Change is Always Bad !!

There are those that truly believe change is always bad. The political Right has this view.  The terms new, different and exciting cause them severe gastrointestinal distress for some reason.  I think that the concept of an African-American President scares the living Hell out of them, but this is a race issue that has become hackneyed and is just too easy; perhaps another time.  On to change.

Change sometimes involves a bit of risk. You have to put yourself out there and take a chance on being wrong.  So, what you have to do is make a determination of the risk/reward ratio. Those of us that have been administrators often call this cost-benefit analysis. You weigh the risks against the rewards and you figure out if it is worth it, but more on that later.

Change can cause discomfort. New, different and exciting can sometimes be the cause of fear; fear of the unknown. You do the best you can to figure out the benefits of a change, but you cannot always be right on in your determination, and often there are the dreaded "unintended consequences." You had no idea that unintended consequences would occur, but once the change is implemented, you discover, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, that there are results that you did not anticipate.

 If you listen to the Conservative politicians and believers, the reason the economy took a dump was the fact that the Liberals in Congress decided to change the rules regulating mortgages. Liberals have long believed that everyone should be able to own a home and dictated, by legislative fiat, that mortgages had to be given to lower-income groups, in a certain percentage. Ultimately, this resulted in persons that could not afford mortgages getting mortgages on which they could not possibly make the payments. Time passes and poof, they default. This happens all at once, the residential real estate market takes a huge crap on the economy and we get "The Great Recession."

An excellent example of this is a woman I dated a few years ago. She refinanced her home at 120% of the market value at the height of the market; the assumption being that the homes would continue to appreciate at the over-heated rate they had for the previous several years. In order to be able to make the payments, she amortized the payments over 50 years (she was in her mid-40's at the time...you do the math). This was the only way she could afford the payments, and she used the money to pay off her car and her credit cards, etc. This succeeded in financing her debt over 50 years instead of the usual 5 for a car (again, you do the math, 4% for 50 years vs. a higher interest for only 5 years).

Oh, did I mention that this was an adjustable rate mortgage? Well, the rate adjusted up and she had to do everything she could to make the payment, including getting a second job. She teeters on the brink of losing her home...oh well. I am a little distraught only because I, being the nice guy I am, and being able to at the time, loaned her the money to make a down payment. This is money on which I have not seen payments in a couple of years, but she was able to buy a new Harley...oh well. In many cases, this same thing happened and people lost their homes to foreclosure. The real estate market crashed and burned, and still lies in a heap of rubble as I type, but again, I digress.

I will not argue the point as to whether the Conservatives among us are correct or not, but, if true, I will say it is an excellent example of unintended consequences. Personally, I think the banking industry started cooking the books with “Mortgage-backed Securities” and had a vested interest in issuing mortgages that they knew no one could pay off.  If we decide to make sure all lower-income people can share in the "American Dream," regardless of whether they can afford to make the payments on their new homes and, as a result, we get an economic downturn the likes we have not seen in 80 years. This does not consider the fact that the mortgage foreclosure has devastated these people's credit even further into the future than it might have been before.

Many years ago, as part of a military project, I was doing what we called "hearts and minds" work in a far-off foreign land. One of the things we were doing was to train the farmers how to use things like fertilizer, rotate crops and till hillsides to avoid erosion. It was what we called Peace Corps work too. Each time we tried to get the villagers to do anything different, their reply was always the same, "But we have always done it this way." There was no rational reason for not doing things differently. There were no unintended consequences, just an irrational desire to not change because "we have always done it this way."

In spite of the rather ominous example of unintended consequences, change is not always bad. Change can lead to a more efficient and effective way of doing things. Change can bring about the ability to get more done, do things faster or with less effort. Change can bring about a change of image from old fashioned and stodgy to progressive and enlightened; you know, modern, but in a world in which change is feared and to be avoided at all possible costs; where change is bad, change will never occur. Things will stay the same and they will not get any better, until change is forced upon "them" by an outside entity, or progress marches on and over those that stand in the way.

In our society, we have a group that fears change.  They are the Conservatives.  They want to do things the same way they have always done them and that is a bad thing, given our economy.  Of course, the Liberals can be and are guilty of the same thing on different levels.  The conservatives want the same old, balance our overdrawn checkbook on the backs of those that can least afford it, the poor, the middle-class and working Americans.  I believe they do this for two reasons; first, they are deluded and believe that the rich will use money given or saved by them to make jobs.  History and math have proved them wrong, except in certain very specific circumstances.  The second reason is because they are practicing what I learned in Chicago to be “Machine Politics.”  They are bought and paid for by corporate America.  They are lining their pockets and screwing the working class because the rich will continue to line their pockets with cash.  They have convinced a whole class of people that they have the one true way to fix things.

Now, having said these bad things about Conservatives, allow me to say that things cannot stay the way they are and the Liberals do not accept all the changes that may be necessary.  We can no longer afford to pay for the kind of social welfare safety net we have in the past.  We cannot afford the kind of entitlements we offer from the U.S. Government.  We can no longer afford to have the kind of military we currently have.  These are the things that are causing the national debt to be astronomical. At the very least, these are the kinds of things that need to be cut so we can pay back the national debt.  In my opinion that fact that we had to inject trillions of dollars into the economy to prevent “The Great Recession” from becoming another Great Depression is to blame in large part as well, but far better minds than mine disagree on that issue.

Cowards are persons that fear change, any change, but should know better. However, they are not tribes of under-educated, third-world fiefs or serfs in a feudal system. The cowards are those that tremble at the mere thought of doing things differently; they think that if things stay the same, they have nothing to fear. They hide from progress and they wallow in the behavior of the past, governed by their fears, their insecurities and their false perceptions. Cowards do not realize that change is not only necessary; it is inevitable, just as progress is inevitable. They do not understand that they will suffer the fate of the Dodo if they do not change and accept change, for progressive thinkers will take charge and replace them in the blink of an eye. The cowards will be left trembling in the wake of change, having no idea what has happened to them, decrying their fate, a fate they truly deserve.

Most things can be done better as technology improves, as new methods of accomplishing a task or process are developed, so change is not always bad. However, just because we can change it, does not mean we necessarily should; to paraphrase Dr. Ian Macolm in Jurrasic Park, "You were so busy patting yourself on the back that you could, you never bothered to ask whether you should." We have spent so much time in our society changing things for the sake of change; we have screwed up a lot of things that never needed fixing.

My personal belief is that the education system in this country that focused on reading, writing and arithmetic, did not need to be changed. We changed it because we could, not because we should. We had to justify the employment of all sorts of bureaucrats that justify their existence by changing things for the sake of changing things. Sometimes you have to look at things from the position of, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." There are changes that need to be implemented, where things aren't working, but the cowards won't and that is a damn shame.

McHenry Resorts to Name Calling...Nothing Else Is Left

This afternoon Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, resorted to what the Conservative Right Wing of the Republican Party has left to it. He called Special Advisor for the Consumer Financial Protetion Bureau, Elizabeth Warren, a liar.  Of course, he chose the most consequential of reasons.  No, it was not a matter of national security, it was not a pending criminal matter; it was not even a matter that dealt with consumer financial protection.  What was it that caused Rep. McHenry to call Ms. Warren, a Harvard Law School Professor, a liar?  It was a scheduling conflict.   Yes, it was confusion regarding whether a scheduling conflict existed and, more accurately, whose fault it was.

Rep. McHenry, who represents the 10^th Congressional District, which covers Mooresville, NC, the headquarters of NASCAR, is a graduate of Belmont Abbey College with a Bachelors Degree in history; not an ignorant man, but certainly not of the caliber of a graduate from Harvard Law.  Rep. McHenry became irked because Ms. Warren alleged his staff had created a scheduling conflict and she had a prior commitment to honor.  It must be something about being from one of the Carolinas that makes a politician rude.  You will recall that Rep. Joe Wilson, R-SC, yelled out “You lie!” during President Obama’s health care speech before a joint session of Congress.  It probably has a lot less to do with the fact that they are from one of the Carolinas than it is related to their being Neo-Conservative, Right Wing, True Believer, Republicans and/or Tea Baggers.  It must be a great feeling, albeit delusional, to believe that you are the only person that could possible know what is really true, right and good.

Members of the no-longer-loyal opposition have lowered themselves to the level of rude name-calling and bullying.  There is an old saying I have heard from lawyers that applies to this situation. “If you don’t have the facts on your side, argue the law.  If you don’t have the law on your side, argue the facts.  If you have neither the facts nor the law on your side, argue the Constitution.”  The final part of this has been ad libbed to be, “If you can’t argue the facts, the law, or the Constitution, then scream at the jury.”  The Right has been reduced to screaming, yelling, name-calling, and just being downright rude.

The Right can’t pass the laws they want.  They can’t massage the facts any longer and their warped interpretation of the Constitution has devolved to a reading of the document that leads some state officials to believe they have the right to secede from the Union.  Remember the argument made by 21 states couple of years ago, based on the 10^th Amendment?   I can’t help but wonder if, being part of the Bill of Rights, the 10^th Amendment is one of those “technicalities” the Conservatives are always railing against?  Apparently, only when an Amendment works for them does it really count.  Sorry, hypocrisy just makes me nuts.

My point is that, in the final analysis, the Conservatives occasionally show themselves for what they really are, and we should be afraid…very afraid.

Right Turn Clyde...Obama Went To the Yellow Line in the Center

…or, Liberals Need More Guts…And As Big a Set of Tea Bags As The Tea Baggers.

Liberals voted in Barack Obama for the purpose of implementing Change, drastic, and fundamental Change (I use the capital-C deliberately), but as I look back, I am reminded of the statement from, of all places, the television show, The West Wing.  The President is meeting with a Supreme Court Justice who is resigning, or more accurately, retiring.  As is apparently customary, the Justice is having a private chat with the President prior to entering the Oval Office where he will formally tender his resignation, but it is clear that the Justice is peeved with the President.    The Justice, played by the late, great character actor Mason Adams, looks at the President and says,

“You ran great guns in the campaign. It was an insurgency, boy, a sight to see. And then you drove to the middle of the road the moment after you took the oath. Just the middle of the road.  Nothing but a long line painted yellow.  I wanted a Democrat; instead I got you. Republicans have guts." 

Every time I think of that scene, I think I have lived it since the last election.  When I voted for Barack Obama, I wanted a semi-radical; a President that would see the super-majority and, during a joint session of Congress, would turn to the Republican side of the isle, look them all in the collective eye and say, “Ladies and gentleman; we won the election, we have the super-majority.  Sit down, hold on, and enjoy, because you are in for a Hell of a ride.”  What I got was a right-hand turn to the center, and I am sorely disappointed.  Unfortunately, I do not see an alternative for us Liberals, but to re-elect him.  It is truly making the best of a less-than-ideal situation.

There are any number of jokes made about Liberals; most of them are pointed toward the Democrats and Democratic Party.  I choose to ignore the public relations crap that would have us believe that the Democratic Party must be referred to as “The Democrat Party.”  First, it offends my sensibilities regarding the English language.  Second, it is just petty B.S. that serves no purpose, other than to illustrate a point I shall make regarding Loyal Opposition.  So, allow me some literary license to interchangeably use Liberal (note capital ‘L’) and Democrat.

The joke illustrative of the problem we have as Liberals is in the quote of Will Rogers, “I don’t belong to an organized political party.  I’m a Democrat.”  It was true then and it is true now.  The Democratic Party is so interested in the Liberal values of fairness and equality, so engaged in self-analysis, and at times, seemingly, self-loathing, that they can’t figure out what they should do.  If they do agree on what they should do, they eat their own young while pondering the question as to how they should do it.  There are lists of other psychic conundrums in which Liberals engage that makes them less effectual as leaders than Conservatives and Republicans.  I am not speaking against truth, fairness or equality, but what is the point of all those high-minded values if it paralyzes the party in power, and nothing is implemented?

The Democrats seem to have a near instinctual need to seek out differing opinions and when they are presented with differing opinions or mechanisms of implementation, they feel honor bound to take those views into consideration.  The Left, prizes itself as the party of intellectual honesty.  They engage in self analysis, take great pains to be inclusive and are enthralled with alternatives.  While these are all seemingly laudable characteristics and worthy attributes, they do not serve to enforce party discipline.

These same attributes can make for party chaos and are used to stymie progress and implementation of programs. You know, like the Congress managed to do…no like the Democrats allowed the Republicans to do…in the House and particularly in the Senate, where the Democrats held a super-majority?  It was disorganization and lack of Party discipline that prevented all the legislation on which all the Democrats and, yes, the President, ran and got elected.

We live in an admittedly politically polarized society.  However, I would submit that the Left has remained where it always has been, at least since the Roosevelt administration, while the Right (capital ‘R’) has moved toward an ever-increasingly conservative position on the political continuum.   This has resulted in an unfortunate set of situations that I believe have become quite obvious.

I would argue that contrary to the observation of the fictional Supreme Court Justice quoted above, it is not so much guts that Republicans have, but discipline.  Republicans teach their newbie politician, recently elected party members to tow the party line and are very effective at it.  The use of pressure, often called “negotiation” and “compromise,” is used very effectively to keep members of the party in line.  I consider it more of a brute force tactic, actually, but potāto, potăto.

If you vote inconsistent with the party line, there are, regardless of what you call them, serious consequences.  The Republicans will do anything to enforce party discipline.  Congressmen that do not vote as they should are punished.  They do not get choice committee assignments, or the choice committee assignment is taken away, projects in their districts do not come up for votes or never get to be part of the pork barrel project list.  Party support is withdrawn during a primary or maybe an alternative candidate is presented.  Short of being tied to a chair in the Halls of Congress and being flogged publicly (they do the flogging in the cloak rooms); there is guaranteed to be a price to pay if the party line is not towed.  The Right manages this because it has one thing that the Left does not, party discipline.  The Right enforces loyalty. 

The Right has become a group that seeks, at all potential costs, to remain and/or regain power.  This has resulted in an assessment that anything the Left or Liberals do is wrong.  It is the path to complete oblivion and it is inherently and intrinsically evil.  It has resulted in a lack of cooperative government.  The Right is no longer the Loyal Opposition.  They have become the party of denial and obstructionism.  If the Left wants to do something, anything, the Right says no; no matter what it might be.  Good ideas, even ideas that the Right has proposed in the past, once proposed by the Left, become unacceptable.  We have a government that has devolved to the level of a sandbox full of four-year-olds.  The Right is more interested in finding something to make you afraid of and then blame it on the Liberal Left.  You know, us Commie, Pinko types.  Barack Obama has been labeled, at various times, a Socialist, a Communist, a Marxist (there is a difference, by the way), even, God forbid, a Muslim, and by presumably, fairly well-educated individuals that are supposed to know the meaning of what they are calling him.

I believe this lack of discipline of the Democrats and incredible discipline on the part of the Right explains why, with a super-majority in the Senate, the Democratic Party could not manage to pass the Health Care Bill without significantly watering it down.   The lack of discipline comes from the top down.  Allow me to use an illustrative example. 

Regardless of how you feel about the policy, Barack Obama was elected, in part, on a promise to end the "don’t ask, don’t tell" (DADT) policy of the military and allow openly gay individuals to serve their country in the Armed Forces.  Again, whether you like the policy or hate it, Candidate Obama said he would end it, and he promised to do so.

When Barack Obama took the Oath of Office, he not only became President of the United States, but also became Commander in Chief of all the Armed Forces of the United States of America.  He was the absolute authority, the top dog, the head honcho what be in charge.  You get the idea.  As the Commander in Chief, he had complete authority and, with the stroke of a pen, could have issued an Order to the Armed Forces that “DADT” was over.  Instead of acting on his promise, he chose to take that right turn, abandon the insurgency that got him elected and, instead of using his authority, said he preferred to do it “legislatively.” 

The President burned a lot of political capital doing it this way and he disappointed a huge number of Liberals that trusted him as a man of his word.  While I believe him to be better than anything the Right Wing has had to offer since possibly Ronald Reagan, I got a lot less than I expected and a lot less than I was promised. 

One of the lessons of history is that one of the greatest abuses of power is not to use it when you have it.  Imagine what would be happening to Libyans if the UN was not taking action, and exercising power, to defend the protesting people of that country. If the Liberals in political positions of power in this country do not become more disciplined and start exercising the proper application of power, I fear we are doomed to live at the hands of the corporations that have managed to buy the legislative authority of the Right.  But that is another discussion, for another time.

Personal Privacy, Government Intervention and Who Cares?

Personal privacy is dead, and contrary to the laws of nature, is actually getting deader (more dead?).  We lost a lot of our Right against entry into and search of our homes in a recent Supreme Court Decision, but it is getting worse and will get even worse still.  Interestingly, the people that you think would be screaming about this loudest are not, mostly because it is not their ox being gored.  Allow me to explain how our privacy and personal Rights are going bye-bye.

In my car, I have a "transponder" that pays tolls for me on various toll roads throughout the State of Florida.  It also, by the way, can tell you exactly when and where I went through a toll plaza.  What could be the downside to this convenience?  Well, there are a number of them, actually.

If I go through toll both 'A' at a certain time and tollbooth 'B' sometime later, the police do some math and, poof, they know how fast I was going.  I was not sure what they were going to do to prove I was the one that was driving and hadn't loaned out my car.  I was sure it would involve my photo being taken as I go thought the tollbooths, but I was wrong, the State issues the ticket, under these circumstances, to the registered owner and, unless the car is stolen and you can prove it, you are guilty.  The concession that is made is the fact that you don’t get points on your license and, presumably no license suspension down the road, after you get a few of these.  How do I know this; because they are doing the same thing now with red-light cameras.  Why are they doing this; MONEY!!

Okay, so they know I am speeding on the Turnpike.  They also know exactly where I am and when I am there.  They don’t need black helicopters or GPS tracking devices, although those exist too, but more on that another time.  Let us take this technology out just a little further.

We are all required to have Driver’s Licenses, right?  Let’s say the state slips a transponder into the D.L.  It slips in where we have the magnetic strip that allows all your personal information to be placed on a traffic citation by a police officer who pulls you over for that traffic violation.  He does not have to write much of anything, except sign his name.  He swipes the D.L. in his little card reader and, once again, poof, completed traffic citation.  Replace that with a small, and they are available, transponder that now broadcasts your personal information. 

In law enforcement, there are four basic pieces of information that will be used to search to see if you have a record or warrant: name, date of birth, sex and race.  The transponder has this information in its memory bank.  A police officer drives by, the same kind of thing that does it at the toll booth inquiries of your D.L. transponder and determines, based on the information it gets, any of the following:  your D.L. is suspended, you have a warrant for unpaid parking tickets in Washington, D.C., you have a prior DUI conviction, you have three prior speeding tickets, finally, let’s say you put the transponder license in one of those silvery shielded bags to prevent it from sending out all this information, you still get pulled over.  Why?  Because when the information does not come up on the police officer’s computer screen, he presumes you are driving without your license in your possession.  This is a traffic violation, and you get pulled over for protecting your privacy.  By the time all this technology is applied, it will probably be deemed to be illegal to shield the transponder anyway.

Now, these scenarios anticipate a moving or stationary vehicle.  Let us move the situation to a slightly more private setting, your home.  The police drive by your home.  Their computer lights up, flashes and says, “John Smith, Felony Warrant.”  Mr. Smith happens to be a your dinner guest and you have no idea he has the unmitigated gall to have committed felony at some point, but this does not prevent the local constabulary from kicking your door off the hinges and coming in to get him.  He is a wanted felon; they are not going to knock, not in the world as it is today.  They are going to kick in your door, rush in, arms at the ready, screaming, “Everybody get down!”  They will be pointing very large (at least from your perspective) guns at you and your dinner guests.  Mr. Smith is, after all, a felon.  I suspect that by this time the government will have figured out a way to define passing an NSF check as an act of terrorism.  So automatic weapons will be the rule, rather than the exception.

I have all sorts of problems with this, not the least of which is identity theft.  I have a friend whose ID got stolen in the mid 1980’s and he is still dealing with it.  How do we deal with it when it is being transmitted out into the ether?  I can drive down a street with a laptop computer now and find unsecured networks left, right and center.  You don’t have to be much of a hacker to go rummaging around computer files on the computers on these networks.  Think about what I would find out about you if I could sit out on the street in front of your house and access your computer hard drive?  If I could steal your ID off a transponder in your wallet, what could I do with that?

The people you would think would be screaming about this erosion of our privacy the longest and the loudest are those that are the libertarians (A/K/A: Conservatives, Right Wingers, Republicans) among us.  Government intervention into our lives is anathema.  The government is something from which we must, as a people, be protected.  I am a firm believer in this concept.  I want to be protected from the overreaching authority our government, however, the Conservative, Libertarian-types deal with this in a schizophrenic and hypocritical manner.  They seem to be perfectly willing to support increasing authority of the police in this country and allow the expansion of the authority of the police to intrude into our lives each and every day.  They do this on the false assumption that the only people that will be the victims of this overreaching authority are the criminals.

The Right-Wing is willing to support the taking away and diminishing of Civil Rights from criminals, the so-called bad guys.  The problem is who are the bad guys?  Eventually, the “bad guys” are whoever the government says they are.  We allow them to define who the bad guys are, and one day, be careful, because it might be you.  The argument is akin to one man's freedom fighter is another man's insurgent (remember:  Osama bin Laden was a "freedom fighter" in Afghanistan as long as he was fighting the Russians).  We have all heard the term “technicality” as it refers to a criminal defendant.  Usually, it is used in the sentence, “He got off on a technicality.”  Folks, that “technicality” is usually one of the first ten amendments to The Constitution of the United States. 

The Bill of Rights is NOT a technicality; it is one of the many things that made this country one of the greatest and most free societies on the planet. You are more than welcome to give up your Constitutional Rights, anytime you want to, but don’t you presume to offer up mine or try to take them away.  I fought too hard and too long earning them for everybody, including myself, to have them squandered in the name of some temporary feeling of security.

We have reached the point in this society where we are perfectly willing to give up the Rights of the other guy in seeming anticipation that we will never need to use or invoke them.  We have also reached the point where we have lost sight of a very important basis on which our country was founded.  While it goes back to the days of the Roman Empire and, in fact, to Deuteronomy in the Bible, we have lost sight of the fact that “it is better to allow ten guilty men go free than convict one innocent man.”  We have actually done a 180º shift.  It is better to convict one innocent man than allow ten guilty men to go free.  I would say that those that have this attitude are those that, as my friends from Texas would say, “Don’t have any skin in the game.” 

It is really easy to say okay, one innocent guy can pay so I feel safe, but it is a little different when you tell someone, “Sorry, it is your turn to take one for the team.  We need to make sure we get the ten guilty guys, so you get to be the innocent one that gets convicted of a crime he didn’t do.”  I wonder what that man would think of all those technicalities in that situation.  Let me make it even a bit more personal, the person’s skin we put in the game is that of your son or daughter.  How do you feel then?  By the way, “It couldn’t/won’t happen to me.” is about the only wrong answer.  As I have said before, it happens, when it happens.

The Conservatives are perfectly willing to trust the single most intrusive arm of the government, the police (in whatever form they manifest themselves, Local, State or Federal law enforcement).  While Conservatives do not trust any other alphabet-soup arm of the government, if you are with the FBI, P.D. or DOJ, then you are untouchable to them.  I don’t get the hypocrisy.  That which presents the most immediate and most intrusive threat to a free society, armed law enforcement, is the group that no one seems to want to control.  These are the guys that can instantly turn you from innocent citizen to criminal defendant in the proverbial New York minute.  I guess I should point out that any police officer can make the decision to arrest any person at any time for any reason, good, bad or indifferent.  Most will not without the required legal reasons, but, if you find the wrong one, at the wrong time, with the wrong attitude, you are going to learn what a favorite law enforcement phrase really means, “You can beat the rap, but you can never the ride [to jail].” You are going to jail my friend and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.  Oh, and if you resist, you are probably going by way of an emergency room.

Folks, the day of big brother has already arrived and George Orwell’s 1984 has gone viral.  I suggest we figure out how we are going to protect ourselves from those sworn to protect us and are willing to do anything THEY feel, in their sole discretion, is necessary to protect us.  We as a society have become so fearful that we now are perfectly willing to give up fundamental rights for temporary security and that is wrong on a quite a few levels, and unless we do something really soon, I assure you, we are all going to have “skin in the game.”

CORPORATE AMERICA AND GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION

One of the things the Right Wing and Conservatives in this country espouse is the desire to be free of government interference and intervention.  I agree that the government should not interfere in our lives unreasonably.  It is that term “reasonably” that really becomes the issue.

I am regularly listening to my Conservative friends rail about the abuses of various alphabet soup agencies, one being the EPA.  Let us look at the EPA as an example, but let us look at the EPA first, in a comparative analysis to private industry.

We have, in the United States, developed a concept called the “corporation.”  I shall, for the purposes of discussion, use this term interchangeably with the term business, manufacturer, and all manner of profit-making endeavors.   Corporations have, to the exclusions of all others, one, single, solitary, purpose in the world.   No, it is not to make a product, no, it is not to provide a service and no, it is not to make the world a better place for all.  These are, at best, byproducts of the primary goal, or they are the way that corporations accomplish the primary goal.  The only reason a corporation exists is to make money, and make as much money as it is physically capable of making.

A corporation does not, contrary to all the public relations campaigns on the planet, have a conscience.  Corporations are a lot like robots or computers in the steadfast achievement of their goals.  They do whatever is necessary to make ever-increasing profits.  The right and the wrong of what they are doing does not come into play unless there is a financial downside to it.  We have recently seen how even the prospect of going to jail does not seem to be a deterrent; Enron, Goldman-Sachs, Massey Energy, Bernie Madoff, etc.

The other thing that a corporation does not have is a truly long-term way of viewing things.  Corporations only think in the relatively short term.  They forecast out maybe five or ten years as far as profits and such are concerned.  Sure, they do financial planning way out into the future, but that does not have to do with how they do business, it has more to do with borrowed and invested money.  If we borrow this much money for 40 years, or invest this much money for 40 years, what does it cost us or how much does it make us?  These are the kinds of questions they ask in the long term.  The corporation things about how much money they will be making in five or ten years, but they do not think about the consequences associated with making that money.  They look to get the relatively quick buck and then get out while the getting’ is good, about the time they have done so much damage it will take, literally, an act of Congress to fix it.

There are legitimate reasons why the government has to intervene in our lives, usually for the greater good.  Let’s look at the consequence side of the issue.  Let’s assume that a corporation is engaged in the manufacture of “widgets.”  In the process of making the widgets, they produce a significant amount of air and water pollution.  As long as they do not make too much pollution, that people in the area begin to notice on a daily basis, no one will complain, for the most part.  If, however, on a daily basis they belch smoke into the sky that causes people to cough, hack and wheeze and put chemicals into the water that cause people to get sick and die in the short term, they have a problem with which they will deal.  However, if the problem is not too serious in the short term, but the chemicals in the air and water build up slowly, they are not likely to worry until it becomes a serious problem that is recognizable.

The take-home point here is that there is no self-regulation.  It is not going to occur because it is not consistent with the free-enterprise system.  Controlling pollution does not make money and therefore there is no reason, within the free-enterprise system to control it.  It is not profitable.   I know, there are those that would tell us that when it becomes profitable enough to control environmental pollution, then companies will be formed to deal with it and technologies will be created as well.  Probably, but after how much irreparable damage has been done?

The existence of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is predicated on the above.  It is not in the corporate interest to control air and water pollution in the short term, so a governmental agency steps in and by legal fiat (mandate) makes them.  The EPA steps in for the greater good of all and forces the corporation to be responsible.  I know there are people that argue they have overstepped and overspent and over-everything.  There are those that also argue that in our difficult economic times, regulation must be cut back, so corporations and businesses can make more money, create more jobs and employ more people.  While it may not be popular, the fact still remains, from the 1960’s and 70’s when “pollution” finally became a problem perceived by the population, that no matter how many jobs we create, no matter how many people we employ, no matter how much economic prosperity we have, it isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference if we do not have water to drink and air to breath.  So, we have set our priorities.

I will agree with my Conservative friends that when the EPA starts regulating milk spills under the same terms as they regulate oil spills, they lose credibility and it kinda gets easy to laugh at them.  If BP had dumped 4.9 million barrels of milk into the Gulf of Mexico, I am not sure we would have been screaming as loudly as we did (keep in mind, I live in Florida).  It would not have been a good thing, but it would not have been near as bad as oil.  Yet, our EPA wants to protect us from that which we drink every day.  Aside from those of us that are lactose intolerant and those that are allergic, the harmful effects are limited.  Is it necessary for the EPA to regulate milk?  I think it is just bureaucratic turf grab, personally, but it is not a reason to disband an entire regulatory agency that does have a legitimate job to do.  Kinda like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

We need to be very, very careful when we start thinking about eliminating government regulation because it has a purpose and is necessary.  The Conservatives have adopted the mantra that the private sector, free-enterprise system and Capitalism can solve all the problems of the world.  They might, maybe are right, but by the time it becomes profitable to fix the problems they create, how much death, damage and destruction has occurred?