. Foreign occupation, to him, is the cause of terrorism and he then legitimizes modern Arab Terrorists by associating them with historical movements. “You want to end terrorism? End unjust military occupations,” he says. But Mohammed Atta and his group were not occupied. And many of the terrorists in Iraq chose to come in from neighboring lands. Cole even goes further by railing against “Indian enormities against Kashmiri Muslims” and Chechnya. I don’t refuse Cole his right to analyze; I just wish that he would recognize the risk he takes by taking the rantings of mass murderers at face-value. He gives them, in essence, their reason to kill, a righteous cause in the eyes of the world.

Cole and I certainly agree on his last sentence: “Humiliation is what causes terrorism.” We differ on what causes that humiliation.

For that we need to find the roots of that humiliation which I touched on above. Thomas Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times and frequent traveler to the Middle East, produced a documentary on the roots of 9/11. Friedman paints a disturbing picture of Arab culture by quoting from the UN Arab Human Development Report 2002. Arab culture, from Morocco to Yemen, has come to a grinding halt in terms of economic growth, technological advancement and political freedom. The entire Arab world has a GDP less than Spain (while having 8 times the population). 5 times as many books are translated into Greek than are translated into Arabic. Most telling, in a country like Saudi Arabia where their per capita income was almost as much as the United States in the 70s, purchasing power has fallen by over half. By contrast, Israel, a small country, which has very few natural resources and has to expend a large amount on self-defense, has seen their per capita income increase dramatically over the same period to twice that of oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

This failure cannot be seen as caused by relatively small conflicts that touch the lives of very few Arabs directly. And one cannot even suppose that these conflicts are primary in their lives when so many problems exist locally. Is it Israel that has crushed economic development in Saudi Arabia or is it an insistence on imprisoning and terrorizing half of their potential workforce? Every Arab country has laws protecting “honor” crimes, where a relative has the right to kill a woman for humiliating the family. When a culture views rape as a crime by the victim and a humiliation born by the male relatives of the victim, are we really to trust any other “cause” for humiliation? And while Arab apologists may cite that honor crimes are rare and typically a phenomenon of the lower class, we have to remember that honor crime legislation is something recent, enacted by the same elites who dismiss it.

Are we surprised then when we find out that Atta insisted in his will that no women, including his mother, be present at his funeral, or that Osama bin Laden grew up with a distant father and a mother who was just one in a long line of discarded brides? Is it unusual that American troops were able to coax Saddam's Fedayeen out of hiding by playing tapes in Arabic of a woman ridiculing their pensises.

The situation is apparent to those who travel and it is of no coincidence that most of the Arab terrorists were not created until they had some direct interaction with the West. The perpetrators of 9/11 were not created in Arabia, where they supposedly suffered under occupation, but rather in Europe. Coming from a hyper-macho society, they were suddenly thrust into an atmosphere where they have to compete and are often out performed by women. The more chilling aspect of this is that whereas few Arabs interacted with western culture, satellite TV has brought the clash of cultures to homes and coffee shops all across the Arab world. Everyday, Arabs are reminded of how behind they are, of how little they have changed, and of how the modern world, encroaching into their lives each day, includes powerful women and alternative lifestyles.

Yes. Terrorism is caused by occupation, not by foreign forces, but by the refusal to grow, to change. As Thomas Friedman said on Tim Russert, Arab culture has been digging itself into a hole for 50 years, if we can just get one group to stop digging, they may see the light above and not the darkness below. That digging will not stop until historians stop harping on the past. I have full faith that the Arab people when no longer shackled by bitterness will flourish like none other in the history of man.

The State of the World

Welcome to Boldtalk.
In the posts that are to come, I hope to elucidate my view of the world. I traveled around the world and studied many different subjects which gives me a unique perspective, not necessarily a better perspective, but, nonetheless, different. There are many truths in the world and I don't pretend to have the only one. I consider myself to have a great tolerance for different views though I must profess that I rarely respect the run of the mill mindless partisan positions. I prefer issues to personalities. I insist on scientific reasoning rather than passionate discourse. I appreciate positions arrived at by your own thought process. I am fairly contempuous of the repetition of talking points.

Boldtalk is a reference to a scene from True Grit.