A candidate for the most meaningless/wrong political rhetoric

"Regulations like this are killing business, making us uncompetitive in the world market and killing jobs."

We all hear this constantly in current political rhetoric, but it is also one of the most overused and durable political glittering generalities in our history.  I suspect you can pick up almost any copy of the Congressional Record for the last 100 years, find discussion addressing legislation attempting to regulate business conduct and within a few pages find some member of Congress espousing some version of the above statement.  (A statement in the 1931 Congressional Record sparked this blog).

Yet somehow, despite the constant lamenting of the Congressional defenders of all things business we managed over the last 100 years to build the most dynamic and dominant economy in the world, and enjoy the most comfortable and secure lifestyle in the history of the world.  (Although admittedly our position has slipped somewhat since those same Republicans who most commonly espouse this cliche got a majorities in Congress from 1995 to 2007 and managed to undermine the economic stability of much of the developed world)

I've heard thousands of politicians making statements like this in my lifetime, but never really thought about how they have been contradicted by history until recently.  I was reading the Congressional Record about a Republican bill in 1995-96 to gut the Truth in Savings Act.  The Truth in Savings Act (12 USC 4301 et seq) had been enacted by a Democratic Congress in 1991 in response to widespread consumer complaints following the Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980's that banks and other savings institutions were using misleading or false information about how much interest a saver would get if they deposited their money with that institution.  Sure enough the above phrase came up regularly in the discussions of the Truth in Savings Act.  If I picked out the words and quoted it here and attributed to almost any current Republican as something they said today, no one would doubt it was a current statement for a second.

One of the primary lubricants that makes free markets work is honesty, allowing dishonesty into the market is like throwing sand into the ball bearings on a wheel.  The Truth in Savings Act set up rules to make sure that institutions were honest about how much interest a consumer could expect if they put their money in that institution.  Yet here, before the Truth in Saving's Act was even dry behind the ears, Republicans were out to gut it to protect financial institutions from having to provide some evidence they were being truthful about the interest they were paying.  Luckily, between Democratic opposition, and Republicans hearing from lots of consumers about how they had been ripped off, in the end the Act only had its teeth pulled, it wasn't deleted.  Oddly enough, given Republicans constant denigration of regulators and regulation, the part that got eliminated was the part that allowed the people injured by the misrepresentation to sue for damages.  The regulatory scheme remained in place.

This is not to say regulations can't be needlessly burdensome, or outdated or counterproductive. But this tired cliche usually serves as an substitute for thought about how to balance the legitimate need for regulation against the potential for over regulation.   My eyes glaze over and my opinion of a speaker sinks anytime I hear someone falling back on this poor excuse for political dialogue.

The Decline of our Democracy?

The Supreme Court removed any restraints on Corporate political funding a couple years ago.   The Republican appointed Supreme Court majority that wrote the opinion were certainly aware that business tends to lean Republican, but I doubt that even they anticipated what a bad decision it was going to turn out to be, and how quickly things would turn bad.


That decision immediately gave nameless, faceless Corporations enormous political power.  A political consultant can now create a lobbying organization with some bland name, go out and solicit donations from people and corporations with lots of money and the desire to influence public policy, then use the money to fund propaganda campaigns to achieve their goals.


The immediate effect has been the unprecedented barrage of negative ads that flood the airwaves in support of some candidate or proposition.  The ads can be outright lies, but if they use the principles of propaganda Hitler relied on, they will probably be successful.  (see postscript at the end of this blog).


Consider what became possible after this decision.  Suppose China wants to undermine our resolve to defend Taiwan.  Or North Korea or Iran want more accommodating US policies.  Or what if Iran, or other oil producing states, want to protect their business by influencing our energy policy by undermining green energy?  They find some political consultant who can form a PAC, identify candidates they believe will be more to their liking, and start funneling money into the PAC.  There is no way to trace the source of the money.


We all know about the flood of earmarks and tax breaks for business that bloated the Federal budget in the last decade.  A recent study found one of the most profitable investments a business can make is to make political contributions.  The companies that made the most political contributions saw an average 250% return on on their investment in the form of profits directly linked to laws favorable to their business.  Now we won't even know what Corporations are buying a particular politican's support for their pet projects.


Around the developing world Democracy's are struggling to get beyond being democracies in name only, where elections are encouraged but manipulated to produce the right result for the powerful.  We seem to be moving the other directions, unwittingly ceding power to the financially powerful.


Only people should be allowed to participate in politics.  The people involved in corporations have a basic right to participate as individuals, they should not be able to multiply their influence through smoke-screen corporations.


Postscript - What Adolph Hitler taught modern political campaigns-


Adolph Hitler was not a guy who seized power, he was elected by a the German people in 1933 because he was a master of political propaganda.  Here are some statements attributed to him about propaganda:


What luck for the rulers that men do not think.


Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.


Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.


It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.


"Education is dangerous, every educated person is a future enemy".

Is Religions Role as a Gude? Or a gatekeeper?

There is no other type of human organization that has done as much good for humanity, nor caused so much grief for humanity, as religion.  Over the scope of history probably billions of people have organized successful, productive, and happy lives around religious principles.  Whether they be Jews, Christian's, Muslims, Buddhist's, Hindu's, or many other religious beliefs, all seem to have the capacity to provide organizing principles to help people enjoy a healthy and productive life.

At the same time religion is one of the two primary justifications for war, genocide and other forms of human discrimination and aggression against others.  (The other justification is just pure naked greed and hunger for personal power).

How can religion be simultaneously so beneficial yet so destructive?  I believe it is because religious folk are not careful about the roles they allow religion to assume in the name of religion.

Religion/s strength is as a guide helping people chose paths in life that lead to health, peace and contentment.  In this role religion suggests options that people can chose to follow - or not.  A Religion becomes popular because it works for people in organizing their lives. 

Religions begin to undermine their ability to be a good guide when ambitious people appoint or sell themselves as the gatekeeper for the religion.  They claim the power to control access to God to enhance their own influence and power.  Since they are human they do not have the capability of absolute understanding, but their ambition tends to make them ignore or forget that fact.  What seems right to them, based on their personality and life experience, becomes the only path authorized by God.  

Religions really go wrong is when the gatekeepers begin to align themselves with government to control not only access to god, but to enforce what they perceive to be god's law.

A goal of all people who respect religion should be limit religions roll to that of a guide - to recognize that different paths to God work for different people.  All people who respect religion should reject those who would set themselves up as gatekeepers controlling access to God.

Sustainable Goverment

History has demonstrated, and is demonstrating that human instinct and emotion leads to behavior that is in the short term self interest of the actor, but undermines the long term interests of the broader society, including, often, the actor's descendents.

Over the long view of history we as a species are evolving into more cooperative and productive societies that allow us to all live longer, healthier and happier lives by learning to modify and control selfish and emotion based behaviors.  The concept of democracy was a big step forward toward moving societies away from from zero-sum battles between individuals that produce big winners and big losers toward more cooperative societies that multiply individual efforts to produce a better life for everyone.

But as democracies have evolved they have have developed a nasty tendency toward zero-sum battles between interest groups fighting to shape policies to their advantage.

It appears the next stage of human evolution is to fine tune our constitutional frameworks to develop a counterbalance for our tendency to just project our selfish short term emotions onto our organizational behavior.  But in the short term we have a growing body of data about how our emotions can control our logic.  We need to find a way to make more voters more aware that what feels good isn't necessarily good policy.  That means we have to focus more effort on teaching voters to distinguish between data and emotion, and to understand that their political opinions are usually rooted in emotion rather than deliberative consideration of facts and data.

Whats wrong with this picture

Corporate pension funds are massively underfunded in the United States, the workers for a number of corporations have lost big chunks or all of their pensions in the last decade as Corporations ran through bankruptcy.  On the other hand the Post Office is being put out of business because Congress has required them to stockpile the money to cover 70 years worth of pension obligations in 10 years.  Why is Congress so concerned about the pension obligations of the Post Office and so oblivious to Corporate pension obligations?

Corporate profits are near all time highs, and economic experts say the main reason (besides layoffs) is because the Fed has kept interest rates at essentially zero, so Corporations can borrow to fund their operations at historically low interest rates.  On the other hand student loan debt is at historically high levels, the interest rates on student loans are much higher than in decades past, and Congress is trying to push interest rates up further on many student loans.

Sometimes it seems like in the last decade this country has turned common sense good economics on its head.

IDP - Questions to those who support Government control over abortions

1.  Genesis 2:7 - states that God formed man and breathed in the breath of life and the man became a living soul.  Is there another bible verse that touches on when the soul is imparted?

2.  What words of Jesus support the idea we are delegated to enforce and punish God's law?

Big surprise - genetics is of little use in developing personalized medicine

A recent article (cite below) noted that studies attempting to start developing personalized medical treatment through genetics had disappointingly revealed very few diseases have a genetic components that correlate for risk of getting the disease.  This is a big disappointment in the scientific world.   For as long as I can remember Science has been committed to the nature v. nurture theory - the notion that everything we are is either the product of our DNA, or our upbringing.  Nature v. nurture never did a great job of explaining variations in human personality, but it provided a ready battle ground for the hard sciences to square off against social scientists.  Neither side was open to complicating the argument by adding another influence.


As a reasonably well informed spectator to the debate it has been apparent to me there is probably a third influence rooted in brain chemistry.  Science has known for decades that the chemicals the different systems in our brain use to communicate are not static.  The particular mix of chemicals changes constantly during the course of a day, a month and a year, and the changes are pretty predictable in many cases, as are behavioral changes that reflect the particular mix of chemicals.  The problem with this theory is a PR problem.  It sounds like Astrology - your personality is affected by the physical world around you, and in particular by when you were born.

My perception of why we have made no progress on the nature v. nurture issue in my adult lifetime is science has shied away from studying the issue first because they feared being associated with astrology, then, as "fear" of astrology receded, the chemical approach to brain science got pushed aside by new digital imaging technology that cannot measure different chemicals very well.  What is important is we are now  30 years down the road and science has run into another dead end in the decade long effort  to explain everything through DNA or nurture.

Responding to a comment to a blog I posted on this topic on  9/22/2011 I said:

I think, for example, medicine would be a huge beneficiary. Treating each person as different (instead of assuming we are all chemical carbon copies) is all the rage in medicine but they have no organizing principal to focus their research. Any good "serious" astrology book will discuss ailments characteristics of certain signs, and in my lifetime looking at myself and people I know those astrological traditions have a high degree of predictive accuracy.

I know the theory sounds wacky to people - particularly science folk - because in some ways it is a science based theory that in some ways sort of invites dipping into the data base in astrology - and the ancient folk that developed astrology know nothing about the brain, or chemistry.  But probably the first time someone said the earth revolved around the sun it sounded wacky, and the first person who drew the conclusion probably knew nothing about the solar system, or galaxy or  universe.  Conventional wisdom often closes our mind to possibilities.  


Now we can search the center of the universe billions of light years away with our telescopes, we can build computers that sit on our desks that can store, manage and process data far faster than we can - but we still can't come to grips with why we aren't all clones of one another.  Science needs to get over its simple notion that everything is based in either DNA or nurture and start investigating other options.


If you are reading this blog and know someone who is in, or thinking about being in, the brain or medical research fields, forward this blog.  Please.  I kept it short so it won't be to painful to read.  I'm getting old.  I want my doctors to be able to understand why I am different from the patient they saw before me.


1 - May 5 Science News, p.11 - reporting on papers presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting