New Federal Unemployment Policy Needed

A philosophy of triaging the unemployed for priority hire should develop a way to provide service to all of the chronically and rarely unemployed equally. It individually rate citizens with an unemployment misery index that gives tax credits to employers equivalent to the rating of each unemployed citizen.

Unemployment may be clustered in disadvantaged communities, yet disadvantaged individuals may exist within prosperous communities too, and they also need to benefit from a federal hiring policy and rating structure equally with those clustered together in community misery.

There is no reason in this computer rich era of U.S. history to fail to provide individual unemployment misery scores that accurately reflect the poverty of each individuals personal experience. Yet if a married couple is unemployed the average wealth or poverty of that couple should be considered. If a housewife or husband is married to a spouse making a million a year, she or he ought not get a high score for being unemployed and earning nothing laying by the pool drinking pina coladas and watching NFL Football the previous five years.

Such a fair policy might be exemplified;

1) Total the five year earnings history of a citizen and total days of unemployment in the past five years together to create an unemployed misery rating. Those with the highest misery scores would have the most value in tax credits for employers.

Areas with congregations of high value ratings would be good places to locate new business with low cost workers (with good tax credit value). Individuals isolated as the very poor amidst the decadent prosperous might also benefit as the wealthy sometimes enjoy getting a bargain too.

Create a national Medical Service for the Poor and Save Money

The concept that all American citizens rightly ought to have access to necessary medical treatment is broadly accepted. The problem is in delivery the lowest cost competent medical service to the poor. Just as public defenders are appointed to those that cannot afford them, free medical service is needed for the poor unable to afford it. The Republican notion that health care should be made ‘more affordable’ is nonsense regarding those that are broke or well below the poverty line-they need no cost health services.

Honest politicians (not really an oxymoron) would recognize that buying insurance for all poor Americans- 35 to 50 million citizens- would be far costlier to taxpayers than a plain and simple national medical service for those that make less than $ 10,000 annually. In a realistic political environment politicians would actually seek to get the most bang for the buck on medical coverage for the poor.

Creating a national medical service for the poor (perhaps also for Veterans in the same hospital service) would not compete with private enterprise (that includes the vast global corporate medical insurers too). Poor people given food stamps would not go spend money at Denny’s for dinner or Pepe’s Elegant Taco Universe if the government did not provide the food stamps-they would go hungry like as not. Neither would poor people with injuries or illnesses go to Dr. Rolls Hilton the III’s medical suite for treatment as an alternative to a national medical service. Instead, they would go to emergency rooms and everyone else from government to corporate and taxpayers and shareholders soak up the cost with a little work going to bankruptcy court as well.

The least expensive and acceptable way to lower national medical costs is first to create a national medical service for the poor. An effective safety net covering the majority of ordinary medical problems for that class would reduce the expense for everyone else. Buying insurance coverage each month for life for the poor is a terribly wasteful concept financially likely to cost far more than a national medical service.

The Colors of Very Small Waves © 2011 GaryCGibson (a poem)

Looking at the waves in colors
of waters clear and silent moving with surges
disbelief of sound is suspended
coinciding with motion
the sight of cold merged form
grains of sand dissolving
shadows of opportunity stricken
seaweed star ribbon of life
broken clouds change meaning less
rain passing with sunshine
flying horizontally like highway headlights
beads of icy time phenomenalized
blue sky patches receding in darkness
where water solid as substance awaits
in atomic weight of hydrogen and oxygen
Earth instead of spaced
nebulae of never reasoned society
neutralized with thought fragment echoes
design of nothingness placed
the colors of very small waves.

9th Circuit Court to Decide Fate of Obama Roadless Wilderness Fjiord

photo credit-N.A.S.A. Earth Observatory of Kennsington Mine

image credit-U.S. Forest Service (map of Tongass National Forest in S.E. Alaska)

S.E. Alaska’s Lynn Canal is America’s largest fjord in wilderness condition. Isolated individuals in Juneau with little to do in winters have attempted for decades to get the state to build a road nearly a hundred miles north along the Lynn Canal (fjord) to reach Haines and the continental highway system. Plainly the need for a highway is virtually non-existent. State population projections for the next three decades actually anticipate that the region will lose population as development moves north. The Tongass Forest wilderness area and Americans are actually lucky in that respect, for tourism, fishing and wilderness values benefit from the wilderness condition.

http://aktransportation.org/mega-projects/the-juneau-road-ferry-mega-project

The Navaho First Nations People the Navaho were evicted from their ancestral land and made to go on the Long Walk East before the civil war. Their lands in New Mexico and Arizona were viewed as resource rich. Today we are glad that President U.S. Grant returned the navaho to thei homelands in 1868 perhaps realizing that they would take better care of the environment than migrating resideual ex-confederates. Lynn Canal (fjiord) must be conserved as well for the sake of the American tribe and all of the wildlife depending upon it.

www.state.gov/documents/organization/38821.pdf

http://lynncanalconservation.org/

The development of a gold mine by a global corporation called the Kensington mine about halfway to Haines has stimulated the drive to build a road close to the fjord and on to Haines. The greed for gold drove countless First Nations peoples from their ancestral lands in America’s past. The desire to not only build a road to allow in hordes of RV’s, criminals, drug traffickers and easy ingression opportunities for terrorists with weapons of mass destruction from Canada’s headwaters of the Yukon District to the America will destroy the quality of life of Juneauites as well as the wilderness. Ten thousand prospectors and mining access roads will be built off the main road. Countless plinking of whales, illegal harvesting of grizzly bear for hamburger, skinning of marten, sables, mink, otter and torturing of bald eagles will occur. Fish producing streams will become polluted-in short the wilderness will be killed because of the quest for gold by global corporations flying in employees from Australia, Mexico and elsewhere.

Conservation of remaining fjords and wilderness areas in S.E. Alaska may be advanced with a Presidential Wilderness Legacy series wherein each President is encouraged to select a wilderness area in his or her name to add to America’s monumental conservation legacy. The Lynn Canal ought to become the Obama National Roadless Wilderness Fjord, and all roads within 15 miles of the fjord banned perennially.

President Theodore Roosevelt quote on the security of S.E. Alaska and concern about mining development in his 1903 State of the Union address. president Roosevelt was of course the founder of the national park system and a conservor of American wilderness as well as a President that confirmed boundary and administrative lines.

"As long as public plunderers when detected can find a haven of refuge in any foreign land and avoid punishment, just so long encouragement is given them to continue their practices. If we fail to do all that in us lies to stamp out corruption we can not escape our share of responsibility for the guilt. The first requisite of successful self-government is unflinching enforcement of the law and the cutting out of corruption.

For several years past the rapid development of Alaska and the establishment of growing American interests in regions theretofore unsurveyed and imperfectly known brought into prominence the urgent necessity of a practical demarcation of the boundaries between the jurisdictions of the United States and Great Britain. Although the treaty of 1825 between Great Britain and Russia, the provisions of which were copied in the treaty of 1867, whereby Russia conveyed Alaska to the United States, was positive as to the control, first by Russia and later by the United States, of a strip of territory along the continental mainland from the western shore of Portland Canal to Mount St. Elias, following and surrounding the indentations of the coast and including the islands to the westward, its description of the landward margin of the strip was indefinite, resting on the supposed existence of a continuous ridge or range of mountains skirting the coast, as figured in the charts of the early navigators. It had at no time been possible for either party in interest to lay down, under the authority of the treaty, a line so obviously exact according to its provisions as to command the assent of the other. For nearly three-fourths of a century the absence of tangible local interests demanding the exercise of positive jurisdiction on either side of the border left the question dormant. In 1878 questions of revenue administration on the Stikine River led to the establishment of a provisional demarcation, crossing the channel between two high peaks on either side about twenty-four miles above the river mouth. In 1899 similar questions growing out of the extraordinary development of mining interests in the region about the head of Lynn Canal brought about a temporary modus vivendi, by which a convenient separation was made at the watershed divides of the White and Chilkoot passes and to the north of Klukwan, on the Klehini River. These partial and tentative adjustments could not, in the very nature of things, be satisfactory or lasting. A permanent disposition of the matter became imperative."

The Virtue of Doing What Is Right

Doing what is right vs. doing what brings immediate happiness; it is amazing that this moral debate has not been decided once and for all. In the gaming era of techno-social indebtedness pseudo-realism may be mirrored in financial, money trading and investment networks in which international boundaries and real people are no obstacles to quick, vast profit taking for an intellectual objective of happiness that is wrong. The philosophy of consequentialism may be a utilitarian effort to select the best form of happiness with the least possible ill consequences, yet a eudaemonistic disregard for reality, social and even evolutionary effects on the watery planet in the solar system and galactic habitation zones may present future disaster and immediate personal harm.

The loss of a moral sense of right and wrong degrades an individual and a society. A global pursuit of abstract profits may lose sight of the rationale for production of goods that meet individual needs and undermine the political and economic credibility not only of a nation, but of many nations.

The Roman philosopher Cicero wrote a treatise on natural law. The book of Jeremiah cites God as saying that everyone knows him yet they intentionally forget who he is. Jean Paul Sartre might have called that ‘false consciousness’. I believe that the reference may have been to an innate sense of moral right and wrong derived from the goodness of God pervasive throughout experience. Human being may choose to do wrong or wickedness because they disregard the subtle conscience suggesting parameters of right and wrong in human social interactions.

Happiness may be found in personal egoism for a time perhaps, even with sociopaths that enjoy torture and murder that know their actions are wrong yet simply don’t care being happy in wickedness. Socially approved pursuits of happiness may too develop social trends in support of amorality in a belief that happiness may be procured through vice or change for-itself rather than with a definite better course in mind. Comparatively few social circumstance are improved through anarchy or random change-for themselves. Structured analytically directed actions even at the price of less than pleasure or immediate happiness may be the right response to innumerable existential challenges.

An individual might easily find happiness through the pursuit of doing what is right. Developing wisdom enough to determine what is right may also bring a sense of happiness. In fact happiness may be an adjustable goal appearing through the accomplishment of personal goals inclusive of right actions and thought.

U.S. Policy toward Egyptian and Middle Eastern Turmoil Should be Abstemious

Under British Government influence because of oil issues, the United States in 1953 developed a C.I.A. operation Ajax to overthrow Prime Minister Mosaddeq of Iran and restore the power of the Shah. That was the beginning of America’s troubles with the people of Iran.

Under the Shah and his secret police SAVAK that tortured countless Iranian dissidents, American interest of the military-industrial-oil complex prospered as we maintained a rather segregated from ordinary Iranian presence in that nation.
Fundamentally we believed that Iran might be drifting toward communism-probably an unrealistic notion. It is difficult to recall where communism has ever prospered in a Muslim nation.

The United States for the past 15 years has had a number of incompetent foreign policy postures. Largely the enemy is us; for we fail to balance our nation’s budget and to develop a completely independent non-fossil fuel technology for private ground transportation. Hence we support foreign authoritarianists that assure an oil supply to global corporations that have made America a nation of transport Luddites stuck in a perennial loop of internal combustion engines and foreign oil.

To regain some credibility and rationality in U.S. politics our nation should walk softly and carry a big stick. In Egypt we ought not pre-emptively select the next dictator to assure stability for concentrated wealth. Our policy should be to let the Egyptians learn from experience the difficulties in building a democracy for themselves. Like the Bolshevik Party the Muslim Brother may co-opt the revolution, yet America should not underestimate the strengths of materialism and liberty that call to Egyptians from Europe and elsewhere. Egyptians probably have no real intention of regressing as perhaps do Americans intellectually or liberally.

http://www.fouman.com/history/Iranian_History_1940.html

http://www.iranchamber.com/history/oil_nationalization/oil_nationalization.php

To a large extent the United States in developing a strong nation, with defensible modern border security (not allowing 4 of 5 illegal aliens to enter successfully per attempt) with a sustainable resource base, full employment and qualitative economic growth would serve as a good example to the underdeveloped and struggling nations of the world. The challenge in achieving such a rational political state is our own, for we are co-opted by corrupt politicians and global corporate networks of business and finance pushing an agenda that render ordinary Americans and the poor quite politically powerless with a declining comparative standard of living.

Egypt may have several twists and turns in a real political transformation that we hope moves toward a better democracy than America’s decline into a corporate neo-feudal empirical vassal state. Instead of picking an object-foe in the conflict that eliminates the need to intelligent and adaptive political thought, America should observe from what distance is possible in the modern world, and morally support those actual democratic elements in Egypt carefully. If actual direct threats to American or Israeli security arise in the future those can be addressed with an upgrade of a Reagan doctrine if nothing better is possible.

Why National Debt Has Increased Since Women & Minorities Rose to Top of U.S. Party Politics

With the rise of minorities and women in federal politics the national debt has increased, industry outsourced, nation flooding with illegal Mexican immigrants, wealth concentrated and public debt skyrocketed. The reason is that there are no large constituencies outside the parties unhappy and agitating for change and inclusion. Without competition the millionaires and would be millionaires in Congress and the White House concentrate wealth and enrich themselves as the first priority.

President Obama recently served up a ‘we will bury you in bulldung’ moment with his plan to add six trillion dollars of new public debt by 2015. Like a ‘senior moment’ the President’s state of the Union speech ‘sputnik moment’ seemed to forget something; inventing new public debt by the trillions creates inflation instead of national economic security. Those trillions aren’t lofted sputniks that rhetorical competition will catch up with and pay for.

Now that ‘minorities’ are insiders and even leading the two parties just kicking back and forth a dialectical materialist transfer of wealth to themselves and debt to the public. 14 trillion dollars of public debt equals one year U.S. gross national product. President Obama plans to increase that by 2015 to 20 trillion dollars of debt. The President has a suggestion that in a decade the budget deficit could be reduced by half (a half-plast budget plan).

Democrats don’t want to cut the federal budget generally. Republicans don’t really either; they just want to redistribute the budget allocations away from the poor and middle class and too the rich through military spending.

Republicans want tax cuts for the wealthy and everyone, which increases the federal deficits. The rich get richer with fewer taxes that too often make their way to the poor-except in the case of national health care.

So Republicans and Democrats in political power kick back and forth the ‘tastes great/less filling debate of tax cuts and budget cuts with both parties getting what they want and failing to prevent the other party from getting what it wants. The net result is and out of control deepening of federal debt and no one besides the poor and Lou Dobbs-perhaps living in Siberia now, to righteously note the problem and the cure. The U.S.A. must raise taxes and cut the federal budget together. It also must develop better spending policy that gets more economic and environmental results for less.