Money in Politics.... Or, How Much Will That Office Cost Me?

In the recent election in my state, Illinois, the Republican candidate for governor was a man named Bruce Rauner. Rauner is a billionaire, and his annual income (as he released the figures during his campaign) is 60 million dollars.

 

I did not vote for this man. I'm not likely to vote for a Republican, but also, in this particular case, I felt that he believed he could buy the election--personal wealth, when put into a political campaign, translates into more TV campaign advertising--and the election results proved that he was right.

 
Generally, in America, there is not much class resentment. The poor don't resent the wealthy and mobs don't stone the Rolls-Royces as they roll by. One reason is that people still buy into the great American myth that anybody can "make it," that you might be rich some day.

And how might that come about? Well, some people live in hopes of winning the lottery. But rags-to-riches is a myth for most people during waking hours. While occasionally someone starts as a mailroom clerk and ends up president of the company, it's more the rule that your socioeconomic class tends to stay the same throughout your life.

I don't know the whole story of Rauner's financial success, but he owns a number of businesses. To put Rauner's wealth into perspective: there are not many avenues, not many occupations, that will give you an income of 60 million. Some professional athletes have multi-million annual incomes, but I don't think they typically make 60 million. An Elvis Presley or a Michael Jackson makes that much. I would not be surprised if J. D. Rawlings (author of the Harry Potter books) has made that much.

 

Copyright (c) 2014.

The Bible and Gay Marriage

Yesterday, a favorable vote in the House of the Illinois legislature meant that Illinois will become the fifteenth state (plus the District of Columbia) to permit same-sex (or "gay") marriage.

I am very happy about this, but it brings to mind the debate, which has occurred many times and took place here recently. That is, some religious folks and conservatives have argued against gay marriage and, at other times and places, other measures to ensure or enhance rights of gay people by pointing to their Bibles.

My personal argument against these people and their point of view on this subject is that we in the United States live in a secular society, not in a theocracy. If it were Muslims who wanted to blur the line between church and state by imposing Islamic sharia law (as have, for example, the Taliban in Afghanistan), there would be a loud outcry. But apparently it matters whose religion is the source of the views and proscriptions that some would like to incorporate into the civil law.

Another example of mine: Jewish people (in the US and of course elsewhere), if they are observant Jews, believe that one should not eat pork. Now suppose that I, as a Jew, argued in the legislature that since I believe that eating pork is a sin (and the Bible—Leviticus—says, I believe, that the eating of pork is an "abomination"), then no one in the US should be permitted by law to eat pork. I'd love to hear the screams and shrieks of those African-American ministers who fought against gay marriage in Illinois when their pork chops are taken away!

And, round about the year 1850, the Bible was pointed to as not only permitting, but positively endorsing, slavery.

A column today by Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times had the same idea but he used different examples. He said that if you stone your daughter for speaking disrespectfully toward you, it won't serve you as a defense to point to your Bible. Nor can you perform a sacrifice in your driveway and point to your Bible as permitting it or requiring it. As Steinberg said, "That battle has been lost."

Just as 150 years after the slavery debate our views have changed, and no one would try to defend slavery, maybe in another 10 or 15 decades people will look back  to these times and see that it was ridiculous to point to the Bible as justifying the inferior treatment of gay people.

Copyright © 2013.

Truth and Lies on the Internet

The Internet is a wonderful thing, as a source of information, there's no doubt. I personally rely on it for finding out a lot of things via Wikipedia and Google searches: how to do some homeowner-ly task, consumer reviews of products, health information, and much more. And this from someone who has a lifetime habit of turning to books and libraries to find things out.

Unfortunately, the Internet is a two-edged sword. It can also be used to spread incorrect "information."

About a week ago I was reading an article, "Ten Brands that Are Likely to Disappear in 2014," on the financial web site 24/7 Wall Street. This article said that Volvo cars are likely to disappear from the US market next year. I forwarded this information to two friends of mine who own Volvos.

One of those friends got somewhat alarmed and wondered if she should sell her car. The other one took a more critical view of the story and did some research on her own, finding a statement from Volvo's US arm that they have no intention of leaving the US market.

That got me thinking about the fact that you can easily locate contradictory information on the 'Net, and then I had to wonder about what percentage of Internet content might be reliable and what percentage not.

Shortly after that incident I received an email, one of those viral emails that has been forwarded many times before reaching me. The immediate source of this one was an old friend from high school with whom I re-established contact a few years ago. (I could tell a bit about this person that might be interesting but I don't want to get too far off my subject. Suffice it to say here that he is politically conservative whereas he knows, or should know, that I am not.)

This email listed some of the problems that the State of Illinois and the city of Chicago have. The problems are  undeniable but, according to this email, these problems are attributable to Democrats because—as the email asserted numerous times—there are no Republicans in Illinois. This is patently false. It mentioned former Illinois Governor George Ryan as being in prison and implied that this is among the many examples of the things that are wrong with Illinois. This is wrong because Ryan was recently released from prison. More importantly, the email conveniently ignored the fact that Ryan is a Republican.

The City of Chicago has a tradition of  voting Democratic; this long history might deserve comment, but again I don't want to go too far afield. However, the suburban counties that surround Chicago typically are Republican and elect Republicans on both the state and federal levels.

If anyone cares to look at the facts rather than making unfounded assertions, the makeup of the Illinois legislature (General Assembly) is thusly: Senate, 40 Democrats and 19 Republicans. House, 70 Democrats and 47 Republicans. Thus, the Democrats do have a majority in both houses of the Illinois state legislature; but I'd say that's a far cry from there being NO Republicans. The facts for the US Congressmen (Representatives) from Illinois are that there are 12 Democrats and 6 Republicans. In the US Senate, there is one Democratic Senator from Illinois and one Republican.

So—back to the email from my high-school classmate. The person who originated that email had very little regard for facts or truth. And I have found in the past that other emails—also forwarded to me by the same classmate—were also full of exaggerations, half-truths, and out-and-out falsehoods.* At the risk of making a rather sweeping generalization, I'm going to say that those on the Right very often play fast-and-loose with the truth. (I base that assertion partly on the fact that, on matters regarding homosexuality, they have been known to shamelessly promulgate lies.)

I think that those who forward these emails are just as guilty as those who first write them. Unfortunately, every person who receives such an email and believes it and forwards it is doing the world quite a disservice by adding to the general store of incorrect information out there.

However, on a brighter note, if the Internet is the problem, it can also provide the cure. I'd like to acquaint my readers with two 'Net sites that are dedicated to countering incorrect information that circulates on the 'Net—to setting the facts straight. They are FactCheck.org and Snopes.com.
___________
*I can recall three previous emails that this person forwarded to me. Two of them were anti-Obama and, when I did some checking, they were factually incorrect. The third was anti-Muslim.

I used to berate my students for what I felt was their mindless, mechanical, uncritical note-taking. I said, "My words go into your ear, through your neck and shoulder, down your arm and onto your paper, with no thought involved. I could say 'Black is white' and you would write down 'Black is white.'"

The point of this posting was that we tend not to be critical of what we hear and read. How many people would take the trouble to check on the content of an email they'd received, if they were planning to forward it or even if they were not?

Note added August 18, 2013. Also see my Friday, September 21, 2012 posting, "Lies from the Right, in Your Email Inbox."


Copyright © 2013.

I Truly Feel for Japan

I feel so sorry for Japan. If you were writing a disaster novel, or the screenplay for one of those disaster movies, and you didn't care that you were just piling up disasters and didn’t worry about straining credibility—then you couldn't make up a more dire scenario than what has actually happened to Japan, with an earthquake, tsunami, and then meltdown of nuclear reactors.

Plus, some Japanese are old enough to have memories of World War II and the suffering that was wrought upon the people of Japan in that war: not just the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but also—much less well known to the rest of the world—the fire-bombing of Tokyo, which leveled half the city, killed a disputed number of people (usually estimated at over 100,000, more than the direct death toll from the Hiroshima atomic bomb attacks, though I find different casualty estimates for the numbers of atomic bomb casualties, as well as for the Tokyo casualties), and left a million people homeless. Remember, it's not the everyday people who start a war, but it is they who suffer from it.

And, Japan has suffered other terrible earthquakes, including the Tokyo earthquake of 1923 and a more recent one in Kobe.

Not to mention that the survivors of the nuclear attacks in 1945 remember the terrible suffering and sickness and death from the effects of radiation rather than the direct bomb blasts. People were dying from radiation exposure for decades afterward. And now again—amidst the death and destruction from the quake and the tsunami, the Japanese now again must worry about the health effects of radiation exposure.

It's tempting to segue into some discussion of nuclear power, its pros and cons. One might say, simplistically, that it was very foolish to build nuclear plants in an earthquake-prone country. But remember that, first, Japan has few other energy resources. I understand that in California there are nuclear plants sitting right atop the San Andreas Fault. Also, right here in Illinois, we have many nuclear power plants that could be affected by the New Madrid Fault, near the southern tip of Illinois, which caused four of the biggest earthquakes ever in the U.S. So as I write this, I am sitting on almost the same type of hazard that the people of Japan were.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Why Should Americans Pay Any Taxes?

In the United States, it would be difficult for anyone to be unaware that it is election season. We are all being barraged by election/campaign messages—on our televisions, on our telephones, in our mailboxes.

Here in Illinois, our Democratic governor is up for re-election (this is the man who became governor when the infamous Rod Blagojevich was impeached, so this man was never elected governor on his own); and the man who was our state Treasurer is running for the Senate, to fill the seat once occupied by Barack Obama.

The State of Illinois is financially in crisis, with a huge budget deficit. Both the governor and the state Treasurer have said that, to rectify the deficit, our state income tax should be increased from 3% to 4%.

Probably no one likes to pay more taxes and, not surprisingly, Republicans are using pro–tax-increase statements by the Governor and the Treasurer as ammunition against them. Both the Republican party and the Tea Party keep railing against "big government" and politicians who want to increase taxes.

Now, let's remember that Bill Clinton left office with a surplus in the national budget. His successor, George W. Bush, cut taxes—and thus turned Clinton's budget surplus into a big deficit.

The conservatives who don't like tax increases also complain that the national debt is a "burden passed on to our children and grandchildren." They don't like the deficit but they don't like tax increases. Can you say "inconsistency"?

Also: the very same conservatives who don't like tax increases very generally support wars. The United States is fighting a war—no, two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan. These wars are expensive beyond most people's imagination. How do we pay for these wars, or any war? If the government does not have enough revenue coming in, it prints money or it borrows-- for example, by issuing Treasury bonds. (The relationship between government borrowing and "printing money" is a complex matter which I won't go into here.) This adds to the national debt.

So I'd like to ask the anti-tax folks if they'd favor immediately ending those wars. I think I know what they'd say. No, cut federal spending somewhere else.

Several government missions, like protecting us from unsafe food and unsafe drugs, are already underfunded. We've seen outbreaks of food-borne illnesses. The E. coli outbreaks caused by ground beef can be laid at the door of the Bush administration, which managed to not implement a Congressional mandate to increase inspection of meat-processing plants.

To some of the extreme anti-government people, I'd like to ask, Do you want the government to no longer help ensure the safety of our food, water, air, medicine?

Would you like the government to not have fire trucks to come to your aid when your house is on fire? To stop building roads? (By the way, we already have a near-crisis of deteriorating infrastructure: roads, bridges, sewer lines, and so forth.) To not install traffic lights?

Sure, let's just rely on the food industry to police itself. We all know that we can absolutely trust large business to act in the public interest.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein