True Lies

No one among us can claim to know everything. We have sympathy for those who admit that, and we can forgive those who are contrite when they realize that they had disbursed wrong information. There is giving information that turned out wrong and there is one about knowing something to be wrong but gives it anyway. There is no getting around that - it is telling a lie. But still all is not lost because there is atonement for such an act. What is unforgivable is when folks continue to lie or even double down on the lie. It is one thing when someone realizes it is a lie; it is unconscionable to continue with it anyway because there is an expediency to do it. It is the worst kind of hypocrisy. When being a hypocrite to look good is bad, being one to fool other people or to gain political power is a devilish thing to do. Hypocrisy, of course, is a social derivative of lying.

Then there's the other kind - the lie has been exposed and the perpetrator of a lie digs a deeper hole even when he or she knows it is a lie, then pretending not to know somehow exonerates them. A special cubbyhole is reserved for them somewhere, someday, where they may never see the light or ever be seen again. Anonymity or the relegation to oblivion is the severely surest way to punish them.

But that is not how it works in politics and other social settings. Politics is man's invention where lying is expected and frowned upon at the same time. Political lies are tolerated and the ones who are good at it seems to be rewarded with very little consequence. Politicians, most of them anyway, are not meted any kind of penalty for such misdeeds. Some of them even prosper in their career or in  some other tangential preoccupations. A U.S. president caught in a lie in a televised deposition, impeached but kept in office, even prospered with high approval ratings almost immediately afterwards. There are too many of these stories. 

Let's take the famous case of Tawana Brawley.

"It was 1987 when a black teenager, Tawana Brawley, said she had been raped and kidnapped by a group of white men in Dutchess County, N.Y.


Her story of being attacked, scrawled with racial slurs, smeared with feces and left beside a road wrapped in a plastic bag made front pages across the nation — especially after the Rev. Al Sharpton took up her case".

Strangely, Tawana Brawley actually made up the lie to avoid punishment for staying out late one night. The court judgment against her after the hoax unraveled was to pay the aggrieved party of the white men  she falsely accused was a financial restitution of $190,000. 15 years later she was only able to $3700, or less than 1 per cent. Rev. Sharpton paid the $65,000 judgment against him from supporters who contributed to his defense. In other words the perpetrators of the hoax were hardly held accountable. 

"The only way to cover up a lie? Keep lying".  --- Tomi Lahren

Then this country was gripped by another racially triggered hoax in recent days. Again, just as the Tawana Brawley case, the country is split once more along not just racial lines.

Jussie Smollet's first lie was writing to himself a racially motivated threat with letters cut out from a magazine to compose a whole page, like a kidnapping notes ransom note. When that didn't gain the intended results he staged another one that was so much more severe in implications.

Those two misdeeds have more than social repercussions because the racial divide fuels political discord as well because politicians, at least from one side of it, are making it one.



Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, AOC, is doubling down on her Green New Deal even as the tidal wave she was hoping to generate is slowly becoming an ebb tide as little by little more people are beginning to see through the lies. She has not backed down from her most recent tweet and repeated TV quotes:

"Millennials, and Gen z, and all these folks that come after us, are looking up and we're like 'the world will end in 12 years if we don't address climate change, and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?'" @AOC #MLKNow #MLK2019

But let's have former Vice President turned climate change advocate and Nobel Prize winner on the lime light as well. To be fair we let Snopes clear it up for him. Snopes - not exactly a conservative advocate  - makes a habit of defending liberal claims from being slammed so badly has this to say:

"Arctic sea ice is, without question, on a declining trend, but Gore definitely erred in his use of preliminary projections and misrepresentations of research. Because Gore himself did not claim to have made these predictions, however, and because his statements applied specifically to summer sea ice in the Arctic, we rate the claim that Gore “predicted the ice caps will melt by 2014” as a mixture".

That is being fair to Mr. Gore but clearly there was no mention of one attribution to him about New York, Manhattan in particular, was going to be underwater by 2014-2015. Granted he parsed his language with "may" or "if we don't do anything" about climate change.

Mr. Gore had become a multimillionaire from his books and movies on "The Inconvenient Truth".  

Now, how are we to make of the world ending claim espoused by AOC? Now, she's at it again:

"Democratic socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested on Sunday night that people should consider not having children due to climate change because there is a "scientific consensus" that life will be hard for kids".

"Our planet is going to hit disaster if we don't turn this ship around and so it's basically like, there's a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult," Ocasio-Cortez said while chopping up food in her kitchen during an Instagram live video. "And it does lead, I think, young people to have a legitimate question, you know, 'Is it okay to still have children?'" She is no longer just after cows. 

We don't know where "scientific consensus" that life will be hard for kids" came from.  It is okay when she says things out of ignorance though in her position, "ignorance is no longer bliss". She is downright manipulative! Her ignorance runs smack at shamelessly fighting for minimum wage for those working at McDonald's and Burger King and all restaurants serving meat. Then she turns around and admonish people to turn away from beef - threatening the livelihood of the very same folks she is supposedly helping. Where is the accountability for such hypocrisy.

When lies are repeated over and over again, they do not miraculously become truths.

Truths and lies are mutually exclusive but somehow folks like those at Snopes make it a "mixture".

There lies, no pun intended, the problem with how media allows deference to people they like even when they are not telling the truth.

Twelve years from now AOC may no longer be in Congress, let alone two years from now, so she may not be held accountable for the things she says. For sure Al Gore is not being held to defend his prediction in 2006 for what he said about 2014-15.

True Lies are real. Let's be aware of it. 

The following story is not true. It is in fact a story I updated/modified for this musing:

A young man found a bottle where upon a genie came out and immediately offered the finder one unlimited wish. The young man, enamored with the idea of zero emissions and call for elimination of commercial and private jets, wished for a bridge from California to Hawaii for an over-ocean train system.

The genie replied: "Oh no. That is too much. Imagine all the engineering involved, the technology I have yet to invent and of the expense. No, that is too much. Give me another wish"

The man, now wishing to make a difference and the furtherance of the Green New Deal, asked this: "Okay, give me the wisdom to understand how Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's thought processes work and of everyone who thinks the same way so I too can do the same thing they're espousing for the environment".

The genie immediately rushed his reply: "Do you want that bridge to have two lanes or four?"

Lib and Let Die

You're not reading the title wrong nor did I misspell the first word. There's a lot going on there, or a lot going on in my head when I penned that. Who wouldn't when one can't help but observe what's going on around this country. I will clear things up in a minute.

First, we look around the world. We look back but not too distantly at the past to see if we can learn or predict what we can of the future from all the diverse histories of nations and regimes. We don't want to overwhelm ourselves with too much data and information so we merely had to to take a quick peek into the last 50-75 years or so, or about two to three generations back. That should be sufficient because we've had two world wars and a handful of regional conflicts during that period.  We look at the U.S., of course, then Europe, Asia and South America. We take a special look into Argentina, Cuba, China, USSR (which is now Russia), Japan, Sweden, UK and Venezuela. I think there's plenty there for us to weigh in on the two major economic platforms that had been the dominant systems: capitalism and socialism.

My apologies to Ian Fleming for misappropriating the title of the second of the James Bond series, "Live and Let Die". As a side note, this might surprise many of you because as movies went, it  was not till later that it was made into one while "Dr. No", which was sixth in publication chronology, was actually first to hit the big screen. Or, that a few of the movies made were  based on short stories, such as, "From a View to a Kill" or "For Your Eyes Only", etc. But I digressed. If there is a point, it is that Ian Fleming wrote the series during the height of the cold war - though a proxy ideological one between the U.S. and the then USSR, it was a direct confrontational battle between communism and democracy. At that time socialism was a gray area, sort of in between the two. 

Now, "Live and Let Die" is, of course, a soft misappropriation by Ian Fleming of the more common expression "Live and Let Live". But where did the expression come from? Researchers observed this as some kind of behavioral pattern among men during the First World War. It was a brutal war of  trench warfare and close quarter violence, which saw the horrific use of poison gas. It was chemical warfare ferociously employed. Commanders noted that soldiers under certain specific circumstances and time had developed the tendencies toward non-aggression against their enemies - an ironic twist in behavior among combatants. Hence, the expression to live and also let others live. Meanwhile, "Lib" here is short for the growing liberalization of society and the general human experience. I will explain in a bit.

So, the seemingly unnatural tendencies of a group of soldiers was a good thing, wasn't it? Yes, but sadly, wars not only kept re-occurring, the capability of each side during the subsequent conflicts continued to develop by leaps and bound, casualties rose almost exponentially, and now the world finds itself armed with enough armaments to destroy itself several times over.

Today we are waking up to another cold war. Another ideological conflict that is bound to also affect the whole world. This conflict will determine what economic system will prevail. It can be  existential because when economies fail, armed conflict is not far behind.

Just over the horizon is a gathering cloud full of promises. It appears to be a bright reflection of everyone's most aspirational wishes for a world free of economic hardships for every citizen. The economically oppressed will be unshackled when the world is freed of economic oppressors which today are basically defined by the wealthy - by the very few who control the most money and possessions. There is a revolt against corporations, the wealthy individuals and families, a seemingly widespread sympathy for those with very little.

A recent example of this revolt is what happened in New York when Amazon was forced to withdraw from building its second headquarters in Long Island. The whole deal was approved by state legislators and local officials who celebrated the agreement after 48 states who vied and lobbied for the opportunity to snag Amazon's business all fell short. Almost all states and local communities offer tax incentives to businesses they wish to attract. In this case Amazon was to get tax breaks over a period of ten years that could amount to about 3 billion dollars in exchange for 25,000 jobs with average salaries estimated to be about $150K per year.

Here's a news clip from:

Reuters Feb 14, 2019

"New York State Senator Michael Gianaris and City Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer said that day that it was “unfathomable that we would sign a $3 billion check” to one of the world’s most valuable companies considering the city’s crumbling subways and overcrowded schools". 

This was of course spearheaded  by no less than the most popular but newly minted member of Congress - the luminous Alexandria Ocasio Cortes - who celebrated it as a win for her liberal agenda when Amazon announced not to go through with the new York plan. She was quoted, “We do not have to settle for scraps in the greatest city in the world". $150K per year of salary is scrap, according to her. This coming from someone who is either out of touch with reality or totally ignorant of economics. This comment is compounded by the fact that she is an economics major. 25,000 jobs mean tax revenues to the state for far longer than ten years, promising growth, a lot of peripheral businesses from housing to services to stores and small entrepreneurs  that will be created by this new headquarters, not counting construction jobs for the new building. The estimate is that north of 25 billion dollars of tax revenues will be realized over the same period that the tax break of 3 billion dollars will be granted to Amazon.

But here is the crazy part. These economic geniuses actually thought they had $3 billion in the state's treasury that they were signing away (read the above quote in bold). There is no $3 billion to give. Not now, for sure, when Amazon pulled out of building their 2nd headquarters there. And New York's "crumbling subways and overcrowded schools" will still be there.

Over the horizon is actually a gathering dark cloud that is socialism. This is a development that should look familiar to anyone who will take the time to see how when a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats took power to run private businesses, or at least dictate how they should be run. Look no further away from the time it took to destroy the economies of once flourishing regions of the world. Spain, Argentina and most recently Venezuela have economies that are now a mere shell, a carcass of what they were. Chavez and Maduro were clones of the Peronistas in Argentina.  Socialism was and remain the shortest path if one aims to destroy the national economy. It is a sad trajectory towards national economic decline and the destruction of individual freedom. 

Nothing has been learned.  Proponents of socialism today are no different from the inexorable fools who insist on doing the same thing over and over, hoping for a different result. But where does this come from. What well are these people drinking from?

The inherent vice of capitalism is in the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is in the equal sharing of miseries.   ---- Winston Churchill

Socialism is about the equal distribution of wealth, liberalism loathes the system that allows for people to become  rich as if the reason for their wealth is the cause of poverty. And no one shall take credit for their wealth through hard work while everyone, regardless of their mediocre toil or lack thereof, deserves an equal share of everything that is in the community. 

The economy - no matter how much tweaking we have to do - does not provide so that everyone can be super wealthy but neither does it mandate that everyone should be dirt poor either.

Henry Ford was the first of the super rich not by blood or inheritance but by sheer determination and indefatigable hard work over numerous failures. But what did he accomplish most? Before his time the automobile was only for the rich. His method of mass production and goal to make cars affordable made the Model T the first car for the average wage earner. It was what "mobilized" America. In the process he became super rich. It made Detroit the first city of the middle class. Amazon made goods available to all Americans, including those in rural areas, merchandise only city shoppers used to enjoy, at lower prices and shipped free (in many cases) to their doorsteps. It increased the package delivery business of UPS and Fedex by several folds, including that of the U.S. Post Office. Oil single handedly saved the whales when it replaced blubber as fuel for oil lamps. The Rockefeller's became rich but oil industrialized much of the world and improved transportation and agriculture.

We can go on and on. Why should we begrudge the wealthy? It was wealth that allowed for the production of big cruise ships. Where it used to be the privilege only of the super rich to see the world in luxury and ease of travel, the middle class was able to do the same without bankrupting their savings. Should we begrudge the ship builders who made profits from their capital? Are we able to enjoy temperature controlled homes if not for Willis Carrier who was the first to envision in 1902 the manufacturing of air conditioners  that regular home owners can afford? Should these people not be rewarded for what they did?

Socialism today, in the eyes of the liberals and radical left, shall be the one ideology to snuff out the fire of inventiveness, entrepreneurship, and impetus to do well. Why? Why should one work so hard when in the end much of what they earned will be redistributed? 

The rich don't keep their wealth under their mattresses. They reinvest it. They can't take it with them, to the afterlife, to Mars or other exoplanets. If they spend it, the shipyards and the workers there are happy to build their yachts, builders and craftsmen will be happy to construct their mansions, their private jets and Lamborghini are built by well-paid workers. Those  will quickly go away once we get rid of the super rich. Let these super rich get their rewards. Remember, like everyone else, they also only have one life to live, they sleep in one bed and use one bedroom at a time, they can be in just one car or jet at a time, and in the end they all "can't take it with them". 

But Henry Ford, with his one life, built a better life for countless others.

Let liberals out-liberalize each other, out radicalize and out-left one another but don't ever let them dictate how we live or spend our money. Already one state is contemplating taxing private retirement plans in order to fund public employee pensions. If we let these ideas permeate in this democracy, the darkness to follow may never see dawn again. Liberalize and let capitalism die. 

Best selling mid-20th century author, a refugee from communist Russia said:

For a shorter musing you may want to read something I wrote in 2016:

99 Cannibals and 1

https://abreloth.blogspot.com/2016/12/99-cannibals-and-1.html

2019 - When The Darnedest Ideas Go Mainstream

One of the benefits of free speech is not so much that everyone can express an opinion but that it also exposes - for all to see and hear - the darnedest ideas ever brought up from the wackiest corners of the political and social realm. Wacky as they are, there is the unfortunate possibility that people will begin to believe them. Actually, there are believers already and we may wake up one day and find out we have created a wacky world that even the creators of the erstwhile "Twilight Zone" TV series could not have contrived, even in their wildest moments. Speaking of twilight zone, is it possible that the collective human mind may have already  reached its limit as if the mountain top of intellectual development had been drastically lopped off at the top into a plateau where everything merely flows downhill from there. Just think. Barely thirty days after swearing in, a twenty nine year old Congress person (adhering to PC cultural-ism) is seen by some as a shaker and mover of legislative policies and quickly embraced by and fast becoming a darling of the media. She cannot be underestimated. Nor those riding the same magic carpet woven from similar yarns of make believe.

Think again. Three decades ago, a year before she was born, the ideas that she now espoused would have been those coming from twenty year old survivors of Woodstock, though dismissed immediately at that time as too socially or politically permissive. The other twist of fate is that some of those who made it out of Woodstock or from the sub-culture of the 60's "Make Love Not War" flower population, managed to finish college from Berkeley and other fine schools of higher learning with the best liberal education money can buy. Miraculously they made it to the work force, many of whom had even become captains of industry and had since been shaping corporate policies at Silicon Valley (where else). But alas, many more of them had become college professors. And by the time they got their tenure they had aged to a respectable level as to be the most influential source of modern thought for the first batch of millennials entering and graduating from college. And beware because many of those millennials might decide to go to the polls in 2020 !

Green New Deal (on cows, airplanes and goodies for everyone !)

It is a resolution - not quite a bill in Congress (not yet anyway) - but it is getting a lot of press. I was struck by the initial reaction of the Democrat Speaker of the House who said, “The green dream or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is, but they’re for it right?” For that reason and for all the hoopla surrounding subsequent reactions to the resolution from supporters and detractors alike, I read the resolution in its entirety. Why? That's what idle minds do. Besides, I was curious about the Speaker's reaction.

I knew that the few lines of bullet points condensed by the detractors into layman terms could not have been blatantly expressed as such in the resolution. So I read. Well, as to be expected of resolutions from folks in Congress, it was in legalese only self-respecting B+ law graduates could have scribbled in a hurry, in my opinion. In a hurry because we are now getting some kind clarifications, contextual explanations, even denials of the ascribed meanings and tweets and deleted website statements. To say that the "roll out" of the Green New Deal was not well thought out is an understatement.

Of course, the resolution didn't exactly say, in so few words, to get rid of airplanes, cows and guaranteed jobs even to those unwilling to work. The volume of words that are in it, however, offer enough clues from which anyone can sift through and conclude that indeed the bullet points on airplanes, cows and free goodies for everyone are in there when one considers other statements made before and after by proponents of the Green New Deal.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, now popularly known as AOC, is the charismatic 29 year old member of the New Congress. You see, outside of the resolution that she launched, flanked by other members of Congress, she was on TV saying the darnedest things. For example, she did say that if we do not do something about climate change, the world will end in twelve years. But for someone who did graduate with a business degree, she did not have a clue as to how much the program of the Green New Deal will cost. And she in fact did say other things relating to money and costs and budget that even those not exactly well versed in business  would have construed them to be too fantastic to believe or straight out of the ovens where pies from the sky are made. But that is a privilege politicians use that she is quickly learning to throw out there, hoping some of them will stick. And they might.  That's the scary part.

When asked about the prospect that this Green New Deal also calls for the elimination of air travel, the Democrat senator from the great state of Hawaii managed only a wry smile, though perhaps silently cringing from the possibility that she may never be able to leave or go back to her tropical constituents, except by boat (and it had better be an electric boat too). Of course, the resolution did not exactly say that air travel should be eliminated but detractors are given that ammunition from the "zero emissions" target called for by the resolutions. 

Now the whole idea of emissions control was farthest from its proponents'  minds when confronted by the fact that just two weeks ago in Davos Switzerland the most influential and most affluent voices against climate change swooped in with their over 1200 private jets - a  single concentration of what environmentalists deem to be the worse ozone-depleting vehicles on per ca pita basis.    But what about the call for the elimination of cows? It was not in the resolution either but others read that between the lines because AOC did say something about it from her other media feed. She and even a current 2020 presidential aspirant, presently a senator from the East Coast, did disparage these hapless domesticated animals for their supposedly excessive methane emissions and their inevitable nature to be regularly flatulent. The whole kerfuffle was further supported by some politicians' call for an end to steak dinners and barbecue and to encourage vegetarian habits because cows are "not good for the world". 

Let's for a moment talk about the humble cow. This meek bovine is nature's factory that converts the humanly-impossible-to-eat grass into protein, milk and raw material for shoes, belts and leather jackets. Technically, it extracts indirectly, but magically, energy from the sun, the vitamin D that comes with it. Nutrients from the soil that we won't dare consume directly goes to the grass that uses the sun's energy to process it and  the cow to convert it. Then as an ultimate sacrifice gives us T-bone, porterhouse and the smoothest leather sofa. Let's not forget  the entire agricultural industry (farmers, producers, grocery stores and rodeo) tied to the cow. It's the darnedest idea to talk about jobs for all while at the same time calling for the elimination of jobs in the dairy and farming industry.





Conflicting images; and there lies the dilemma for vegetarians because we know what's coming next - heads of lettuce and cabbage with placards.

Zero emissions also mean for the elimination of one of the best paying jobs that are in the oil industry.

  
It is no joke because in 2016 one presidential aspirant actually called for the coal industry's extinction. It is even more alarming to call for it now when this country went from being an oil hostage in the 70's and habitual oil importer to now a net exporter of it. Imagine how many jobs will be lost. 

Another freshman member of Congress passionately spoke for the TSA employees not getting paid during the shutdown. Then the following week she called for the elimination of the Department of Homeland Security which she deemed an oppressive arm of the government. Of course, she didn't know that the TSA is under the Department of Homeland Security. Again, job security for all persons of the United States but meanwhile let's eliminate a lot of jobs. Notice the resolution says guaranteed jobs for all persons, not citizens of the United States. Health care for all, college for all, all kinds of goodies for all. How much will it cost? The only certainty in  all of these is that proponents of free stuff for everyone have no clue how much the tax payers will have to fork for these half-baked pies.

Darn, there's more but let's not over do it. Save some for later. Maybe socialism, anyone?