All living creatures communicate. Humans, of course, but much has been written about the communications of all the other primates, plus dogs, birds, insects.
And then there are the trees, grasses, and other plants that communicate by emitting chemicals into the air, water, and soil. These chemicals communicate to other plants that someone is being eaten or attacked in other ways, so that defensive measures might be taken.
There not only is intra-species communication, but inter-species communication, whereby the actions and cries of one species provide valuable information to other species.
Even bacteria communicate via many means, including “quorum sensing,” the release of chemicals that, in essence say, “There are enough of us to do as a group, a thing that individuals of us cannot do.”
Serena, 2002
And by this torturous road, we approach Serena Williams and the “f” word.
Serena is considered by many people, me included, to be the greatest female tennis player in history.
Her combination of speed, strength, guile, serving power, and her never-quit, incredible desire to win have been unequaled for more than twenty years.
So dominant is she, that had I merely referred to her as “Serena,” you probably would not have needed the “Williams” to know whom I meant.
Last night, Serena, age 36, lost to a player 16 years her junior, and perhaps that age difference alone tells much of the story.
But there is another part to the story, and that involves the “f” word.
No, not that “f” word.
Because communication is so complex and subtle, we have evolved many complex and subtle rules that differentiate acceptable vs. unacceptable communication.
For example, there is a hideous and hateful word, often and widely used in earlier times, that now is used only by the coarse and the bigoted, and even then only in coarse and bigoted situations. That word is “nigger.”
It is a bastardized version of “Negro,” which itself is considered impolitic in many settings, as is the word “colored” when referring to people, though mysteriously, “of color” is acceptable.
If we add “black” and “African American” to the list, we have a broad range of references to the same human feature. And this doesn’t include the various slang derogatory terms used to reference minorities, each with degrees of unacceptability, depending on audience and situation.
In today’s hypersensitive world, references formerly considered innocent, now are grouped under the title, “Shaming.”
Clicking the above link will reveal to you many sorts of shaming, all designed to separate and denigrate some subgroup that is different from you.
Part of shaming is the use of certain shaming words. One of those words is the “f” word. I mean, “fat.”
Politically, one does not refer to a person as “fat.” The more acceptable reference is “big,” or in clothing, “plus” size, or “not in condition,” or “out of shape,” even more gently, no reference at all, as though we are blind to all differences.
I do not know how Serena’s coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, will reveal to her that part of the reason she lost yesterday is that she either is fat, big, plus, not in condition, or out of shape, if she isn’t already aware of it.
In her younger years, Serena moved to the ball like a lioness after a gazelle. She was a graceful ballerina, but with strength and power.
Yesterday she abandoned the rapid, lithe steps that formerly brought her into perfect hitting position. Instead, she stood flatfooted, and settled for taking a long, slow, laborious stride, punctuated by a lean and reach, that almost, but not quite, allowed her to stroke the ball properly.
She was (dare I say it?) a fat ballerina.
Perhaps she knows, but due to her sensitive physical condition (She almost has died on two separate occasions, the most recent, a year ago) and possibly sensitive emotional condition (after postpartum and losing in a second consecutive tennis major final), either cannot or will not change.
Or perhaps she believes, that given her age, her accomplishments, and her limited future in professional tennis, she doesn’t wish to go through the effort and discomfort of weight loss.
That Serena remains one of the world’s greatest players, is a testament to her will and her natural athleticism. But I, as an admirer, am sad to see this magnificent champion turn “large,” in a tutu bordering on the comical.
I suspect that if Mouratoglou somehow could communicate to her the need return to better “condition,” i.e. lose about 20 pounds, Serena still might have more championships left in her. Otherwise . . .
Communication, especially in the high-strung, sensitive world of professional sports is, as we said, complex and subtle. It requires great care and delicacy. But if anyone can do it, the Serena/Mouratoglou team can.
At least I hope so.
Serena seems like a very kind and moral person, a magnificent champion, and a good mother.
She is the G.O.A.T., who warmly hugged the young woman who defeated her and demanded the crowd to “stop booing,” lest the youngster’s victory not be tarnished.
Serena would not deserve to be remembered with the “f” word.
It described the Trump administration’s cruelty to children as the official policy designed to prevent illegal immigration.
The idea is that if America can subject children to terrifying cruelty, their parents will be less likely to come to America illegally.
In short, we tell the world, “We Americans torture children. We will inflict permanent mental and emotional damage on your children. So, if you have more decency and concern for children than we Americans do, don’t come here.”
That Donald Trump is an indecent man, is sickeningly obvious.
That he has surrounded himself with similarly indecent creatures, also is beyond debate.
That Trump’s family also lacks moral character is a sad truth.
Trump has infected the entire Republican party — the party of “law and order,” which now puts party before country, and rich before poor. Immorality has become standard operating procedure for Trump’s “religious” followers.
And it just gets worse:
The Trump administration said Thursday it will seek to keep some undocumented immigrant children in detention for far longer than currently allowed, a move that would have sweeping implications for the families and for the immigration detention system.
You see, the current level of cruelty to children is not sufficient. We must tighten the thumbscrews further — much further.
We have no decency ourselves. We want to hurt these children so badly and do so much permanent damage to them, that no parent ever would want to come here.
The move comes on the heels of the administration’s decision this spring to separate families at the border as part of its “zero tolerance” prosecution policy, which resulted in more than 2,500 children being separated from their parents for weeks to months at a time.
We don’t care about the outcry from truly moral Americans. We don’t care about the rulings from a moral judge.
We don’t even care that more than 500 terrified children remain separated from their parents, because — well, because we simply don’t care.
It’s not our fault that we are immoral bastards. It’s the parents’ fault for trying to escape horrifying conditions and for seeking sanctuary with us immoral bastards.
So quit your whining, snowflakes.
The more than 200-page proposed regulation would circumvent a court settlementthat has, for 20 years, set standards for the care of children in immigration detention.
Regulations? Standards of care for children? Court settlements. Who cares about regulations, standards of care for children, and court settlements?
“Some very fine people.”
The Nazis had it right. The white supremacists have it right. As our President said, they are “some very fine people.” They know how to treat aliens.
The administration has long sought to overturn the court agreement, arguing it binds the government’s hands and contributes to attracting undocumented immigrants to the country.
By holding families as long as their immigration case moves through the system and deporting them more quickly, they argue, families will be less inclined to try to come to the US illegally.
Yes, it’s true. The more horribly we can treat these unfortunate people, who have given up everything to escape terror, the less likely they will want to come to America for sanctuary.
If we could get away with shooting them all, we’d do that, too.
The proposed federal regulations would nullify the court case known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, which governs how undocumented children can be treated in custody.
The administration has targeted the Flores settlement as one of the main sources of its frustration with the immigration system, specifically the requirement to release children who arrive as part of families from detention within 20 days.
In a statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen labeled the settlement as a “pull factor” that drives immigrants to the US illegally.
Everyone who touches Donald Trump becomes dirtied by the experience.
You can add Kirstjen Nielsen to the long list of people who lost their decency, if they ever had any.
“There’s a reason we have Flores in the first place, and that is to protect children. Period,” said Philip Wolgin, director of Immigration Policy at the Center for American Progress.
“Given any number of recent reports on the abuses of children in immigration custody, we need these common-sense protections more than ever. … It’s hard to see how the rules wouldn’t be challenged in court as not living up to the substance or spirit of the agreement.”
Like all Trump agreements, this one is void before the pen touches the paper. Ask anyone who ever has dealt with him.
And as for the “spirit of the agreement,” you have to be kidding. This is Trump we’re talking about.
“The last thing we need to do is to expose children to even longer detention under weaker conditions as the Trump administration is proposing,” echoed Ur Jaddou, a former DHS counsel now at the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice.
“Medical and psychological experts all agree that detention, including family detention, is no place for children, let alone under inhumane conditions, and especially when there are viable and workable alternatives available. This proposed regulation is unacceptable and should be challenged.”
Inhumane conditions. That’s not a bug; it’s a feature.
Trump loves it. The GOP loves it. Trump’s followers love it. The party of waterboarding is 100% sold on the benefits of torture — especially the torture of children.
The government wants to keep families in detention for the duration of their immigration court case. Those cases can take years to finish.
“The proposed rule may result in extending detention of some minors, and their accompanying parent or legal guardian, in (family detention centers) beyond 20 days,” the rule acknowledges.
“ICE is unable to estimate how long detention would be extended for some categories of minors and their accompanying adults in FRCs due to this proposed rule.”
So we keep children in jail for weeks, maybe months. The longer the better. That’ll teach ’em not to come to the land of opportunity, freedom, and compassion.
Not days; not even weeks. Months or years.
If a mother and child, trying to escape a pack of wild dogs, came knocking at your door, begging for sanctuary, would you let them in?
Trump and the GOP would imprison the child and throw the mother out to the dogs.
The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
In previous posts (here, here, here, and others) I have given you many reasons why Modern Monetary Theory’s (MMT) “Jobs Guarantee” is naive foolishness.
For instance:
1. Jobs are not hard to find. Millions of jobs are available. It’s the right jobs that are hard to find. (Right skills, right pay, right location, right benefits, right working environment, right opportunities for advancement, right learning potential)
a. Find or create jobs,
b. interview,
c. hire,
d. supervise,
e. promote and demote,
f. switch jobs, and
g. fire the millions of people who should be fired.
h. while determining pay scales
for every kind of job in every city, suburb, and hamlet all over America.
3. The federal government is ill-prepared to provide healthcare, maternity leave, vacation days, IRAs and myriad other benefits appropriate to different employees all over the nation.
4. If people are hired only because they need jobs, rather than because the jobs need people, nothing prevents those jobs from being make-work.
“Good news! We just found you an interesting job. Stand around and look interested.”
And now comes proof, if more proof is needed, of the federal government’s incompetence in the whole “jobs” area:
The Department of Labor’s Job Corps program is supposed to teach disadvantaged young people the skills they need to get good jobs. But the program, which costs taxpayers about $1.7 billion per year, is apparently a failure.
O.K., it doesn’t cost taxpayers one cent.
A Monetarily Sovereign government has the unlimited ability to create its own sovereign currency, which it does by the simple act of paying creditors.
About 50,000 students enroll in the program each year, about two-thirds of whom are high school dropouts, according to The New York Times. Results aside, the program’s goals are admirable. As The Wall Street Journal reported in April:
Launched in 1964, Job Corps works with 16- to 24-year-olds who grew up homeless or poor, passed through foster care, or suffered other hardships.
The goal is to equip these young adults with skills for careers in advanced manufacturing, the building trades, health care, information technology, business and more.
Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening. A March audit from the Labor Department’s Office of Inspector General sampled 324 Job Corps participants who were five years removed from graduation.
The median annual income of 231 of those participants (wage records weren’t available for the rest), was just $12,486 as of December 2016.
The audit acknowledged that “Job Corps could not demonstrate beneficial job training outcomes.”
And that is the point. The federal government bureaucrats were supposed to do what high school “Workplace Preparation” courses accomplish — and predictably, they failed.
(Workplace preparation courses prepare students to move directly into the workplace after high school or to be admitted into select apprenticeship programs or other training programs in the community.
Courses focus on employment skills and on practical workplace applications of the subject content.
Many workplace preparation courses involve cooperative education and work experience placements, which allow students to get practical experience in a workplace.)
That’s not all. Job Corps spends about $50 million a year on “transition services” to help graduates find jobs.
But in 94 percent of the cases sampled, “Job Corps contractors could not demonstrate they had assisted participants in finding jobs.”
A 94% failure rate: These are the same federal bureaucrats who are supposed to find jobs for millions of people all over the country — millions of people who don’t have the “benefit” of federal jobs training??
A terrible waste of time for the job-seekers.
One former North Texas teacher, who quit in 2015, says the entire program is failing. “Job Corps doesn’t work,” the teacher, Teresa Sanders, tells the Times. “The adults are making money, the politicians are getting photo ops.
But we are all failing the students.“
No surprise there. It’s what I’ve preached for years.
Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta admits the program “requires fundamental reform.”
“It is not enough to make changes at the margins,” he tells the Times. “We need large-scale changes.”
If a small program fails, the government’s approach is to make the program biggere, so that the failure can be bigger.
Despite its shortcomings, Jobs Corps is popular among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress (to Democrats, it’s a government program aimed at reducing poverty; to Republicans, it incentivizes hard work), so there’s only so much Acosta can do. “
Does that sound familiar, MMT? Reducing poverty and incentivizing work are two of MMT’s goals (i.e. excuses) for its Jobs Guarantee.
But why do we need to incentivize work? Why has sweat become a moral imperative?
You have a program with a rich and complicated history that’s one of the biggest leftovers from the war on poverty, and it is enormously complicated to make any significant changes,” Eric M. Seleznow, a former deputy assistant secretary for the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration during the Obama administration, tells the Times.
He notes that “competing interests from Congress, program operators, advocates, as well as complex legal requirements present a lot of challenges.”
If Job Corps is salvageable, then it can do some real good. But if real reforms aren’t going to happen, Congress should shut it down.
So let this be the final nail in the coffin of the “Jobs Guarantee, and instead, let us begin to focus on the Ten Steps to Prosperity (below).
The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
The Fiscal Service accepts gifts, bequests, proceeds and unconditional donations to the United States, both for general government purposes and for the specific purpose of paying down or reducing the public debt. For more information, see:
How do I make a contribution to the U.S. government?
Citizens who wish to make a general donation to the U.S. government may send contributions to a specific account called “Gifts to the United States.”
This account was established in 1843 to accept gifts, such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States. Money deposited into this account is for general use by the federal government and can be available for budget needs.
These contributions are considered an unconditional gift to the government. Financial gifts can be made by check or money order payable to the United States Treasury and mailed to the address below.
Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Funds Management Branch
P.O. Box 1328
Parkersburg, WV 26106-1328Any tax-related questions regarding these contributions should be directed to the Internal Revenue Service at (800) 829-1040.
Yes, there’s nothing like throwing your money into a bonfire, so you can “express your patriotism to the United States,” because that is exactly what the above federal government page tells you to do.
Sending your dollars to a government that produces dollars at will, surely is one of the least intelligent things a person can do, but hey, the government encourages it, so it must be right. Right?
No, it simply is unintelligent. Not only does our Monetarily Sovereign federal government have no need for your dollars, but it actually destroys your dollars upon receipt.
Every single dollar you send to the U.S. Treasury not only disappears from your pocket, but it also disappears from the total supply of money in America.
Those dollars effectively are destroyed. To visualize why, answer these two questions:
If you owned a limitless dollar-creating machine, how many dollars would you have?
If, while you owned that machine, I sent you $1,000, how many dollars would you now have?
The answer to both questions is the same: You would have an infinite number of dollars. My sending you $1,000 would have zero effect on the number of dollars you have. The $1,000 would disappear into infinity.
Can you imagine? People think we need their tax dollars!
Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”
Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.”
St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills.
The federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, owns that limitless dollar-creating machine. The government “has” infinite dollars, because it creates the dollars with which it pays all its financial obligations.
The dollars you send to the federal government do not add even one penny to the dollars the government has. Those dollars are destroyed.
And that includes your federal tax dollars.
Even if the federal government received zero tax dollars, zero interest dollars, and zero dollars from any other source, it never would run short of its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar.
The FICA dollars taken from your paycheck? Destroyed. The income tax dollars you send to the Treasury? Destroyed. Federal estate taxes? Destroyed. Federal excise taxes? Destroyed. All federal tax dollars are destroyed.
(This does not pertain to state and local government taxes. These governments are monetarily non-sovereign. They do not own unlimited money-creation machines. They do use your tax dollars)
I was reminded of all of this when came across the following article in the August 31, 2018, THE WEEK online paper:
Medicare-for-all sounds great, but how do we pay for it?
In a normal country, the answer would be simple — just raise taxes. But in the United States, health care is so outlandishly expensive that the simple solution is anything but.
Where Austria or Finland would be assured that a modest tax hike could (and did) cover everyone, America has to grapple with a bloated health-care sector eating up over 17 percent of GDP — nearly 5 points (or about $1 trillion) greater than Switzerland, the second-most expensive country.
This reality forces Medicare-for-all advocates into one of two basic choices, neither of them easy:
1. Swallow the huge costs, shove through a really big tax hike, and hope that people will understand the taxes-for-premiums swap.
2. Try to cut costs, and keep the tax increase modest, but tempt the wrath of the medical lobby.
Some tax increases are certainly inevitable. But the second choice is by far the best, on grounds of both practical policy and politics.
No, no, no, no, and did I mention, NO? The “really big tax hike” would be beyond stupid, as 100% of those tax dollars would be taken from our pockets and then destroyed.
And as for “cutting costs,” that inevitably becomes “cutting services.”
The best, perhaps only, basic choice is to have the federal government pay for everything, simply by creating dollars.
This would avoid the negative effects of tax hikes and of service cuts.
The article continues:
Why is American health care so expensive? Drug prices and administrative costs.
America paid roughly twice the rich country median for drugs in 2015, at $1,443 per person, with $1,023 of that in the form of retail pharmaceuticals.
France paid $697, while the Netherlands paid just $466. Secondly, fully 8 percent of American health-care spending goes to administration — as compared to Germany at 5 percent, Canada at 3 percent, or Sweden at 2 percent.
Thus the first priority for a Medicare-for-all bill must be to cut administration spending to the bone. Given that this is largely down to providers having to navigate the hellishly complex and fragmented status quo system, this should be quite easy.
Smashing down drug prices would be harder politically, but conceptually simple. You simply survey the drug market and set prices given an overall budget of (let’s say) $725 per person.
We have a knee-jerk, negative response to the word, “expensive.” But, in a single-payer, federally funded, Medicare-for-All program, stimulus dollars would flow from the federal government (which has an infinite supply) to the private sector (which needs dollars for growth).
Pharmaceutical companies, and their employees, and their suppliers all would receive dollars from the federal government. All these people would spend the dollars, benefitting thousands of companies and their employees.
Similarly, administration spending would benefit all those who administer federal programs on both the private sector side and on the government employee side.
Federal spending for Medicare-for-All would benefit many millions of people financially, improve the entire nation’s health, and stimulate the economy.
One last thought: Not many people realize this, but Medicare Part B (medical insurance) is funded differently from Medicare Part A (hospital insurance).
This can include outpatient care, preventive services, ambulance services, and durable medical equipment. It also covers part-time or intermittent home health and rehabilitative services, such as physical therapy, if they are ordered by a doctor to treat your condition.
Some of the preventive services Medicare Part B covers include a one-time “Welcome to Medicare” preventive visit, flu and hepatitis B shots, cardiovascular screenings, cancer screenings, diabetes screenings, and more.
While Medicare Part A supposedly is funded through the FICA tax, Part B supposedly is financed through a combination of general revenues and premiums paid by beneficiaries.
In both cases, I say “supposedly,” because all dollars coming to the federal government are destroyed, so all federal spending is funded by new money creation.
The point, however, is:
While a mythical Part A trust fund often is said to be running short of money, Part B never is said to be running short, because even with federal government’s phony financing system, sufficient dollars come from the general fund.
Rather than focusing on tax increases and spending cuts, the government should focus on the one implementation that would save lives: Pay for it all.
A single-payer program would be much simpler and more efficient to implement than the complex, convoluted combination of multiple insurance companies, multiple coverages, multiple deductibles, incomprehensible Part D (drug) coverages, multiple home care, multiple long-term-care rules we now are burdened with.
One source, that covers everything, and sets the price limits for everything, just the way Medicare now does, would take the labor and guesswork out of insurance.
The solution to all federal funding comes with the realization that the federal government:
1. Is Monetarily Sovereign,
2. Has the infinite ability to create its own sovereign currency,
3. Neither needs nor uses tax dollars or any other income, and
4. Never can run short of the dollars needed to pay for anything.
(Now, someone please tell Bernie Sanders and the Democrats)
The single most important problems in economics involve the excessive income/wealth/power Gaps between the have-mores and the have-less.
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of The Ten Steps To Prosperity can narrow the Gaps:
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 