EU-Phobia

   Utopia becomes dystopia.

   The euphoria that captured much of Europe as more nations joined the Union may be  overwhelmed  by radical nationalism, coupled with the danger of economic collapse and fear of "the other."
   In recent elections to choose members of the European Parliament, candidates opposed to the EU itself made significant gains as delegates to an organization they want to disband.
   On another level, a major problem is that the member nations agreed to a common currency, the euro, before setting up a strong enough central banking system and fiscal policy. And unless that happens soon, the danger of economic and/or political collapse will increase, especially if Scotland splits from the United Kingdom and declines to join the EU.
   That's the most likely scenario at the moment. Others, of course, may also develop. For example, some of the economically stronger countries may refuse additional support for those already in trouble. Added to rising xenophobia, this will worsen local problems and complicate issues for the entire EU.
   As that happens, the stronger economies could decide they will be better off on their own and in full charge of their own national and economic destinies, thereby increasing their ability to decide fiscal and monetary issues most beneficial to themselves. That, of course, would mean dropping out of the EU and abandoning the euro.
   In Britain, they're already halfway there, since they do not use the euro and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) is growing in strength. The head of that party has been elected to the European Parliament, and is sure to use his growing popularity to pull the UK out of the EU.

Ready for Hillary?

   She may not have formally announced, or even privately decided on, her intention to run for President in 2016, but already a political action committee (PAC) is seeking funds to support a campaign.
   Of course, the Ready For Hillary PAC, in mailing out fund-raising brochures, carefully notes that the effort is "not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee." But that doesn't mean the potential candidate doesn't know about it, especially when the fund drive's pitch letter is signed by one Craig T. Smith, who claims to have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years, worked on her husband's '92 presidential campaign, "worked with her in Arkansas, on over a half dozen campaigns and in the White House."
   The group was formed last January, the pitch letter says, to "be ready ... when she gets ready."
   Will she run? Realistically, it's too early for anyone to say. Those who announce early often are the first to flame out.

Blame Game

Don't fix blame, fix the problem.

   In the midst of all the noise about delayed medical care for veterans at VA hospitals, the chief of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has resigned.
   No surprise here, since Eric Shinseki, the retired general who heads the VA, has become a distraction to any serious effort to fix the problems brought on by lower-level fudging of appointment books, most notably in Phoenix, Arizona.
   But even as the Shinseki resignation was announced, House Speaker John Boehner switched his blame aim to President Obama.

   Enough, already. Fix the problem, and stop wasting time and energy on fixing blame on those at the top. The falsifying of reports has been known for years, long before Shinseki's tenure as VA chief.

   The blame game has become a political football match, with one side trying to score points by criticizing the other side's top-level official. Granted, a general is ultimately responsible for the behavior of front line troops and lieutenants. But it's long past time to discipline those who cook the local VA hospital appointment books.

Roundup

   Idle thoughts from a rambling mind.

   REALITY CHECK -- Every spring, bears leave their hibernation dens and roam rural and suburban areas, wandering through residential back yards and rummaging in trash bins. This year, several sightings prompted a Philadelphia TV reporter to observe that the bears "seem to make themselves at home."
   Check that. They are home. People are the newcomers.

   KNOW-NOTHING PARTISANS -- Lawyers hired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie cleared him of any wrongdoing in the bridge closing scandal. What a surprise (not)! Editorial writers properly called the report a whitewash, since the probers took no testimony from active participants, but only from the Governor and his aides.

   NOT PROVEN -- In the American system of justice, someone is presumed innocent until proven guilty. That means it's up to the prosecutor to prove guilt, and not up to the suspect to prove innocence. This is not to say, however, that the person charged is in fact innocent, but only that he or she has not been proven guilty.

   TRAITOR OR PATRIOT -- Exposing government wrongdoing is an act of patriotism, not treason. Some commentators insist that we must always support the government, and to disagree equals treason, as well as a failure to "support the troops."  It's one thing to support the troops, but quite another to protest a government policy that put the troops in harm's way.
   It was curious to hear right-wing commentators demand that everyone support a President who happened to be a Republican at the time. The theme was "support the President because he's the President." A few years later, these same commentators were vehemently assailing a President, who happened to be a Democrat.
   Currently, many government supporters are demanding that Edward Snowden is a traitor because he exposed government activities that were and are clearly excessive and wrong. By definition, treason is an act that gives aid and comfort to an enemy. Snowden, however, arranged to leak government documents to the general public via newspapers, and not quietly and surreptitiously to an enemy.
   If Snowden is to be charged with treason, then so also should the editors of the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, all newspapers that published accounts distributed by the Associated Press, as well as any and all broadcast journalists who reported on the content of the leaked documents.
   Remember the Pentagon Papers, which exposed government failures and misdeeds in Vietnam? Theft, perhaps. Treason, no.
   The First Amendment right to freedom of speech and of the press is not a right granted by government, but a right we already have, and one to be guaranteed by government. Interfering with that right is a wrong perpetrated more often and more dangerously by government than by those who exercise that right.

Slowdown Part Two

   Negative territory.

   A second look at America's economic performance in the first quarter of this year showed a minus number for the second time since the Great Recession ended.
   The U.S. Commerce Department said GDP (Gross Domestic Product) decreased by 1.0 percent during the first three months of 2014. A first estimate indicated the economy barely moved -- it rose by 0.1 percent, compared to a growth rate of 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter and a jump of 4.1 percent in the autumn quarter.
   In the first quarter of 2011, GDP dropped by 1.3 percent.
   Meanwhile, prices continue to rise. Using the year 2009 as a base, government statistics show the GDP price index rose from 100 that year to 103.2 in 2011, to 105.0 in 2012, to 106.4 for all of last year and to 107.4 in the first quarter of 2014. The price index for personal consumption expenses rose to 104.0 in 2011 to a current level of 108.0.

   What does it mean? Supply (output) is declining even as prices rise. But as prices rise, demand will fall as consumers decide they can't afford to buy. Later, a drop in demand will drag down production, which means fewer jobs and lost wages, leading to even lower demand and less production. And the cycle continues. Sound familiar?
   Exception: The super-wealthy will remain immune from depressing production and even benefit from lower prices. It has happened before, during economic downturns in the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century and the Great Depression of the 1930s.
   Will it happen again? That will depend partly on whether the advocates of austerity have their way. They insist that hard times call for hard measures, and government must lead the way by saving more and spending less. Moreover, they extend this tactic to the wealthy, in the mistaken belief that tax cuts will somehow increase expenditures.
   They forget the Paradox of Thrift, which says the more people save and the less society spends, the worse things get. Tax cuts for the wealthy don't matter, since they already have more than enough for living expenses, and falling prices enable them to maintain their status at less cost. Benefits from tax cuts only enable them to stash more cash in savings accounts.
   Idle cash benefits no one.

The American Kaleidoscope

"I have a dream." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Can't we all just get along?" -- Rodney King

   America has been called a "Great Melting Pot," which suggests that all newcomers eventually blend with all others to become part of one nation and one culture.
   That, however, is a 19th Century notion by those who expected newcomers to adopt and conform to all the characteristics of those already here, predominantly those of the WASP persuasion -- White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
   The truth, however, is that the WASP has always been a minority in America, so the country is better described as a kaleidoscope.
   In a melting pot, every element loses any distinctive characteristics and blends to a sameness of color and texture. In a kaleidoscope, however, the elements retain their individuality even as they become part of a beautiful, ever-changing pattern.
   Is America a cultural melting pot? Consider: Of the total 308 million Americans, according to the 2010 Census, 72 percent said they were solely of the White race, 13 percent reported they were Black or African-American, 5 percent identified their race as Asian, and 1 percent indicated American Indian or Alaska Native alone. "The remainder of respondents who reported only one race (6 percent) were classified as Some Other Race alone," according to the Census Bureau. Finally, people who reported more than one race made up about 3 percent of the total population, the Census reported.
   Some insist that America is "a Christian nation," but that claim ignores the estimated 7 million Jews, 4 million Buddhists, 2.5 million Muslims, 1.5 million Hindus, 525,000 members of the Baha'i faith and, of course, 37 million Agnostics and 1.3 million Atheists, as well as those who report no spiritual or religious affiliation of any kind.
   As for country of origin, despite the tendency to identify England as "the Mother Country," only 27 million U.S. residents chose that as the ancestral source, compared to 50 million who selected Germany, 36 million identified themselves as Irish, 18 million as Italian, 10 million Polish, 6 million Scots, 9 million French, and nearly 3 million African. This last, of course, refers only to recent arrivals  from Sub-Saharan Africa, and does not  include the millions who claim Egyptian or Arab origin, nor the 13 percent of Americans (40 million) who identified their race as Black or African American. In addition, there are 16 million people claiming Asian ancestry. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

   But enough with the numbers. It is an accident of history that English is the dominant language spoken in America. Certainly it was not the first, nor is it now the only. In fact, the settlements sponsored by English entrepreneurs were latecomers to America. Viking adventurers were here long before Christopher Columbus, an Italian navigator sponsored by Spain, arrived in 1492, reportedly using a map drawn by the Irish monks who traveled with St. Brendan. Later came the Swedes, the Dutch, the French and others, including Russians who moved into Alaska.

   Finally, there were the many tribes of people who populated America many hundreds of years before the European invaders, whose descendants remain, speaking many languages and practicing a variety of cultures.

   All these human elements come together to form the American kaleidoscope, a set of many languages, cultures, colors, races, creeds and national origins.

Voter Fraud vs Voter Turnout

   Voting is not a requirement, but it is an obligation. And those who do not exercise their right to vote  have no credibility when they repeat spurious allegations of voter fraud.
   For all the sound and fury about the supposed looming catastrophe of voter fraud, consider this: A more important issue is voter turnout. In this week's primary elections scattered around the country, only 20 or 25 percent of those eligible and registered to vote actually turned out to exercise their franchise. And typically, in general elections as well as those held to choose a President, turnout -- of those not only eligible but also actually registered -- is less than  70 percent.
   In contrast, how many incidents of voter fraud, whether by those who are ineligible and/or in the country illegally, have been alleged and have been proven?
   The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law maintains that "voter fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is nearly non-existent  and much of the problems associated with alleged fraud in elections relates to unintentional mistakes by voters or election administrators."
   In Missouri, for example, there were just six cases of votes cast by ineligible voters, out of 2.3 million votes cast throughout the state in the general election of 2000. "This amounts to a rate of 0.0003 percent," the Brennan Center said in its report.
   In New Jersey, a state with a long-past history of ballot stuffing by machine politicians, the Brennan Center report noted "eight substantiated cases of individuals knowingly casting invalid votes -- eight voters voting twice" in the 2004 general election. That's 0.0004 percent of the 3.6 million total votes cast. Moreover, "none of these problems" of double voters -- those allegedly voting in New Jersey in addition to other states -- "could have been resolved by requiring photo ID at the polls."
   In the 2012 general election, voter turnout was just 54 percent, according to Census Bureau data. Moreover, of the 5.9 million people eligible, only 3.6 million -- some 64 percent -- actually registered to vote in 2012.
   In Wisconsin's general election in 2004, a total of nearly 3 million votes were cast. Only seven allegations of voter fraud were substantiated, all by persons with felony convictions. That's a rate of 0.0002 percent in the state as a whole, according to the Brennan report.
   That, of course, raises another question. Should convicted felons forever lose their right to vote, even after they have paid their debt to society?
   There was one case alleged of a vote cast in the name of another -- impersonation. That, however, was later determined to be a clerical error by a poll worker.
   And in Pennsylvania, the state "failed to show any evidence of in-person voter fraud," Judge Bernard McGinley of the Commonwealth Court wrote as he struck down Pennsylvania's voter ID law.
   As for the number of people eligible to vote in Pennsylvania, Census data show a total of 9.4 million, of whom only 6.8 million -- 69 percent -- did so. Of those eligible and registered to vote in Pennsylvania, 5.8 million -- 59 percent -- showed up to vote in the 2012 presidential election.
   In short, allegations of voter fraud are minimal, and those allegations shown to be valid are virtually nonexistent compared to total voter population. In fact, most of the alleged cases of fraud were due to administrative error, not to voters. Further, virtually none of those substantiated cases involved people in this country illegally. As a practical matter, those here illegally try their best to avoid involvement with the legal system, lest they be deported.

   On the other side of the argument, an organization called True The Vote says on its web site that "46 states have prosecuted or convicted cases of voter fraud," yet it provides no numbers of allegations or of the number successfully prosecuted.
   The group claims there are more than "1.8 million dead voters still eligible on the rolls across the country." While that may be true, the question remains: How many of those "dead voters" were counted at the polls on Election Day. Granted, the lists should be regularly checked and those names removed, but no examples have shown up of "dead voters" casting ballots.
   As for the number of cases of "potential felony interstate voter fraud," the group says it found 99 cases. Note the word "potential," which does not necessarily mean proven. Moreover, 99 allegations of cross-border voting in a national population of some 300 million isn't much. In the 2012 presidential election, a total of 128.5 million votes were cast, according to government records out of a total registered voter population of 235.3 million -- a participation rate of 62 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Moreover, only 71 percent of those eligible were registered.

   Conclusion: With proven cases of voter fraud virtually nonexistent relative to voter population, and fully one-third of eligible voters not bothering to turn out even for presidential elections -- the turnout rate is far worse for primary and midterm elections -- the uproar over supposed voter fraud can only be seen as a ploy by one side to prevent voting by those who are likely to support the other side.
   It is, therefore, a tale full of sound and fury but signifying nothing.

What's Going On Here?

   Membership on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors will go down to less than half its authorized number as Jeremy Stein leaves to return to his teaching post at Harvard. That would make four vacancies on the seven-member board, whose primary duty is to oversee the economic health of the nation and regulate many financial institutions.
   Meanwhile, the Senate has not confirmed two of President Obama's nominees to the board, and another nominee has not yet been selected.
   Given GOP opposition to anything and everything the President suggests or plans, one wonders whether a refusal to allow a full board would cripple the Fed's ability to function.
   Could this be part of a broader plan by Republican conservatives, their corporate backers and Tea Party radicals to dismantle the Fed?

   Unfettered capitalism is so 19th Century. Look what that brought us -- the so-called Gilded Age of the super-rich, who owned almost all of America's wealth. That disparity is currently being repeated, as one percent of Americans control some 80 percent of the nation's wealth. And the disparity is growing, as documented by, most famously, Thomas Piketty in his book "Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century."

   Many free-market proponents insist that, left alone, an economy will rebalance itself. And they cite Adam Smith and his book, "The Wealth of Nations" as their prime source. At the other extreme are those who look to Karl Marx, who maintained that capitalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Marx's work was seized upon by later revolutionaries to justify their efforts to topple the Czarist regime in Russia. A main problem, however, was that Marx never intended his predictions to apply to Russia, since it was still a feudal society and had not undergone the industrial revolution that changed Germany and Britain and developed a full-grown capitalist society.
    Now comes Piketty, who has detailed the inequalities between the one percent and the 99 percent. Conservatives, of course, denounce him as a Marxist, even though he disavows such leanings in the introduction to his book.
   Moreover, even a superficial reading of Piketty indicates that he feels both Adam Smith and Karl Marx were wrong. Or at least that they didn't go far enough in their analyses.
   Conclusion: Piketty's work is leading economics into a new age of study, using computers to analyze massive amounts of data to summarize patterns that earlier economists were not able to detect.
   For too long, the field was hijacked by number crunchers, who forgot that economics is a social science, and used econometrics to try to force a round social science into a square pure science box. Piketty, however, does not forget that economics deals with social issues -- what people do with what's available to them -- even as he uses data to analyze trends.

May Day

   News media have been making much of the idea that May Day is a "forgotten event" in America, while many other countries celebrate it as International Workers Day. It seems there was some violence between striking workers and police in Chicago in 1886, resulting in the death of seven cops and four civilians, as well as scores of casualties.
   Later, eight men were arrested and brought to trial. Seven were sentenced to death and one to 15 years in prison. Eventually, governor of Illinois criticized the trial and pardoned those who had not already been hanged.
   National Public Radio in America ran a feature stressing that the May Day holiday had its beginning in the Chicago incident, and May Day is still observed worldwide, but largely forgotten in America.
   Perhaps in the context of labor unions and workers' rights.
   Forgotten by NPR and others is the observance of May Day going back many centuries by churches and spiritual groups -- including some that would be labeled "pagan."
   Remember dancing around the May pole and spreading garlands of flowers?

    Picky, picky, picky.

    From the White House fund-raising pitch:  "This certificate hereby confirms the authenticity of the accompanying limited edition fine art print. This print is an authentic reproduction of the original."    
    Translation: This guarantees that the print is a copy. 
   This pitch goes into the same category as the car dealer offering "guaranteed pre-owned vehicles." Translation: "We guarantee that this is a used car."