Monday, December 23, 2019

Trains Not Tolls 1

The Trouble with Tolls

Maryland, following Virginia's lead, auguring similar failures and inequities, is moving to put in toll lanes as it seeks to expand 270 to accommodate exurban commuters from Frederick County and further. At the same time, it is depreciating it's already depreciated commuter train service. Lexus lanes sound attractive until you study their full implications.

Lexus lanes are premised on notions that private monarchal government is somehow better than public government, “privateering” of public infrastructure. This false argument was setup in the 1880s and has been in operation since then. It is very lucrative for the Privateers, not so much for actual capitalists and workers. The results of privatization often look good in the immediate aftermath. But they rarely are sustained. This is because the capital and labor necessary to sustain private systems is often secondary in importance to profiteering.

Worse, the financial benefits of privatization are illusory for other reasons.

  1. The investment money is usually acquired by people, or their artificial person fictions, avoiding taxes on unearned income and often represents an opportunity cost of previous privatization.
  2. Investment money is often also from surpluses intended for other purposes, (derivative) and that will lead to short term spending rather than sane development. [Bubbles and Booms]
  3. Rental income is built into the investment. They will not invest unless they can guarantee rent from their investment. This means the profits are artificial and much higher than if the investment represented public investment.
  4. Ownership equals rule, and rule means that which a person owns, they can loot, junk or destroy. And so whether or not the new system is maintained solely relates to whether the new owners can extract maximum profits if they maintain it.
  5. Acquiring public services, where the customer has minimal or zero ability to find alternatives or refuse the products involved, usually leads to profiteering. Such as people using patent monopolies to jack up the price of insulin.
  6. Profiteering is built in. If a person owns the market, the tracks, the shop buildings, other infrastructure, they can live on rent from them.
  7. They will invest in markets and infrastructure that is lucrative, and neglect markets, i.e. neighborhoods that are short on credit.
  8. And since their income is derivative of our already privatized banking system, that means they will likely collapse when the economy turns.
  9. Privateering used to kill with broadsides, now it kills stochastically.
  10. Bridges collapse because they were cheaply built.
    Things manage to be costly and cheaply built at the same time.
    Bills don't get paid while the privateers walk off with the loot.
    Both inequality and inequity rise.

Those are the theoretical reason why Lexus lanes and similar privatization schemes fail. What is happening in Virginia illustrates how that plays out. Nothing like paying 60$ to use lexus lanes during rush hour times. They will claim they aren't price gouging. But does anyone believe them?

Reference:
https://ggwash.org/view/61095/495-and-95-toll-prices-were-very-high-on-tuesday-thats-likely-a-sign-theyre-working

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Post Truth and Authoritarianism

The irony of the times is that what is happening to us in America, is not new. Like the spooky refrain in the Battleship Galactica reboot,

“It has happened before”

The only real difference is that some of us understand what is happening to us.

Hypatia and the Barbarians within

In the movie Agora, Hypatia, then, like now:

“is a 2009 Spanish English-language historical drama film directed by Alejandro AmenĂ¡bar and written by AmenĂ¡bar and Mateo Gil. The biopic stars Rachel Weisz as Hypatia, a mathematician, philosopher and astronomer in late 4th-century Roman Egypt, who investigates the flaws of the geocentric Ptolemaic system and the heliocentric model that challenges it.”

The movie Agora is fictional. We don't know for sure how advanced science was in 415 AD, but we do know that much was lost to history during that time. Thus the movie is probably is more accurate than its critics like to admit.

”Surrounded by religious turmoil and social unrest, Hypatia struggles to save the knowledge of classical antiquity from destruction. Max Minghella co-stars as Davus, Hypatia's father's slave, and Oscar Isaac as Hypatia's student, and later prefect of Alexandria, Orestes.”

Powerful Secrets

The secrets of the PaRDeS, religious interpretation, lay behind most of the religious traditions of the Common Era, and those secrets include deep psychological insights into the value and uses of myth, narrative, emotion and belief.

Deep Secrets

A thin elite understood the world, almost as well as educated people understand the world now. Deep understandings buried in myth and fable enabled a thin elite to live lives of value and learning. Mystery religions taught people to understand deep psychological truths within themselves through meditation, study, and parsing out the allegorical meaning within religious text. The myths themselves were of value as entertainment and the fantasies gave comfort to the sick, dying, enslaved and suffering.

The Gnostic bible texts used the power of interpretation to preach equality, make people see nuances of reality and open them up to enlightenment. Such texts are only secret because those reading them don't read past the fictional vehicle to their inner truth.

Manipulating Masses

These Bishops also understood the tools that we know today as propaganda and marketing, and how to use religion to manipulate people. Homilies meant to comfort and sick and dying, could turn people into fanatics, or make them angry at rivals or enemies. Any tool can be used for good or evil purposes and the early church used its power to manipulate people. The early church was, for the well educated bishops and priests who converted to Christianity, in part, to ride its opportunities for wealth and power, such a tool.

Solving a Problem

The Romans had a problem. Religion had been chaotic, paganism was losing its power to motivate people, and the Romans needed to control their empire. Christianity appealed to people who were oppressed, enslaved, and to whom the old Gods were no longer speaking. Ironically this was a mostly urban phenomena, so the Bishops accommodated rural beliefs even as they sought to craft a religion that enhanced their power. In the process they created a bigger problem.

Believing your own Myth

Unfortunately the tools of myth and interpretation were used to turn people into fanatics, demonize rivals and stir up mobs to attack enemies of Christiandom. Those early Christians taught people to be fanatic, and the fanatics burned the books that had made Roman Culture tolerable to the educated. Whether they were sincere, true believers, or simply manipulative sociopaths, but the result was not peace.

The Barbarians inside the Gates

Instead people fought over religious issues. They converted and then fought with "heretics." They attacked fellow citizens as Pagans, Jews, or members of heretical religions. The internal wars were what made Rome weak. Dropping standards of hygeine. Baths shut down as "pagan" followed by plagues caused by parasite vectors and spread due to poor hygeine. The Vandals may have looted and burned Rome, but they were fighting fights motivated as much by their Arianism's conflict with Catholicism as by tribal identity. Religion enhanced tribalism. Tribalism used religion.

A New Civilization?

The replacement of Graeco-Roman culture with Christian culture was led by people who understood secrets and misused them. As a result, the secrets were burned or buried with the books and educated people, like Hypatia, who understood them. The movie depicts the Barbarians at the Gate, as being ordinary Roman Citizens in the Gate. That is all too accurate about now, every bit as much as then. The author Joshua J. Mark in the Ancient History Encyclopedia writes:

“The anti-intellectual stance of the early church is attested to by early Christian writers themselves and so, if the Christians in the film are depicted as ignorant it is because they were so by choice. St. Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 CE) was openly hostile to classical learning and claimed that all the important values and thoughts expressed by writers like Plato were stolen from the Christian Bible’s Old Testament.” [ancient-eu]

Rejecting Civilization

The early Christian apologist Tertullian (c. 160-230 CE) also rejected classical learning and famously stated:

“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from "the porch of Solomon," who had himself taught that "the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart." Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.” Tertullian

The Barbarians were inside the gate.

Hypatia
https://www.ancient.eu/Hypatia_of_Alexandria/
https://www.ancient.eu/article/656/historical-accuracy-in-the-film-agora/
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186830/

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

A Recidivist President

The Mueller report did not exonerate Trump. But he, his co-conspirators and co-dependents in the GOP, with a little help from the corrupt Attorney General William Pelham Barr, created a propaganda campaign to make it look like it did. They succeeded enough so that Trump decided he'd beat the rap and been "exonerated." Instead Trump shakes down the newly elected Ukrainian President Zelensky, in a shakedown over delivering promised military assistance. He does this, knowing that Ukraine is fighting trench war within it's country on the border with its Donbas provence, where the Russians have Tanks and military forces and regularly shoot at any Ukrainian who raises his head out of the trenches or happens to be in the path of an artillery shell. The USA promised to let them buy Javelin Anti-tank Rockets. Trump deliberately held up those missiles, after the State Department had certified that they'd complied with anti-corruption requirements to try to force investigations into 3 subjects:

  1. An investigation into Burisma intended to go after Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, who had been put on Burisma's board in order to curry favor with the Obama administration. That could be true, but not illegal and had no influence on Joe Biden.
  2. They also claimed that Biden got a Prosecutor General of Ukraine fired in order to stop a Burisma investigation. This is false. The prosecutors fired were not doing investigations into corruption, but were themselves corrupt and shaking down targets. His ultimate replacement did investigate Burisma. Biden was proud of instigating reforms, not doing nepotism. Trump doesn't care about nepotism. You can ask his children.
  3. The Cloudstrike allegations, is worse. It is part of a Russian Disinformation campaign that made up a false story that the DNC Server somehow ended up in Ukraine. The Emails were "in the cloud", but the DNC server is now in their basement along with the Watergate file Nixon's burglars broke into. Cloudstrike is a US security firm. One of it's top people was born in Moscow, not Ukraine. The whole story was a megilla designed to shift blame from the Russian Hackers to a Russian Target, Ukraine.

It turns out there is a whole lot of corruption going on. I was trying to draft mock up articles of impeachment based on what I knew when we found out about what Trump is doing in Ukraine. It just keeps getting more surreal. The latest news is that Giuliani is in Ukraine making a movie “documentary” about all this, a sort of Citizens United 2.0 Biden edition. That Barr is going around the work trying to put the USA Intel community on trial, put the 5 eyes intel sharing agreement into the shredder, and dig up dirt on those who informed the Mueller investigation so they can be discredited, prosecuted or driven out of office.

Ukrainian Impeachment Report:
https://intelligence.house.gov/report/
PDF: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20191203_-_full_report___hpsci_impeachment_inquiry_-_20191203.pdf
Mueller Report:
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/18/708850903/read-the-full-mueller-report-with-redactions

Monday, November 25, 2019

Cruelty is the Point Vs Reform

Dear David Trone:

Unfortunately for me, I've had family members who've been jailed or imprisoned. I live in a relatively decent State, Maryland, yet prisoners, both convicted and those merely jailed, suffer treatment similar to that experienced in West Virginia, referenced in this article by Rebecca J. Kavanagh:

“People incarcerated in West Virginia prisons will soon be charged $3 an hour to read books and $15 an hour for video visitation with their families.” DrRJKavanaugh
“Prisoners in West Virginia are paid between 4 and 58 cents an hour for their labor.” DrRJKavanaugh
“Do I really have to write a bill to ban charging prisoners to read?”Trone Tweet

David, You probably do need to write some laws, including repealing laws:

  • that reduced access to exercise rooms and libraries.
  • Resourcing libraries,
  • counseling,
  • Psych and recovery detention centers separate from prisons.

The reason they do things like this is that cruelty is the point. They are trying to run prisons as for profit plantations. The idea is to indebt inmates by refusing them access to basic needs like books or exercise, charge them for these things, and then allow them to borrow the money only to treat them like slaves even after their time is up. Not paying them for their work advances that, plus enriches the administrators.

And they do some of this in Maryland too. If we let our Piratical, Freebooting, "Republican" privateers, they'll privatize prisons here too.

It's a racket, and the officials are the racketeers. As I've been warning! These are:

Privateers! If they can't rent it, put tolls on it, extract loans against it, they destroy it. Modern day pirates, perfectly legal thieves!
Reason Article
https://reason.com/2019/11/22/west-virginia-inmates-will-be-charged-by-the-minute-to-read-e-books-on-tablets/

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

How to fix our Taxation system

Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax, probably would be deemed unconstitutional. It is also unnecessary. What is needed is a mix of reforms and restoring what worked before.

We had progressive taxation. It has never been perfect. But at one time people at least understood the basic principles.

Basic Principles

To get to just taxation a number of basic principles need to be properly defined, applied and traded off against one another:

  • Tax unearned income more than earned income.
  • Recognize that "wealth in the course of production" is capital.
  • Define as capital, only wealth used to buy actual capital goods, stock, tools, machinery and buildings, and being used as intended.
  • Recognize that wealth from renting wealth is not capital except to the people employing that wealth.
  • Recognize that natural resources, and land itself, are a common property that needs to be used wisely and for the benefit of the whole people as well as for those doing the extraction.
  • Recognize that the right to ownership is an inalienable right, but not an absolute one.
  • Recognize that work is what conveys a stake in ownership, that labor – of all kinds – is prior to capital, and that it is sacred and deserves to be adequately rewarded.
  • What a person earns, is theirs and deserves to be paid in treasury direct notes or coin.

Therefore we need to:

Bring back progressive taxation on net income calculations. Tax unearned income from owning property (rents). Don't tax business property that is in the course of production. Don't tax wage gross wage income
  • Stop treating Wall Street Stocks, Bonds, real estate property, etc... as if they were capital, and focus tax exemptions and deductions on capital used as capital,
  • Income from economic rent is not earned. Only the portion of economic rent that has been earned by the effort of the people owning the property (net income) being rented should be exempted.
  • and on protecting wages from labor. A person owns what they earned and should be able to live off of it.
  • Every person earning income, should be able to keep enough of what they earned (net) to live a complete life.
  • Therefore we should set a universal exemption at the poverty level, and deduct basic food, transport, shelter and basic comfort (clothing, heating/cooling) from gross wages before applying net taxation.
  • These rates need to be indexed for inflation. When wages and costs inflate, it isn't fair to tax them like they are rich when they aren't.
  • Tax rates are indexed, which means that the net for each rate level should be taxed, not the whole amount.
  • At the same time a net income greater than a million should be taxed at a millionaire rate (indexed for inflation), a 10 million net rate, a 100 million net rate and a billionaire top net income rate. That top rate should be something like 90%.

  • The first tax bracket should start at the wage which is the average of all wages in the country (mean) after exemptions and deductions.
  • Further tax brackets should attack unearned wealth with rates high enough to level out net incomes.
  • I would suggest using standard deviation calculations from the mean net income.
  • So called capital gains should be taxed as ordinary income on the net income taken out of capital. This encourages people to keep money wealth and resources in the market.
  • Tax earnings from Gift or inheritance at point of transfer or death, as ordinary gross income.

Now payroll taxes may be needed to pay for social security and healthcare, because people are going to have to save for or pay for healthcare and their retirement anyway. But if we focused taxes on unearned income.

Friday, November 15, 2019

Shootings and Reform -- The latest shooting and Gun reform

Another shooting in another school. This time at Saugus High School with a 45 caliber handgun. The gunman opened fire, killed 2 people and wounded 3 others. After the shooting he ran away and then shot himself when the police were closing in. This is a tragedy. It happens too often in this country.

The good news is he didn't have access to a semi-automatic long gun or the count could have been higher. California controls over weapons are the strictest in the country and the State is big enough that it is harder to smuggle weapons in. Though that happens.

Normalizing or Stopping Mass murder

The bad news is that these incidents are far too common and hard to prevent without hardening schools and controlling entry. The further bad news is that the risk of mass murder is still alive and well in most of the country because we do not properly regulate arms. We let people run around armed, while denying them a formal role in the security, self defense and emergency responses of our local and national land divisions and homes.

Security is a Collective Duty

Security is something that is supposed to be the collaborative responsibility of the Federal, State, and local governments,

and we the people

The constitution says that Congress has the duty of:

... “organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia,”.... [Article 1, Sec 8 COTUS]

To which the Second Amendment clarifies:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,” [2nd Amendment]

That:

“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,”

must be enabled and regulated.... So that law abiding people are part of the process of protecting their own homes and communities, local and general.

Palladium of Liberty

When the founders called the militia the “Palladium of Liberty”, they were referring to the reality that "militia" was intended to be a check on the power associated with standing armies. Standing Armies being a term that applies in a modern context to professional police forces, bureaucrats with coercive powers, and even security forces in private employment.

For more on the Palladium of liberty see:

https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-palladium-of-liberty.html

Badly formed, Constituted, government

Regulating arms is not only in the constitution, it is a collaborative duty of a Democratic Government. That this issue is confused is because the original constitution of militia had different meanings and uses in different parts of the country. The Militia was initially vital for defense against immediate enemies. As the country became more generally settled, the idea of butchers and bakers, coachmen and candle makers, meeting weekly for drills and marching, made less and less. The original form of militia became outdated. At the same time the problem of standing armies and military forces as oppression never really went away. The national guard became a kludgy substitute for militia at the Federal and State level. Indeed the National Guard is pointed to when people think of Militia. But the concept was so muddied that private militia and even private armies, which are problematic expressions of militia, are posed as if they were what the founders were thinking of.

And so, the individual right to carry weapons has been made something blanket, that allows unregulated, undisciplined and sometimes criminal elements to engage in tyranny and oppression. Exactly the opposite of what the founders wanted.

And of course, even if the founders thought local tyranny was a good thing, all this goes against their own principles, the basic principles of a democratic republic that they expounded.

For more on this see:
Select Militia and National Guard

Turning the Second Amendment on its head

We have a system where extralegal violence is glorified. Where the right to bear arms for the common defense has been transformed into an individual right to shoot up shopping centers and police stations. From "Dirty Harry" thru "Barretta" to hundreds of examples of vigilantes and aggrieved revenge seekers, the lone criminal with a gun is glorified as some sort of hero. These media glorify cold blooded murder, revenge and grievance. Worse right wing propaganda also glorifies “standing ones ground” against strangers. It is telling that the “stand your ground laws” only seem to apply to murder situations where the [usually white] murderer can claim that his victim [black, gay, different] was at fault for being shot. It is no wonder that young men like this one in early November 2019, somehow saw something romantic in revenge murder. The propaganda is immature and appeals to teenage angst, and it encourages terrorism. Folks dress up in black. Try to look like ninja or their favorite hollywood mass murderer and attack. While hollywood may not the cause of gun violence, blood soaked fantasies fill the air nationwide. Thoughts lead to words, words lead to deeds. The propaganda builds on the frustration of people feel powerless. Powerless is the result when left out of self government. Militia was supposed to be an antidote to tyranny. The Second amendment has been turned on its head.

Second Amendment Badly decided

The Right to Participate in Government Functions is Democracy

The other reason that the militia clauses did not work as intended (at least by the defenders of the constitution) is that the militia did not always live up to its intended purpose as "the palladium of liberty" for everybody. Militia were associated with Slave patrols in the South. Militia were often used in "posse comitatus" actions. So much that in 1878 a law was passed to put a stop to it.

The Posse Comitatus Act states:

“Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws...”

It was intended to reduce the risk of the Government using the military to enforce martial law or arrest political opponents. But militia had been regularly used for posses and for “hot peace” civil warfare against indigenous peoples, immigrant communities and in internal disputes between rival settlements on the frontier. These have not been “well regulated” militia. Standing armies are dangerous, undisciplined militia are “no better than a mob” [Can't remember source of quote, will look later]. A well regulated militia is the palladium of liberty. Undisciplined or private militia and standing armies are dangerous to liberty.

For more on this see:
Selective Service vs Standing Armies
and:
Select Militia & National Guard

Stopping the Glorification of Violence requires Participation

Children will do stupid things. But by glorifying violence, the combination of culture and access to weapons makes it more likely, not less, that an angry and confused young person will do something vile and vicious. Preventing that is difficult, but shoring up the democratic and just aspects of our economy can, maybe, change the culture. At the very least, when weaponry is well controlled, but available when needed, the incentives to keep unsecured arms around the house can be removed. To get to that point. We have to respect the first amendments original meaning and respect the right and duty of the people to participate in their own affairs, their own defense and their own security. Guns are supposed to enhance security, not be used to gun down other kids a confused and deluded kid is angry at.

Voluntary Service and temporary Service are Militia

Expanding the National Guard, volunteer service, using national service to train health providers, teachers, and the militia system to bring communications and transportation personnel into the Emergency management system would go a long way to changing our culture. Democracy = "People" [Demos] + "Rule" [kracy]. Our involvement as volunteers, compensated for, “organizing, arming, and disciplining” those in service to the United States, is democracy. Jury Service is Democracy. Poll worker service are democracy. If we want to reduce gun violence, access to them must be regulated. And only those trained and sworn to use them in service to community and country, or in active self defense, should carry them. And only militia, and services derived from the militia, should bear arms in a fight or peace keeping role.

This kid should not have had access to a 45 caliber weapon outside of an armory.

It is time to differentiate between settlements, where guns need to be in secure locations, like Armories under control of legal & supervisory, local, authority, and less secure locations, where a person should be able to keep a weapon in a locker or other secured location in his own home. It doesn't even make sense to let people carry weapons into super markets and shopping centers, other than security trained people. Let's make sure everyone is participating in their government, so the second amendment has rational meaning again.

Thursday, October 31, 2019

No More Substitute Teachers!!!

When we won back the House in 2006, the hope of regulating the Republicans was restored, somewhat. Unfortunately, nobody had the stomach to raise the stakes on the Republicans and go after their crimes. Why? Because Democrats, as Pelosi said at the time, despite the fact we'd been treated unfairly by the GOP when they had the majority:

“are not about getting even” with Republicans. Pelosi NYT

The leadership, perhaps mistakenly, thought that with the Republicans electorally rebuked in 2006, the Republicans would behave like normal people. For that reason despite the fact that the GOP had:

“frequently excluded Democrats from conference committee hearings and ... blocked attempts to introduce amendments, would not suffer similar treatment. Pelosi NYT

We knew that the country could only prosper if the two parties can work together and so she:

“pledge[d] civility and bipartisanship in the conduct of the work here and we ... partnerships with Congress and the Republicans in Congress, and the president — not partisanship.” Pelosi NYT

Bipartisanship and getting the work of a functional Government was more important, to her, than duking it out with partisan Republicans. We really thought we could work with the Republicans.

Equal Application of the Law IS Justice

The trouble is, they had revealed who they were when they had the majority during the Bush Administration, and before, when they had impeached Bill Clinton on petty charges when they had a majority before. Extending an olive branch to unreconstructed bullies, just encourages them to escalate. As my Wife had explained about teaching:

“If you show up on the first day of class extending an olive branch and talking about how much fun the semester will be, some students might respond well, but most will see that as weakness and walk all over you.”

My Wife would lay down the law on the first day of class. Her students either loved her or dropped the class, but they learned from her. And most came to love her because she enforced discipline. The constitution is an overarching discipline, ethic, that shouldn't require external power to enforce, but when it does, it has to be done from the beginning of a person's tenure or it is lost.