If the (crackpot) federal grand jury rule were to spread throughout...

If the exclusive to federal grand juries (crackpot) rule that the Fifth Amendment no longer applies once you answer any question at all on a particular line of inquiry – “once you open the door” – were to somehow propagate throughout all the American court system, state and federal, the immediate result would surely be a national outcry for a constitutional amendment to get our precious Fifth Amendment back.

But as long as it only exists in one (mostly hidden) venue the federal grand jury system gets away with it.

The “once you open the door” silliness could even enter the police station: Miranda (not that I’m in love with Miranda) might no longer be able to protect your right to remain silent: once you answer any police question.

The founders’ Fifth Amendment intention was to prevent torture. Does “opening the door” permit torture?

Who's going to eat whose lunch?

The poverty line in this country is set at three times the cost of an "emergency" diet (wherein you may not purchase a can of beans, only dried beans). I move that the federal government move immediately to a poverty standard of six times an emergency diet which is much more in keeping with 2007 basic needs (eg., $40,000/yr for a family of four).

Market failure implies that markets are for some (as far as I can see) unexplained reason expected to produce "fair" outcomes. The "free market" should be seen as analogous to the operating system of a computer -- as the OS of the economy -- upon which may be imposed any fair or unfair checks and balances program.

The first such "program" imposed by industrialization in nineteenth century England was the race to the bottom. Individual weavers who made a decent living were replaced by 100 (?) times more productive steam loom operators who were reduced to, not just-enough-to-stay-alive income, but the lowest form of just-enough-to-stay-alive income: staying alive on oat cakes three times a day because they could not even afford wheat bread.

The idea that the biggest ongoing drama in human history -- who's going to eat whose lunch -- is going to be automatically fairly resolved by an unfettered free market is what psychiatrists might characterize as "magical thinking".
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25% of Americans live below a realistic poverty line (double the official line -- see the 2002 book, Raise the Floor). I am willing to admit 25% below without assistance (food stamps, etc.).

This ties in neatly -- until the recent slight increase in the minimum wage -- with 25% of labor earning below the modern European minimum wage level (generally $9.50/hr). Of course in Europe that is accompanied by full medical, 4 weeks paid vacation, etc., etc., etc.

Which fits in with a New story in the "Globalist" : "The OECD recently updated its definition of 'the middle class' " -- now focusing on "the average worker" rather than on "the average production worker" -- the recalculation:

"A British middle class family with two children and two incomes of 100% and 67% of average wages still earns 40% more (in PPP terms, net of taxes) than their U.S. counterparts ($65,000 compared to $45,500). In fact, U.S. families in this category rank only 15th in the OECD."

Which also ties in with -- until the slight increase -- 25% earning less than the 1968 US federal minimum wage.

We have a near 1939 minimum wage ($4.50/hr -- no taxes) -- we have a prohibition (drugs). We have created a new organized crime base -- this time it black and Hispanic rather than Irish, Italian and Jewish.

I read Wilson's 1997 book, When Work Disappears at the same time I read Venkatesh's 2002, American Project. Wilson's study wrapped up (if I remember correctly) while the fed minimum wage was still about $7/hr. At this point the projects which had once been a place of hope (when factory work had yet to disappear and the minimum wage was closer to $10) had become crime ridden but not yet the gang controlled Hell that accompanied the minimum wage drop to $5/hr. Better to make "all of" $10/hr selling drugs.

If work paid in America like it pays in labor controlled Europe (I'm no big lefty, BTW) poverty in America would not exist any more than it does in Europe. (Minority schools would work too if the parents worked; a.k.a., were paid enough to work -- forget worrying about the teacher's union).

A $500/wk minimum wage would add less than 4% to cost of GDP output (going from the $5.15/hr level!) -- about how much we grow per capita every two or three years -- up from $380/wk in 1968; following 100% increase in average income since. All we ever had to end poverty in America, it turns out, was to pay people what we could afford to pay them.

GREENSPAN'S MID-BRAIN:

STILL IN RE-WRITE:

Alan Greenspan's midbrain (a.k.a., seat of murky human emotions):

if you don't empathize with labor sufficiently you it is easy to miss how vulnerable the labor market is to distortion -- and to turn out lopsided economic theory -- no matter how smart everybody thinks you are.

One kid has enough money to buy ten packs of Cool Aid; the other is willing to put in the hours at the stand (they both get their daily needs at home). These two kids have to get together on the price of a drink. Very possibly one will want to put in fewer overall hours for more overall dollars by setting a price for his labor that reduces the number of hours the stand can stay open profitably.

But if these two are not kids; if they must provide for the daily demands of biology (and sociology), then, the one who lives paycheck to paycheck may not have the option to freely pull his labor off the market like a house seller who withdraws until prices rise enough to suit her. If the Cool Aid provider is under less such pressure (capital typically is or it would not possess capital) or can simply switch his offer to any number of other unorganized labor providers, the capital provider may be in a (market warping) position to offer what little it takes to barely keep labor alive while the limit for his profits is the sky.

Economists who insist that the oldest drama of mankind (who is going to eat who's lunch) can be resolved by unfettered markets are guilty of "magical thinking". They show themselves only smart enough to perceive market warping when occasioned by as giant an octopus as Standard Oil of as colorful a character as John D. Rockefeller -- but not equally perceptive at detecting market distorting on the everyday (e.g., fast-food) scale -- deep down because they may just not care.

Thus does the unsympathetic ideology of their mid-brains warp the forebrains of Alan and the Chicago Boyz and Republican politicians into producing pathetic economic theory. (Our same literally pea-sized limbic system has a million lawyers rising for the judge without making the connection that they don't have to salute the flag.)

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Our progressive friends tend to miss a couple of vital pieces of the puzzle too. Their problem I suppose being a lack of practical upper-middle class contact with folks at the bottom half of income.

Thus does their "only so many percents of inequality caused by lack of unions" not square with New York City cops in a super strong union making only the same pay today that their predecessors made thirty years ago -- even as average income in America jumped two-thirds. Nor do their charts explain why cab driving in Chicago (my job for over twenty years beginning in 1980) now pays less than half as much per hour -- even as average income jumped by half in America.

All the while in Dublin, Ireland you cannot get a cab to take you home on Saturday night because the common ethic over there is so weighted to labor's advantage that they wont make seemingly common sense adjustments for fear it might take any bite out of labor's living.

Can those academic calculations extrapolate how much pain would have been avoided in this country if the minimum wage had managed not to drop back from 1968's $9.50/hr -- or if it had kept on climbing to $12.50/hr (I am not necessarily saying $12.50/hr with European vacations, etc -- workaholic Americans would likely work somewhere else on vacation; at least at the minimum wage level).

It seems more about the attitudes (which are mostly based on the accuracy of common knowledge) than anything in our friendly economists calculations.

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The "25's ways" to hike American labor expectations:

25% of Americans now earn less than the (cash) minimum wage of Europe (throw in paid vacation, holidays, maternity leave, sick leave, severance AND full medical coverage and that might make 35%);

25% of Americans -- not surprisingly considering the first "25" -- now live below a realistically calculated poverty line (not the ridiculous federal line which is set at three times the cost of an emergency diet -- which doesn't allow canned beans, only dried -- before taxes).

$250,000 is the level of the better paying medical specialties (family doctor pay -- $150,000 -- actually shrunk 10% from 1995 to 2003 even while AVERAGE income rose 12%);

$250,000 is now the AVERAGE income of the top-fifth of families -- IF WE SPREAD THE WEALTH GOING TO THE TOP 1% across the top 20% --according to US Census figures (Census numbers must be adjusted for top-coding income over one million dollars out of the family survey or "only" $176,000 average income shows for top-fifth families).

New story in -- just in the "Globalist" :

"The OECD recently updated its definition of 'the middle class'. It now focuses on 'the average worker' rather than 'the average production worker'."

New recalculation:

"A British middle class family with two children and two incomes of 100% and 67% of average wages still earns 40% more (in PPP terms, net of taxes) than their U.S. counterparts ($65,000 compared to $45,500). In fact, U.S. families in this category rank only 15th in the OECD."

When is America's media -- or John Edwards -- going to tell the people the true story about the squeeze on American labor (unique in the first world). To paraphrase Tony Montana's drug boss: if America's business and labor would just work together the right way the only problem for labor would be "what to do with all the f...... money."

THIS ENTIRE MESSAGE IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

The Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald

I read Wilson's When Work Disappears and Venkatesh's American Project simultaneously. Wilson's narrative ends around 1980 when the minimum wage still paid $7.75/hr in today's dollars. Venkatesh's book went on into the 80s and 90s when the minimum wage dropped to the 1939 level (.30/hr adjusted).

The projects were a place of hope as Wilson's story started out, before -- reasonably paying -- work disappeared. The projects ended in gang infested hell as the minimum wage virtually disappeared to a pay level that American born workers would show up for.

My contention is that if American labor looked after its interests in the robust way that European labor does -- especially with Americans' greater tendency to be workaholics -- that the jobs left behind would have paid more than enough to keep hell from taking over urban minority life. IOW, the Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald.

One Chicago U. economist found that drug dealing only pays about $10/hr for all but the very top leaders (even the economist's gang leader lived with his mother). Who would choose that over the European minimum wage (also the 1968 American minimum wage) of $9.50/hr -- supplemented in Europe with paid vacations, holidays, maternity leave, etc., etc., plus paid medical -- AND NO JAIL?

Enough money is here somewhere -- just as enough is enough in Europe (where people work one-third less (many fewer hours X many fewer family members working) -- to pay Americans enough to free all from ghetto hell (remember: the schools wont work if the parents wont work; and American born parents wont work if you don't pay them enough).

The US Census family income survey says top-fifth families AVERAGE $176,000 a year. But the survey contains a check box marked "over one million dollars" -- which means the survey "top-codes" all income over a million out of its report. Adjusting for that (by matching family growth with un-coded per-capita income growth) gives me more like $250,000 AVERAGE income for the top-fifth.

I hardly need point out that one out of five families in the US are not earning anywhere near this level (unless they live in lower Manhattan, where wealth is a plateau not a pinnacle).

Much more to the point: $250,000 a year is the average pay of the better paying medical specialties. $150,000 is the average income of today's primary care providers (the latter down 10% from 1995 to 2003 -- while average income in the US grew 12%).

Average income climbs 10-15% every decade (not even counting the free advances of technology) -- while 95-99% of American incomes stand still or go down -- and are going to keep standing still or going down until Americans realize they have to organize labor here the modern every-where-else-in-the-world way: some kind of legally mandated, sector-wide, labor agreements.

The Newt Gingrich, Chicken Littles of the world call every progressive European innovation "socialism". Interestingly, right-wing Europeans have no objections to strong unionization -- but only carp about over-regulation (cannot fire anyone) and over-welfare (automatically on the dole if out of work) as they should.

Just keep saying to yourself, over and over: "The Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald", "The Crips and the Bloods could not whip a decent paying Ronald McDonald", and you will know all you need to know about untangling the multi-factor web of deep-seated urban pathologies. :-)

One hundred million addicts saved?

The drug war:
One million prisoners doing hard time at any given time.
More millions have done hard time at one time.
Perhaps ten million with life ruining, unnecessary felony convictions -- even if they did not go to jail.

One hundred million addicts saved? Maybe not one.

A "very enlightened" policy whereby we threaten to ruin your life: we will break up your family, we will take waste your years, we will make you unemployable thereafter -- if you take the chance of ruining your life using a dangerous drug.

Meantime back at the economy: we have had a 1939 level federal minimum wage level ($4.50/hr, w/no taxes in FDR's era -- adjusted for inflation) to combine with the prohibition. What do we naturally get?: street gangs selling prohibited substances. Only difference between the today and the '30s: the gangs are African-American and Latino instead of Irish, Italian and Jewish.

What a wonderful set of ass-backwards policies.

In defense of the Vietnam War

I think those who strongly oppose the Vietnam war or the war in Iraq mostly don’t want to watch war on television. I think if withdrawing from Iraq, for instance, would mean seeing three times as much violence on TV (there would certainly BE three times as much) they would be much less vehement. To be frank, I don’t think most of them would have supported the Civil War to free the slaves if they had to watch it on television – least of all would they have sent their kids to fight in it “that horrible mess”.

I think they just cannot understand how war could make any sense from the perspective of their rich, symbol manipulating (IOW, normal modern?) existences – have a lot harder time understanding anyway.

To fully understand Vietnam you have to look from the perspective of the time: 20 years before the decision year (1965) two little fascist nations almost took over the world (mostly Germany – we only directed 15% of our own war effort at Japan). Now, the two big communist nations that the two little fascist countries could not bite off were coming for us – one with 11 times zones; the other with a billion people; both with thermonuclear arms. Neither Kruschev nor Mao made any secret of their intention to “bury us”.

PS. At the time the Soviet economy was growing 7% a year to our 3% (as far as we knew) -- the Russkies were graduating twice as many scientists and engineers as we were – and they ahead of us in space and in jet engine technology (as far as we knew -- our intercontinental bomber had 8 little engines to their 4 big ones). In 1965, communism was at high tide.

In strategic terms, Ho’s invasion of the South represented the craziest communist dictator willing to kill millions of his own people to add on a little bit of communist real estate. Our fear: if the democracies rolled over and did not put up a fight, we might face every less crazy communist leader comming out of the woodwork to try to take over the real estate next to his.

More widely, we could expect every “Che” in the world to step up his attempt at home based revolution. You may remember LBJ’s recorded phone remarks that he was afraid if he let go in Nam “the communists might chase you right back to your kitchen.” Don’t forget: the psychological is to the physical as three is to one – just to keep folks on our side we felt compelled to win the race to the moon; we feared backing away from a fight could have far reaching consequences too.

PS. The “big lesson” of WWII – which I have only realized is bunk lately – is that if Chamberlain had not “appeased” Hitler, there would never have been any WWII – obviously if the guy was going to invade Russia there was going to be war.

Is this going on too long?: it is the justification for a way that killed 60,000 of us – and millions of dead Vietnamese.

By 1975, when we lost locally, we were winning globally (even if the locals weren’t) – communism was receding.

The best portrayal I have seen of the struggle with communism over those ten years is Thomas Lipscomb’s “Prosperous Southeast Asia Proof the U.S. Did Not Fight In Vain”. Note: the free Southeast Asia nations are the ones that showed the world (including China) how to raise the poorest people in the world to near Western prosperity.

Oh, did I forget, after all this – definitely too long – we might have won the war after all but then threw it all away. Seems that for the last three years the South Vietnam Army took over all the ground fighting – AND WE CRAZILY (!!!) WITHDREW THEIR FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND THEIR AIR SUPPORT. Congress was upset so we took our bat and ball and went home. According to a book by ex-CIA employee Frank Snepp, Decent Interval, we had a guy on the politobureau in the North who reported they voted to throw in the towel after Nixon’s Hanoi bombing – but when they realized the South had to ration how many bullets a soldier could fire a day, etc., they started up all over again.

Saving the best (policy) for last, there was a proposition to call up the reserves and send four times as many troops (two million – saw this in Glenn… ). This would have ended it all fast and relatively bloodlessly, if very expensively.

Is Israel just a big Jewish neighborhood -- or a real county?

Is Israel just a big Jewish neighborhood -- or a real county?

I am afraid that after two thousand years of going without a country Jews no longer know what to do with one when they've got one (some might claim "got one back"). After two thousand years on the move, maybe all they can think is: "neighborhood", "neighborhood", "neighborhood".

How else to explain well fed -- liberal -- Israelis living complacently down the road from painfully poorer Arabs within Israel proper: the Arabs seeming to them more from unrelated neighborhoods than from any overall society.

Ditto for settlements in the occupied territories -- just more neighborhoods. If poor Arabs are not content to be poor somewhere else (move down the road; "How much difference can that make?"), but actually have the temerity to fight back (if often immorally -- but who invented the truck bomb?), they are always terrorists, never patriots.

The geopolitical concept of "sovereign-territory invading sovereign-territory" endlessly eludes Israelis where Palestine is concerned -- which is why the dots between Israel's American giant military/political/economic support and mad (by both definitions) Arabs blowing holes in New York City fail to connect also (Americans by and large fail to connect the dots, too -- 2 far for 20/20 vision?).

Word to Israel: You have been away for two thousand years. Two, two hundred year old technologies have "lately" altered the psychic landscape: the railroad and the telegraph, which made national borders feel both much less flexible and much more "sacred".

Back when the furthest you could extend your personal influence was how far you could ride your horse in one day (if you could afford a horse), the further reaches of your political realm might seem like the far side of the moon -- life was mostly "neighborhood". The railroad and the telegraph pulled the continental US together to the point where African slavery that was tolerated in the North in 1800 had become too close for psychic comfort by 1850.

The medium could be the message in the nineteenth century, too.

If Israelis ever get the message -- to go along with their country -- they will at last heed the need to cease, 24/7/365/40, provoking a billion-plus potential Palestinian adherents to wage violent jihad against David -- and his big friend Goliath.
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If I were President of the United States I would send the Marines into Gaza to liberate that country. There being no Israeli troops there, the most important intention would be to develop the psychological concept of Gaza as a real country who can invite whomever it pleases.

I would follow that up by sending American or coalition troops into the West Bank (by Palestinian invitation) to promote the same psychic-geopolitical notion there. Israeli troops would not dare to fire on American troops -- geopolitical suicide.

Coalition troops would open the Israeli-only highway system to all (except perhaps one day a week when it would run only one-way: out), end check-points, allow Palestinians to drill water wells wherever they would, block new settlements of course and most importantly move all Israeli military without a shot being fired...

...all of which should make continued residence untenable for the great majority of Israeli settlers -- without so much as addressing a word to them.

I don't believe that Palestinians would harm a hair on Israeli settlers' heads -- at first; while waiting on a negotiated shake-out. I take the Palestinians to be the easiest people on earth to get along with -- after ever mounting Israeli abuse all they seem to ask is to be left alone. I suspect the Irish would have stormed Tel Aviv, by now, swinging broom sticks if that were all they had, if they had been subject a tenth of the same abuse (authority: I have 5 Irish grandparents counting my mother's step-mother).

My method would be to "fester" -- not "force". All would be calculated to firmly establish in Israeli psyches that the West Bank and Gaza are in fact another country -- not Israel's outback. The psychological can outweigh the physical as three is to one when opposing an illegal occupation, too.

How hard would it be for settlers to move back to Israel? How hard was it to move to the West Bank in the first place -- or would it be to move to Brooklyn? Moving would be much cheaper in the long run than maintaining as many tanks at the ready as Western NATO and the US armies combined -- on 1% of the population base -- and infinitely less costly to the Western liberal psyche.

Maybe the settlers might not have to go; not all anyway -- as long as the Palestinians held complete sovereignty and control. Seems a shame to waste all that nice real estate development that Palestinians could not afford to keep up, when both sides can profit. Perhaps the poorer Palestinians will rent the settlements back to the richer Israelis; maybe not even to the same Israelis; maybe to all comers; all the market will bear (and sell the Israelis the water resources they have been raiding, too)! Could mean a humongous amount of money for third world Palestinians to catch up on lost development with and hopefully not too much for first world Israelis to fork over (hey; this is the Middle East; you bargain) -- all hinging on the Palestinians keeping total and absolute control.