Category Archives: Culture

Care and Feeding of a Democracy

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I ask the help of readers to distribute this open letter to education bureaucrats at every level from the Federal Cabinet Secretary to each District Superintendent.

Dear Educationist:

We live in a democracy. It is not in good shape today and it shows the characteristics of a plutocracy more than a democracy. Ranking last among the twenty-eight developed democracies, only forty-seven percent of eligible voters actually vote; fifty-three percent, a majority, feel the government doesn’t listen to them or involve itself in their day-to-day lives.

Why is that? The current parties don’t help; they are awash in career protection, political gaming, and allow money to control the perspective of legislation. Nondemocratic processes like gerrymandering and tilting the judicial branch to be politically opinionated doesn’t help either.

This abusive behavior is allowed because many, perhaps a majority of citizens, don’t know how to manage a democracy. Yet the government is owned by the citizens. Imagine the impact of an election where one hundred percent – not forty-seven percent – voted. Imagine if voters knew how to promote referendums. Imagine if more citizens understood the importance of attending local political events – even a school board meeting!

Citizens feel the indifference but don’t know how to change the situation.

It is strongly suggested, indeed intensely advocated, that Civics be taught in every primary and secondary school; a required part of the curriculum. The program should not be based on history as much as how to manage a democracy. True, in the United States the Constitution is important but how does a student work through church versus state, civil liberties, Roe v Wade, the impact of simple tax effects, precedent law, etc. It may be better to have lab projects as the major part of the subject; this would allow actual human impact as part of the learning experience.

Your advocacy and implementation of civics classes is greatly needed to restore our democracy to a healthy state.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Resistance

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Mariner receives correspondence from a number of readers. It is obvious that mariner is not an instrument of change, entertainment perhaps, even a puzzle; but not an instrument of change. Readers, indeed all people without exception, except perhaps easily led nonthinkers, have their opinion, whatever its logical or illogical constructs, and will stick to it. Having principles is a good thing.

What drives mariner to frustration is the incongruity of it all. A few examples:

The US is the strongest and purest version of democracy among all nations. Oddly, it ranks last among the 28 democratic nations with only 47% voting. More than half of the electorate (mariner should stop aggrandizing citizens with that term) does not vote.

Oh, but they carry guns in fear of the government invading their homes and stripping them of security and worth. If one thinks about it correctly, the citizens own the government; the government doesn’t own them. Paranoid bullets won’t even be noticed when confronted by the largest, best trained, highly equipped army in the world. But think what an additional 53% of votes would do to an election. If one doesn’t vote, one can’t bitch. The subset of the paranoid citizens that do vote, vote for an Antichrist just to cause trouble for the establishment.

Mariner understands that the heavily capitalist plutocracy that exists today has screwed the labor class and most of the middle class. But causing lasting pain between US allies and disrupting trade and commerce with an incompetent, uneducated president does not help. Building an irrational and largely useless wall may appeal to a dissident’s paranoia but it comes at an even higher price on civility, equality, and freedom – to say nothing about misspent taxes. This is no time for a king, though it must be entertaining for dissidents to watch the conflagration.

Just as horses and much earlier spears became useless because of advances in technology, bullets are on their way out. Even today new technical processes armed with a dissident’s private information can strip them of everything – who needs the government? Most citizens haven’t had time to contemplate about the new world offered by automation and access to universal information. It is time to evaluate what will change. The change will be the greatest shift in human history.

How can Joe Citizen protect himself from the tech/data giants? (This is a magnitude more likely than the government barging in.) Keep the gun as a souvenir but cherish one’s voting registration – and vote, goddammit!

Ancient Mariner.

 

Big Brother has learned to walk – Don’t let him run

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[NPR] Google and its YouTube subsidiary will pay $170 million to settle allegations that YouTube collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent, the Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday.

The companies allegedly collected information of children viewing videos on YouTube by tracking users of channels that are directed at kids. YouTube allegedly failed to notify parents or get their consent, violating laws that protect children’s privacy, according to a complaint filed against the companies by the FTC and the New York attorney general.

YouTube earned millions of dollars by then using this information to target ads to the children, according to the complaint.

Amid the more urgent issues causing confusion in Congress (Donald isn’t confused nor does he care if ,in fact, he knows about the issue) is control over the tech/data industry, which while deeply impacting culture and freedom, gets back row to guns, walls, immigrants, Russian interference, noisy tweets, a herd of democrats and blatant racism. Granted, all these issues cause turbulence in the processes of Constitutional democracy. Still, the most influential issue that will really, really make a different society and is at the center of commerce, corporatism, political power, warfare, privacy and security, and even what a person will wear and eat, is the tech-based future.

The future is being transformed by buzzwords like 5G, cloud, Alexa, facial recognition, GPS, robotic consciousness, AI, super computers and smart phones. Of all the issues mentioned in the last paragraph, which can be compared to thunderstorms, Tech/data is comparable to Noah’s flood. Nothing is free of total redefinition when the buzzwords are in play.

As the campaign season begins, there are three issues that rise above the others:

  • Remove Donald from office.
  • Restructure the US economy to include manufacturing.
  • Establish control over the tech/data industry. The public understands clearly why there must be strict regulations about polluting rivers; the public must understand that strict regulations must keep tech/data from polluting the liberties and individuality of a healthy society.

Ancient Mariner

Did You Catch This?

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[Newsy] An appeals court ruled on Friday that survivors and family members of people killed in a mass shooting in South Carolina are allowed to sue the federal government for negligence.

In June 2015, a white supremacist entered an African-American church in Charleston and opened fire on a Bible study group. Nine people were killed. The shooter was convicted on federal murder and hate crime charges and now awaits the death penalty.

After the shooting, then-FBI Director James Comey said the gunman was federally prohibited from owning a firearm when he bought the weapon used in the attack, and that he was able to buy it due to failures in the FBI’s background check system.

Cases brought by survivors and family members intended to hold the government accountable for allowing the shooter to buy the gun. They were consolidated and dismissed by a lower court, which ruled the federal government was protected from lawsuits under two provisions.

But the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said Friday that judge was wrong. It ruled that the laws protect the government employee who performed the background check, but not the government itself. The dismissal was reversed.

Wow! This will provide impetus for gun legislation. Hit’em in the pocketbook.

[CityLab] Between crushing student debt, skyrocketing rents, and underemployment, more college graduates are crashing with mom and dad until they can find financial stability. A study using 2016 Census data, from the real estate site Zillow, found that overall, the share of young college graduates moving back home jumped from 19 percent in 2005 to 28 percent in 2016. Miami and New York had the highest shares—45 percent and 42 percent, respectively. For some Millennials, according to MarketWatch, that means they’re skipping starter homes and going for larger houses as their first purchase.

In his small home town, mariner has a related statistic. Many older families are now parking a third car in their two-car driveway.

[Propublica] Everything You Need to Play Baseball Is Made in China — and Getting Hit by Trump’s Tariffs.

Baseball is America’s pastime, but prices on its China-made gear are about to rise as the trade war escalates. Golf, lacrosse, basketball and other sports will feel the pinch, too.

It’s not hard to think of the future being made in a blender. Will the Minuteman Statue sport a Mongolian deel? will the Statue of Liberty wear tight Yoga pants? Will hamburgers be served at a Japanese tea ceremony? Will Afghanistani women wear stringy short-shorts? Will Donald attend his Alabama rally wearing a tilted bérét, a pencil mustache and twirling a Bat Masterson cane?

Mariner prognosticates that global politics, society and economy will all be in a blender until sometime after 2040 – a lot like living in the Bahamas with Dorian hanging around.

Ancient Mariner

Of God and Country

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It seems that an individual selects one’s God and one’s candidate in similar fashion. In these modern religious times, scriptures are less a source for describing god; most believers settle for a God that is very much like them but whose authority is absolute. The same is true with candidates for elected office. Study after study has shown that, in the final analysis, a voter selects the candidate with whom they are most comfortable – the candidate most like them.

A major issue is that the selection process has no absolute, agreed-to plan. One can’t plan God’s will; one can’t plan an elected official’s will. So there is no plan. There are whims and fancies, even a structured belief about what may happen but there is no agreed-to plan.

There never will be a plan. Authority is an individual vice, self-serving and even in its most gracious moments, self-directed. This is why most universal issues, e.g., the fossil fuel industry, discount what others may desire or have insight into – “it’s the money, stupid.”

Just as money yields to more money, power yields to more power. The advantage of God is that God already has all the power and in an orderly way distributes power to all existence – whether it is what voters choose or not – hence global warming. In today’s confusion corporations and technology, both unfettered by meaningful regulation or conscience, seem to have a power approximating God’s. The framework of morality, accountability, fairness and all the other words that constitute human wellbeing are not part of their plan. Like a kindergartener playing with blocks, the attitude is ‘if we can do it, do it’ without consideration to its ramifications.

Mariner, like everyone else in this new century, is caught in the maelstrom. His compass is tossed about by disruptions in his human magnetic field; his vision is blurred by the smoke of confusion and disorder; his personal hopes and dreams are stifled by interruptions and blockages of discord.

Mariner welcomes you to this century. Pick your candidate as carefully as you pick your God – there is no plan.

It is time for a haiku:

Haze rests on the grass.

Squirrels frolic in the trees.

Life starts a new day.

 

Ancient Mariner

 

 

About Labor Unions

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Labor unions have been on the decline for several decades. Conservative politicians, businesses and lawsuits limiting union financing are the primary causes. Even more specific, the Internet and advancing technology have changed both the workplace and the treatment of payroll making it a finite overhead that does not flex with profit.

The union model, in place since the start of unions at the beginning of the twentieth century, is corporate-specific; the union is a unit of a specific business and is subject to the condition of that business. Some unions were able to merge with other unions in the same market, e.g., steel, carpentry, autoworkers, truckers, steamfitters, etc. Service unions, e.g., hotel workers and shipping also merged to be a generic force across several businesses. Government unions have survived in democratic states but have been throttled in republican states. A precedent was set at the Federal level when Reagan busted the air traffic controllers union. The following paragraphs succinctly describe the union situation:

[U.S. Labor Unions By Jordan Yadoo]

The Situation

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court found that states cannot require public employees who opt out of union membership to nonetheless help pay for collective bargaining undertaken on their behalf. The court had deadlocked over a similar case in 2016. The decision is expected to reduce the funds unions use to support their members and expand recruitment efforts. And it is likely to cut into their political power, since they’ll have less to spend supporting (mostly Democratic) candidates. The court’s decision was another blow to a system that’s been in decline for years. In 2017, just 10.7 percent of wage and salary workers in the U.S. belonged to a union; almost half the rate in 1983. So-called right-to-work laws, which ban any requirement for employees to pay union dues or fees, are already in place in more than half the states, including the traditional union strongholds of Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin. In the public sector, where the membership rate has hovered at about 35 percent, unions were already feeling pressure to agree to pay, pension and health-care cuts. There have been a few bright spots: a string of recent successful unionization campaigns by journalists at the Los Angeles Times, Vox Media and MTV News, and a series of teacher strikes in states including West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Colorado that led to salary increases.

In 1935 the National Labor Relations Act codified workers’ rights to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. By the end of the Great Depression, unions grew in strength and number. When the AFL and CIO merged in 1955, more than 1 in 3 American workers had union jobs. But as the U.S. economy shifted from manufacturing to services, unions gradually lost ground. Workplace walkouts declined. From 1970 to 1980, there were an average of 280 work stoppages per year in the U.S. involving 1,000 workers or more; in 2017, there were 7.

Union workers earn about $200 more per week on average than non-union workers, and have better retirement pay and health insurance. Some economists link today’s wage stagnation, broadening income inequality and lack of economic mobility to the decline in unions.

As manufacturing dwindled, the economy depended more on the service industry (restaurants, hotels, transportation, white collar labor, government, etc.) as a significant working class contributor to GDP. The service business model was too eclectic to unionize easily. Most recently teachers and fast food workers have increased their political voices but legislation, business profit models and self-destructing ennui by workers make a recovery of unionization difficult.

Mariner often quotes Deming in his statement that a new paradigm cannot evolve from within the old paradigm. Boy, is that true today! The ‘Establishment’ has reached the end of the road as the entire world jumps into a different reality. This includes the union ‘Establishment.’

Guru suggests that the marriage between business and unions is over. The influence of the Internet and the ability to move whole companies from country to country without disruption eliminates the hold that a union may have on a stationary business operation – the business can just move elsewhere. What unions may evolve into is a guardian of worker wellbeing in general with no specific business relationship.

A good example that exists today is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The rights of free speech, among other Constitutional rights, is defended constantly not for just paying customers but for all citizens. Consider an American Worker Rights Union that is a constant presence between business practices and worker rights and wages. Another example is the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Mariner remembers his father (Labor Chaplin of Maryland) visiting different unions. They weren’t too far removed from social clubs except that the issues were quite important. Today, this is inefficient. The enemy is a freewheeling corporatism and a plutocratic government. The union defense is in changing legislation and protecting everyone who suffers from illegitimate wages and benefits.

Ancient Mariner

 

College, Economy and Jobs

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There are a few folks still alive who remember the small four-year college as a finishing school for social graces and intellectual elitism. Liberal Arts was the major purpose, refining ideals, philosophy and social insight. Of course there were more pragmatic subjects in the sciences, engineering, medicine and the like but most of these subjects required advanced degrees beyond the small liberal arts college.

Things changed after World War II. The GI Bill financed college for veterans. Slowly as the 1900s passed, social grace was displaced by the opportunity to have a better paying job; certainly the intellectual purpose still existed but people with four-year college degrees clearly had a better chance in life. At the end of the century things began to shift again.

The issue is the imbalance of the workforce. In the 1990s the economy expanded through investment opportunities rather than manufacturing. The number of manufacturing jobs dropped dramatically between 1997 and 2010 – to the tune of 5.7 million jobs. The net effect was that a college degree was the sole strategy for getting a better paying job; and colleges grew.

Further, by 2030 automation will reduce the number of all jobs by 73 million. While college degrees may be valid for a narrow group of post graduate studies, the four-year degree, at the moment, is not providing the better future it has promised in the past. Statisticians who follow these studies suggest far too many students are entering college than there are jobs to accommodate them.

The lack of trained labor employees that would be needed for a recovery of manufacturing has caught the attention of Congress. Conservatives already are looking for ways to redirect Federal funds that support four-year colleges in order to improve trade schools, community colleges and training offered by businesses.

Given the increased complexity of artificial intelligence and integrated computer processes, and robots of every description, a manufacturing job indeed needs more training and comprehension today than the old school, labor intensive environment. But Liberal Arts is not required.

What all this means for small liberal arts colleges is not good. Already dozens of colleges have had to revamp their majors to include service work like nursing, criminal justice, and business accounting. Still, too few students are registering for liberal arts majors. Today, there are too many service workers who have four-year degrees; the market for students is no longer growing. College mergers are frequent and reflect a changing student environment that is a cross between subjects requiring labs and in-person attendance combined with internet-based classes taken at home.

Today, college tuition is out of whack similar to the health industry. There are certain sectors of the economy that should not be driven by maximized profit. Given the fact that there are too many college students and the cost is astronomical, it is likely that elite universities and state universities may be all that survives. Yet again, smaller colleges could redefine their purpose toward two-year programs. The honing of one’s civility will not be one.

Ancient Mariner

 

The Child Park

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Teresa Hanafin, a columnist for the Boston Globe, covered a report that talked about the increased anxiety resident in children today. The report believes it’s because of a fundamental shift in the way we view child-rearing, in which “the work of raising children, once seen as socially necessary labor benefiting the common good, is an isolated endeavor for all but the most well-off parents.” Parents who have to work are forced to “warehouse” their kids most of the day, and the pressure for success is paramount:

“School days are longer and more regimented. Kindergarten, which used to be focused on play, is now an academic training ground for the first grade. Young children are assigned homework even though numerous studies have found it harmful. STEM, standardized testing, and active-shooter drills have largely replaced recess, leisurely lunches, art, and music.” The kids’ resultant mental distress is overwhelming and dangerous.

 It is true that children need lots of unscheduled time with parents and family, other children and even alone time. The brain is not a computer; it is a bag of highly sophisticated chemicals and special cells. Just because society has continued to accelerate daily life since the early 1900s and looks forward to even more automatic features in future society, that doesn’t mean the brain physically modifies its learning requirements to match social acceleration. It is what it is and while it is learning and developing in young people (including teenagers), parents and society in general need to support not only data learning but must also personally invest time with children to develop their social and emotional skills and to allow time for the playground.

People have learned how important it is to their pet dogs when they take them to a dog park. We can do no less for children.

Ancient Mariner

REPRINT!!

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Danger Ahead

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If there is any strength the US has to stand up against a hostile world, it is the US Intelligence Service. Coupled with the best funded military in the world, other nations think twice about taking on the US mano-a-mano.

In this most serious sector of US policy, Donald is showing his disregard for US security in favor of money schemes and showing his incompetence as a Commander-in-Chief.

This is beyond political rhetoric, beyond the politics of ‘the base’, beyond the dysfunctional condition of Congress. Donald is, in a seriously inept way, playing with the security of the US – a monkey with keys to the vault. He has no regard for anything that does not add wealth to his pocket. Under his leadership, the subtleties of international relationships are irrelevant.

Unfortunately, there is no Congress to take him to task. The electorate must suffer through an ever increasing dismantle of the US image and its authority. The electorate must endure to the election. The nation is at risk in a way that has not existed since the Second World War.

Ignore the ‘base’; ignore the do-nothing-Congress; ignore the true conflict surrounding the loss of jobs under Reaganism – the security of the US is at stake.

Ancient Mariner

Guruvian Observations

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Guru, the alter ego who views humanity and the universe from somewhere around Neptune, predicted during the first Obama administration a Donald-like bowling ball. Not that Guru is a genius – many predictions are whimsy – but Guru hit the bullseye on this one. The federal government had become irrelevant to citizen reality. The election process, indeed the daily ritual once elected, was tightly wrapped around raising money rather than pursuing the American dream. Ex-senator Al Franken confessed on a late night TV talk show that the first five hours of every day were spent calling donors and lobbyists to raise money not just for Al but for the Democratic Party. It was the same with the republicans.

Campaigning had become a traveling carnival complete with snake oil salesmen who did not base rhetoric on problem solving but rather reinforced the insecurities of the electorate should something actually change. Meanwhile, the electorate reality was indeed changing; the economy was slanted toward shareholders and investment, leaving actual labor investment in the dust. Ignoring the wellbeing of the electorate – especially their economic wellbeing – is a recipe for populism. Elected officials were about as useful as bowling pins.

Along came Donald. A bowling ball made to order. Pick any analogy: a bull in a china shop, a landslide blocking the highway, a spilled garbage can. As has been widely reported, three rustbelt states took advantage of the Electoral College to overthrow the popular vote in the 2016 election. Populism took charge via Donald.

What is good about populism is that it forces instability; it disrupts the status quo; it makes things uncomfortable for the irrelevant processes of a stagnant culture.

What is bad about populism is its mindless destruction; it throws out the good with the bad; it wounds the culture in a way that will take time to heal; it ignores opportunity in order to sustain disruption.

The days of the guillotine have passed. Fortunately, the United States is isolated between two oceans and inherited an immense wealth in a newly discovered continent. Otherwise, one wonders whether war, destruction and murder, as observed today in other parts of the world, would be the process for US populism.

Guru still is concerned whether the ship of state and the state of the electorate will be stable enough to receive a turbulent century of unknown disruption to society, economics, environment and day-to-day survival.

– – – –

TO BE NOTED:

Havin’ a heat wave ♪

[The Washington Post] In what has become a seemingly monthly entry, this past July was not only the hottest July but also the hottest month on Earth in recorded history. It was so hot that wildfires ravaged millions of acres of the Arctic and swaths of Europe set record highs, including 108.7 degrees in Paris. July 2019 “beat” July 2016 — a month further warmed by “an extremely strong El Niño” — by about 0.07 degrees, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Ancient Mariner