Damn Straight, Your Eminance! Pope Calls for Massive Wealth Distribution

Right on, Father! Almost 20 years to the day after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Pope Benedict XVI took aim at Communism's seeming polar opposite.

Sam Walton's children have more money than the Catholic Church. Seriously.

A more just and peaceful world requires "adequate mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth," said the Pontiff in a statement released on December 16th in preparation for World Peace Day. So is the Pope a Communist?

Hardly. Capitalism only appears to be the polar opposite of Communism. At the core of each ideology is a belief that tramples the individual while claiming to speak for the commoner. While Communism takes away the right of the individual under the State, capitalism takes away the right of the individual by way of the all mighty dollar.

Am I being overly dramatic? Maybe not, when you consider attempts to stifle freedom of expression via the Internet, or attempts to eliminate government meat inspection. Sure, a few people might die, but that would cost precious dollars!


E. Coli in hamburgers, poison pet food, led paint in children's toys. This is unregulated capitalism friends, and it ain't pretty. Unless you're at the very top, unrestrained capitalism doesn't enable life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Certainly not if you don't have health insurance. And if not for Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, along with massive tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance AND President Obama's recent reforms, most people in this country wouldn't be able to afford health insurance. They would simply be priced out of the market.

Pope Benedict called for--among other things--better education. Boy, this country sure does need it, because the uber-capitalists have actually led people to believe that the rich in this country are insufficiently rich. That's a theory that is beyond absurd.

Did you know that Sam Walton's children have more money than Warren Buffett or Bill Gates? Seriously, the four of them have a combined wealth of nearly $85 billion! And they can't pay their employees a living wage because?

The Pope has criticized unrestrained capitalism before. Perhaps with income inequality in the news courtesy of Occupy Wall Street, people will notice.

To be continued . . .

Paul Krugman doesn't begrudge people like Mitt Romney for destroying jobs--he should.

And so it has come to this: Paul Krugman, a prominent, self-identified liberal economics professor, Nobel Prize winner and New York Times columnist says he doesn't hold it against Mitt Romney for getting rich by taking away other people's source of income. Seriously. He said that. In last week's column titled All the G.O.P.'s Gekkos, the Princeton University Professor wrote:

Krugman should think and hard before being soft on Romney

"Mr. Romney made his fortune in a business that is, on balance, about job destruction rather than job creation. And because job destruction hurts workers even as it increases profits and the incomes of top executives, leveraged buyout firms have contributed to the combination of stagnant wages and soaring incomes at the top that has characterized America since 1980."


Damn! Scathing criticism, right? But two paragraphs later, Krugman asks:

"So what do we learn from this story? Not that Mitt Romney the businessman was a villain. Contrary to conservative claims, liberals aren’t out to demonize or punish the rich. But they do object to the attempts of the right to do the opposite, to canonize the wealthy and exempt them from the sacrifices everyone else is expected to make because of the wonderful things they supposedly do for the rest of us."

Huh? It's okay to ship jobs overseas, cut wages and pay for remaining domestic workers, and get rich by producing absolutely nothing of value so long as such an individual pays a slightly higher tax rate? Sorry, Professor, but I'll have to disagree with on that one.

Perhaps Professor Krugman would be wise to examine the impending collapse of Slate.com, an online magazine that he once wrote for. The opinions and commentary webizine built up a steady readership with well-thought out, articulately reasoned online columns. Not two paragraph blog-brain farts, but actual columns. Like a newspaper. Just for the web.

Enter the Washington Post. I documented the slow destruction of Slate recently, so I will not recount all of that here, but the irony is overwhelming. The Washington Post increased its profits by laying off smart writers like Timothy Noah and Jack Shafer, and replaced the thoughtful, if not always correct Annie Lowrey with the sophomoric Matthew Yglesias.

Let's be frank: The Washington Post probably isn't paying Yglesias nearly what it paid Lowrey. And instead of paying staff writers, Slate currently leans heavily on reproducing news from the Associated Press to increase web traffic. And then there are the "guest contributions," paying some professor a fraction of the Post would pay a salaried writer to produce content.

Ironically, one of these guest columnists is an economics professor by the name of Robert Frank from Cornell University.  I say ironically because this Ivy League economics professor is laughably wrong in his prescription for America's current economic malaise. In a piece titled, "The Progressive Consumption Tax," Professor Frank identifies income inequality as a problem that can only be resolved by scrapping the income tax and replacing it with a progressive sales tax--that is, instead of a fixed tax rate on goods services, a rate on goods and services that would increase based on one's income. Incredibly, with the wealthiest Americans earning more money, Frank proposes that his progressive sales not be implemented at this time.

Clearly, Robert Frank is educated beyond his intelligence. After all, it is in the interest of the 99.9 percent of all Americans that the super-rich spend more money, not less. Spending keeps the economy going, and the Mitt Romeny's and Jamie Dimon's of the world have more money at their fingertips than they could ever possibly hope to spend. That's a problem, because with when corporations and super-wealthy individuals horde money into offshore savings account, such money has essential disappeared from the economy. Presto. Gone. Someone else has seen the fruit of his or her labor vanish, likely to never be seen again.

Where should Krugman and other self-proclaimed liberals go from here? Perhaps they should stand for more than just higher tax rates on the wealthiest one tenth of one percent and instead focus more on the root causes of income inequality. And believe me, they came from somewhere.

To be continued . . .

Slate Ain't What it used to be

It's a shame. Slate.com, a once respectable, opinions and commentary website, has devolved to unprecedented levels of shoddiness.

This didn't happen overnight. Rather, it started slowly. A small, rather innocent journalistic experiment in which reporters would not hide their biases, but rather share their opinions based on facts. It made for brilliant arguments (like Tim Noah's analysis on American health care coverage), thought provoking insight (ie, anything from Christopher Hitchens), and probing questions about human nature, taking politics out of the equation. And sometimes interesting commentary on sports, or media, or some other facet of American politics or culture. It was interesting, and it resided strictly in the fact-based community.

No longer. Microsoft had no need for this little thought experiment in 2004, and the opportunistic, money-losing Washington Post showed a rare display of financial acumen by purchasing the online entity. Over time, inferior journalists started writing guest columns that looked more like deceptive industry p.r. pieces than any legitimate journalistic endeavor. New "reporters" started to fill the bandwidth with CNN-style fluff, writing about whether or not a certain candidate will go up or down in the polls, as opposed to whether or not a policy proposal does or does not make sense.

The final nail in the coffin, perhaps, was when the Washington Post laid off Timothy Noah and Jack Shafer. Why? To what end? What industry in its right mind would lay off its best employees?

The future One World Trade Center

The Post, like most daily newspapers, probably isn't making a lot of money. It is probably losing money, or breaking even. So what did the wizards of finance over at accounting decide to do? Cut the payroll from the Online publication that is actually making money!

That's absurd. And it's probably why its "Moneybox" columnist, Matthew Yglesias is so laughably clueless about anything having to pertain with anything related to economic matters.

No more than two days ago, this Magna Cum Laude Harvard graduate posted a rather sophomoric brain-fart theory about economic development on Manhattan island (sorry about the harsh language, the university I went to in New Haven was on the wrong side of the tracks).

 Apparently, real estate in Manhattan would be cheap, if only the city of New York would remove the height restriction in certain neighborhoods. Is Yglesias aware that a new luxury high-rise goes up virtually every fort-night in midtown? Or that construction workers are currently building the largest office tower in the human history downtown?

It would be a waste of words to correct every wrong that Yglesias theorizes, but the man clearly doesn't understand that economics is demand-side. As long as Manhattan is populated with the richest people in the country, it will be an expensive place to live.

Not to outdo himself, Yglesias went off the rails again today, this time taking aim at Miley Cyrus for making a music video in support of "Occupy" protests across the globe. In Yglesias's warped world, Cyrus owes her wealth to income inequality and therefore, shouldn't empathize people struggling financially.

Yglesias doesn't stop there. He cites rising incomes in China and India as a reason for Cyrus's great wealth. The trouble with this logic is that when poor people start earning money, that decreases income inequality. Yglesias offers no explanation, though, as to why Miley's wealth should correlate with other people's hardship. Why is that?

There was a time when the more lucid writers of Slate would have something sensible to say (before they got fired, of course.) After all, no one who works should be poor. The rent wouldn't be too damn high if certain workers didn't make too much money. Why should a hedge fund manager make 20,000 times as much money as a pediatrician? Why should a health care CEO make make more money in an hour than a paramedic earns in an entire year? Why should some entertainers become millionaires when other people who do actual work (concert technicians, broadband installers, manufacturers of music equipment, airline pilots who fly Cyrus and other super-rich entertainers to concerts, etc) face financial hardship?

It is oddly fitting that a real economist (and former Slate columnist), Paul Krugman, published a real, coherent argument about salary and fiscal policy on the same day. It is somewhat tangential, but there is a reason why we tax wealth. And there is nothing wrong with someone who is wealthy suggesting that more people should have good jobs.

So it goes. I lament what is lost, and I refuse to stoop to level of my "professional" peers. I will continue investigating and writing informative online columns to fill the void that once was something.


Until next time, good night--and good luck.

Something I am thankful for.

I hope you all had a very good Thanksgiving this year. Today was an enjoyable time with family for me, but also a day of deep reflectiveness and contemplation. I was still saddened with the recent passing of an elementary school friend, Rachael Verdicchio-Morris. In spite of the fact that a great light went out far too soon, I still feel I have much to be thankful for.

One of Racheal's many beautiful illustrations. Check out her catalog at http://rachealanilyse.com/

Racheal is a hero to me, and I do not use that term lightly. There aren't very many human beings who can brighten your mood simply by the look of her smile, the glean her eye, or the tone of her voice. Racheal did this things so easily that it is a privilege to have known her and gone to school with her.

On simple human terms, she was an exemplary human being. Her accomplishments in life made her exceptional. Her list of accomplishments as an artist are impressive; the works themselves, phenomenal. What is most amazing is that she was able to achieve so much while living with epidermolysis bullosa, a very rare connective tissue disease that leaves the individual with very fragile skin. A simple hug can do a world of damage.

That didn't stop Rachael from living her life. I remember standing around on Prospect Street in Wethersfield, watching a parade, when I heard a familiar voice say, "Hi, Kevin!"

I turned around just in time to Rachael zip by me on her roller skates. At the time, I myself had only tried to roller skate a few times in my life--with very, very poor results. But there she was, unafraid and doing fine. That's inspiration. That's courage. That's heroism.

Some years back, Racheal testified on behalf of other individuals suffering from EB to the Connecticut General Assembly. As recently as 2009, insurance companies in the state of Connecticut were not required to cover wound care for individuals with the disease. To those who doubt the capacity of the democratic process in these troubled times, the bill passed and was signed into law.

Thank you Racheal. You will continue to be an inspiration to us all, now and forever.

Amen.

Tuesday's election results expose myths of right-wing America--opposition continues to waste oppurtunities

America the Conservative. The Country where Patio Man steps out on his deck and warmly embraces an impending foreclosure notice on his underwater mortgage. Anything less, argue the Rick Santelli's of the world, would be tyranny.

Looks like somebody forget that Arizona used to be part of Mexico.

Not exactly. Case and point was the Mississippi "personhood" amendment. Anyone with a decent memory can recall a similar voter-initiative to outlaw abortions in South Dakota back in 2008, and even carved out exemptions for cases of rape, incest or the health of the woman. That bill failed by a similar margin.

Ohio shouldn't have been a surprise either. Governor John Kasich was elected with 49 percent of the vote, and is currently tied with Rick Scott as the most unpopular governor in America. The assume that any of Kasich's policies have even snowball's chance in hell of passing a ballot initiative is laughable.

And then there's Arizona, where Russell Pearce became the first state lawmaker recalled in Arizona history and the first time a state Senate president has been recalled anywhere in the United States. It's also amusing that these Phoenix-area citizens didn't vote a Democrat, they chose another Republican.

And what has the opposition party taken away from all this? Probably nothing. HuffingtonPost has gathered word that the "Super Congress" may extend the Bush Tax cuts--permanently. And today, President Obama released another press release containing Hoover-esque talking points: "The American people deserve to have their leaders come together and make the tough choices necessary to live within our means," said the release. "Just as American families do every day in these tough economic times. The President urged the leaders to get this done."

The folks over at Manhattan Mini Storage understand what's going on.

It's nothing short of phenomenal that presidential candidate could advocate a lower standing of living and come out on top of the polls, but here we are.

Well, I can't take it. If we can't persuade George McGovern to come out of retirement and help save this country yet again, we had better start telling Elizabeth Warren to set her sights a little higher.

Jon Stewart should have stayed up to watch the Colbert Report

Last night's extended Daily Show interview with Nancy Pelosi offered promise, but fell flat. A great deal of the failure fell on Pelosi, who maintained in a somewhat bizarre state slight sincerity and hard core question dodging. One question, though, revealed an unusual failure on Jon's part.

Nancy Pelosi's quasi-sincerity had Jon flummoxed.

"How is it," Jon Stewart asked Nancy Pelosi, "that Paul Volcker writes a three page memo, and that turns into 300 page legislation that Paul Volcker then doesn't support?"

Nancy Pelosi fortified herself against any sort helpful answer, and stuck to platitudes--although true--about the undue influence of lobbyists and Republican extremism.

If Jon Stewart really wanted to know how it is that good legislation so easily gets corrupted, he should have just stayed up and watched the Colbert Report. That very night, the subject of Colbert's "Word" segment was a an anti-bullying law in Michigan. The original legislation stated that public schools would adopt policies against bullying by students. Fair enough.

But before this bill became law, social conservatives carved out an exemption. "This section," states the law, "does not prohibit a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction."

Boom. This allows for harassment of any kind against any person. Steven made light of a few obvious flaws to this legislation, as Jews, Muslims and Christians are now free to harass each other, and the laws of Leviticus are quite ludicrous (Steven didn't mention it, but Leviticus prohibits eating pork, but does not prohibit a man marrying his daughter).

The absurdity of placing harassment in the eyes of the person making the statement is worthless. A Southern Baptist could tell a Catholic that he/she is hellbound because God does not appoint a living emissary in Jesus' absence. If said Catholic were to stay, "please stop saying such hateful things about me," said harasser could keep on shouting. After all, he is only stating his deeply held religious belief!

How did this happen? Through the legislative process. Through participation in representative democracy. Through parliamentary procedure. The failure of our democratic system is not limited to our nation's capitol, but merely an extension of our failures nationwide.

Jon kept prodding Nancy, and Nancy wouldn't let her guard down, finally pulling out a stock cheap applause line to exit the interview.

Of course, as we learned from some of the elections this Tuesday, our democracy isn't a complete failure. But that's a story for another day . . .

Tom Brokaw calls American soldiers unskilled for the economy, crowd aplauses

I wish that headline were a typo. Sadly, it isn't.

On Wednesday, November 2, a mere week and half before Veteran's Day, the former NBC news anchor insulted America's military members on national television and received applause.

Check out the whole video at http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-2-2011/tom-brokaw

To be fair, Tom Brokaw wasn't trying to insult the men and women of America's military. He just made a statement of benevolent ignorance. To his credit, he was trying to say that the country should do more to support its veterans, which explains the applause. But such a statement certainly deserved more scrutiny.

"They've been fighting the bad guys for 10 years," the old man said sternly. "And they don't have the training for this kind of economy."

Excuse me? I think I can name a few professions in which recent veterans do have the training for in this kind of economy: Police Officers, firefighters, paramedics, construction workers, private security workers, Parts inspectors for military equipment, warehouse stock workers, airline pilots, helicopter pilots, computer scientists (yes Tom, today's military uses computers. Check your facts), health care administrators, human resources staff workers, teachers, personal trainers, business consults, tour guides, truck drivers, any civilian job within the Department of Homeland Security. And I'm sure any recently returning vet could be a better news anchor than the arrogant, ignorant, although well meaning, Tom Brokaw. It goes without saying that any recently returning veteran could be a better news anchor than your typical Fox News host, who is arrogant, ignorant and malevolent.

And those are just the good jobs. So what if veterans don't want to sell worthless "complex financial instruments" on Wall Street?  Maybe they love their country to much to send the economy down the toilet. At least that's how Scott Olsen and Kayvan Sabehgi seem to feel about it.

It's wrong to suggest that skilled employees like soldiers, sailors, pilots, marines, etc need more job training to enter the civilian workforce. It's wrong to suggest that any person who is willing and able for work is unqualified. Stewart seemed a little taken aback by Brokaw's shocking statement, and tried to save Brokaw from his own ignorance by suggesting a specific example of what work our servicemen and women are already qualified for.

"You have this group of incredibly talented and determined individuals who clearly know how to rebuild countries--we could use rebuilding." Steward said, and he wasn't joking. "It seems like a really nice match."

But the old man wouldn't budge. Brokaw's body language indicated he was remarkably dismissive of Stewart's suggestion, and his verbal response seemed at odds with his condescending attitude towards Stewart that prevailed throughout the interview. "The fact is that they are well trained" Brokaw said. "They know about discipline, they know about risk assessment, they know about management of resources, And they know about going into hostile situations and making a quick sizing up about what's at risk there."

Yeah, those are all called job skills.

If you are a vet, don't let Brokaw's nonsense get you down. Thank you for your service. If you haven't done so already, check out Jobs for Vets. And any job searcher can benefit from reading What Color is your Parachute. Don't waste your time reading Brokaw's latest book. We already have public service academies. They're called universities. For others, it's called military service.

Rick Santurum: Make war, not love.

Folks, I apologize as its been a while. It's been hard to keep up with all the madness. Sometimes, however, it is just as simple as re-posting what is already on video.

First of all, are you kidding me? It should be unsurprising that Santorum would make such a ludicrous claim that soldiers aren't having sex. Maybe he should have specified that soldiers aren't having sex during combat operations, but I don't think this man is intellectually capable of understanding the distinction. The fact that the audience gave Santorum such enthusiastic applause displays their ignorance on the matter as well.

It also has such a disgusting, 1984ish overtone. Having sex is to be looked down upon, to be scorned. Participate in the war effort, brother!

It's just sad. Make love, not war. Wow, what a slogan. So convincing. Love is lovely and war is ugly. Then again, we don't know how people like Santorum view the physical act of love. Even Colonel Jack Ripper seemed to enjoy the concept of lovemaking.

Not so for Rick "man-on-dog" Santorum. Make war, not love. I'm sure he thinks he's doing God's work by disavowing sexual intercourse, and I'm sure millions of women are grateful for it (just not for the reason's Santorum supposes).

At any rate, his campaign will sputter with the same flaccid lifelines as his own sex life, which, in a way, is justice.

Final thoughts on Amy Winehouse.

We will miss you, Amy.

behind the tabloids, the flame-outs, and the horrors of drug addiction was one of the most talented singer/songwriters of the last ten years. The fact that people don't pay for music anymore is just as much a reflection on new technology as it is a reflection that most of what record companies throw at the consumer is absolute garbage.

Amy Winehouse has left us. Suddenly, not entirely unexpected. Sadness befalls us, and the call to recollect on her complex life beckons. A life brought to stardom through her sheer talent, brought down ultimately by the addictions that she so poetically celebrated. Like the Irish poets before her, she wrote from her experience. And like the Irish poets, her experiences led to her untimely demise.

And like several prominent artists in more recent times, (Hendrix, Dean, Morrison, Joplin, Cobain) she left us at 27. It is almost eerily fitting that such a cast has left us at this exact age. 27 is a perfect cube, the product of 3 times 3 times three. Three dimensions. That's Amy. That's Jimi, James, Janis and Kurt.

Unlike the flat, two dimensional record-company groomed "artists" that are constantly spewed on commercial radio constantly, these are real people who have entered the cultural zeitgeist through talent and ingenuity. Amy had both in spades.


"I'm no good" was a song that sounded fresh, smooth, and a little bitter. Like a bottle of good wine. It can from Amy's heart, expressed beautifully on so many levels.

"Rehab" was ingenious, a remarkable ability to integrate catchy "hooks" into music without sounding like the idiotic child-like sing-songs of Madison Avenue garbage.  A remarkable use of real musicians seamlessly integrated with synthesizers to make real music. Not since Pete Townsend added a synthesizer to "Won't get fooled again," has electronics so enhanced the underlying soul of real music. And that was a long time ago.

Vintage without sounding old. New without pandering to the often idiotic trends of pop music. That's hard to do. That's the hallmark of Amy's work, and why we will miss her.

Goodbye, Amy.

Fix player salaries--forever.

Let them play. No more lockouts. No more strikes. No more petty arguments between the millionaires and the billionaires.

That holds true for Major League Baseball, the National Baseball Association, and the National Football League.

The NFL generates $9 billion a year. MLB takes in 7 billion a year. The NBA--which already has a player salary cap--claims it is losing money despite taking in $4.3 billion a year. Not content to finish in last-place among the big three billionaires of professional sports NBA owners are talking about enduring season-long lockout. I have a better idea.

Yes, it's time to renegotiate collective bargaining agreements in these three industries, but we need to do so in such a way that enables players a fair compensation for the work they do and gets miserly owners to shut their respective yaps about how they're going to the poorhouse.

Let's take Major League Baseball. Although owners claim there is no cap on player salaries, there is a de facto salary cap. No player earns more money than Alex Rodriguez. In the 10 years since A-Rod became the highest-paid player in baseball, no one has surpassed him in salary.*

Rodriguez is able to command such money for two reasons. First of all, Major League Baseball makes enough money to pay him. Second of all, human beings of his athletic ability (enhanced or not) are remarkably hard to come by. It's supply and demand: the Yankees wanted a right-handed long-ball threat who can hit for average and play exceptional defense at third base while chasing Hank Aaron's home run record. The reality is, only Alex Rodriguez can do that at this point in time.

Albert Pujols can make a claim that he is better than Alex Rodriguez when he becomes a free agent at the end of this season. Like Rodriguez, Pujols puts up Hall of Fame numbers every year. Like Rodriguez, he has played on a World Championship team and multiple MVP awards. And like A-Rod, he is very competitive. When he hits the free agent market, it is fair to say he will be the best player on the market and therefore, worthy of a salary at least equal to A-Rod's.

Except that he will ask for more because Major League Baseball is a more profitable industry. MLB revenues have more than doubled since A-Rod landed his blockbuster $250 million contract in 2000. Theoretically, Pujols could ask a $500 million contract!

Now you might say to me, Kevin, that's an absurd amount of money. You are right, my friend. It is absurd. You might also say to me that, if the company you worked for saw profits double over the course of ten years, and you helped that happen, you would be right to ask for some portion of the profits.

Major League Baseball has seen its revenue more than triple over the last 15 years.

Therein lies the dilemma. On the one hand, players want to get as much money as they feel they are owed, and owners will complain about player salaries whether financial problems are real or imagined. In 2002, Arthur Andersen, also an accountant for Enron (remember them?) declared that Major League Baseball was losing money. While that claim may have been fiction, today the  Mets and Dodgers are losing money right now. These losses have less to do with player salaries and more to do with problems in our financial sector: The Mets "invested" $500 million in Bernie Madoff, Frank McCourt borrowed money that he didn't have to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Problem number two is that salaries lend themselves to escalation everytime a blockbuster player hits free agency. Every free agent signing is therefore impacted. If Johan Santana makes $20 million a year, C.C. Sabathia wants $20 million a year as well. If the Yankees were willing to offer more than that to Cliff Lee and Sabathia is at least as good a pitcher as Lee, Sabathia will likely ask the Yankees to pay him at least what they offered Lee last season. Few would disagree that these arguments about millions of dollars hurt the fan base.

First of all, we should deconstruct the pretense that these multi-billion dollar professional sports industries are losing money. If Frank McCourt or Fred Wilpon can't meet payroll, they've got to sell the team. Period.

Second, and more important, we must restructure the free agent process to more accurately reflect what players say they want: fair financial recognition of their value to the sport. Here is what I propose:

Instead of our constantly escalating system of free-agent mega-deals every time a Hall of Fame-caliber player hits the market, players would instead negotiate based a tiered system of pre-determined salaries. At the top of the tier would be the Hall-of Fame bound. Below that would be All-Star, followed by above average everyday players, average everyday players, and then bench reserve players. For the sake of argument, the pay scale might look something like this:

Certainly Hall-of Fame-bound: 20 million
Possibly Hall-of Fame bound: 15 million

All-Star: 5 million
Above Average: 2.5 million
Average Player: 1 million
Bench Players: 500,000

A player would also receive bonuses based on performance. MVP Awards, Batting Titles, and so forth would entitle a player to a bonus. So would selection to the All-Star team. These bonuses could be team-based as well: the infield that makes the fewest errors gets a bonus. The pitching roster with the lowest ERA gets a bonus. And obviously, the team that wins the World Series gets a bonus.

The best players want to earn the most money. That's fair.

This would institute fairness and sanity the free agent market. If Matt Kemp were to be a free agent, he would bargain based on whether or not a team valued him as a potential Hall of Famer or an All-Star. He would negotiate based more on his value as a player than whatever his agent would be able to squeeze out of ownership. The tier system would adjust its dollar amounts every ten years, after which it would be re-adjusted based on revenue.

Of course, that leaves a great deal of extra money as the revenue would surely increase over the course of the next ten years without any corresponding increase in player salaries. What to do with those extra millions, perhaps billions of dollars?

That money would go into a fund for after school inner-city youth sports programs. Basically, whatever extra revenue gained through the savings incurred through the tiered system of player salaries would go into a designated fund. Every city that has a professional sports team would benefit. The kids would have good-quality sports equipment and facilities, and would be supervised under professionals who would teach character building, teamwork and sports fundamentals. In that order.

Some might say that the owners and players of the NBA, NFL, MLB, etc might dismiss such an agreement, no matter how popular and morally decent such a program might be. If the owners and player's unions were unable to adopt such a program, the Federal government should respond by revoking the concept of exclusive broadcasting rights to sporting events, as well as the tax-exemption for game tickets.

I think both sides would be more receptive to the tiered system of payroll when given the choice. But what about you? If you think this idea is too good to float around the blogosphere, we should start a campaign to make this concept go viral. The urgency to enact such a program is vital, given that some NBA owners are talking about yet another season-long lockout.

* Granted, Alex Rodriguez did negotiate a pay raise after the 2007 season, as his contracted enabled him to "opt-out" and negotiate for better terms. Under the tiered system, A-Rod would still have earned more money, but such compenstation would have been specific to his on-field accomplishments: Each MVP award and Home Run title he earned in that time period would have given him a bonus.

Moderation Versus Good Policy

Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee doesn't like this. Too bad.

Last week's Gay Pride Parade in New York was a little more prideful than usual, for good reason. Oddly enough, the great state of Rhode Island didn't think people should celebrate over gay marriage, and instead the state legislature passed a civil union bill. It reminded me of Barry Goldwater, when he read a speech written by somebody else who was paraphrasing somebody else. To be succinct, I will paraphrase:

"Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue; extremism in the pursuit of justice is no vice."

As he sometimes does, Mr. Goldwater has a point. Sort of. Then again, that's Barry Goldwater for you. What Goldwater did not define was what the terms "moderation" and "extremism" meant. And to be fair, he was an extremist. But that does not justify "moderation" as good policy. That wasn't true in 1964 and it is certainly no more true today.

Evidence that democracy works: People celebrate in the street to celebrate passage of legislation. How often does that happen?

Andrew Cuomo just passed good policy, and millions of people are elated. 58 percent of New Yorkers approve of gay marriage, compared to 54 percent nationally. The fact that Governor Cuomo was able to sign the will of the majority into law has garnered speculation that he may someday run for President. To quote Goldwater's contemporary, you can go from chicken shit to chicken salad!

And gay marriage is good policy. Buffalo state senator Mark Grisanti said so in just a few simple words:

"I cannot legally come up with an argument against same-sex marriage. Who am I to say that someone does not have the same rights that I have with my wife, whom I love, or the 1300 plus rights that I share with her?"

That's a good point. That's good policy.

Civil Unions are not good policy. It is a semantics nightmare, an intrusion on religious freedom, and perhaps worst of all in the eyes of political conservatives, a French Social Experiment.

France passed its own "civil unions" law in 1999. Guess what? Straight couples prefer these domestic partnerships to marriage. What gives? If today's Republican Party wants to boast about "streamlining government," what is the point of establishing two legal separate legal entities for the exact same living situation?

Liberals view same-sex marriage as a civil right--that all Americans are guaranteed equal protection under the law. Some political conservatives view same-sex marriage as a right for religious institutions to wed whom they please, and that marriage is a bedrock of community. There is really no "middle ground" here.

And while "civil unions" are merely a benign case of "moderate" policy, let's revisit our old friend Lyndon Johnson to see what a complete, unmitigated utter disaster a "moderate" course can be.

While his political opponents accused him of communism, Lyndon Johnson established Medicare. When Klansman were bombing churches in Alabama (and acquitted of murderer, by the way), Lyndon Johnson signed historic civil rights legislation. The economy grew with a federal deficit that was only 3 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, compared to a whopping 90 percent today. Some of his policies were consider radical at the time, today we take them for granted.

And Johnson also assumed a moderate course on foreign policy. Barry Goldwater advocated the invasion of North Vietnam and the use of nuclear weapons. Douglas MacArthur warned against any military involvement in Southeast Asia (a mere footnote to his personal history). Lyndon Johnson attempted to bridge these conflicting viewpoints by supporting the South Vietnamese government "by all necessary measures." We all know what happened next.

I understand the concept of negotiation and the art of the deal. And there is a time and place for that. To be wise, we must understand the difference.

Andrew Cuomo--What can I say?

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I just haven't been able to keep up with the pace of madness to write my thoughts coherently. Sometimes, though, the madness just writes itself.

On a day when when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo coerced state employees in major wage and benefit concessions, the sports section of the New York Times posted a literally groundbreaking story about dirt.

Apparently, dirt is big money. At least it is when it's the dirt that Derek Jeter stood on--but only on the night of his 3,000 hit. Any other day of the year, it's just dirt.

Sadly, New York voters had little choice in the 2010 election. Both Andrew Cuomo and his opponent Carl Paladino cling to the lunatic fallacy that state workers are making too much money--and we need low taxes to spur "innovation," so that private sector workers can prosper.

Perhaps if New York's state income tax where lower still, Steiner Sports might be inclined to sell Derek Jeter's underwear from the historic night. Or maybe the urinal cakes from the clubhouse bathroom could fetch top dollar. How about his athletic cup?

Even sarcasm is insufficient to describe the total idiocy of an economic policy that punishes university professors, welfare fraud investigators and environmental conservation workers in hopes that the Lloyd Blankfein's and Brandon Steiner's will "trickle down" wealth the the rest of us.

I just have one question for Governor Cuomo: If high taxes discourage worker productivity, do you really think that when Derek Jeter is standing on that valuable dirt, he cares about his tax rate?

Maybe we should ask Paul Molitor for a second opinion.

Remember, Governor, there's only one right answer. And there's only one thing a good ballplayer thinks about when he's in the batter's box. It sure as hell ain't taxes.

Traffic: There must be some kind of way outta here

Said Annie Lowrey to the thief. Hot right now on Slate.com is Annie Lowrey's blunt analysis of commuting to and from work. It's something that should be said more often: It's awful. And it's costing more than just money.

How much? Lowrey cites a study from a Swedish university that tied longer commuting to higher divorce rates. And that's just in Sweden. Our traffic is about a million times worse. Lowrey collects other evidence based on surveys in the United States that confirm the obvious. Workers who have longer commutes are less happy and less healthy than those who spend less time in a car (also known in rush hour as the isolated cage of immobility). And if you think being in rush hour contributes to immobility, there's also a disturbing correlation between these commutes and our nation's obesity crisis.

I do not think this is the utopia that Henry Ford envisioned.

What can be done to solve this problem? Lowrey puts the blame on homeowners. Apparently, we've just been duped by cunning real estate agents. Apparently, "drive until you qualify" isn't an obnoxious put-down, it's a clever ad technique!

There is a problem with this analysis. It ignores the fact that there are homes to be had at incredibly low prices not far from the urban core. They are called slums. Or Ghettos. But they are houses that can be purchased for the price of a typical down-payment on a suburban house. Understandably, most middle-class families don't want to live in high crime areas with over-crowded schools. Fair enough. That's why it's time for an aggressive policy change.

Places like Detroit, Michigan and Hartford, Connecticut cannot wait for the same kind of gentrification that Brooklyn was fortunate enough to encounter in the last ten years. These communities need to made livable now.

The United States should enact a tax on retail gasoline based on the concept of a price floor, such that the cost of gasoline will never fall below a certain amount. For the sake of argument, let's say that the cost of regular unleaded gasoline will be fixed at $4.50 per gallon. If gas normally costs $3.20 per gallon, the tax would be $1.30 per gallon. If gas were to retail to $2.75 per gallon, the tax would be $1.75 per gallon. If the cost of gas were to spike suddenly and gas were to retail at or above $4.50 per gallon, the tax would be suspended.

Finally! A practical use for the Canyonero!

Funds acquired from the tax would be set aside for the strict use of rehabilitating dilapidated houses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development could purchase the homes, employ contractors to make them safe and livable, then sell the homes back to the general public at the original cost, plus operating expenses. Simply put, if it costs HUD $30,000 to refurbish a house that cost $20,000, HUD would sell the house for $50,000.

The benefit of such a program is obvious. The United States was caught flat-footed in 2008 and again to a slightly lesser extent this year when retail gas skyrocketed, whereas European nations where more able to absorb the cost as they have been accustomed to better mass transit and more fuel efficient vehicles. This would also provide soften the blow at the gas pump in the event of future price spikes.

Brookyln, pre and post gentrification. A little elbow grease could rebuild other cities.

The other benefit is that our communities can be made whole again. You might not have noticed it, but Chicago lost 200,000 residents in the last ten years. To put that in perspective, 204,000 is the listed population of Richmond, Virginia. And these people didn't leave due to lack of affordable housing in Chicago (check out this 4 bedroom 2 bathroom for just $24,150). They left because they don't want their kids to get shot at on the way to and from school. Quite frankly, I don't blame them.

But we can fix this problem. We put a man on the moon for no other reason than because we felt like it (and to do it before the Russians did). Therefore, we can give jobs to inner-city youth to fix houses and sell these homes back to the public. It's a jobs program. It's a public safety program. It's an environmental conservation program. Virtually every Democratic core constituency would support such a program, and even General Motors expressed support for the concept of a price floor for gasoline.

The time to start such a program is now. And while Obama maybe too timid to actually start solving our domestic problems, such a plan could easily win approval at the state level.

Haste makes waste, let's get this party started!

Rift between political conservatives and mainstream values continues to diverge

Ah, Karl Rove. Keep talking. Your "Permanent Republican Majority" isn't coming any sooner than the Rapture.

The majority of Americans are okay with this.

Two news stories buried in the back pages were incredibly significant nonetheless. On the same day that Tennessee's State Senate voted to forbid any discussion of homosexuality in kindergarten through 8th grade classes, Gallup released a poll that showed a majority of Americans approving of same-sex marriage. That's right. More than half the country wants to hear to guys--or girls--say, "I do."

While I have no doubt that older generations of Americans felt a sincere reservation towards the subject, it was disgusting to watch crass individuals like Rove try to gin up opposition to equal marriage rights while timid Democrats timidly looked at the polls and failed to articulate the right thing. Six and half years later, public opinion has understandably shifted. Gay marriage, along with higher taxes on the rich,
a one-way plane ticket home for our men and women in Afghanistan, and increased regulation of the financial sector, is a majority opinion in the United States.

Just like the photo above, love is love

George McGovern better start filing his papers before it's too late!

Maureen Dowd faces conflicts with reality

Oh, Miss Maureen Dowd, how I once enjoyed reading your bi-weekly column until I realized it was just a waste of time.

I know that sounds harsh, over the top criticism, and maybe a little bit wrong. But so too is her column.

He's Bambi! No, Dr. Spock! Now he's Paul Newman!

I stopped reading her opinion pieces because she was just re-wording, or in some cases, reprinting the news on page 1 and adding adding clever nicknames to the various political players of the day. Problem was, these nicknames had a tendency to reveal her own misconceptions rather than illustrate the mixture of "politics and Hollywood," that she tries to portray. Case and point: Referring to Barack Obama and "Bambi," during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. In the aftermath of Osama Bin Laden's killing, he is now "Cool Hands Barack." Given that Barack Obama campaigned on attacking Bin Laden even if he was in Pakistan without consent of the Pakistany government, it is clear that he was never naive. Barack didn't change, but Dowd's opinion of him certainly did. And if Dowd bothered to watch or at least read about the President's appearance on "60 Minutes" last week, she would have learned that "Cool Hand Barack" doesn't exactly have ice in his veins.

Although these nicknames might be mildly amusing, it is hard to justify extending these nicknames into a 750 word essay. To phrase it another way, it's kind of like the Saturday Night Live sketch that should have ended after the first joke--but just goes on, and on, and on. And given that these nicknames tend to reveal Dowd's own biases rather than illustrate truth, what's the function of giving her a twice-weekly opinion platform in the New York Times--especially now that I'm paying for it!!

Yesterday's piece put me over the edge. The title was "Corsets, Cleavage, Fishnets." Wow. Is Joe Biden cross-dressing? Is this about the absurdity of Fox News anchors? The latest in the absurd parade of Mama Grizzlies? I thought it was worth reading. Alas, not so much.

Dowd instead took deep exception to popular culture. Fair enough, most of pop culture is garbage. But if you thought it was some fault to the American public, or the avarice of corporations appealing the the lowest common denominator, you were wrong. Apparently, there is a vast, male conspiracy in the entertainment industry to put women down, and she's got the scoop!

What evidence does Dowd utilize to support this claim? She quotes two unnamed television executives--one male, one female--who echo each other, each saying that men are confused. Gender roles have changed, and after watching Christina Hedricks' character on "Mad Men," the male sex can't get enough. Everything on television and the big screen is a male fantasy. Sort of. As usual in her columns, Dowd doesn't bother backing up her claims with evidence. "Mad Men" is in limbo because its contract wasn't renewed of creative differences between network executives and the show's creator, Matthew Weiner. The exec's wanted to eliminate characters and broadcast shorter episodes to save money. (Weiner should be commended for not bowing to such foolish demands, but that's another story).

Even Dowd herself has a hard time reconciling her logic when she writes about a redux of Charlie's Angels. "Sure, the angels of Charlie (Robert Wagner) look hot in thigh-high black boots, red vinyl minidresses and devil’s horns," writes Dowd. "But they have skills, like building car engines, cracking safes hanging upside down after drinking two Cosmos, and putting 'the cat in cat burglar.'"

Um, that's always been the nature of the original show. And the movie. Attractive women fight crimes. Was Dowd unaware of that? How can this be some sort of new trend? And yes, the women on television and in movies are attractive, but has Dowd ever noticed so are the men! 

Reading her loopy logic is like a train wreck. The Green Lantern, approximately the 15 billionth comic book-turned movie of the last ten years is another "recent example" of Dowd's newly discovered trend about male domination in the movies. Apparently, Dowd knows what men want, and it's the half-naked Ryan Reynolds. When Dowd writes that Hollywood is a male dominated business, she is presuming too much when she assumes that most of these men are interested in women.

Maureen Dowd makes a false assumption when she assumes
that most men in Hollywood are heterosexual chauvinists.

Maybe my expectations are a little high for Ms. Dowd, who, unlike David Brooks, was once an award-winning reporter who wrote about actual news. Then again, that makes her quoting of unnamed sources all the more inexcusable (see Miller, Judith).

And, in all fairness to Ms. Dowd, she also hasn't completely missed the mark. She grew up in a time when women weren't allowed to do anything (thanks Title IX)! As a result, when she sees attractive women on television, she cries foul, insisting that women are only appreciated for their bodies. Apparently, she forgot that the name of the show "Mad Men," is mad men! It's a scathing indictment of the male behavior of the past, not cause celebré. Don Draper is mad much the way the villains were in great works of Charles Dickens. Would anyone read Oliver Twist as hagiography to 19th century orphan industry?

Sadly, I think David Brooks would answer in the affirmative to that question (it's wealth creation! He would argue), but someone like Maureen Dowd would no know better. The same holds true for summer movies and television shows. Dowd should do a lot more research and back up claims with actual evidence before signing her name to it.

Based on the last 15 years of her career, that may be wishful thinking, but at least for the rest of us, we can retain belief in equal rights of men and women without seeing misogyny everywhere.

Osama Bin Laden never lived in a cave

You heard it here first.

In case there was any doubt, the man never, ever lived in a cave. Osama Bin Laden died the way he lived: in incredible luxury. In a three-story mansion, complete with western cola, Nestle chocolate bars, and homegrown marijuana. And the pornography, lots and lots of pornography.

It's a shame that President Obama dismisses releasing many of the facts related to the recent raid as "spiking the political football." Hey, Barry Sanders never spiked a football, but he knew when had crossed into the Endzone. Right now, President Barry needs to communicate to the millions of Muslims openly sympathize with the terrorist leader, because their sympathy is based entirely on ignorance and misconception.

The misconception is that Osama Bin Laden was some sort of freedom fighter, a man born into wealth who rejected his life of privilege to "go underground" and "fight oppression." The problem with this theory is that Bin Laden's involvement with the Mujahideen has always been subject to debate, with no firsthand evidence that he ever actually fought the Soviet army in the 1980s. The fact that he was born rich and spent the last several years of his life living in luxury is indicative that he never learned to live without.

In time, the truth will come out. The videos of him walking through the mountainous regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan will be revealed to be nothing more than cleverly staged photo-ops. Each video of Osama and his "death to America tirades" probably started as follows: "All right everybody, hop in the van. I look great in just five minutes--with just for men! We'll drive to these mountains over here, make sure the camera doesn't face the road. I want to do all this in one take. Afterwords, we'll get stoned and eat chocolate!"

The man may no longer be alive, now the myth must die. People all over the world need to know that this alleged terrorist mastermind was nothing more than a psychotic millionaire. People in the Muslim world need to know that he didn't care about them, he merely saw them as pawns in his own web of personal delusion.

So by all means, Mr. President, tell the truth. Granted, the truth must dazzle gradually, but it is better to inform rather than let ignorance and misconception fester. That too, can make the whole world blind.

Someone needs to tell the Grey Lady there is no Room for Debate

Arg. Deprived of one my main sources for news, I finally buckled and paid the damn subscription fee for the New York Times. In spite of how often I criticize it, The Times is still a reasonably good news source more often than not, particularly offering more depth than other news outlets. And I like Paul Krugman, and their Travel Section, and the fact that they police their own comment boards so that the discussions generated actually enhance, rather than obscure meaning.

And then I see something that makes me cringe because it is virtually no value to the reader and producer of news alike.

One of the web-exclusive features of the Times is a somewhat slapdash "Room for Debate" opinion "thing." I really don't know what to call it--other than garbage. I say this because on the subjects the Times chooses, there is absolutely no room for debate among sane, thinking individuals. Basically, some editor for the paper selects a few people of expertise and they write a few paragraphs on a given subject of "debate."

The most recent exercise in this debacle was military spending. Some nameless editor simply phrased the question as follows:

Annual military spending has risen more than 70 percent in inflation-adjusted terms since 2001. With the drive to reduce the deficit, the current $700 billion Pentagon budget is considered by budget cutters to be a good place to find savings.
Which areas of the Pentagon budget should Leon Panetta, the next defense secretary, target for savings? What kinds of spending could most easily be cut back? How big a peace dividend might be expected from withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan?

The debate should have been settled last week when an elite team of Navy Seals--not a military force of 100,000 soldiers--killed Osama bin Laden and made off with a virtual truckload of Al-Qaeda information. And for seven of the eight online "debaters," it was. One could read seven different iterations of the same theme: remove American soldiers from large commitments overseas and stop spending a literal fortune on cold-war era programs. I could read this from the perspective of a retired military colonel, A university professor of international relations, a history professor (you know, to mix it up a little bit), a "Lecturer" at Harvard University, an MIT research scientist, and even the Koch brothers funded Cato Institute research fellow. Oh, and Ronald Reagan's Assistant Secretary of Defense. When people of opposing political perspectives agree with each other, that's not debate. That's agreement. The lone outlier in this discussion was Mackenzie Eaglen of the ultra-right wing Heritage Foundation. Her proposal was Donald Rumsfeld's failed policy with her name on it: more troop presence, more money for weapons programs, coupled with pay cuts for soldiers and outsourcing tasks to civilian personnel. Yeah, like that saved money.

Maybe the New York Times can do a little cost-cutting of its own and eliminate this stupid "debate" forum and just report on the facts. The headline and sub-head might read as follows: "Experts across the political spectrum call for reduction in military spending, Heritage Foundation still mired in its own web of delusion.

Just a thought.

The Seven Most Important Things to consider know that Bin Laden has Received the Hot Lead of Justice

Good riddance. Now that Osama Bin Laden's gone, he's all over the news again. In the flurry of talking heads, twits making tweets, and written words, here are the seven most important things to consider now that Bin Laden has met his fate:


The "Biden" Doctrine has succeeded where the Bush Doctrine has failed.

"We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.[emphasis mine]. George W. Bush's policy of overthrowing governments--by pre-emption if necessary--to stop terrorism should be viewed as a complete failure. It could be weeks or months before we know how much the Pakistani government knew of Osama Bin Laden's whereabouts, but it seems incredibly dubious that the Pakistani government made any good faith effort to capture the man. Does that mean we should have overthrown the Pakistani government as well, only to let Bin Laden escape yet again?

Bottom Line: Joe Biden's vision of a narrow, focused attack on counter-terrorism is more effective at bringing specific terrorists to justice than trying unilaterally attacking countries to spark a wave of democracy and therefore, stem terrorism.

This should accelerate the splintering of Al-Qaeda.

The Obama administration should not downplay the strategic significance of one man. Fred Kaplan and Daniel Byman over at Slate.com probably have the best analysis based on actual facts of what will happen without the star power of Bin Laden. In the long run, Al-Qaeda's recruiting will likely suffer with the loss of its figurehead, and affiliate groups in Somalia and Yemen are likely to be wary of each other, perhaps creating a power struggle with Al-Qaeda's main branch in Pakistan. Which brings us to point number three:

Justice has been served, but the most effective way to reduce/eliminate the terror threat requires non-military solutions.

For what these polls are worth, Al-Qaeda does not register a majority level of support in any country. Richard Clarke hits the nail on the head with his analysis in Monday's New York Times. Clarke describes the difficult situation in countries like Egypt, Syria, and Yemen, where governments are unpopular due to catastrophically high levels of unemployment:


"Moderate, tolerant and even some secular groups exist, but they often do not have a comprehensive alternative vision, know how to communicate it or have the organizational skills to promote it. American and European experts can assist them in building politically viable organizations, but to succeed these new groups must be homegrown and tap into the Arab and Islamic traditions that speak to many Muslim youth.
"Moreover, without investment to create jobs, new governments in these countries will fail under the weight of youth unemployment. Unless corruption is replaced with efficiency, investment will either not materialize or be wasted"

Osama Bin Laden was Hitler without an army: a man of evil without conscience who had the ability to deceive otherwise decent human beings into doing horrible things. Hitler became popular because he was right when he said that the Treaty of Versailles unfairly punished Germany after World War I. After World War II, the United States and Britain resolved not to make the same mistake again, and would allow their defeated foe to rebuild. Preventing another Osama Bin Laden requires diplomacy and a commitment to global economic prosperity. In other words, we can't just give $1.3 Billion annually to someone like Hosni Muburak. We need to make sure that economic aid goes directly to the people, and not some dictator who turns a blind eye to high unemployment and citizens who become terrorists. Speaking of dubious allies:

With friends like Pakistan, who needs enemies?


The U.S. State Department needs to be more selective when determining who is really "a valuable ally" of the United States. Osama Bin Laden was living in a large mansion with 12 foot high walls not far from Pakistan's military training facility. Neighbors noticed that the building did not have telephone service and that the occupants burned their trash. This did not arouse the suspicion of the Pakistani military? Whether Pakistan was blissfully unaware of Bin Laden's presence or knowingly sheltered him remains to be discovered.

So what do we do with Pakistan? Do we overthrow this government as well? Or should we continue with the diplomacy that Richard Clarke encourages? If we are going to win the hearts and minds of the opposition, we should engage in diplomacy first.

Our continued presence in Afghanistan is continually harder to justify.

The moral justification for overthrowing the Taliban was because they harbored Al-Qaeda, giving them a "home base" to plot terrorist attacks. So does Yemen. So does Somalia. If we need to do so, our Navy SEALs can track down and kill a high-profile terrorist in hot pursuit, regardless of what government the country has.

Taking that into consideration, the question of supporting the Karzai government deserves more scrutiny than ever before. Is he unpopular because the Taliban hate freedom, or because he probably lost the last election? As our current situation stands right now, the United States will have a continued military presence in Afghanistan until 2014, at which point a withdrawal might take place--or be re-evaluated based on conditions on the ground.

That time for re-evaluation is now. President Obama should listen to members of both political parties, in calling for an exit strategy, rather than the increasingly delusional Joe Lieberman. The U.S. government puts itself at risk by supporting regimes like Muburak. We need smarter diplomacy and fewer wars without clearly defined goals in order to truly fight Islamic extremism.

Now is also a good time to restore the rule of law.

"Wonder what President Obama thinks of water boarding now?" tweeted the twit Congressman Steve King (R-Iowa).

Spare me. Science tells us that Torture doesn't work. Steve King doesn't believe in science, but fortunately, the Obama administration does. The FBI didn't torture underwear bomber Umar Abdulmutallab. They even read him his Miranda Rights. The FBI did, however, bring in Umar's relatives, and from that tactic the FBI was able to extract all the information they needed.

Steve King may not believe in science, but the rest of us do. We don't have all the details yet, but it seems dubious that information leading to Obama's capture came through torture, or because those questioned were held as "illegal combatants" as opposed to Prisoners of War. Legal scholar Dahlia Lithwick says that such claims are unfalsifiable, but I disagree. Holding Enemy Prisoners of War does not mean that such individuals could not be interrogated, it only requires that they be treated humanely. And guess what? Humane treatment yields results. Donald Rumsfeld's tactics yielded the Abu Ghraib. I think it's safe to say which tactic resulted in Bin Laden's death. Which brings us to our final point:

If we're going to thank a former president for eliminating Bin Laden from the face of the Earth, it's John F. Kennedy, not George W. Bush.

Either George Bush's statement of not caring about Bin Laden's whereabouts and subsequent invasion of Iraq was a clever ploy to make it seem like he wasn't interested in bringing him to justice, or he really didn't care all that much about bringing him to justice.  And remember when John McCain criticized Obama for wanting attack terrorist targets in Pakistan without help from the Pakistani government? It was President Obama who made finding and killing Bin Laden a top priorty, and relied on the Navy SEALs to do the job with remarkable efficiency.

For that, we should thank President Kennedy. This Navy veteran and war hero understood the need for a small group of elite forces trained in unconventional warfare and established the SEALs in 1962. Sunday's raid did what predator drones, cruise missiles, or cluster bombs could not. To everyone who has ever been a member of the Navy SEAL program: Thank you.

That's all for now. Undoubtedly, these topics will arise in the future. Hopefully, our leaders will take the right path.