The other day, the local newspaper had a front page story announcing a new local, college-based reality television show – entitled “Cheapster.” The idea behind the show is for college students to come up with innovative ways to show their frugality… and the winner will receive $10,000.

While I’m certainly for wise spending, the whole concept of “cheapster” I find appalling, especially the title. Everywhere I look, there’s another facet of the “cheaper is better”  belief, from Amazon and WalMart to so many “sales” that a recent survey revealed that many consumers won’t buy anything unless it’s on sale. Part of this emphasis and concern about price is doubtless a result of the long recession and the slow rate of recovery, especially in better-paying jobs, but I think the emphasis goes beyond that… and the implications certainly do.

When we as a society emphasize “cheap,” we’re also inducing, if not forcing, manufacturers and retailers to produce goods in the cheapest way possible, even if that means outsourcing production to third-world sweatshops and child labor.  It’s also an inducement to deception, as in the case of the book industry, as I’ve pointed out, where the “cheapest” prices for bestsellers doesn’t necessarily translate into overall lower prices… and where the reduction in book outlets where people can browse has greatly contributed to a decline [in real dollar terms] in sales and certainly in the diversity of books provided by publishing firms, thereby effectively reducing choice.  Yes, I know that self-publishing ebooks has taken off, but most people don’t have the time to peruse all those titles… and that’s another facet of reducing choice in a realistic way.

Then there’s telecommunications industry where, despite all the claims to the contrary, overall people are spending far more on communications than ever before and where “basic” service is more expensive now, even for cellphones, than it was in the time of the great Bell monopoly.  This tends to be forgotten because long distance calling is “cheap,” if not close to “free.”

“Cheap” airline fares aren’t really, not with all the extra charges, and travelers pay more in the way of inconvenience because the cabins are jammed with luggage to avoid checked bag fees, and that means that flights take longer because it takes longer to load the aircraft… and that, in turn, increases operating costs and overall travel time.

Beyond the myriad deceptions of cheapness is also a larger question. What ever happened to other virtues, such as quality or reliability?  And what happened to the idea that price reflects value?

But does all that matter, so long as it’s “cheap”?

A week or so ago, a U.S. District Court approved the e-book settlement between Hachette, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins and the Department of Justice, a settlement that opens the way for Amazon to sell ebooks from those publishers at any price Amazon chooses.  The Justice Department, of course, hails the settlement as a groundbreaking and anti-monopolistic agreement that will provide cheaper books to consumers. In thinking this all over, I realized that the entire structure and operation of monopoly has changed in the last twenty years, while the definition has not, so much so that the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, designed to prevent the harmful effects of monopoly has, in the case of the publishing settlement, become an instrument to support monopoly – and no one seems to realize this.  How did this happen?

A century ago, the operation of a monopoly was clearly defined.  A company, such as Standard Oil, bought up all the competition, or the majority of it, sometimes used low prices as a temporary measure to bankrupt competitors or drive them out, then took control of the market and raised prices to make a greater profit.  Today, companies like WalMart and Amazon have developed a very different monopolistic approach. They begin with selectively low prices and equally low wages for employees.  The low prices of highly visible selected goods attract more customers, and few people notice that other goods aren’t any cheaper, and in some cases, are even more expensive. WalMart gets around this by allowing customers to show competitors’ prices and then matching those prices… but most customers can’t and won’t do that for the majority of goods.  In the case of Amazon, Jeff Bezos lost money for years building that bookselling customer base.

Then, once the new monopolists have that customer base, they exert pressure on suppliers to provide goods for lower and lower prices.  Both WalMart and Amazon are excellent at this.  Amazon provides its marketplace for online retailers, then scans their sales, discovers what items are selling well and in large quantities, and either pressures the supplier to sell to Amazon directly for less, thus undercutting the Amazon affiliate, or finds another supplier to do so more cheaply. Recently, reports have surfaced that Amazon is using similar tactics with small and independent publishers, who don’t have the clout or the nerve that some of the larger publishers have.  Thus, in the end, the new monopolists aren’t gouging the consumer, but using excessive market power to gouge the suppliers and their own employees.  All the while they can claim that they’re not monopolists because people are getting goods for lower prices.

What the Department of Justice and the legal scholars seem to be overlooking is that such behavior is still restraint of trade – it’s just restraint of trade from the suppliers and through low employee wages rather than price-fixing from the retailer… and it has a definite negative impact on both local economies and the national economy, most obviously in the outcome that lower paid employees can’t live as well, don’t buy as much of other goods, and pay less in taxes.

In fact, Jeff Bezos even declared that his goal was to destroy the traditional paper-based publishing industry and take over the information marketplace. If that isn’t a declared intent to monopolize an industry, I don’t know what is. The new monopoly structure also may well be a far more deadly form of monopoly than the old one because it impacts the entire supply chain and effectively reduces incomes and the standard of living of tens of millions of Americans, both directly and indirectly. As I’ve noted before, already the publishing marketplace has changed, in that there’s less diversity in what’s published by major publishers, and more and more former midlist authors are having trouble getting published… or have already been dropped.

While Borders Books had its management problems, the final straw that pushed the company out of business was likely Amazon’s predatory pricing. In the years before its final collapse, Borders annual sales were around $4 billion, and it operated close to 400 brick and mortar stores with approximately 11,000 employees.  Those sales, and payrolls, not to mention the store rental costs, likely generated a positive economic impact of anywhere from $40 to $70 billion. While some of those sales have gone to Barnes & Noble or Amazon, most have not, and the operating expenses and payrolls paid by Borders are almost entirely an economic loss, since Amazon and Barnes & Noble didn’t add many new employees or, in the case of B&N, open new stores.  Books-A-Million did open some new stores, but only a handful.

Amazon’s policies have also resulted in lost revenue for independent bookstores, as well as closure of a number of stores of smaller regional bookstore chains, just as WalMart’s policies have adversely affected local and regional retailers. Yet the Department of Justice claims a victory in a settlement that reinforces the practices of the new monopolists where, apparently, the only determining factor is how cheaply consumers can obtain a carefully selected range of ebooks.

All hail the monopolists of “cheap” and “cheaper.”

A film that most Americans had never heard of or considered appears on U-Tube, and anti-American riots break out in Egypt and Libya, during which four Americans are killed, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. While recent information suggests that the demonstration was planned as a cover for the assassination, the fact remains that there was a demonstration in Egypt and the Libyan plotters had no trouble in rounding up plenty of outraged Muslims, and additional protests have since occurred in Malaysia, Bangladesh, and Yemen. Some might dismiss this as a one-time occurrence.  Unfortunately, it’s not.  Several years ago, a Danish newspaper published some satirical cartoons of Mohammed, and that caused violence and uproar.  When the novelist Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses, the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling on all good Muslims to kill Rushdie and his publishers, forcing Rushdie into seclusion for years.

Some people might declare that things are different in the United States… and they are, in the sense that our population doesn’t have so many “true believers” who are willing to kill those who offend their religious beliefs or so-called religious sensibilities, but we do have people like that, just not so many.  After all, what is the difference between fanatical anti-abortionists who kill doctors who perform legal abortions and fanatical believers in Islam who kill anyone who goes against what they believe? Is there that much difference in principle between Muslims who want Islamic law to replace secular law and fundamentalist Christians who want secular law to reflect their particular beliefs?  While there’s currently a difference in degree, five hundred years ago there certainly wasn’t even that.

What’s overlooked in all of the conflict between religious beliefs and secular law is the fundamental difference that, for the most part, secular law is concerned with punishing acts that inflict physical or financial harm on others, in hopes of deterring such actions, while religious law is aimed at requiring a specific code of conduct based on particular religious practices of a single belief. The entire history of the evolution of law reflects a struggle between blind adherence to a narrow set of beliefs and an effort to remove the codes that govern human behavior from any one set of beliefs and to base law on a secular basis, reflecting the basics common to all beliefs. Historically, most religious authorities have resisted this change, not surprisingly, because it reduced their power and influence.

Thus, cartoons of Mohammed or satirical movies do not cause physical harm, but they are seen to threaten the belief structure.  Allowing women full control of their bodies likewise threatens the belief structure that places the life or potential life of an unborn child above that of the mother.  When blind faith rules supreme and becomes the law of any land, no questions to that law are acceptable.

When a specific belief structure dominates a culture or subculture, the lack of questioning tends to permeate all aspects of that society.  To me, it’s absolutely no surprise that there’s a higher rate of denial of scientific findings, such as evolution and global warming, among Christian fundamentalists because true science is based on questioning and true belief is based on suppressing anything that raises questions… and such societal suppression is the greatest danger of all from blind faith, whether that faith is Islam, LDS, Christianity, or even a “political” faith, such as Fascism, Nazism, or Communism.

Some twenty years ago, at the Republican convention that nominated George H.W. Bush for his second term, Pat Buchanan made a speech essentially claiming that what he stood for was the beginning of a fight for the soul of the Republican Party.   That struggle has persisted for twenty years, and now the Republican Party platform seems largely in conformity to what Buchanan outlined.  Paradoxically, some opponents of Republican policies might claim that platform proves that the Party has no soul, but I don’t see anyone raising the larger question:  Should a political party aim to have “a soul”?

Over the more than two centuries since the U.S. Constitution was adopted, there have been more than a few disputes and scores of court cases involving the respective roles of religion and government in American society, the idea of separation of  church and state notwithstanding.  Yet doesn’t anyone else find it strange that, in a society that theoretically does not want government dictating what its people should believe, and in a land created to avoid just that, one of the major political parties has been striving to find its soul, when the very idea of a soul is a highly religious symbol?

Not only that, but the closer the Republican Party has come to adopting Buchanan’s positions, the more the partisans of this “soulful” party have attempted to force government to adhere to positions based on highly religious views – many of which are not shared by the majority of Americans.  And requiring a secular state, which the United States is, despite the “under God” phraseology, to require conduct based on religious views is diametrically opposed to what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

Part of the reason for the growing push to embody “religious” ideas in statute is likely the fact that the United States has become more diverse, and many feel that the nation does not follow the “traditional” values and have reacted by attempting to prohibit any government program that they see as opposing or not supporting such traditional values. There have always been those who did not fully embrace such values, including such Founding Fathers as Thomas Jefferson, but the idea of using government to insist on such values in law, as opposed to defining acceptable conduct in secular terms, has continued to increase, particularly in the past twenty years.

Even if the United States continues to diversify, I suspect that the founders of this nation, who were largely skeptical of political parties, would be even more skeptical about fighting for the “soul” of a political party.

According to the September issue of The Atlantic, one in four Americans believe that President Obama is not a “natural born citizen” of the United States, while half of all Republicans believe this.  Given the latest political identification as indicated by the Rasmussen Report of June 2012, and the number of registered voters in the United States, that means that even twenty percent of Democrats and independents hold to this belief, still a considerable number.

The U.S. Constitution only specifies that, to be President, a person must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States, but does not define that term.  Over the time since the Constitution was adopted, the courts have defined “natural-born citizen as a person who was born “in” the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; or was born abroad to U.S. citizen-parents, either in the United States or elsewhere; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for U.S. citizenship at birth.

At least three court suits have been filed on the question of Obama’s citizenship, all in different states, and the determinations in all cases have affirmed that he is a “natural-born” citizen.  He was, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, born in a U.S. state of an American citizen.

So why do so many people, Republicans, in particular, believe he isn’t a “natural-born” citizen?

Yes, his mother divorced his father and then married an Indonesian and moved to Indonesia for a time, but the courts have previously ruled in other cases that similar acts, including the case of a woman born in the United States [with only her mother as a U.S. citizen, as was the case with Obama] who lived in a foreign country from the age of three until she was twenty-one was still a natural born citizen.

And why do so many Americans believe that he is a Muslim, when the man has attended Christian churches for so many years?

Or are these convenient beliefs merely a cover for the fact that Obama is black, and many voters, obviously including a significant proportion of Republicans, simply don’t want to admit publicly that they don’t like and don’t want a black President?  Instead, they claim that his mother was too young when she married his father [using convoluted legal rhetoric to claim that because she was so young, the rules for a child being a citizen when only one parent is a citizen don’t apply, that is, if Obama didn’t happen to have been born in a U.S. state, ignoring the fact that he was] or that his birth certificate was forged, or that he was really born in Kenya.

It’s one thing to oppose a politician for what he stands for; it’s another to invent reasons to oppose him to avoid facing personal prejudices… and it’s a shame so many Americans have to go to such lengths to avoid admitting those prejudices.  And it certainly doesn’t speak well of the United States that so many Americans accept such arguments as having any validity at all.

College professors are faced with a new generation of students, one filled with students termed “teacups,” students who literally break or go to pieces when faced with failure of any sort.  They’ve been protected, nurtured, and coddled from their first pre-school until they’ve sent off to college.  Their upbringing has been so carefully managed that all too many of them have never faced major disappointments or setbacks. Their parents have successfully terrorized public school teachers into massive grade inflation and a lack of rigor – except at select schools and some advanced placement classes where the pressure is so great that many of the graduates of those schools come to college as jaded products of early forced success, also known as “crispies” – already burned out.

Neither “regime” of “success” is good for young people. As I’ve noted before, the world is a competitive place, and getting more so.  Not everyone can be President, or CEO, or a Nobel Prize-winning author or scientist.  Some do not have the abilities even for the few middle management jobs available, and many who do have the abilities will not achieve their potential because there are more people with ability than places for them.

Even more important is the fact that most successful individuals have had more failures in life than is ever widely known, at least until after they’ve been successful. Before he became President Abraham Lincoln had a most mixed record. Among other things, he failed as a storekeeper, as a farmer, in his first attempt to obtain political office, his first attempt to go to Congress, in trying to get an appointment to the United States Land Office, in running for the United States Senate, and in seeking the nomination for the vice-presidency in 1856.  Thomas Edison made 1,000 attempts before he created a successful light bulb. Henry Ford went broke five times before he succeeded.

For the most part, people learn more from their failures than their successes.  More often than not, most people who are early successes, without failure somewhere along the line, never really fulfill their potential.  Even Steve Jobs, thought of as an early success, failed several times before he could launch Apple, and then the management of the company that he founded threw him out… before he returned to revitalize Apple.

Yet these young college students are so terrified of failing that many of them will not attempt anything they see as risky or where a possibility of failure exists.  Yet, paradoxically, many will attempt something they have no business trying or something well beyond their ability because they have been told how wonderful they are all their lives – and they become bitter and angry at everyone else when they fail, because they have no experience with failing… and no understanding that everyone fails at something sometime, and that it’s a learning experience.

Instead, they blame the professor for courses that are too difficult or that they were overstressed or overworked… or something else, rather than facing the real reasons why they failed.

Failure is a learning experience, one that teaches one his or her shortcomings and lacks, and sometimes a great deal about other people as well.  The only failure with failure is failing to understand this and to get on with the business of life… and learning where and at what you can succeed.

Over the past month, the Republican campaign has concentrated on the importance of economic issues, clearly trying to minimize its stance on so-called “social issues.”  This isn’t exactly surprising, and, based on polling numbers, this emphasis has clearly had an effect. But what I find surprising is that the Democrats haven’t seized on the underlying meaning of this emphasis… and what’s been lost in the attacks on Obama’s economic record.

A former executive  vice president one of largest U.S. companies once observed that what you pay for something reflects how much you value it.  Or as the old saying goes, “Money is power.” This is very much reflected in the economics behind the “social issues.”

For example, what exactly does it mean when women make only 67% of what men do? If money is indeed power, and it is, then they have a third less power than men.  But this discrepancy pervades the most intimate parts of human relationships, whether we’ll admit it or not.  For example, most health insurance plans will pay for Viagra/Cialis, but not for birth control pills.  Translation:  Those with money value male pleasure over women having control over their bodies.

If a woman gets pregnant, and abortion is not allowed, as the Republican Party platform would have it, she’s responsible for that child – but I don’t notice any legislation requiring the responsible male being required to post a quarter-million dollar bond for his half of the cost of raising that child to adulthood.  Right now, he can essentially walk away.  Oh, yes, she can file a lawsuit – except that takes money, lots of it, and most women don’t have it, and for the few that do, there’s little chance of collecting. So, when you get right down to it, abortion is also an economic issue, and the economics are stacked against the woman.

But it goes beyond abortion.  The rhetoric is all about a right to life, but the word life extends beyond birth.  Right now, the way the Republican platform and policies are, they’re talking about government guaranteeing a right-to-birth, but avoiding the hard issues of what happens after birth. They’re not alone, because most Americans are ignoring this aspect of the issue as well, including the economic burden that ends up on society as a result of children that need support their mothers cannot provide.

Now… the Republicans have pushed for a huge assault on “voter fraud,” with a requirement for a picture ID.  Despite study after study showing that voter fraud is minimal, the push goes on.  Why?  Might it just be because those who lack picture IDs are almost invariably those lowest on the economic totem pole – the poor, elderly, and minorities? And isn’t it interesting that the picture ID requirement would impose an economic cost on the poorest segments of society, who are, just incidentally, those most likely to vote for Democrats?

The Republicans talk about the need for economic growth, and I agree.  We need economic growth, but where are the policies that would improve our highway systems, our aging power grid, our antiquated air traffic control system, and inadequate water and sewer systems?  Those are necessary government oversight/support functions that are vital to economic growth – and they’re definitely not welfare or even “social” programs… and the Republicans have volunteered nothing. Just less restraints on big and small business and tax cuts, none of which address infrastructure, and, oh, yes, lots more defense spending.

As the old saying goes, they’ve put their money where their mouth is – and it’s for corporate America, male dominance, and the wealthy… and against women and the poor.  And no one seems to see this side of the economics of their policies… or the cost to society as a whole.

The Republican Party’s platform Committee has adopted a plank that that calls for legislation recognizing the rights of unborn children under the 14th Amendment and states that an “unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life that cannot be infringed.” Yet at the same time, a wide range of Republican leaders and national politicians have pressured Representative Todd Akin of Missouri to abandon his campaign for a Senate seat because he said that he was opposed to abortion even in the cases of rape or incest and claimed that women who were truly raped could not become pregnant.  Exactly what is going on here?  Party leaders don’t want a candidate who is following the GOP platform?  Or is it that they don’t want national attention called to their stance on abortion?

I have more than a little trouble with the Republican agenda these days, as some may have noticed, but what amazes me is that more people don’t have the same problem.  Let’s look at some basics.  On the issue of abortion, what the Republican agenda states, quite clearly, is that the government controls a woman’s body if she ever gets pregnant.  It doesn’t matter if she was forced or raped; she will have that child if Republicans get their way.  Now, some women with resources may, with luck, find a doctor who will provide an abortion… maybe, if the pro-life vigilantes haven’t terrorized the medical community to the point where very few doctors will provide abortions. Republicans continually rail against big government and big brother, but their stance on abortion is a perfect example of big government – government will decide, not the woman.  Another example of hypocrisy, perhaps?

Compare the Republican position on abortion and women with the positions regarding big business.  Republicans trumpet the need for less regulation and more freedom, but with regard to women, and their bodies, they want more regulation.  Let me get this straight.  The Republicans trust the people who created the biggest financial mess in the last half century more than they trust women?

Now…the Republican stance is disguised by a lot of rhetoric about being pro-life, but the problem with this rhetoric is that it’s only empty words, because the rest of the agenda wants to cut program after program for disadvantaged children.  Or are the Republicans only pro-life until a child is born… and after that the child, no matter how disadvantaged or poor, is on his or her own?  Not only that, but the Republicans have also mounted a campaign against using federal funds for family planning and birth control… which is bound to result in more unplanned children… and who’s going to pay for them?

If they’re not raised properly and educated, we all will, with unproductive adults in 16-20 years or more criminals or more welfare recipients or more social unrest… or all three.  And if we want to avoid that, we’ll need to spend more money… which Republicans don’t want to do, either.  The vaunted private sector is not going to step up and provide that support and education, and it certainly isn’t going to provide jobs for uneducated or undereducated adults.  So merely saying no to abortion and family planning doesn’t exactly address the problem.

Ah… but human life is sacred, or so the rhetoric goes.  Really?  When deity after deity at some point in history demanded human sacrifices [and that includes the Old Testament Christian God]?  When there are more than six billion human beings on the planet and maybe a thousand tigers left?  According to the god of economics worshipped by the Republicans, scarcity determines value – and that means the remaining tigers are more valuable than people.  And so, by the way, by that token, are the endangered Utah prairie dogs.

Economics doesn’t apply to people, then?  Or maybe it does.  Maybe the whole idea is to increase a workforce that already doesn’t have enough jobs to go around so that employers and big business can keep wages in the already low-paying service industries even lower… and that means that all those employees will have to limit their purchases to WalMart… and their entertainment to pirated movies and ebooks… no… not ebooks, because most of them won’t have the time to read, not holding down three part-time minimum wage jobs to make ends meet.

That really couldn’t be… could it?

The other day my wife made the observation that almost everything seemed to be “rated” these days.  Rate your stay at the hotel or motel.  Rate your purchase. Rate the service and food at the restaurant.  Rate this book.  Rate this movie.  Rate your car.  Rate the teacher.  Rate the doctor. Rate the professor.

When I was in college, too many years ago, about the only things that were rated were a handful of very high-end restaurants… and they were rated by anonymous experts. Now, almost everyone can rate almost anything.  But for all those ratings… have matters changed all that much? Even as millions have rushed to rate, exactly how much do those ratings mean?  And is their effect more in what is bought or sold or more in boosting the companies offering the ratings?  In the case of Amazon, the ratings definitely boosted sales, and probably affect to some degree what is bought, but, as I’ve discussed before, the ratings certainly don’t measure excellence, only popularity.  As for other companies in other fields, the results are at best mixed.

There’s definitely an effect in areas where millions pile on, so to speak, if only because the amount of ratings suggest a certain popular appeal… but, again, that doesn’t reflect excellence necessarily, just popularity, a fact that’s particularly overlooked in such spectacles as “American Idol” or “America’s Got Talent.”

What also tends to get overlooked is that the more things are rated, the less respect there is for the area being rated.  The idea of rating Einstein on a scale of one to ten, or one to five, seems ludicrous now, but how long before we get to the point of “Rate the Scientists”?

Even at Amazon, the ratings game can be absurd.  How does one make a meaningful comparison between Pride and Prejudice and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies without disrespecting the original?  And some comparative “ratings” clearly point out the absurdities, as when Americans give Congress approval ratings of something like 18% while a majority of voters in most congressional districts approve of what their representative has done.

And, once more, as I’ve pointed out, the idea of 18 year olds having any idea of what they’re doing in rating college professors is absurd.  They’re “excellent” in picking popular teachers, but the only meaningful correlation is that the professors with the highest student evaluations, in 90% of the cases, are those who give the highest grades… not the ones who demand the most of their students.

So… on a scale of one to five, I’d give most ratings a negative grade, not that what I say will do a damned thing to change or even slow the ratings madness.

The simple reason for this is that a significant percentage of Americans are either depressed, discouraged, or angry – if not all three.  And most people want either a quick and easy solution or someone to blame, if not both. Easy solutions are not possible, and no solution is possible without compromise, as I’ve noted before, and the media is a large factor in making compromise politically infeasible.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only problem. The Republicans have spent most of the past four years attacking Obama and the Democrats, and making political gains from those attacks.  The Democrats have finally realized two things.  You can’t prove a negative [which philosophers have known for thousands of years], and urging people to be reasonable doesn’t work when we you’re under violent attack.  The negative that they can’t prove is that matters would be much worse without the steps taken by both the last Bush Administration and the Obama Administration to bail out the financial community.  Yes, I know – the financial types didn’t deserve it, and they’ve continued to behave as irresponsibility as the government will allow them to be.  But the plain fact is, like or not, without the highly unpopular bailout, the entire world financial system would have collapsed – except you can’t prove that unless you let it happen.  So there’s no way to prove that without unacceptable results, and after four years, the Obama Administration is stuck with the “responsibility” for something it didn’t cause and a solution begun and initially implemented by Republicans [and now denied by them]. And people don’t care about those facts.  They just want things fixed.

People are angry, and many are afraid.  Angry fearful people don’t listen to reason.  They listen to the loudest and simplest voice that addresses their concerns, and the Democrats have finally begun to realize that, in order to have any chance of holding onto power in the Senate, stopping the surge of Republicans in the House, and re-electing President Obama, they’re going to have to shout just as simply, just as loudly, and just as nastily as the Republicans have been doing all along.

The Republicans don’t like this realization. That’s clear enough from recent comments from Romney and even John McCain.  But what exactly do they expect?  They’ve spent four years attacking and misrepresenting matters and seen that tactic work.  Now that their opponents have responded in kind, they’re claiming that the Democrats are to blame for politics becoming nastier.

Nonsense.  This is one area that’s becoming totally “bipartisan,” and will get even more so in the weeks and months ahead.  The attack ads will proliferate.  The charges and countercharges will escalate, and by the time the election arrives, we’ll still be polarized as a nation, if not more so, and feelings will be running higher than ever… all because it’s clear that fear-mongering beats reason in getting elected, and getting elected is more important for almost all politicians than dealing with complex societal and political problems.

Harry Harrison died earlier this week, and the F&SF press and blogosphere is now filled with incredible praise for his work, much of which was truly ground-breaking and ahead of the time in which it was published. Rather belatedly, Harrison was inducted into the SF Hall of Fame in 2004, and received the SFWA Grand Master Award in 2009 – when he was 84, and already in ill health.

All the current praise is deserved, but its timing frankly once again raises some questions that are continually swept under the metaphorical carpet.

Where the hell was most of this praise when Harry really could have used it and had time to enjoy it?  Or for that matter, where was it for many other ground-breaking and influential writers [such as Fred Saberhagen] who sometimes were never fully recognized? And why do some many readers vote for awards for whatever the current literary or genre “flavor de jour” happens to be?

Harry’s death was noted by the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and innumerable other news outlets, and yet, in a writing career that spanned more than five decades, he never won a Hugo, although he was nominated twice, and shared in only a single Nebula (and that was for the movie Soylent Green, adapted from his book Make Room!  Make Room!).

Interestingly enough, now that George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series has become a popular HBO miniseries, his latest book – A Dance with Dragons – is now a Hugo and World Fantasy nominee for best novel, and Martin was just named a lifetime award winner by the World Fantasy Convention, at the comparatively young age of 63.  And pretty much all the other novel award nominees for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards have some or all of the following – strong and active PR, fanatical fan bases, extensive insider connections, and internet presences.

Harry, by comparison, just had his books and ideas behind him, and he was never a “flavor de jour.”  My salute to him and his books!

As some long-time readers of this blog may know, some forty years ago, I served briefly as a legislative director to a Congressman.  One of my duties was to handle the staff work for one of his subcommittees – the one dealing with appropriations for the U.S. Post Office [before it was theoretically made an independent agency].  Way back then I raised the issue as to why the Post Office was basing its revenue on first class mail rates and treating bulk mail as a marginal cost. Over the years, I’ve raised this issue, and to this day, no one seems to want to deal with it.

Last quarter, the Postal Service lost $5 billion, and those concerned in the USPS and Congress keep talking about raising first class rates, closing post offices, and eliminating Saturday delivery.  None of these steps will address the problem.

The vast majority of my mail – measured by weight, not rate class – is either bulk advertising mail, reduced rate charitable solicitations, or periodical reduced rate mail.  I’ve asked a number of people with various Postal Service profiles, and that seems to be true of all of them as well.  As first class rates have soared, first class volume has declined, and periodical and bulk [junk] mail make up as greater and greater percentage of Postal Service deliveries, again by weight.  But weight is what counts!  Ask FedEx and UPS.  They charge by a combination of weight and speed of delivery.

The problem is that USPS “bulk,” periodical, and “non-profit” rates aren’t literally carrying their weight… or paying their freight.  But neither the USPS management nor the Congress has wanted to face the fact that these rates are too low, because, in effect, the USPS inherited built-in subsidies adopted for political purposes.  Some of those purposes are still political. For example, all members of Congress have a “franking” privilege that allows them to send letters to their constituents over their signature on the envelope for literally pennies.  The direct mail industry is being subsidized as well, as are non-profit organizations and periodicals. If I’ve read the rate charts correctly, advertising mail and periodicals are charged at slightly over twenty cents a pound[ or in some cases twenty-one cents for the first three ounces], while first class letters are now forty-five cents an ounce.

If Congress wants those subsidies to continue, then it should fund the USPS deficit… but in this time of fiscal difficulty, it won’t do that, and it won’t force the USPS management to adopt a realistic and practical rate structure, because churches, political organizations, direct mailers, and Congress itself would all have to pay more.  Instead, the everyday Americans who don’t like all the junk mail and political and endless charitable solicitations are faced with poorer service and higher prices for personal communications – and not all of us can or want to pay our bills electronically. Nor can we, since  it’s not possible for all businesses or for all individuals. Nor should we have to when those higher postal rates are subsidizing the unrealistically low rates paid by other classes of mail.

It may well be that lower postal rates for periodicals and non-profits serve a greater social purpose, but, if that is so, then Congress should subsidize those rates with public funding.  But, as usual, Congress doesn’t want to pay for its privileges [the franking privilege] and doesn’t want to admit the degree to which it wants everyone else to subsidize bulk mail for business, charities, non-profits, and political organizations, all of which apparently have more political clout than the citizenry as a whole.

Not that any of this is surprising, but I have yet to see any public discussion of this aspect of the Postal Service cost structure, not in more than forty years – except for my own comments.

Last week, the American gymnast Ali Raisman tied for third place at the Olympics in the all-around competition… and lost the tie-breaker because she was a more consistent performer than the Russian gymnast with whom she was tied.  Yes… that’s correct.  The more consistent performer lost in a competition designed to reward the most consistent   I doubt that was what the gymnastics federation had in mind when they drew up the tie-breaker rule, but that sort of result was absolutely and mathematically inevitable because of the rule, which provided that, in the event of a tie, the lowest score each of the two gymnasts had, out of the four events, would be thrown out, and the one with the highest remaining score would be declared the winner.  The result mathematically is that when two gymnasts are tied, if one has a particularly bad single event, the winner will always be that one.

This is an excellent example of how what seems, on the surface, to be a perfectly logical “solution” created a result totally at odds with the goal of the competition.  Unhappily, this doesn’t just happen in Olympic gymnastics, but in all too many areas of society, business, and government. It occurs because too many decision-makers, from politicians to business CEOs, don’t think through the implications and ramifications of their decisions.  Sometimes, that occurs because they don’t think events will ever require contingency plans – as in the case of safety requirements at Japanese nuclear facilities.  After all, who could have predicted the freakish combination of earthquake and tsunami? And in gymnastics, what was the probability of a tie with that many judges and four events with scores measured in thousandths of a point?

Results at variance with what one might call common sense also occur when situations change and the rules or procedures don’t. Or they occur because everyone is so concerned about the moment that something totally predictable that occurs periodically, but at long intervals, is totally overlooked, as in the case of Delta Airlines forgetting to renew their online security certification at a time when they had cut commissions to travel agents and increased the fees required for telephone booking, thus increasing the percentage of reservations and payments made online.

All of these situations are the result of failure, in some way, to consider the implications of either certain actions or of failing to act… and all are preventable… but, given human nature, few will be.

Several days ago, a former student of my wife called, frantically trying to locate an original copy of music he needed – by the next day.  Last week, her department chair informed her that a special grant was available for her opera program, if she could submit the paperwork by Monday.  Now… he had been informed that she was leaving for a singing appearance the next day and would not be returning until Monday evening… and he’d had the information about the grant for almost a month.  And more than once I’ve had editors of periodicals [not my regular editor; he knows better] request corrections to proofs in a day or two.

What gives with people these days?  Now that we have instant messaging and email and networks, etc., it’s as though half the population, if not more, believes that everything can be done instantly… and that everyone is instantly available all the time.  Yet often these demands and requests involve material objects that can’t be produced or located instantly.  Electronic instantaneousness doesn’t translate automatically to instant physical production, especially of objects involving more than text, a fact that is increasingly lost on many superiors.  Nor is everyone always physically located where they can comply with such requests and demands.  Yet the creation of near-instant communications has created the illusion for many that everything is instant.

Even when someone is present and ready, these last-minute requests and demands create the danger of fast and shoddy work, often with little or no oversight and review. For the most part, speed is dangerous.  This fact is certainly recognized in areas such as aviation and various racing sports, where great attention to detail is the hallmark of those who are successful. There’s all too much truth to the truism that “speed kills.” But the dangers of speed appear far less well-recognized in business or education, or finance, despite such mishaps as the flash crash of the stock market several years ago, or the more recent mishaps dealing with a portfolio of stocks handled by a large market-maker, caused, incidentally, by the adoption of new trading software designed in part to speed trades.  And the use of fast electronic processing by shoddy mortgage firms has doomed many homeowners to unnecessary financial ruin.

There’s a huge difference between planned and careful use of speed and laziness, incompetence, and procrastination enabled by rapid communications… and it’s well past time that individuals, not to mention organizations and their leaders, recognized that difference.

Mozart was a genius.  That’s something on which almost all professionals in classical music agree.  Outside of music, however, his acts, language, and behavior left, shall we say, something to be desired.  The same was also true of Richard Wagner.  Because my wife is a professional singer, as well as a professor of voice and opera, over the years, I’ve met a few renowned figures in the field.  Several, often described as outstanding or geniuses, have come across as boors, bitches, and self-absorbed bastards [no..I won’t name names].  In my years in politics, I went through the same experience, except that occurred in the back rooms, so to speak, because any competent politician, in general, is warm and caring in public… or at least careful in dealing with anyone who can vote or contribute or give good media coverage. 

Now… not all geniuses are uncaring, self-centered egotists, but from what I’ve seen, a disproportionate number are – especially in private or when they think they can get away with such behavior.  What is it about so many people who have great talent that makes them so indifferent to the feelings of others and so willing to tromp over others – even when it gains them nothing and often costs them far more than they realize? That might just be a reason why the career of pop music phenoms average 18 months.

Some have claimed that such egotistic behavior is one of the costs of or prices for genius.  I don’t buy that.  I suspect that people tend to excuse behaviors by those with great talent, wealth, or power that they would not tolerate in others.  I understand [but still find repulsive] such excuses when people feel they must ignore or excuse bad behavior by those with great power, as in the case of corporate subordinates of egocentric CEOs, because calling your boss on bad behavior is usually a career-limiting move.  And I have to admit that I’ve never understood the appeal of rock stars or popular musicians whose popularity seems to be enhanced by bad behavior.  That might possibly be because fans wish they could do the same and identify with it, but, elitist that I am, I much prefer quiet class to the openly displayed arrogance of power.

As I’ve noted before, in the corporate area, competent and quiet CEOs almost always outperform the egocentric ones, but both the public and the media seem all too willing to praise the egotists, at least until they fail… and most do.  As for Mozart, while his music lives on, he was buried almost without mourners in an unmarked grave.  Maybe that fact ought to be trumpeted a bit more.

The other day, my wife and I were discussing a basic change in music, one represented by the fact that very few of the younger generation can listen to complex music [anything that contains more than five non-repeating bars and a simplistic rhythm] and the fact that opera, musical theatre, popular music, and even music videos all now require elaborate and often excessive visual effects, and that so much music all sounds alike.  This goes beyond just music.  An ever-increasing proportion of the youthful population cannot listen to a teacher – or anyone else – for more than a very few minutes before tuning out. Just how as a society did we get to that point?

I’d submit that it has occurred as a result of the intersection of two factors.  The first is that sight is the strongest and most rapid of all human senses.  The second is the development of high-level, high-speed visual technology that reinforces and strengthens the dominance of human sight. What people hear, especially human speech, must be heard, translated, and then essentially reformulated. This takes more time and effort than seeing.  The same process exists with music lyrics, which must be heard and then felt.

All of this excessive reliance on the visual has a far greater downside than most Americans seem able to realize.  There’s now a huge effort to persuade teenagers in particular not to text and drive, for example, but so far, at least, the deaths from driving and texting continue.  The transit authority in Salt Lake has asked the legislature to make “distracted walking” a criminal misdemeanor because of the numbers of injuries and deaths involving people absorbed in cellphones walking into the path of light rail transit cars. Almost every school day, my wife has to stop or slow drastically to avoid hitting college students involved in texting crossing streets, oblivious to traffic.

Although a huge percentage of American teenagers have cellphones or the equivalent, comparatively few of them talk for long periods on them. Instead, they text. While there are text symbols for emotions, those symbols represent what the sender wants them to represent, not necessarily what the sender actually feels… and they make misrepresentation far easier.  Just look at how many teenagers, especially females, have been deceived through the internet and texting by people whom they would have dismissed instantly in person.

The entertainment industry has responded to the change in perception by emphasizing the visual. There are now very few if any overweight singers in opera, musical theatre, or popular music.  Popular music tour shows rely as much, if not more, on elaborate lighting, costumes, and pyrotechnics as on singing. Musical theatre has come to rely more and more on spectacle.  Music is becoming secondary to the visual, and complex lyrics are largely a thing of the past, unless occasionally accompanied by a monotonous beat in rap.

In a sense, even ebooks are a part of this trend – words on a lighted page that can be turned more quickly than a printed page, with speed skimming the prevalent and preferred way of reading, rather than an appreciation of depth. More and more, I see comments from readers that indicate that they don’t understand the innuendoes or the allusions in dialogue.  This isn’t surprising, since fewer and fewer young people can actually verbally express complex thoughts conversationally… or apparently want to, since in walking across most college campuses, no one is talking to those around them, but instead walking, hunched over, texting madly.  In fact, it’s so common that one scientific publication noted a new repetitive motion syndrome – “texting neck.”  It’s just my opinion, but when people are texting so much that it creates an adverse medical condition, it’s healthy neither personally nor societally.

Nor is it good for society when people are more interested in the visual appeal of musicians than in their musical excellence.  Nor is it healthy when fewer and fewer people can and will carry on face-to-face in-depth conversations.

But all those are symptoms of the curse of the visual, of overdosing on sight, if you will, fueled by the high-tech wizards of silicon cities across the world, more interested in the profits reaped from fueling the addiction than in the societal and physiological damage created.

The author Daniel Foster observed [in Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the Greeks] that an epic poet’s protagonist embodied the virtues and values of an entire society while the protagonists of a lyric poet embodied specific virtues accepted as exemplary traits for an individual. Foster also made the point that lyric poets whose protagonists’ values differed as society changed became less relevant and less widely read, as did those whose referents became less familiar. 

While Foster used the Greek poet Pindar as his historical example, his observation, it seems to me, also applies to novels today.  While some fantasy labeled as epic meets his definition, much of current large-scope fantasy presents values often at variance with the idea of a single unified culture represented so often in traditional epic works, and situations where the individual is pitted against the culture rather than acting as its champion against outsiders.

At the same time, over the past twenty years or so in my intermittent teaching and continual observation, I’ve seen that poets of the first half of the twentieth century have been read less and less, and, more important, when read, are understood less and less.  Part of that loss of understanding certainly lies in the loss of meaning of the references and allusions, because today’s young people are such a culture of the present that the majority of them know very little of the culture of as little as a single generation past, and without an understanding of what those references represent, the poetry loses much of its power. Most contemporary verse appears to appeal to shallow but universal feelings, interestingly enough, even as most novels pit an individual against at least some “universal” societal values. 

This trend in contemporary novels also exemplifies a change in basic societal values in the United States, or at least in the idea that there are some basic societal values that trump individual freedom of action. The belief held by many that the right to bear any kind of weapons is one example of this turn away from the idea that a society represents certain universals. Instead, we have ideological splintering, where various segments of society each believes that society should adopt its universals.

According to Foster, the composer Richard Wagner believed that the evolution of the poetic tradition ran from epic forms to lyric and finally to dramatic, where, in the dramatic form, the writer’s protagonists portray an out and out struggle against societal norms while still striving to live out individual virtues – in essence, a totally futile struggle because, in the end, without societal standards, there is no society.

I’m most likely overgeneralizing, but it seems to me that we’re seeing this conflict today in what is being published in current fantasy and, to a lesser degree, in science fiction.  One could actually characterize the fascination with zombies as a metaphor – with zombies representing a dead and somehow alien past that the protagonists are struggling against.  Vampires are a bit more ambiguous.  Are they the blood-sucking past drawing life from the vital present? Or are they the misunderstood new future nourished by the past?  Either way, both sub-sub-genres – as well as that of werewolves – represent a dramatic conflict embodying the premise that a society with unified and widely accepted common values is a thing of the past, and this represents a major change in western cultural values, largely among the younger readers… possibly another manifestation of both the generational gap and why the poets of the past no longer speak to the readers of the present.

The most disturbing aspect of the latest mass shooting in Aurora, to me, is the fact that, on paper at least, James Holmes was a comparatively privileged young man… as were both of the Columbine High School shooters ten years ago. We’re not talking about poor oppressed minorities, but about young people who grew up in moderately affluent family situations.  In the case of Holmes, he was even an honor student at the University of California, Riverside, but he couldn’t get a job better than minimum wage, and he entered a doctoral program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, where he struggled and then dropped out.  Somewhere around that time, he began to buy weapons and ammunition.

So why would a quiet young man from a comparatively privileged background commit such a terrible crime?  I’d submit that one of the key factors was precisely that background.

As I’ve expressed more than a few times, the continual expression of the Lake Wobegon theme [the place where all the children are above average] is not only false, but has been incredibly damaging to the younger generations.  Because they’re not all outstanding.  By definition, only a small percentage can be well above average, and the perks and privileges and jobs are going to go to that small percentage.  Even if a greater number of young people are brighter than their parents – which I doubt, but even if it is so – it doesn’t matter.  The positions at the top are limited.  They are in any society, and more education doesn’t mean better opportunities.  It means that college graduates essentially have the same opportunities as high school graduates had two to three generations earlier.

As noted by Joel I. Klein, the head of the New York City School system in 2010, “In 1950 high school dropouts made up 59% of the United States workforce, with just 8% represented by college graduates. As recently as 2005, these numbers have nearly reversed: 32% of workers have a college degree, while 8% are high school dropouts.”

This change in work-force composition has several ramifications.  First, an undergraduate college degree is likely not going to be the passport to a high paying job that it was in past generations. According to initial reports, that was one of the frustrations expressed by Holmes, that even with a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience, he could only find McDonald’s level jobs.

In addition, the dumbing down of both high school and collegiate undergraduate curricula and requirements has resulted in an entire generation of young people, of whom only a tiny percentage have been truly tested, and who have been told time after time how special they are.  In general, they’ve been shielded from failure and told they’re wonderful. In essence, not until his mid-twenties did Holmes discover that he really wasn’t that special and that the world didn’t care. The fact that our culture also values “personality” over technical and subject matter excellence, no matter what anyone says, adds even more fuel to the fire for those who are bright and socially awkward, as Holmes was said to be.

The pattern manifested by Holmes – and others – is familiar to forensic psychologists.  While not all young people who are alienated, depressed, and angry are violent, it appears that almost universally the violent are alienated, depressed, and angry. In the case of Holmes and the Columbine killers, and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, it is highly likely that a key motivating factor is anger by those from a privileged background who couldn’t deal with failure and wanted to blame others for it. They believed they deserved more, and the fact that they hadn’t gotten what they wanted must have been the fault of others.  Hadn’t everyone told them how special they were?

Now… there will be years of study, and debate and counter-debate, but I’d be very surprised if anyone actually discusses the issues I’ve raised.  After all, how could we go wrong as a society by telling our wonderful children how special they are?

Although business/economics has become the foundation of western culture, its practitioners have circulated and tend to believe a number of myths and truisms, many of which are in fact half-truths.

You get what you pay for.

No.  You can’t get what you don’t pay for, but between over-inflated prices of certain goods (ranging from luxury products to certain prescription drugs and other aspects of health care), counterfeits, and cheap knock-offs, you often don’t get what you pay for.

 High pay is required to assure competence, especially in upper management.

High pay attracts people who are motivated by money, and higher than average pay is required for people with specialties that require long and expensive training, but there’s an upper limit, and this half-truth varies greatly in different segments of society.  More than a few studies have shown that comparatively lower-paid CEOs who are not “personalities” in general out-perform the highest-paid CEOs.  In addition, a significant percentage of the highest-paid money managers actually lose more money over time for their clients than gain it.  Likewise, money-motivated competence varies tremendously across fields.  A professional academic musician generally has more education than any MBA, but makes a fraction of the income of those MBAs in business and usually at least 30%  less than a business professor with an MBA and more like 50% less than a law professor with a J.D.  The same salary differentials apply to other academics teaching “humanities,” as well as most teachers.

Supply and demand always works better than regulation.

 This is a half-truth because it’s true as far as it goes, but doesn’t consider the implications, or what is meant by “better.”  Supply and demand is indeed the most “efficient” way to determine the allocation of goods and services, but that efficiency doesn’t take into account other values.  In a total free-market economy, in a famine, those who have money will pay higher prices for food… and will survive.  The poorest would not.  In addition, in a high-tech society, as noted above, even the most sophisticated consumer cannot determine the quality of certain goods, such as drugs, some beverages, even some foods, and therefore may well pay more for goods than “true” supply and demand would require. We’ve seen a similar issue in health care, where the “supply” of certain health care services costs more than many people can afford, which is one [but not the only] reason why tens of millions of Americans cannot afford health care.

The greater the risk, the greater the reward.

It is often true, in the case of dividend-paying stocks and bonds, that higher-risk issues have to pay out more than less risky ones, but this analogy truism breaks down in society.  Fire-fighters and police officers certainly face far greater risks than hedge fund managers, but they make a small fraction of the income that financial professionals do.  In professional sports played by both genders, such as basketball or golf, the risks are the same, but the males make more.  Now, this is justified historically by the argument that the demand for watching males is higher, and that can’t be disputed, but that points out that all of these myths/truisms are anything but absolute, even though they’re all too often dragged out as absolutes, especially by business people in pursuit of the bottom line and more of everyone else’s money.

The business model works better.

This half-truth has recently been promoted as the answer to virtually every ill in public institutions ranging from schools and universities, to municipalities, charities, public hospitals, and prisons. And, of course, the question is, again, what is meant by “better.”  In education, the business model has been applied in terms of teacher-pupil ratios or in higher-education, what disciplines are most “cost-effective.”  Unsurprisingly, the hard sciences and the performing arts are the least cost-effective educational disciplines, because the sciences require expensive equipment and additional laboratory sessions and the performing arts require intensive one-on-one training, especially in vocal music. While good financial management is clearly a necessity in any organization handling significant resources, the bottom line of the business model is to cut unnecessary expenses, and services/products which do not cover their costs, and to maximize revenues.  The business imperative is to look out for the business, and only to look beyond the business as necessary to assure its profitability and survival.

Public institutions, by their nature, provide goods and services that society has deemed necessary, even if not “profitable” for the specific institution.  That is why they are public institutions. Public hospitals are mandated to provide health care to people who will never pay their bills.  Schools must handle problem students and disabled students whose education is anything but profitable or cost-effective from the business standpoint.  Fire-fighters will often spend more time and effort putting out a fire than a structure is worth, even when no others are threatened.

So… the next time someone starts spouting these economic “truths,” it wouldn’t hurt to think about just how “true” they are in the case in point, especially if it’s a politician doing the spouting.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah protested the representation of his position on the television show “Newsroom.” On the show the lead character, a news anchor, states that Lee is for the repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment.  He also says that Lee has a double-digit lead over Senator Bennett, the most conservative member of the Senate. For those who actually follow politics, the show is only partially correct.  Lee only favors repealing the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that allows citizenship to any child born in the United States of foreign-born parents here illegally, and Bob Bennett never got to a primary election because he didn’t even get 20% of the votes in the Republican state caucus.  The problem the writers of the show faced was that trying to explain what really happened would have lost most of the audience.  So they opted for a simplification that was essentially true to the spirit of the situation, showing Lee’s ultra-conservatism and his appeal to the far-right Republicans, but, factually, it was a misstatement, resulting in a half-truth, if you will.

This whole tempest in a Utah teapot, however, raises a much larger issue.  How does one raise vital issues in a complex world with a twenty-second attention span without either losing the majority in the details or oversimplifying into half-truths that can often be misleading? In the case of Mike Lee, the half-truth is partly incorrect, but not misleading.  He is now in all probability the most right-wing senator serving in the Senate, and if not, so close to it that in political terms it makes little difference.

Although I’ve criticized the opponents of the Affordable Health Care Act for their misleading statements and half-truths, the fact is that, for all its virtues, its supporters have also engaged in a campaign of half-truths, because the act won’t solve all of the health insurance problems facing the United States.  Even the individual mandate features won’t force full coverage, because the fines imposed for not having coverage are most likely to cost non-compliers less than insurance would, for those who could afford insurance, and for those who cannot, it’s rather difficult to obtain funds from those who have none.

Senators and U.S. representatives who head to Washington promising to balance the federal budget and get spending under control are spouting half-truths, if not total falsehoods, because no senator and no representative can do that by himself or herself.  Any successful legislation requires in these days 60% of the Senate and a majority of the House of Representatives, and all the rhetoric in the world won’t change that.

Part of the problem is the complexity of the world in which we live.  As I’ve noted before, we all prefer simple answers and explanations, but most of the problems we face don’t have simple answers.  The tax code, for example, is a complete nightmare of complexity.  Why?  Because straight and simple taxes are often unfair and fall disproportionately on certain individuals or people who live in different places or under differing circumstances. New industries might never develop without certain tax breaks, and so Congress, almost as soon as an income tax was made constitutional, began to amend and change the tax code, both in the interest of “fairness” and in order to encourage and discourage certain behaviors. Those who wanted those changes certainly didn’t tell the “whole truth.”  They said what they hoped would get what they wanted.

In the end, everyone wants the “other guy” to tell the whole truth, but not to tell it themselves, and that hasn’t changed a lot since the dawn of government, and certainly not since the founding of the United States, but too many half-truths result in fundamental misunderstandings and problems in a time of greater complexity and greater ramifications arising from all too many business, political, and technological changes.

That said… will half-truths persist?  Of course. They’ll even multiply, based on the all too human need for a simplicity that doesn’t exist in a modern world.