"Affirmative Action"

Nobody is perfect.  We all have our faults.  But, in my case, they are a fricking avalanche.   If you have read this blog, you have come to expect that I am a Liberal.  Your expectation is correct, but don’t count on it as a predictor of opinion.  I occasionally step out of the parade.  Such is the case with the recent Supreme Court decision on Affirmative Action for the colleges of the state of Michigan.  The Roberts’ Court will generally side 5:4 for the ultra-right.  These decisions are normally not good law or good policy.  But, even with their weighted scales of justice, they will occasionally get a decision right.  Can't seem to avoid it. Affirmative Action or positive discrimination is a temporary solution to a hopefully temporary problem.  I would like to see a day in American when skin color is no more important than hair color, but obviously we are not there yet.

By a wide margin in 2006, the voters of Michigan approved an amendment to the state constitution that says, “Michigan’s public universities shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.”  The Supreme Court of the United States decided not to strike that down as unconstitutional, thus opening the door for the State of Michigan to strike down Affirmative Action and showing other states how to do the same.  This Michigan constitutional amendment is not only fair, but it should have been in all states’ constitutions two hundred years ago.  It is long overdue.

To me, the big plus for Affirmative Action was placing a black faculty in front of a black student body in an elementary school.  The students need to see that authority and success does not only come in white.  Having a black president, of course, goes a long way in this direction.  There are probably states in our country where Affirmative Action is no longer needed.  But certainly there are areas where it is.  The concept that our higher educational system has for generations discriminated against black students is well established, but to make that right, the discrimination must be stopped, not turned into an advantage.  The best example of reverse discrimination is Indian Gaming Casinos which are a bad idea both for the Indians and for those they prey on.

Good law should be good for today and hopefully good for the next century, as well.  It would mean writing fewer laws, but spending more time thinking about what is written.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

"Easter & Passover"

Easter is very big in our little town.  The Roman Club sponsors their annual Crucifixion reenactment parade.  We are a senior community and I suspect that I am the only thin, elderly Jewish male in town, so they always want me to play the lead role and drag the cross to our hilltop, where they want to nail me up on it.  I can’t, in good faith, celebrate this event.  I always decline the offer, but they keep on asking.  Of the many immoral acts that God supposedly orchestrated in The Bible, this one of sacrificing his innocent, only child, was not the most wrongful piece of mythology.  God was at his worst in the Passover story.  I know most of you haven’t read The Bible, but if you read anything in the book, you need to read the “Passover” story.  It starts at Chapter 7 of Exodus.  If you do, it will remove any guilt that you may feel for not reading the rest of it.  If you don’t have one in your house, they might have a Bible in your library and if they don’t, spend a night in a cheap motel and you will find one in the top drawer of the night stand.  Check the sheets for bed bugs.  I am obviously not suggesting that you go out and buy the damn book.

This is the story of “Passover”.  If any of you find it inaccurate, there is room for comment at the end of this blog post.  The transaction starts with an agreement with their Lord, of the Nation of Israel accepting a few centuries of slavery in Egypt, in exchange for ownership of “The Land of Milk and Honey" (Canaan).  Well, when the agreed period of slavery is over, Israel’s Lord tells Moses and his older brother Aaron to go inform the Pharaoh of Egypt of this agreement and that it has come to a close, so Pharaoh must let the Lord’s people go.  Pharaoh wasn’t even born when the agreement was made, if in fact it was made, and who the hell is this Moses and his brother anyway?  Moses reaffirms that he represents the Lord of Israel and that it will not go well for the people of Egypt, if he does not comply.  Now mind you, the people of Egypt do not have radios, newspapers or TV sets.  They have no knowledge of the conversation between Moses and Pharaoh.  They are truly innocents and ignorant.  Before any of the negotiations take place, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart.  Meaning, Pharaoh couldn’t let the Israelite slaves go if he wanted to.  So much for the free will.

After about a week of dirty tricks and plagues, like turning the water in Egypt to blood, locusts, killing cattle and so forth, God gives the Pharaoh his coup de grace, God kills the first born son of every Egyptian family and the first born of their cattle.  Can you believe that?  God killed the first born of innocents, who were themselves innocent.  And, what on earth were the cattle guilty of?  The Jewish slaves knew that this shit storm of God’s was coming and were told to spread the blood of a lamb over their entryways so that the killing angels of God would not mistakenly kill their firstborn.  We can safely assume here that God didn’t know an Israelite from an Egyptian, without some clue.  The murdering angels passed over the slave dwellings and that is where the name “Passover” came from.  If you are a Jewish scholar, please tell me what the moral is to be learned from this act?  Is it that it is OK to bomb or nuke the innocent civilians of a nation if you don’t believe that the leader is a good guy?

This story isn’t over.  After the first born of Pharaoh is killed by God, as is the first born of every Egyptian family, God softens Pharaoh’s heart and Pharaoh gives the order to let the Israelites go.  God creates a channel in the sea for the slaves to leave through.  When they have walked through the sea with a wall of water on either side, God hardens Pharaoh’s  heart again and Pharaoh sends his soldiers and chariots through the dry gap in the sea to chase the freed slaves.  The gap closes and Pharaoh’s army is drowned. These soldiers lost are fighting for their god, their country and probably their country’s freedom.  They are the same as any soldiers.  They are simply obeying orders.  What is the Bible’s lesson here?

There are many moral lessons in the Bible.  Good ones and bad ones.  Is it literal history?  Obviously not.  How do you separate the good lessons from the bad?  Damned if I know.  Perhaps you would use your own moral rudder.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

Baseball

I am pretty much an expert on watching baseball.  My wife loves watching the Arizona Diamondbacks and I love my wife.  Baseball is a little boring.  It isn’t the most boring sport on TV.  Doesn’t even give golf or bass fishing any real competition for that title.  Just a couple of improvements would make it possible to stay awake through an entire nine innings.

For starters there are too damn many games played in a week.  It feels like it is on every evening of the season and it very nearly is.  It is wearing out the players and it is wearing out my recliner.  If a game were played once or at the most twice a week, it would become a normal sport, like football.  I could look forward to game night.  There would be fewer Tommy John surgeries.  This surgery is becoming as common to the pitching staffs across the nation as face lifts are to aging women.  The poor guys wear out their elbow tendons by pitching too often.

The outcome of the game rests squarely on the pitcher’s shoulders and his elbow.  We will play a team one night and beat them 9 to 1.  The next night, they beat us 12 to 2.  Same batters on both nights.  Same fielders and catcher too.  So, what has changed?  Well, obviously, the pitcher has.  He pretty much controls how much hitting the other team does and so goes the game.  When a pitcher does pitch a no-hitter, watching the game does rival golf and bass fishing for a boring experience.  The excitement of the sport is the hitting, running of bases and fielding.  If you really wanted to make the game fun to watch you would move the pitcher’s mound about twelve feet back.  The batter would have more time to realize what was coming at him.  The ball would have slowed down a bit and you would see more hits and more fielding.  The pitcher would have a better chance to defend against a line drive to his head and would be more able to field ground balls that normally find the gap between the short-stop and the second baseman.  It would be a better game to watch and the players, other than the pitcher, could have a greater impact on the game’s outcome.

Another rule that needs fixing is how they go about intentionally walking a batter.  The catcher moves out of the batter’s swing range and the pitcher throws four intentional balls to him.  A good friend of mine mentioned this as one of the things he would like to see changed.  If a pitcher would like to intentionally walk a batter, just wave him to first base.  There is no need for the silly game of catch.  The Baseball Commissioner is paid something like seventeen million dollars a year.  Ask yourself what he does to earn this money.  How about improving the game?

Baseball players are crotch grabbers.  I mean their own crotches.  I don’t know when or how this started.  Perhaps it isn’t a really manly sport, like football or hockey, therefore they spit and play with themselves to look macho.  The rock stars also grab their crotches and it really isn’t that attractive when they do it.  When I was about nine years old, I went through a four week period of spitting, like a baseball player.  I think my folks curtailed my habit.  When I played basketball in college, I never found it necessary to spit and neither did any other player I ever saw.  I don’t see football players spitting or crotch grabbing themselves.  Baseball players need to have a little more pride.  I know pride is a sin, but who wants to sit in a dugout full of spit.

Often you will see a ballplayer hit an infield ground ball and just jog up the first base line.  These men are being paid five or six million dollars a year and that ought to be enough to inspire them to run every hit.  When the hitter runs hard, it rushes the catch and the throw of the infielder.  It also puts a little more pressure on the first baseman.  This obviously increases the chances of an error.  Why does the manager not bench a player when little effort is made to get to first base?  I would guess that this is why they are called a manager, rather than a coach.  Some things they just don’t bother coaching.

 

If I told you that a home run is a different distance at different parks, would you believe me?  What if I told you that a home run is a different distance from the plate depending on which side of the field you hit it to?  What if a basketball hoop were ten feet high, give or take a foot at either end of the court and that a football field is one hundred yards long, give or take fifteen yards.  Well that is the great game of baseball.  Batter Up!

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

"The Koch-Sucker Nation"

If you believe that you live in a democracy, you have been suckered into the belief.  For a very long time this has been a country ruled by large dollar interests.  Recently the Roberts’ Supreme Court made the “Gold Rules” system of government official with two decisions.  One, the “Citizens United” (It’s for you, sucker!) decision, which gave corporations the right to give unlimited, anonymous dollars to a Political Action Committee (PAC).   Two, the recent McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, invalidated limits on the overall amount of annual donations an individual can give to federal candidates and committees.  The existing limit of $123,200, already too high, was increased to over three and a half million dollars.  So, the Koch brothers can contribute over seven millions dollars personally, and unlimited political donations through the multitudes of corporations that they control.  You still get one vote.

   

The Roberts’ Court, which consists of Roberts himself and four puppets, constituting a simple majority, believe that large money in some way resembles freedom of speech.  A ten dollar donation to a person’s favorite candidate may resemble freedom of speech (although it isn’t), but millions of dollars into a campaign from a single source controls the candidate, a control that you as a citizen and your well-being do not even begin to compete with.  When your interests are involved in a Supreme Court decision, you are at an away game.  Large corporations are on their home court.  The corporations, which were designed as a legal tool to carry out business, are now seen as citizens with constitutional and civil rights.  You, the actual citizen, are not even equal to a smudge on a corporate wall.

A couple of obvious examples of corporate government influence would be the war in Iraq and the recent “Affordable Healthcare Act”.  Our nation knew before entering a conflict with Iraq, that Iraq was not involved in 9/11.  We also knew before starting the war that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.  Bush pulled out the UN inspectors, on a 90 day inspection, in 60 days, and bombed, with no weapons found and it was well known before we attacked that the terrorists involved in 9/11, were Saudi.  The war was to aid munition sales and the Haliburton war logistic systems.  Suckers believe that the war had something to do with their freedom.  I can’t draw the logical connection.   Your universal healthcare act was written with the aid of health insurance lobbyists, for corporate benefit.  If it were not, it would have been a single payer system called Americare.  Other countries, not under the corporate thumb, offer systems of healthcare at lower cost, with better results and they offer care to all of their citizens.

I have been a lobbyist to the Arizona Legislature and I have witnessed large corporations, copper and cattle, not the citizens of the state, rule!  We are no longer a country, “Of The People, By The People and For The People”, that is if we ever were.  Someone is calling your name and I hope that it isn't the Koch brothers and their ilk.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

Freedom in Arizona

If you think that you are free, in any state other than Arizona, you need to think again.  Road-rage shootings, which seem to have gone out of style in California, are being revived here in Arizona.  I’m sure that after you read this uniquely American story, you will conclude that since it is being posted on April 1^st it must be an “April Fool’s” joke, but what seems like a joke in other states, is no joke in Arizona. 

The headline on page A2 of the Arizona Daily Star of March 28^th was, “Man acquitted in road-rage shooting death in Oro Valley.”  The account of the incident is short and sweet.  On February 13, 2013, David Arnold Mota, 22, “accidentally” cut off Joshua Stephen Switalski, also 22, who then pulled up along Mota’s car, where a verbal argument ensued.  Switalski pulled ahead and Mota used the semi-automatic handgun he had in his car to shoot Switalski, also in his car, in the back, penetrating his lung and heart, ending his life.

Mota then drove to a side street and removed the mirror from his vehicle, which he had accidently shot a hole in.  The conclusion could reasonably be drawn that he was fleeing from the scene of a crime and trying to remove some of the criminal evidence.  He never called 911 to report the incident.  Mota must have believed that he had committed a crime, but the jury decided differently and acquitted him of all charges.  The charges included first-degree murder, drive-by-shooting and aggravated assault.  I don’t see that any of those charges are an overstatement.  The man may be out in his car legally, with his loaded gun, today.

I’m pretty sure that even in Arizona you can’t legally shoot a deer from a moving vehicle, but you obviously can legally shoot a man from a moving vehicle.  In a sane state you are not allowed to have a loaded gun in a vehicle.  In Arizona, a law is pending, allowing you to carry a concealed weapon into a public building.  It has passed the legislature and is waiting for our governor to sign into law.  We already can legally carry a concealed weapon into a bar.  All of the successful legislation in Arizona, since the recent mass murders here and around the nation, has been designed to take the teeth out of gun safety legislation.  In our state, you are in more trouble if you overstay your welcome at a parking meter, than if you shoot someone from your car.  Welcome to the state where freedom rings.  God Bless America and God Bless Arizona.  Screw sanity.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

The Open Door

This post is not science fiction.  It is about the natural progression of mind communication with computers.  We have opened this door and we like it.  You can watch a YouTube segment today about a non-invasive set of receivers, placed on your head that will tell a toy RC helicopter to fly up or down, right or left, back and forth by your mental command.  Thus, the language of your mind can be read by a computer and translated into a control command.  The first and most obvious useful adaptation of this technology would be the motorized wheelchair of a quadriplegic.  A more sophisticated application would be mind control of word processing.  Yet another wonderful application would be a two way communication between the computer and a blind and deaf person.  Virtual images and audio to this person would open their world.  Since the simple communication of the mind and the RC helicopter is now possible, so will be the above.

Now, since this is America, let’s take a look at some military application of mind control of a computer.  This area is where vast sums of funds will be available for development.  A sample of this application would be a small tank/robot that could be built to patrol the streets of Iraq.  It would be about the size of a lawn tractor, or smaller.  Its eyes would be a binocular camera 3D system with depth finding crosshairs.  This would be coordinated with either a high powered rifle or a laser beam.  The effective range would be four to five hundred yards.  A fleet of these little guys traveling the main corridors of a city could fairly well keep an area clear of IED placement.  The soldier/operator of the unit would be in an air conditioned bunker, far from the fight.  This basic concept is presently being applied to our drone force, which saves courtroom expenses by not having to prove a suspect’s guilt.  The soldier being virtually removed from the battle scene may well cut back on guilt driven suicides.

As this system of communication between the mind and the computer becomes more and more sophisticated, the uses of this alliance will naturally multiply, in quantum leaps.  You think that the cost of a college education is too high?  Sit down for twenty minutes and let a computer download a knowledge base to your brain’s memory bank equal to a degree in Physics.  If I can think the toy helicopter into the sky, it will be able to tell me what the world looks like where it is.  As our sensory devices create our real world now, so will virtual reality from a computer create much of our reality of the future.  You will be virtually doing a gold metal dive in The Paris Summer Olympics or having sex with the man or woman of your dreams, while a few of the “chosen”, with a larger brain, better health and better athletic bodies are having sex to reproduce.  This system will improve the breed and cut back on overpopulation.  The only consolation that you will have in this situation is that you are having more fun than they are.

We are gently preparing ourselves for this wonderful future with our smart phones.  Observe the young coupe at a romantic dinner, each playing a game on their own hand held.  See a young mother, with her iPad resting on her baby’s bottle as the new born is fed.  Read about the Long Beach rapid transit engineer, texting while passing a half dozen warning lights and crashing into another train, killing 22 of his passengers.  Yes, these pioneers are ready for virtual reality.  As my wise philosopher brother-in-law once said, “Life is what you think.”

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

American Caste System

Today we are creating a caste system in America, without the help of the Hindu religion.  We are doing it with our system of advanced education.  A college degree has become so expensive that it is only afforded by great athletes and the children of the wealthy.  The truly great athletes only finish a year or two, before going on to the pros. The children of the middle class and those with low income parents either don’t attend college or they graduate with a degree and a crippling college loan debt.  A shovel, a hammer or a rifle may be a better alternative than the college debt.  Does a hundred thousand dollars in college debt sound like an efficient means of separating the common folks from the wealthy? 

Presently there are caring college professors offering random online courses, at little or no cost, with no degree or acceptable college credits, at their conclusion.  There are also very expensive, private colleges’, online degrees being offered, without much prestige to the diploma.  The system is market driven or random at best.  The proper solution will involve long range planning (a rarity) to benefit our nation.  Presently, our government decisions are made by our large corporations and the range of their planning is their next quarterly income statement.  Below, is a letter written to our president, before “Affordable Healthcare”, to which I received a boiler-plate, “Thank You…”  The letter was obviously never seen by our president.  President Obama commented in a State of The Union speech that he would still be paying on his college loans, if he hadn’t  gotten a couple of successful books published.  Not all of us will hit the lottery in our lifetime.  Below is the letter I sent to the President, outlining a realistic method of turning back the clock to a day when a deserving student could become a college graduate:  

Dear Mr. President:

As you well know, the cost of higher education is shooting up like the cost of healthcare.  The difference in the two problems is that there is a simple solution to the escalating cost of college and post graduate work.  Today, the middle income, or below, parent can no longer afford a college education for their son or daughter.   Colleges are increasing tuition while offering less class selection.  The answer to the problem is currently seen as: student federal service time, more tax dollars to universities, government sponsored student loans, Pell grants and tax reductions to students and parents.  These all equal additional tax costs.  But none of the present solutions deal with the root of the problem.  The cost of higher education is too high and getting higher.  The solution to the problem lies in a well designed federal online university.    

If we could lower the cost of higher education, while increasing its quality, rather than sponsoring the ever increasing cost with student and taxpayer dollars, wouldn’t that be a good thing?  We can.  The technology is here now.    Take a look at the broad selection of degrees offered through the internet at The University of Illinois Online and at many other internet colleges across the nation. But, as you know, the virtual university costs are nearly as high as actually attending a campus.  Online college competition raises each of their costs by lowering enrollment.

The development of a federally sponsored online university would solve the cost penalty to a bachelor or graduate degree.  It would require initial support from the federal government.  A realistic target for the cost to a student would be under one thousand dollars per year (30 units) of education.  And this amount would ultimately self support the university.  If every online student of Accounting 101 across the nation is taking the course from the same professor and is using the same online textbook wouldn’t the cost of those 3 units be very reasonable for that student?  And could you not hire the best Accounting 101 professor at a top level salary to teach this course?  The professor could teach from his home or his university.  Many professors would get more satisfaction from teaching a group of twenty-five thousand students than from teaching twenty-five.    A faculty composed of the best in the nation would offer a highly respected diploma from a prestigious university.  Exams would be given just as the SATs are, in libraries, junior colleges and other locally monitored community facilities.  TA’s would be available for online questions.

An online low cost university would be open to all qualified students.  It would allow the student the opportunity to see a given lecture two or three times if they weren’t confident of their understanding the first time.  This would allow a student to master each subject.  As college exists today you can receive a D in a subject and balance it with an A in another subject.  This college could require mastery and therefore represent a better education and better qualifications to prospective employers.  Today, in classes, time is the constant.  The grade is the variable.  With this system, mastery is the constant and time is the variable.  Students would move at their own rate.  If a bachelor’s degree takes one person two years and another six, so be it.  They have mastered the curriculum in either case.  Some will be able to proceed full time and others, who might be supporting themselves or a family, will not.    

An online university has its shortcomings.  There is no socialization or establishing contacts in your chosen field.  Today, some students can’t afford this luxury or have no time for it or will not need it.  As an example, if you are a law student, one of your three graduate years might be spent in a courtroom environment or an internship.  The other two years could be accomplished online.  You have just knocked two thirds off of the cost of a law degree.  Study for the state bar can be done completely online.  Any given bachelor’s degree may require one semester or a full year on campus.  I believe that a good percentage of universities would gladly co-operate with such a program, offering the on-campus requirements.

 This is a shift in paradigms whose time has come.  It is time to make our citizens the best educated population in the world.  Ability and effort will become the determining factors for a great education.  A high school counselor will be able to tell an incoming freshman in a low income neighborhood, “Your education is no longer determined by your parents’ wealth.  You decide if you are working for a college degree.”  The student will be able to pass the message down to their younger siblings.  A new hope for the future will be born.

I enjoyed my four years in college in the sixties.  It provided me with a better future and a better life for my family.  I had no college loans.  College was reasonable in the 60s, so I was able to work and pay as I went.  This lack of debt also enabled me to start a small, successful business within two years of graduation.   With the present cost of tuition, room, board and books you couldn’t possibly do this.  The choice for a good student, today, having parents of average income, is to graduate with a diploma and a giant debt, or to not be able to go to college at all.   

I think that the federal, state and local governments, working together, could provide an excellent alternative route to a university degree.  State sponsored universities would need to cooperate with the online program in order to furnish the on-campus time that some majors require, such as labs, hands on study and discussion groups.  Turn back the clock fifty years for the cost of higher education.  Let all worthy students go to college.  Make The Federal Online University a reality.  And, set this online university on track to become one of the best rated universities in the nation.

This could be a university with the best professors in the nation, demanding mastery of their students and offering a prestigious degree.   The described federal online university would offer an equal opportunity to all students, at a cost that both they and their government can afford.  The student, who should get a college education, will get a college education and our nation will be better for it.  Is this a non-partisan issue or would you face a Republican filibuster?  Wouldn’t our corporations get behind this in order to supply themselves with a better educated work force and be more competitive in the world marketplace?  You will take some flak from the present universities, but this idea will come to be.  I would love to see it implemented properly during your administration and be a part of your legacy.

Comments are welcome, Old Buz

(Sorry for this blog post being so long, but I thought you might enjoy reading something that the POTUS was not allowed to.)