A Few Brief Remarks. I left some comments at news stories at the Huffington Post on AOL today, on different topics. Here are three:

We need to ABOLISH tipping altogether, by law, and build a reasonable service fee into the bill, as ALL CIVILIZED countries do. Tipping is petty BRIBERY that is unfair to everyone. It extorts money from people who receive bad service [but] are intimidated away from giving less than the going rate -- which has in recent years been inflated from 10% to 15% for no reason. And it leaves servers at the mercy of cheapskates like "Mr 1%". To enforce the prohibition on tipping, we need merely provide that all tips left at the table are GOVERNMENT PROPERTY, and pocketing that money for private purposes is a FEDERAL CRIME, punishable by a fine of 10X the amount stolen, and by imprisonment for egregious violations. Then use the tip money, sent to the Government via business-tax returns or quarterly tip checks, for anti-poverty programs. We can also abolish the exemption from the minimum wage for servers, and establish a reasonable minimum wage that takes into account the 10% or 15% service fee. Any raiding of the service fee by the owners of the establishment would be punished, again, by a fine 10X the amount misappropriated, plus imprisonment for egregious violations.
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If you don't know the sleazy things that SOUTHERN states are doing to suppress the Democratic vote, educate yourself. In many rural areas of the South, a significant portion of the black population was born at home, thru midwives, so did not have birth certificates, so requirements that they present a government-issued birth certificate, with no substitute documentation, such as affidavits, school records, etc., are NOT good-faith attempts to prevent voter fraud, which is in any case rare. Most REGISTERED voters don't even vote.
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Churches are NOT businesses. They do not make profits. Only PROFITS are taxed. The U.S. IS a democracy, but not a theocracy. No church can be attacked for expressing moral views or favoring one candidate or party. Cannot be done under the Constitution: First Amendment -- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". What part of that don't you understand? Government may not restrict freedom of speech, be it by an individual, a pastor, or a church as an official statement of policy. Opposing a political STANCE is NOT running a campaign, and in fact NO CHURCH has ever been taxed for speaking out on political issues. Nor could it be, because that would constitute "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. You may not like freedom of religion, but it is an indispensable part of American civilization, without which we would have endless, bloody, civil war after war after war.

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
GOP vs. POP. The best people in this country are Liberals, and mostly Democrats. The tuffest and nastiest people, alas, are Radical Rightists and Republicans. It would be the easiest thing in the world for an American Hitler to recruit a new SA or SS from among the Radical Right, who would gladly beat, stab, and shoot their fellow Americans to get their way, rationalizing that they must never hesitate to do whatever may be necessary to "save America". Liberals would never do such things except in the extreme event of an absolute, inescapable need to defend themselves and save the Nation from descent into barbarism. But decent people can be pushed only so far before they fite back. The First Confederacy found that out when they bombarded Fort Sumter. What will it take for Liberals to take all necessary steps to crush the Second Confederacy, the present-day conspiracy of Tea Partiers, Radical Libertarians, militias, and Radical Rightists who want to undo all the progress of the last century?
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The Democrats are the party of compromise beyond all principle, of accommodation that has gone over to capitulation. Democrats are, in short, the Party Of Pussies (in the sense "ineffectual or timid person[s]"). In a contest between the brazenly savage GOP and the endlessly apologetic, timorous POP, which will win — every time?
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Democrats need to find their backbone and show the same militancy for principle that the Radical Right has shown for tribe. Because it doesn't matter if Democrats win the White House and both houses of Congress by large majorities — as they did in 2008 — if they will never crush the barbarians of the Radical Right under hobnailed boots. A party of MEN who do not compromise away the good and decent to accommodate evil and indecency, needs only a small majority to do what the people elected them to do. And the very first thing the new Congress must do is ABOLISH the unconstitutional and immoral filibuster rule, Senatorial "holds", and every other antidemocratic perversion that evil men have intruded to frustrate the intent of the Framers of the Constitution that both houses of Congress always operate by simple majority (save for a tiny number of exceptions spelled out expressly in the text of the Constitution). Then the floodgates will open, and the people's work will be done in a flash, with the greatest of ease.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
Greatest Generation, Your Ass! Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nitely News, ticked me off again tonite in talking nonsense about the "Greatest Generation". I sent the following email to NBC News, about its appalling lack of perspective.

Kindly STOP using the preposterous term "Greatest Generation" to refer to the Great Depression-WWII generation. If you truly believe that these people, who SUFFERED misfortune not of their choosing, is greater in any way whatsoever than the generation that CREATED the United States, and CHOSE the hardships they endured for our sake and the sake of this benighted planet, there is something seriously wrong with you. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Monroe, Adams, and on and on and on, have no peer in that 20th Century generation. The latter wrote NONE of our basic documents and created NOTHING in the way of the basic structure and culture of this Nation. They are NOT the "Greatest Generation". They're not even the SECOND-greatest, which term must surely apply to the 19th Century generation that held the Union together and abolished slavery, at huge personal cost. STOP using Tom Brokaw's IDIOTIC term. It was NEVER right, NEVER justified, and always INSULTING to the Founders of this Republic.

The generation that Brokaw stupidly calls the greatest, had disasters befall them. They didn't intend to suffer the world's worst Depression, nor its worst war. Those disasters just happened to them, and they struggled to survive. None of them volunteered to be crushed by the defects of laissez-faire capitalism. And the bulk of the soldiers who fought WWII were conscripted — drafted. Perhaps as few as 1/3 volunteered, and only 73% of the U.S. military in WWII served abroad.
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By contrast, every single Revolutionary War soldier volunteered. Every single one (including one of my ancestors). And the war came home to them.
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Does anyone on Earth think that our parents/grandparents (whatever) embraced the Depression? Do you think they WANTED to be thrown out of work and reduced to penury, then drafted to be sent thousands of miles from home to fite in hell? If they had asked to be laid off, for the sake of building their character, or volunteered to be cannon fodder in Europe or the Pacific, that would be one thing. They did not. Nor did they accomplish anything like the changes at home that the Civil War generation or the 60s generation did. So let us never hear "the Greatest Generation" in Tom Brokaw's sense again. Ever.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:51 PM

 
Time for Sanctions against Russia and China. The former dipoles of the Communist world conspiracy, Moscow and Beijing, have become obstinate advocates of barbarism, this time in vetoing UN action on Syria. It's time they paid the price for their inexcusably monstrous behavior. We should move to strip them of their vetoes, as the first shot over their bows. Once that motion is itself vetoed, we must move to the really powerful guns to blast them out of the water: trade embargoes.
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China is wholly dependent upon exports to keep its people from starving, then rising in revolution against the regime. Ditto Russia.
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Russia's main exports of importance are oil and gas, and Europe has become hooked on Russian suppliers. But there's plenty of oil and gas in the world, and Europe can free itself from its dangerous dependency on a country that is teetering on the edge of dictatorship or revolt.
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The U.S. and EU can cripple China any time they want, simply by imposing restrictions on imports from Communist China, starting with the goods sent thru the most abusively unfair trading practices. We can also demand that China let its currency rise or fall on the world market, and stop artificially keeping its value low to give unfair advantage to Chinese manufacturers. So we'd be fiting two abuses at the same time.
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The U.S. acting alone can cause China huge problems. Already, the U.S. recession has produced considerable suffering among Chinese manufacturers, without any willful intent on our part. If we can harm China indeliberately, think of what we can do deliberately.
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Russia and China are committing hostile acts in the realm of cyber warfare against the U.S. and other countries, and we should warn them in unmistakable terms that we will not consent to have them ramp up their misdeeds in preparation for any kind of war, be it cyber, economic, or military, but regard the behavior of their regimes as provocative, and worthy of countermeasures from the U.S. We should remind Russia of what happened to the Soviet Union when it went up against us and our system of alliances, and caution them that we may be able to break up the Russian Federation as much as we did the Soviet empire. We need not merely promote democracy. We can promote regional separatism.
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We should publicly and covertly work to strengthen Russian democracy and oust Vladimir Putin from all positions of influence in Russian society.
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We should publicly and covertly work to promote democracy in China, and force elections not just at the local level but also at the national level — real elections, for real change from a real opposition that we will support not just thru rhetoric but also thru monetary contributions, and educational and technical assistance in organizing a popular democracy. China has separatist movements we can support too. And its leaders know full well what happened to the Soviet Union.
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Russia and China are the mainstays of barbarism in our time. Their support for the worst dictators on Earth must be broken — indeed smashed. If the people now in power in Moscow and Beijing will not stop their monstrous behavior, then we should do everything in our substantial power to oust their leaderships.
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We have nothing to fear from doing so. China's military is already preparing for military war against us, and the civilian leadership has not stopped the military from pursuing those plans. If we are to have war against Communist China, it is better for us if it comes sooner rather than later, inasmuch as China's trade surpluses — from us! — are turned over to the military to prepare for war against us. We cannot be naive about this. We must strengthen the forces of democracy in China, which are as well the forces for peace and for stripping the military of its excessive power.
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People who fear China will dump its U.S. treasury bonds and such needn't worry. There will be other buyers, friendlier buyers. And if there are not buyers for existing bonds, China cannot unload them and thus cannot cause us harm. Concern about Communists in China dictating policy to the United States because of the mess the Republicans have put us into in refusing to raise taxes on the rich, can be used to crack the whip over the Republican Right and FORCE them to raise taxes on the rich, as the only way to re-establish our economic independence from Communist China. Breaking the back of Russian and Chinese barbarism could be a win-win: for the United States, and for the people of those miserable countries.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:05 PM