Almost like a football cheer, many folks would be quick to chant, "US is number one!"
But, sadly, the US is not number one in many areas.
The US is not number one in per capita income, in life expectancy, in infant mortality, in literacy rate. We don't have the tallest buildings or the fastest trains in the world. And Americans are not the tallest people in the world (we once were, but now it's the Dutch).
(I probably shouldn't even get started on education. Finland, for example, has 93% of its high school students graduate; in the US, it's 75.5%. And on worldwide standardized tests of school kids' achievement in science and math, the US rates nowhere near the top but only in the middle of the pack.)
Now the latest report calls attention to the state of US infrastructure. In the latest report, the US ranked number 6 among the world's countries, and, in an update expected to come out next month, the US will be rated number 12.
The deteriorating US infrastructure--deteriorating roads and bridges--is costing jobs and economic growth. More money needs to be spent on infrastructure.
But, with "spending" now a dirty word in the US Congress, due to the new power of Tea Party members of Congress, that is not going to happen.
Update, September 15, 2011
Here is an article on the US' standing in education rankings: http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/09/14/the-world-is-becoming-more-educated-than-the-u-s/?icid=maing-grid7|maing5|dl24|sec3_lnk1|95582
Update, July 28, 2012
A recent article says the US ranks 16th in percentage of "college attainment."
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Religious Leaders Amass Wealth as Well as Power
Church establishment and hierarchies, it seems, have always been pretty good at attracting to themselves a lot of power and material possessions.
In ancient Egypt, the high priest wielded a lot of power. During the so-called Intermediary Period, when Egypt was divided into a northern and southern kingdom, a ruler of the North, Psusennes, was able to be very powerful by becoming High Priest as well as Pharaoh.
In the century or two before about the year 1000, the Vikings attacked and pillaged the monasteries in the north of England. Presumably the monasteries had sufficient wealth to tempt the Vikings to rob them.
In 1536, King Henry VIII of England dissolved the monasteries of England. Among other reasons he had was to seize the monks' wealth.
Throughout later centuries in Europe, the Church had staggering wealth and power. Church leaders were also temporal rulers. Look at the monastery of Melk in Austria, with its fabulous, gilded, Baroque rooms.
Today, the Vatican has enormous wealth. It is known to be a big stockholder in the Italian economy. The truth is, no one knows the magnitude of the wealth of the Vatican because it simply refuses to reveal any numbers.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
In ancient Egypt, the high priest wielded a lot of power. During the so-called Intermediary Period, when Egypt was divided into a northern and southern kingdom, a ruler of the North, Psusennes, was able to be very powerful by becoming High Priest as well as Pharaoh.
In the century or two before about the year 1000, the Vikings attacked and pillaged the monasteries in the north of England. Presumably the monasteries had sufficient wealth to tempt the Vikings to rob them.
In 1536, King Henry VIII of England dissolved the monasteries of England. Among other reasons he had was to seize the monks' wealth.
Throughout later centuries in Europe, the Church had staggering wealth and power. Church leaders were also temporal rulers. Look at the monastery of Melk in Austria, with its fabulous, gilded, Baroque rooms.
Today, the Vatican has enormous wealth. It is known to be a big stockholder in the Italian economy. The truth is, no one knows the magnitude of the wealth of the Vatican because it simply refuses to reveal any numbers.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
Monday, August 15, 2011
Buffet Says Rich Should Pay More Tax
Warren Buffet, one of the wealthiest men in America, has gone on record publicly saying that the wealthiest in America should pay more taxes, should pay their share and "share the sacrifice."
That that is true seems to me should be non-controversial, a no-brainer. Yet a local TV station in Chicago polled its viewers, "Do you think that the wealthiest Americans should pay more taxes?" Even though a pretty good majority—91%--voted "Yes," I am surprised that 9%--that is roughly one in 10—voted "No." I wonder why not. Maybe they buy that often-voiced Republican and Conservative argument that taxing the wealthy stifles job creation. But sparing the wealthiest individuals and corporations from taxes is trickle-down economics. It was tried during the Reagan years and it does not work.
Anyway, Congress take note of these poll results: There is very wide public support for raising taxes on the wealthy.
Warren Buffet is a good guy, there's no doubt. He has partnered with his fellow-richest guy Bill Gates to form a little group that lobbies other wealthy people to get them to be more philanthropic. Buffet said he pays some 17% of his income in taxes. Unfortunately, with the many loopholes that exist, many wealthy individuals are able to shield almost all their income from taxes. The rich can afford clever attorneys who help them to exploit a large number of ways of avoiding the income tax. Thus wealth, as always, begets wealth, and the rich and super-rich, under current policies, just get richer. Those in the upper 1% by income now control 33% of assets in this country.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
That that is true seems to me should be non-controversial, a no-brainer. Yet a local TV station in Chicago polled its viewers, "Do you think that the wealthiest Americans should pay more taxes?" Even though a pretty good majority—91%--voted "Yes," I am surprised that 9%--that is roughly one in 10—voted "No." I wonder why not. Maybe they buy that often-voiced Republican and Conservative argument that taxing the wealthy stifles job creation. But sparing the wealthiest individuals and corporations from taxes is trickle-down economics. It was tried during the Reagan years and it does not work.
Anyway, Congress take note of these poll results: There is very wide public support for raising taxes on the wealthy.
Warren Buffet is a good guy, there's no doubt. He has partnered with his fellow-richest guy Bill Gates to form a little group that lobbies other wealthy people to get them to be more philanthropic. Buffet said he pays some 17% of his income in taxes. Unfortunately, with the many loopholes that exist, many wealthy individuals are able to shield almost all their income from taxes. The rich can afford clever attorneys who help them to exploit a large number of ways of avoiding the income tax. Thus wealth, as always, begets wealth, and the rich and super-rich, under current policies, just get richer. Those in the upper 1% by income now control 33% of assets in this country.
Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein
Sunday, August 14, 2011
A Very Brief Summary of Wrongs Done to Native Americans
In the 1830s, US President Andrew Jackson, in defiance of a decision by the Supreme Court, ordered the Cherokee Indians, Choctaws, and several other tribes in the American Southwest, to leave their homes and march westward to a new land that was promised them, Oklahoma (which was then named Indian Territory). The story of this forced march (The "Trail of Tears"), is an extremely sad one. According to Wikipedia, "Many Native Americans suffered from exposure, disease and starvation en route to their destinations. Many died, including 4,000 of the 15,000 relocated Cherokee."*
Maybe even sadder, the promise of this land for the exclusive and perpetual ownership and use by the Indians was broken a few decades later, when white settlers started moving in.
In 1868, the Treaty of Ft. Laramie promised 41,000 square miles of land (in four states, centered around Montana) to the Lakota (Sioux) Indians. Again the treaty with its promises was broken a few decades later when gold and silver were discovered on those lands and white settlers began dispossessing the Indians of what had been promised to them.
The Indian cultures had no concept of land ownership, and when they did agree to sell their land to the White Man they often did not really understand what they were doing. Or, when they agreed to sell, they had been backed into a position of having no choice. Their lands--hunting and burial grounds, sacred mountains, and so forth—were enormously important to the Indians and yet they had to leave them, again and again.
Time and again, promises made to the Indians and treaties were simply forgotten and ignored by the US government. That is only one aspect of all the wrongs and mistreatment perpetrated against the Native Americans. The buffalo (bison), on which the Plains Indians depended for food, were deliberately, systematically, and efficiently wiped out as a matter of US government policy. This virtually destroyed Indian culture and turned a proud people into dependents. The Indians, deprived of their food source, were forced into dependence on the government's Indian agencies for handouts of food, and these handouts were not always adequate or dependable; and there was much corruption, fraud, and abuse in the system of Indian agencies, all to the detriment of the Indians whom they were supposed to benefit.
The catalog of wrongs done to the Indians is endless and shameful. They often were simply massacred, shot and their homes burned. They were given blankets infected with smallpox, perhaps deliberately (my impression is that the evidence on that is not completely clear).
As I have written elsewhere, in my view it is extremely cruel to deprive a people of its culture and its language. In addition to the utter destruction of the buffalo-centered hunting lifestyle of the Plains Indians, Indian cultures were vitiated in other ways, too. Indian children were removed from their families and sent to "Indian schools" where they were forbidden to speak their native languages and punished if they did so. This was all part of a policy to force the Indians to assimilate to the White Man's culture, but obviously done out of a lack of any respect for their own culture. Racial attitudes meant that the Indians were regarded as "savages"--even by Andrew Jackson, who professed to love the Cherokee. Clearly, Jackson held conflicting and irreconcilable attitudes toward the Cherokee. (Notions of the superiority of any European and Christian culture to any indigenous New World culture also worked to cause the Spanish conquerors to destroy the great empires of the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca.)
_________
*Wikipedia, s.v. Trail of Tears.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
Maybe even sadder, the promise of this land for the exclusive and perpetual ownership and use by the Indians was broken a few decades later, when white settlers started moving in.
In 1868, the Treaty of Ft. Laramie promised 41,000 square miles of land (in four states, centered around Montana) to the Lakota (Sioux) Indians. Again the treaty with its promises was broken a few decades later when gold and silver were discovered on those lands and white settlers began dispossessing the Indians of what had been promised to them.
The Indian cultures had no concept of land ownership, and when they did agree to sell their land to the White Man they often did not really understand what they were doing. Or, when they agreed to sell, they had been backed into a position of having no choice. Their lands--hunting and burial grounds, sacred mountains, and so forth—were enormously important to the Indians and yet they had to leave them, again and again.
Time and again, promises made to the Indians and treaties were simply forgotten and ignored by the US government. That is only one aspect of all the wrongs and mistreatment perpetrated against the Native Americans. The buffalo (bison), on which the Plains Indians depended for food, were deliberately, systematically, and efficiently wiped out as a matter of US government policy. This virtually destroyed Indian culture and turned a proud people into dependents. The Indians, deprived of their food source, were forced into dependence on the government's Indian agencies for handouts of food, and these handouts were not always adequate or dependable; and there was much corruption, fraud, and abuse in the system of Indian agencies, all to the detriment of the Indians whom they were supposed to benefit.
The catalog of wrongs done to the Indians is endless and shameful. They often were simply massacred, shot and their homes burned. They were given blankets infected with smallpox, perhaps deliberately (my impression is that the evidence on that is not completely clear).
As I have written elsewhere, in my view it is extremely cruel to deprive a people of its culture and its language. In addition to the utter destruction of the buffalo-centered hunting lifestyle of the Plains Indians, Indian cultures were vitiated in other ways, too. Indian children were removed from their families and sent to "Indian schools" where they were forbidden to speak their native languages and punished if they did so. This was all part of a policy to force the Indians to assimilate to the White Man's culture, but obviously done out of a lack of any respect for their own culture. Racial attitudes meant that the Indians were regarded as "savages"--even by Andrew Jackson, who professed to love the Cherokee. Clearly, Jackson held conflicting and irreconcilable attitudes toward the Cherokee. (Notions of the superiority of any European and Christian culture to any indigenous New World culture also worked to cause the Spanish conquerors to destroy the great empires of the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca.)
_________
*Wikipedia, s.v. Trail of Tears.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
Friday, August 12, 2011
Americans Are Lucky
We here in America are lucky. But maybe not (in my opinion) for some of the reasons usually given.
From earliest times, America was to be a haven and refuge, a new and better society. One of the earliest colonies in what became the United States, that in Plymouth (Massachusetts), established in 1620, was founded by members of the Puritan sect who left England to escape persecution-- and, incidentally, once in the New World set up a theocracy which was anything but religiously tolerant. (Just as a couple of examples, Roger Williams was expelled from Plymouth for having and spreading ideas that the government did not like. Anne Hutchinson was expelled because she and her preaching were deemed unorthodox.)
For much of America's history, there was a sense--quite often expressed--that this new land was special. It was given to the newer arrivals to tame the wilderness, to civilize the "savages." America was seen as "the new Eden," a chance for mankind to make a new start with divine blessing, free of many of the Old World's problems such as religious intolerance, bad governance, and so forth. Many immigrants came to the United States also to make a fresh start in their personal lives, sometimes even to shed their identities and take on a new one. (A bit like Australia, some early arrivals on the shores of America were criminals who had been sentenced to "transportation" and who sometimes made a fresh start in America and even became materially very successful.) It was seen as a matter of divine dispensation: God was giving Mankind a second chance.
But this has to be viewed, today, as myth-making, so that's not what I meant in the opening sentence. I mean we have been spared much of the human misery like, for example, the starvation and homelessness that is going on in Somalia. We have had our Civil War and it cost a shocking number of lives, but many of the earth's peoples have endured decades of civil warfare that has created far more widespread suffering.
Look at the poor people of Vietnam, who not only suffered killing of their civilian population and destruction of their homes and crops and livestock during the Vietnam War; but are still suffering today in the form of birth defects as the result of the defoliant Agent Orange that was sprayed on their land during that war. Not to mention that American soldiers during Asian wars--in Vienam just as earlier in Korea--left behind "war babies" who do not find social acceptance in those countries because of their mixed race and have to live their lives with that stigma.
India, despite astonishing progress, still has shocking poverty among literally millions of its people. China, despite its economic miracle and the prosperity of its urban population, still has much true poverty among its rural population.
I don't wish to make our Civil War or the War of 1812 or the French and Indian War mere footnotes; but in more modern times America has not suffered any war on its own soil. We have poverty and we have problems, but a majority of Americans since the Depression generation have not suffered in the manner that enormous segments of humanity have.
I am not a flag-waver at all, and I am the last one to take an America-can-do-no-wrong attitude. I just want to point out that we, compared to great masses of humanity, have been comfortable and secure, and spared a great deal; and we just don't know what the sad lot is of so many humans.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
From earliest times, America was to be a haven and refuge, a new and better society. One of the earliest colonies in what became the United States, that in Plymouth (Massachusetts), established in 1620, was founded by members of the Puritan sect who left England to escape persecution-- and, incidentally, once in the New World set up a theocracy which was anything but religiously tolerant. (Just as a couple of examples, Roger Williams was expelled from Plymouth for having and spreading ideas that the government did not like. Anne Hutchinson was expelled because she and her preaching were deemed unorthodox.)
For much of America's history, there was a sense--quite often expressed--that this new land was special. It was given to the newer arrivals to tame the wilderness, to civilize the "savages." America was seen as "the new Eden," a chance for mankind to make a new start with divine blessing, free of many of the Old World's problems such as religious intolerance, bad governance, and so forth. Many immigrants came to the United States also to make a fresh start in their personal lives, sometimes even to shed their identities and take on a new one. (A bit like Australia, some early arrivals on the shores of America were criminals who had been sentenced to "transportation" and who sometimes made a fresh start in America and even became materially very successful.) It was seen as a matter of divine dispensation: God was giving Mankind a second chance.
But this has to be viewed, today, as myth-making, so that's not what I meant in the opening sentence. I mean we have been spared much of the human misery like, for example, the starvation and homelessness that is going on in Somalia. We have had our Civil War and it cost a shocking number of lives, but many of the earth's peoples have endured decades of civil warfare that has created far more widespread suffering.
Look at the poor people of Vietnam, who not only suffered killing of their civilian population and destruction of their homes and crops and livestock during the Vietnam War; but are still suffering today in the form of birth defects as the result of the defoliant Agent Orange that was sprayed on their land during that war. Not to mention that American soldiers during Asian wars--in Vienam just as earlier in Korea--left behind "war babies" who do not find social acceptance in those countries because of their mixed race and have to live their lives with that stigma.
India, despite astonishing progress, still has shocking poverty among literally millions of its people. China, despite its economic miracle and the prosperity of its urban population, still has much true poverty among its rural population.
I don't wish to make our Civil War or the War of 1812 or the French and Indian War mere footnotes; but in more modern times America has not suffered any war on its own soil. We have poverty and we have problems, but a majority of Americans since the Depression generation have not suffered in the manner that enormous segments of humanity have.
I am not a flag-waver at all, and I am the last one to take an America-can-do-no-wrong attitude. I just want to point out that we, compared to great masses of humanity, have been comfortable and secure, and spared a great deal; and we just don't know what the sad lot is of so many humans.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The "Big Money Boys" Fund the Tea Party
Here is an article by Judy Carbone of the University of Missouri that shows (very well, in my opinion) that it's the "big money boys" who control the Tea Party--rather than the Tea Party being some kind of grass-roots, populist movement. These few individuals effectively control the government, and have been trying to convince the public that "government is the problem" (as Ronald Reagan tried to convince the American public). She says, though--contrary to what I have maintained--that the public "gets it"--knows who runs things and calls the shots--while, somehow, the public still thinks that government is the problem because of the effective propaganda of these big-money, Right-Wing voices. And she shows how these people have been trying to render powerless those segments who have been the power base of the Democrats, such as unions.
She names some of these people: The Koch brothers, two extremely wealthy men who have a large network of think tanks; and Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul, who propagandizes via Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, etc.
She also says "The Tea Party has held the country hostage to a manufactured crisis designed to prove their ideological purity." Regular readers of this blog know that I have said the same thing.
To read this important article for yourself, click on the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/june-carbone/money-men-tea-party_b_915997.html
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
She names some of these people: The Koch brothers, two extremely wealthy men who have a large network of think tanks; and Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul, who propagandizes via Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, etc.
She also says "The Tea Party has held the country hostage to a manufactured crisis designed to prove their ideological purity." Regular readers of this blog know that I have said the same thing.
To read this important article for yourself, click on the link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/june-carbone/money-men-tea-party_b_915997.html
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
Two (Surprisingly) Nutritious Foods
You may not think of watermelons and mushrooms as being fruits and vegetables that are superior in nutrition or healthfulness.
Probably you think of watermelon as being mostly water (duh!), and the same for mushrooms. But it happens that both of these foods are packed with vitamins and healthful phytochemicals (plant-based substances that are very good for the human body), and I have read or heard more than one source recommend including more of them in our diets. So I have been trying to follow the recommendations and eat more of both of these. I like them, and I'm trying to remember to buy them when I go shopping. As to watermelon, there's this consideration for me: being a one-person household, I don't want to buy whole watermelons; and individual slices for sale in the supermarket seem to be a very poor buy.
As to mushrooms, I have several ways in which I like to prepare them (not into raw vegetables as a rule). It seems to me that there are two varieties of the common white button mushroom that most Americans think of first when we think of "mushroom": the ones that you ordinarily see in supermarkets, packaged in a half-pound package (don't ever buy the already-sliced ones because once they're sliced, they lose nutrition); and those sold in bulk.
The packaged ones are of a very uniform, medium size, and stay very nicely white in your refrigerator for days. I personally prefer to buy bulk mushrooms at the produce store. They are not so uniform in size and may be larger; and they begin to turn brown a day or two after you get them home. But I like their cooking quality. They genuinely brown as you are sautéeing them, whereas the smaller, whiter ones don't. And I think they might be tastier.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
Probably you think of watermelon as being mostly water (duh!), and the same for mushrooms. But it happens that both of these foods are packed with vitamins and healthful phytochemicals (plant-based substances that are very good for the human body), and I have read or heard more than one source recommend including more of them in our diets. So I have been trying to follow the recommendations and eat more of both of these. I like them, and I'm trying to remember to buy them when I go shopping. As to watermelon, there's this consideration for me: being a one-person household, I don't want to buy whole watermelons; and individual slices for sale in the supermarket seem to be a very poor buy.
As to mushrooms, I have several ways in which I like to prepare them (not into raw vegetables as a rule). It seems to me that there are two varieties of the common white button mushroom that most Americans think of first when we think of "mushroom": the ones that you ordinarily see in supermarkets, packaged in a half-pound package (don't ever buy the already-sliced ones because once they're sliced, they lose nutrition); and those sold in bulk.
The packaged ones are of a very uniform, medium size, and stay very nicely white in your refrigerator for days. I personally prefer to buy bulk mushrooms at the produce store. They are not so uniform in size and may be larger; and they begin to turn brown a day or two after you get them home. But I like their cooking quality. They genuinely brown as you are sautéeing them, whereas the smaller, whiter ones don't. And I think they might be tastier.
Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein
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