California Free Press

10 Reasons Not to Get a Job

The following article can be found at Steve Pavlina . com:

Just for fun I recently asked Erin, “Now that the kids are in summer school, don’t you think it’s about time you went out and got yourself a job?  I hate seeing you wallow in unemployment for so long.” She smiled and said, “Wow.  I have been unemployed a really long time.  That’s weird…  I like it!” Neither of us have had jobs since the ’90s (my only job was in 1992), so we’ve been self-employed for quite a while.  In our household it’s a running joke for one of us to say to the other, “Maybe you should get a job, derelict!” It’s like the scene in The Three Stooges where Moe tells Curly to get a job, and Curly backs away, saying, “No, please… not that!  Anything but that!” It’s funny that when people reach a certain age, such as after graduating college, they assume it’s time to go out and get a job.  But like many things the masses do, just because everyone does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.  In fact, if you’re reasonably intelligent, getting a job is one of the worst things you can do to support yourself.  There are far better ways to make a living than selling yourself into indentured servitude. Here are some reasons you should do everything in your power to avoid getting a job: 1. Income for dummies. Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea.  There’s only one problem with it.  It’s stupid!  It’s the stupidest way you can possibly generate income!  This is truly income for dummies. Why is getting a job so dumb?  Because you only get paid when you’re working.  Don’t you see a problem with that, or have you been so thoroughly brainwashed into thinking it’s reasonable and intelligent to only earn income when you’re working?  Have you never considered that it might be better to be paid even when you’re not working?  Who taught you that you could only earn income while working?  Some other brainwashed employee perhaps? Don’t you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too?  Why not get paid 24/7?  Get paid whether you work or not.  Don’t your plants grow even when you aren’t tending to them?  Why not your bank account? Who cares how many hours you work?  Only a handful of people on this entire planet care how much time you spend at the office.  Most of us won’t even notice whether you work 6 hours a week or 60.  But if you have something of value to provide that matters to us, a number of us will be happy to pull out our wallets and pay you for it.  We don’t care about your time — we only care enough to pay for the value we receive.  Do you really care how long it took me to write this article?  Would you pay me twice as much if it took me 6 hours vs. only 3? Non-dummies often start out on the traditional income for dummies path.  So don’t feel bad if you’re just now realizing you’ve been suckered.  Non-dummies eventually realize that trading time for money is indeed extremely dumb and that there must be a better way.  And of course there is a better way.  The key is to de-couple your value from your time. Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income.  This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work.  The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it’s in motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not.  From that moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income. This web site is an example of such a system.  At the time of this writing, it generates about $9000 a month in income for me (update: $40,000 a month as of 10/31/06), and it isn’t my only income stream either.  I write each article just once (fixed time investment), and people can extract value from them year after year.  The web server delivers the value, and other systems (most of which I didn’t even build and don’t even understand) collect income and deposit it automatically into my bank account.  It’s not perfectly passive, but I love writing and would do it for free anyway.  But of course it cost me a lot of money to launch this business, right?  Um, yeah, $9 is an awful lot these days (to register the domain name).  Everything after that was profit. Sure it takes some upfront time and effort to design and implement your own income-generating systems.  But you don’t have to reinvent the wheel — feel free to use existing systems like ad networks and affiliate programs.  Once you get going, you won’t have to work so many hours to support yourself.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be out having dinner with your spouse, knowing that while you’re eating, you’re earning money?  If you want to keep working long hours because you enjoy it, go right ahead.  If you want to sit around doing nothing, feel free.  As long as your system continues delivering value to others, you’ll keep getting paid whether you’re working or not. Your local bookstore is filled with books containing workable systems others have already designed, tested, and debugged.  Nobody is born knowing how to start a business or generate investment income, but you can easily learn it.  How long it takes you to figure it out is irrelevant because the time is going to pass anyway.  You might as well emerge at some future point as the owner of income-generating systems as opposed to a lifelong wage slave.  This isn’t all or nothing.  If your system only generates a few hundred dollars a month, that’s a significant step in the right direction. 2. Limited experience. You might think it’s important to get a job to gain experience.  But that’s like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf.  You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not.  A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain ”experience” doing just about anything, so that’s no real benefit at all.  Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician. The problem with getting experience from a job is that you usually just repeat the same limited experience over and over.  You learn a lot in the beginning and then stagnate.  This forces you to miss other experiences that would be much more valuable.  And if your limited skill set ever becomes obsolete, then your experience won’t be worth squat.  In fact, ask yourself what the experience you’re gaining right now will be worth in 20-30 years.  Will your job even exist then? Consider this.  Which experience would you rather gain?  The knowledge of how to do a specific job really well — one that you can only monetize by trading your time for money – or the knowledge of how to enjoy financial abundance for the rest of your life without ever needing a job again?  Now I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have the latter experience.  That seems a lot more useful in the real world, wouldn’t you say? 3. Lifelong domestication. Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program.  You learn how to be a good pet. Look around you.  Really look.  What do you see?  Are these the surroundings of a free human being?  Or are you living in a cage for unconscious animals?  Have you fallen in love with the color beige? How’s your obedience training coming along?  Does your master reward your good behavior?  Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your master’s commands? Is there any spark of free will left inside you?  Or has your conditioning made you a pet for life? Humans are not meant to be raised in cages.  You poor thing… 4. Too many mouths to feed. Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is.  In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes.  The tax system is designed to disguise how much you’re really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck.  But you can bet that from your employer’s perspective, all of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive such as benefits.  Even the rent for the office space you consume is considered, so you must generate that much more value to cover it.  You might feel supported by your corporate environment, but keep in mind that you’re the one paying for it. Another chunk of your income goes to owners and investors.  That’s a lot of mouths to feed. It isn’t hard to understand why employees pay the most in taxes relative to their income.  After all, who has more control over the tax system?  Business owners and investors or employees? You only get paid a fraction of the real value you generate.  Your real salary may be more than triple what you’re paid, but most of that money you’ll never see.  It goes straight into other people’s pockets. What a generous person you are! 5. Way too risky. Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves. Morons. Social conditioning is amazing.  It’s so good it can even make people believe the exact opposite of the truth. Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words (”You’re fired”) sound like a safe and secure situation to you?  Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10? The idea that a job is the most secure way to generate income is just silly.  You can’t have security if you don’t have control, and employees have the least control of anyone.  If you’re an employee, then your real job title should be professional gambler. 6. Having an evil bovine master. When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way.  When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, “Sorry, boss.” Did you know that the word boss comes from the Dutch word baas, which historically means master?  Another meaning of the word boss is “a cow or bovine.”  And in many video games, the boss is the evil dude that you have to kill at the end of a level. So if your boss is really your evil bovine master, then what does that make you?  Nothing but a turd in the herd. Who’s your daddy? 7. Begging for money. When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for more money?  Does it feel good to be thrown some extra Scooby Snacks now and then? Or are you free to decide how much you get paid without needing anyone’s permission but your own? If you have a business and one customer says “no” to you, you simply say “next.” 8. An inbred social life. Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet.  They hang out with the same people working in the same field.  Such incestuous relations are social dead ends.  An exciting day includes deep conversations about the company’s switch from Sparkletts to Arrowhead, the delay of Microsoft’s latest operating system, and the unexpected delivery of more Bic pens.  Consider what it would be like to go outside and talk to strangers.  Ooooh… scary!  Better stay inside where it’s safe. If one of your co-slaves gets sold to another master, do you lose a friend?  If you work in a male-dominated field, does that mean you never get to talk to women above the rank of receptionist?  Why not decide for yourself whom to socialize with instead of letting your master decide for you?  Believe it or not, there are locations on this planet where free people congregate.  Just be wary of those jobless folk — they’re a crazy bunch! 9. Loss of freedom. It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee.  The first thing you have to do is break the human’s independent will.  A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations.  This leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible.  Thus, the employee will likely conclude it’s safest to simply obey the master’s commands without question.  Stir in some office politics for good measure, and we’ve got a freshly minted mind slave. As part of their obedience training, employees must be taught how to dress, talk, move, and so on.  We can’t very well have employees thinking for themselves, now can we?  That would ruin everything. God forbid you should put a plant on your desk when it’s against the company policy.  Oh no, it’s the end of the world!  Cindy has a plant on her desk!  Summon the enforcers!  Send Cindy back for another round of sterility training! Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of course.  The only policy they need is:  “Be smart.  Be nice.  Do what you love.  Have fun.” 10. Becoming a coward. Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies?  But they don’t really want solutions – they just want to vent and make excuses why it’s all someone else’s fault.  It’s as if getting a job somehow drains all the free will out of people and turns them into spineless cowards.  If you can’t call your boss a jerk now and then without fear of getting fired, you’re no longer free.  You’ve become your master’s property. When you work around cowards all day long, don’t you think it’s going to rub off on you?  Of course it will.  It’s only a matter of time before you sacrifice the noblest parts of your humanity on the altar of fear:  first courage… then honesty… then honor and integrity… and finally your independent will.  You sold your humanity for nothing but an illusion.  And now your greatest fear is discovering the truth of what you’ve become. I don’t care how badly you’ve been beaten down.  It is never too late to regain your courage.  Never! Still want a job? If you’re currently a well-conditioned, well-behaved employee, your most likely reaction to the above will be defensiveness.  It’s all part of the conditioning.  But consider that if the above didn’t have a grain of truth to it, you wouldn’t have an emotional reaction at all.  This is only a reminder of what you already know.  You can deny your cage all you want, but the cage is still there.  Perhaps this all happened so gradually that you never noticed it until now… like a lobster enjoying a nice warm bath. If any of this makes you mad, that’s a step in the right direction.  Anger is a higher level of consciousness than apathy, so it’s a lot better than being numb all the time.  Any emotion — even confusion — is better than apathy.  If you work through your feelings instead of repressing them, you’ll soon emerge on the doorstep of courage.  And when that happens, you’ll have the will to actually do something about your situation and start living like the powerful human being you were meant to be instead of the domesticated pet you’ve been trained to be. Happily jobless What’s the alternative to getting a job?  The alternative is to remain happily jobless for life and to generate income through other means.  Realize that you earn income by providing value — not time – so find a way to provide your best value to others, and charge a fair price for it.  One of the simplest and most accessible ways is to start your own business.  Whatever work you’d otherwise do via employment, find a way to provide that same value directly to those who will benefit most from it.  It takes a bit more time to get going, but your freedom is easily worth the initial investment of time and energy.  Then you can buy your own Scooby Snacks for a change. And of course everything you learn along the way, you can share with others to generate even more value.  So even your mistakes can be monetized. Here are some free resources to help you get started: The Courage To Live Consciously (article on how to transition to more meaningful work) Podcast #006 - How to Make Money Without a Job (audio) Podcast #009 - Kick-start Your Own Business (audio) Podcast #014 - Embracing Your Passion (audio) 10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed (article) How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog) (article) How to Make Money From Your Blog (article) One of the greatest fears you’ll confront is that you may not have any real value to offer others.  Maybe being an employee and getting paid by the hour is the best you can do.  Maybe you just aren’t worth that much.  That line of thinking is all just part of your conditioning.  It’s absolute nonsense.  As you begin to dump such brainwashing, you’ll soon recognize that you have the ability to provide enormous value to others and that people will gladly pay you for it.  There’s only one thing that prevents you from seeing this truth — fear. All you really need is the courage to be yourself.  Your real value is rooted in who you are, not what you do.  The only thing you need actually do is express your real self to the world.  You’ve been told all sort of lies as to why you can’t do that.  But you’ll never know true happiness and fulfillment until you summon the courage to do it anyway. The next time someone says to you, “Get a job,” I suggest you reply as Curly did:  ”No, please… not that!  Anything but that!”  Then poke him right in the eyes. You already know deep down that getting a job isn’t what you want.  So don’t let anyone try to tell you otherwise.  Learn to trust your inner wisdom, even if the whole world says you’re wrong and foolish for doing so.  Years from now you’ll look back and realize it was one of the best decisions you ever made.

10 Reasons Not to Go to College

by John Lawrence

1. A college diploma does not guarantee you a job. The conventional wisdom is that, if you don't have a college degree, you won't do well in life. They are selling you a bill of goods! They are using statistics to lie which anyone can do with statistics. Who are "they?" Those who stand to gain by getting you to go to college, namely, colleges and universities, themselves, and corporations for whom you are grist for the mill. I feel sorry for all the youngsters, especially poor black kids from the ghetto, who swallow this crap thinking everything will be hunky-dory if they just do what they're told and stay in school. Many of them are destined to wake up one day and be very disillusioned realizing that they have been lied to and sold a bill of goods if everything doesn't turn out as they were promised it would. Here are some reasons to think twice about college.

Your job can be terminated, RIFed (Reduction in Force-ed), outsourced. You can be fired, laid off, let go, given a pink slip, terminated. If you're self-employed, none of these things can happen to you. You don't need a college diploma to be self-employed or to start your own business. After all Bill Gates started Microsoft without a college diploma or degree. He is a college drop-out! Fresh out of college you may or may not be able to get a job. But if you lose your job after 10 or 20 years and are unemployed, the chances of your ever getting another one diminish with age. After 40 or so, the chances you will ever get hired again - especially in a high tech field - are negligible. The government doesn't guarantee you a job. Private industry will use you or discard you as they see fit. As you get older, your skill set will diminish relative to younger just-out-of-college types and your salary will have escalated compared to their starting salaries so that you're ready to be discarded as far as a corporation is concerned. They need to keep labor costs low in order to increase profits because their first responsibility is to their blessed shareholders, not to their employees. You're better off taking the $100,000. you would have spent on college and becoming one of their shareholders instead!

2. Student Loan Debt. Students coming out of college today are starting off with $50K to $100 K in student loan debt. It's like having a 30 year mortgage without having the benefit of a place to live. The money might have been better invested in a mortgage in the first place. An investment in real estate will appreciate over the years. An investment in a college education that leads to your becoming an employee will depreciate. Of course, if your college education prepares you for a profession which enables you to be self-employed or go into business for yourself, this is not true. No one is in a position to "let you go" if you are your own boss.

3. Self-education is better than forced feeding. You can learn more, develop your brain better and have more knowledge than most college graduates simply by reading 2 hours a night. Such subjects as art, history, literature, foreign languages, music appreciation as well as many other subjects can be self-taught. The learning resources are available on the internet and in public libraries. Why pay money for something you can get for free? All that is required is self-discipline rather than someone standing over you threatening you with failure if you don't study and pass tests! The beauty of being self-taught is that then you will learn what you are truly motivated to learn, what you are really interested in rather than courses that are required to get your degree. Such courses will be immediately forgotten once the final has been passed .

Many contributors to human knowledge were autodidacts, that is people who were sufficiently interested in whatever field to teach it to themselves. Such geniuses as Sir Isaac Newton (pictured at right) and Gottfried Liebniz, who simultaneously developed calculus, were largely self-taught. A lot of great musicians and artists are self-taught. The only reason to actually go to college is to get credentialed in a field that you really want to enter, and then it should be possible (it only isn't in order to give job security to professors) to just take an exam (like it used to be for the law) in order to gain the credential. Abraham Lincoln taught himself law and passed the bar without the benefit of a college education or diploma. Then he was actually able to make money at it - all without the benefit of a college degree.  Today, of course, we are much more civilized, requiring our lawyers to have a college degree in addition to passing the bar!

Anything you can learn in college you can learn on your own. If you want the equivalent of a college education, find out the course list and reading lists for any degree of the college of your choice. Then read all the same books. Anything you want to know is available on the internet. Why study a lot of boring stuff you're not interested in? You won't retain it anyway. Most college students study enough to regurgitate on a test and then immediately forget it. It's wasted time and energy. Study and learn what you're interested in instead of what is "required." That way you only will be learning what you have a passion for. Most people that are successful in their professions have a passion for what they do, not merely a "ticket of admission" to the field of their choice which is what a college degree represents.

4. Money Invested in a College Education Would Be Better Invested in Real Estate. If you took the money most people invest in a college education and bought a chunk of real estate instead at age 18, you'd be able to retire with the income and/or profit from this investment in 30 years. You do the math. Money invested is gaining appreciation and/or interest. A student loan will end up costing you many times the value of the loan itself in interest for a college diploma that only depreciates in value if all you have to offer is your labor as an employee. From a corporation's point of view you are just a labor input regardless of whether or not you have a degree. Don't think you're a privileged character just because you have a college degree. You're not, and, in a corporation's eyes, you're totally discardable especially if they can get somebody cheaper to do the job, say somebody in India or China. Don't think an American educational institution has anything over the educational institutions in India or China either. In many cases they're a lot better, and their graduates sure work cheaper.

5. Money Spent on College Education Would Be Better Invested in Starting Your Own Business. If you are your own boss, you don't need a piece of paper to prove to an employer that you're worthy of being hired by him. You don't have to worry about sucking up to your boss or getting along with your co-workers. Everyone I know who is an employee undergoes all kinds of stress having to deal with co-workers and bosses. Employees are stuck with their co-workers and stuck with their boss. The only way of getting rid of them is to quit your job. Be your own boss and you don't have to put up with that kind of crap. Bill Gates didn't need a college diploma to start Microsoft. In fact he doesn't have one and neither do a lot of entrepreneurs and people who have made great contributions to society.

6. Don't think a college diploma eliminates risk. Corporations are in the business of shifting risk to their employees rather than, as they traditionally have, assuming it themselves. Increasingly, employees are having to assume the risk for their own pensions which can be lost in risky investments in the stock market via 401ks. This risk used to be assumed by employers with defined benefit pensions. No more. Now there are defined contributions; read - YOU TAKE THE RISK! Also, if circumstances change for the corporation, you can be downsized, laid off, let go, fired, whatever euphemism, you want to apply to it...terminated? The corporation (or any employer for that matter) has no obligation to keep you employed. Health care is another risk employees are being asked to shoulder alone. Suddenly, paternalistic corporations are no longer paternalistic. You're on your own, baby! And don't expect unions to bail you out. Unions are passe with membership decreasing with each passing year.

So why not look your risk squarely in the face and become an entrepreneur, start your own business whether it's as a gardener, painter, handyman, carpenter, architect, civil engineer, lawyer or whatever. Just because you're a gardener doesn't mean that you're not the owner of a business that has value. Your customer list is a valuable asset that can be sold some day if you wish to retire or do something else.

Also there's no reason why you shouldn't develop a few different skill sets. For instance, you could become an excellent cook or a waiter. Doesn't take a huge training investment to do that. Then while you're pursuing an education in another field, you can be making money doing something more basic. Also it's something to fall back on should you ever be "downsized." Many people have aspirations toward very risky fields such as being an actor, musician, novelist or artist. Having an ability to make money in more mundane fields such as gardening or accounting may act as a launchpad (read "day job") for professions that are inherently more satisfying and are potentially more lucrative but in which relatively few are able to gain a reputation or make any money. If what you are doing is a labor of love, making money may not even be a requirement so long as you have an alternative way to make a living. Borat gave himself 5 years to make it as a comedian before he would give up and go into something more mundane. As it turned out, it took almost the whole 5 years before he started getting anywhere and now he's made tens (possibly hundreds) of millions of dollars on a #1 "moviefilm"  for which the production expenses must have been unbelievably low.

7. Start Life Early. Don't Delay it by Going to College. You don't have to delay real life by 4 to 8 years. You can start a family and your kids will be grown and out of the house before you are old and gray. You have a jump on real world experience. College unnecessarily delays starting out in life. At a time when your peers are graduating from college with so much student loan debt that they can't even afford to date, let alone get married and start a family, you could own your own business which you started from scratch, have a family started and own a house.

Be earning money during the 4 to 8 years you might have spent in college. Learn a basic trade or profession and build your business over the years you would have spent in college. Pay the minimum necessary to procure whatever credentials you need to practice that trade or profession. Learn it on your own. The only college degrees worth having are in the "thousand year old professions" such as law, architecture, civil engineering, medicine. In these professions you can hang out your own shingle - be in business for yourself. Forget high tech and anything that requires you to work for a corporation or as an employee and doesn't let you have the option of starting your own business. These degrees are worthless. As a laborer with a college degree, no matter how high tech, you are just a commodity. As a self-employed businessman, you call the shots, make the profits and build a business which has a value in itself, which can be sold some day if you choose to do so. Live simply and on the cheap when you're starting out pouring most of your money into your fledgling business. Be homeless if you have to. Live in your car or work vehicle. If you have a shop or storefront, live there. No sense in paying 2 rents. After you get going, you will be able to afford to move up in the world.

8. A 4 year college degree is worth practically nothing these days. Since these degrees have become so common, colleges and corporations have upped the ante requiring more and more college, graduate school, specialized training, licenses, post-docs and every other way they can figure to keep you paying tuition and racking up student loan debt which you will probably be paying off in lieu of a mortgage for the rest of your life.

9. College trains you to be a docile and compliant employee. Is this how you want to live your life? As Caspar Milquetoast? The second you mouth off to your boss, you're history! Be a free and independent individual instead. Have a passion for what you do. Have real knowledge instead of a piece of paper that says you know something. Do real work instead of make work. Be willing to take the risk of starting your own business instead of the pseudo-security of being somebody else's employee. Then you don't have to take crap from anyone or kiss anybody's ass!

Most college courses do not train you to do anything useful in the real world. Even as a working engineer, I never used 98% of the course material I had to learn in college. I had a professor at Georgia Tech who demanded that every electronics engineer be capable of working a thyratron problem. I was never asked to work a thyratron problem in my engineering work life or even to design any kind of a circuit. I was never asked to work a calculus problem. (Calculus was a required course.) Most, if not all, engineers do nothing more than push paper - especially if they work in the military-industrial complex. Of course, a lot of people are perfectly happy doing this!

Instead, learn a trade or a profession that deals with reality head-on. Otherwise, you're merely equipping yourself to be a paper-pusher. And you have no skills that are relevant to anything anyone would want to pay for in the real world if you lose your job in the corporate world. I found that the best engineers I met in my life were not even college graduates but people who had a passion for whatever it was they did. If you don't have a passion for your work, forget it, unless you're perfectly happy sitting on your ass and doing nothing all day. Then, by all means, get a college degree and enjoy collecting middle class welfare!

10. Learning resources are available for free in libraries and on the  internet. Anything you want to know is already available to you. Why pay for it? You're not going to learn anything by going to college if you don't have the self-discipline to study it on your own. You have to put in the effort. The teacher can't transfer the knowledge painlessly from his brain to yours. Most professors are useless anyway. All you end up doing in class is taking notes which you are  forced to decipher later. You might as well buy the notes and study them on your own rather than wear out your writing hand trying to keep up with the professor in class. He will have taught you nothing except how to take notes. Most of the material can probably be found in the text book or from other sources anyway.

Some of the great men in American history were autodidacts not products of educational institutions. Take Ben Franklin, for example. He only had a third grade education yet was a scientist, inventor, author, publisher, writer, diplomat - an all-around Renaissance man. He invented the lightning rod, the Franklin stove and bifocals among other things. He was fluent in 5 languages. He was also one of the wealthiest men of his day and was highly regarded as a scientist for his pioneering work in electricity. As a printer, he also had access to the tools necessary in becoming a published writer. This is an example of what I call concomitant serendipity, when a proficiency in one vocation synchronizes with another enabling one to move from one to the other with ease. Another example is becoming an architect and a contractor at the same time. That way one can design and build one's own spec houses. After so many of these, one has a track record that prospective clients can check out. With this approach you can start your own business from scratch making money at first from selling spec houses that gain you a reputation as an architect and later from clients who are impressed by the legacy of the houses you've designed and built. Another example of concomitant serendipity is a journalist who writes books on the side such as Bob Woodward, an editor of the Washington Post who has written 12 best-selling non-fiction books. Look for professions that allow you to do other perhaps more satisfying and lucrative work as a by-product.

Thanksgiving at Justine's

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Justine's:

Miles Davis, John Coltrane: So What!

A great rendition of So What by Miles Davis. Solos by Davis and John Coltrane. See it here:

Neocon Rats Leaving the Sinking Ship

In an article to be published in Vanity Fair, the principle neocon architects of the war in Iraq wring their hands over the total failure of the policies they advocated. They blame Bush for his incompetence. They blame Rumsfield for his incompetence. They blame Bremer. Never once do they stop and think that maybe they had their heads up their asses to advocate such a cockamamie and utterly immoral idea as preemptive war, in other words a war of aggression. They might as well blame President Cheney too because Bush was merely the Cheerleader-in-Chief, a President prior to 9/11 who was shopping for a legacy and was sold a bill of goods by the neocons, and it was a traditional Republican legacy after all: WAR. Now the neocons such as Richard Perle on the left are backing away from their involvement in designing and promoting a "splendid little war" with Iraq. The reason they were so enthusisatic about it was that toppling Sadam Hussein in their eyes was like shooting fish in a barrel. None of them had the foresight to envision the chaos and destabilization that has occurred.

According to [Richard] Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty." Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."

The whole neocon idea of spreading democracy in the middle east by attacking and invading a country in order to change it from a dictatorship to a democracy is a ridiculous proposition on the face of it but that's what the neocons were selling. And the preposterous notion that this was a moral undertaking - it was morally a good thing to do - to bring death and destruction to a nation in order to spread democracy is as repugnant as the notion that Hitler was morally correct to invade weaker countries because the Germans were the most advanced civilization composed of the stongest and best people. The American supermensch, according to the neocons, would advance the Iraqi undermensch to democracy and freedom. Depite the cost in death and deatruction, they would thank us some day. They would throw flowers at the advancing troops much as the Austrians threw flowers at the German army during the Anscluss. The only difference was the Iraqis didn't throw flowers while the Austrians actuallly did.

A President shopping for a legacy was sold a bill of goods by a pretentious, pompous Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle, and others and now they're blaming the Bush Administration for incompetence. If they had only executed their duties flawlessly, Iraqi democracy and freedom would be flowering. With a little American water and fertilizer, whole generations of Iraqis from the old and grizzled to Iraqi schioolchildren would be thanking us and singing our praises. And those who didn't would be the dead enders, the sore losers.

What these ideologue neocons misunderstand is human nature itself, not to mention the history and culture of the Iraqi people. And their disingenuousness belies their true motives which are much the same as Hitler's - to extend American (German) power over a greater part of the world by means of establishing humongous military bases in Iraq and turn Iraqi "freedom" into the free enterprise system (otherwise known as capitalism) goal of extracting oil for profit - said profit not to be shared in an egalitarian manner among the Iraqi people but in the best globalistic tradition put up for sale to the highest bidder whether Iraqi or some other member of the global community (read: BIG OIL).

Human nature is such that you can't invade a country in order to save it; you can't destroy a country in order to save it; you can't subjugate a people who refuse to be subjugated. Neocon doctrine is similar to Hitler era Nazi doctrine: the strong should assert their superiority over the weak. Power should be used and exerted to train and tailor the world to conform to American interests and values: Pax Americana similar to Pax Germana. This is the morality of survival of the fittest: social Darwinism which underlay Nazi as well as neocon doctrine. A nation that has it within its power to use that power to help instead wants to use that power in the interests of enriching and ennobling those who wield the power since they believe they are the natural superiors of everybody else.

Instead of using its military to "help" people, instead of using the forces of destruction to bring about a better life and a better world, America should use its might to bring about a better world by waging peace - what a novel notion! By being constructive rather than destructive, by not using military means to achieve goals, but instead using constructive means, much good could be achieved. But this is an alien notion to right-wing Republicans who have sufficiently castigated and demonized do-gooders. Instead they want the invigorating and masculine action of a fully charged military. Military action will hasten a new day, a day in which all the cobwebs of stagnating inaction have been cleared away. Helping to fight poverty and disease, supplying the basic needs of humanity for Americans (Charity begins at home) and foreign peoples, constructing rather than destructing ennabling rather than enslaving, letting people define themselves instead of trying to define them to themselves - all these things were and are possible. Instead  of being a constructive force for peace in the world, America has left it to a few good billionaires and multi-millionaire entertainers to cure disease aand to provide clean drinking water to those who lack even the bare essentials of life while winking at the corrupt politicians and businessmen who have access to the inner circles of power - the nexus between lobbyists for powerful corporations and Team Earmark, the congressional me firsters.

Rome tried to  control the world. Pax Romana was defeated by internal corruption and profligate spending as well as miltary overstretch. Then Napoleon tried it; Hitler tried it.  And now the neocons have tried to bring about Pax Americana. Just as Hitler blamed the incompetence of  his Generals and the unwillingness of the German people to assert their superiority over the undermensch, the neocons are blaming the incompetence of the Bush Administration and the impatience of the American people rather than blaming and questioning the wisdom of their own philosophy which led to their ideology of American aggression. It looks like their Pax Americana is unraveling. The American people have had enough of it. They're not wling to die for the glory of the Bush Administration and its concomitant neocon think tanks.

New York City: A Monday in Manhattan - Part II

In Part I of this series I had arrived at Port Authority Bus  Terminal on 8th Ave and done a brief tour of the West Side before walking east on 42nd St to Grand Central Station, and then walking through the station on my way to the Upper East Side. You can walk directly from Grand Central into and through the Met Life building next door.  The Met Life Building abuts Grand Central Station, and then just north is the Helmsley Building now owned by the United Arab Emirates. It straddles Park Avenue. Park Avenue emanates from under the Helmsley Building having made a 90 degree turn inside the building! The Helmsley Building was formerly owned by Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean. She had become notorious for her gross mistreatment of employees at many of the Helmsley hotels across the United States. I always wanted to get this shot looking south along Park Avenue with the Helmsley Building in the foreground and the Met Life Building in back of it and Park Avenue disappearing into the Helmsley Building. It is quintessential New York! The Helmsley Building was bought in 2005 for $705 million by the royal family of Dubai, along with the Essex House. When Dubai Ports tried to purchase several American ports there was a big outcry, but no one seems too concerned that they own a prime piece of Manhattan real estate located next to the Met Life Building and Grand Central Terminal.

We continue up Park Avenue and very soon come to another landmark - the Waldorf-Astoria - at 301 Park Ave. Below is a view of the interior of the Waldorf.

According to the Waldorf's website,

"The Waldorf Astoria is a privileged environment of eminent elegance, and has hosted distinguished visitors from around the world for decades. It's unparalleled luxury and impeccable service indulges the most discriminating of travelers with an exclusive hotel experience." Evidently, all this pretentiousness doesn't include access to a good grammarian since the compound subject "unparalleled luxury and impeccable service" should take a plural verb "indulge." I didn't inquire about the room rates.

The next stop was at the Seagram Building at 375 Park Ave. Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe built this simple, bronze and glass tower in 1958. Don't plan on peeking inside the venerated Four Seasons Grill and Pool Room though. Security at most New York skyscrapers is extremely tight. Chances are you won't get beyond the lobby unless you have a good reason to be there.

The Sony Bulding at 550 Madison Ave is distinguished by the circular cut-out at the top of the building. The first floor arcade is home to Sony Style electronics stores.

Pathetically, here in the world capital of commerce, they can't even give you a decent demo of a Windows Media Center Edition computer interacting with a Sony HDTV. A sales person was attempting to give one to a well-heeled looking group, but, when the woman asked to see what an internet website looked like on the TV, the salesman had to admit "it wasn't hooked up" to the internet. Then she said well just bring up a Word document then. When he couldn't even do that, he was forced to admit that the TV was not only not hooked up to the internet, it wasn't hooked up to the computer's hard drive either! Very disappointing as I had also tried to get a similar demo from a Sony Style store in San Francisco a week earlier with similar disappointing results. How do they expect to sell this stuff if they can't even give a decent demo? They should train their salesmen better! On the right is a photo taken inside the Sony Building looking out.

The next building of interest is the Citicorp Center on Lexington Ave between E 53rd and E 54th Streets. It can be distinguised by its large angled top as seen below. Don't count on seeing much inside the building though. They made me go through security just to get into the atrium, and there were security guards everywhere. About the only things I had access to were a couple of shops and restaurants. You needed a badge to actually go anywhere inside the building. According to a recent documentary, after they got the Citicorp building built, someone discovered that the whole building could actually collapse in a sufficiently high wind storm. Without publicizing it they went through and retrofitted the whole building so now it's safe supposedly!

Here is a photo of the entrance to the building:

Tucked into a corner of the Citicorp building is St. Peter's Church which is known for its support of jazz. As you can see from the following photo of their program, they have jazz vespers, jazz memorials, jazz by the Duke Ellington Society etc. etc. St. Peter's doesn't look like much from the street, but it goes down underground several stories and is really quite extensive. It supports the arts as well.

Now I proceed north on Madison Ave toward my next stop at the Whitney Museum of Art, Madison Ave and 75th St, at which I was planning to spend some time especially since they were featuring my favorite American artist, Edward Hopper. Unfortunately, the Whitney is closed on Monday. But this was just as well since I was already late getting to my final destination, Carl Schurz Park.

Here is a picture of my favorite Hopper painting, Nighthawks:

Here are some pictures of the shopping available along Madison Ave between 59th and 79th Streets. You can click on any picture to get a larger version of it.

We will make one more stop in this part of Monday in Manhattan, and that is at the Cafe Carlyle at Madison Ave and 76th St. The Cafe Carlyle is where the well-heeled denizens of the upper east side go for the most sophisticated entertainment. Mr. Sophistication himself, Bobby Short, played and sang here for over 30 years. Since he died in 2004, they have even named a nearby street after him. Singer Barbara Cook and Woody Allen perform here as well. Woody Allen plays clarinet on Monday nights with his Dixieland band.

We have to leave it here for now. In Part III, we'll continue north to 82nd St and then head east to Carl Schurz Park on the East River.

"It's the Corruption, Stupid!" - Why the Student Loan System in the US Should be Investigated

This is a subject we have blogged on before.

The following article is from Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice.Org:

In exit polls this Tuesday, voters listed corruption as a bigger concern than the War in Iraq. While the White House, Congress, and others inside the beltway may pooh-pooh this sentiment, the citizens hold it dearly, because they see the effect corruption has on their lives.

Take the student loan industry, for example. Since 1994, the cost of attending college has skyrocketed, to where the average student can expect to graduate with over $18,000 in debt for a four year degree. Sallie Mae, the largest provider of student loans, and former Government Sponsored Entity has seen its stock price rise by nearly 2000% during the same period. Its executives have paid themselves billions in stock bonuses. Its Chairman recently attempted to purchase a major league baseball team. Its CEO again topped the list of highest paid CEO’s in Washington D.C.

Many don’t realize that Sallie Mae lobbied for- and got- draconian legislation passed during the same time period. This legislation took away bankruptcy protection for all student loans - federally guaranteed or not. This legislation made it illegal for most borrowers to refinance their consolidated debt, even with lenders willing to accept less profit. This legislation gave the lenders collection powers that would “make a mobster envious”, to quote Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren. These powers include termination of public employment, income tax seizure, wage garnishment, suspension of professional licenses and certificates, and seizure of social security, and disability payments. This legislation has actually made it more profitable for lenders when students default, as opposed to remaining in good stead with their loans.

This legislation has created the perfect mousetrap for a most vulnerable segment of our population: lower and middle class citizens aspiring to achieve the American Dream through higher education.

Those who do everything right, and pay their loans on time are shocked at the sticker price of their education, and many put off marriage and children because of their debt. Less fortunate citizens who weren’t able to capitalize on their education for health, employment, or other reasons are faced with the choice of paying double, triple, or even more than they originally borrowed, or being forced to live “off the grid” and living in fear of their government. Some are fleeing the country. Some are even taking their own lives. Sallie Mae attributes its record profits to fees and penalties extracted from these borrowers.

So where’s the corruption in this? Consider that the Chairmen of both the House and Senate education committees (Buck McKeon, and Michael Enzi) have taken millions of dollars from the student loan industry, and funneled some of this money to family members through campaign committees or PACS. Not to mention the chartered flights for golf in Boca Raton, ski trips to Big Bear, fishing trips in Wyoming, and other extraordinary excesses that this money paid for. John Boehner, who has received the most from student loan companies and is former chairman of the House education committee, secured a job for his daughter with a student loan company (since acquired by Sallie Mae) over a game of golf.

Consider further the corruption inside the Department of Education, which actually makes money from the business of defaulted loans, receiving $1.20 for every dollar paid out. The head of the Federal Student Aid program, Theresa Shaw, was brought into the Department of Education from Sallie Mae, and brought many of her Sallie Mae cronies with her. One has to wonder aloud whether this group was attracted to these lower paying government jobs out of an altruistic nature, or whether they or their family members have a residual interest in the success of Sallie Mae.

A recent OIG report warned Ms. Shaw that her oversight program for student loans was highly vulnerable to conflicts of interest, and that the Department relied too heavily on “partnerships” with student loan companies, rather than real oversight. Again, one has to wonder if that happened by chance, or by design.

Senator Durbin recently called for an investigation of the student loan industry with respect to inducements, and “preferred lender arrangements” between lenders and schools.

One would hope that the new Congress, as it “drains the swamp”, will pay particular attention to the cesspool where Sallie Mae and its ringers within the Department of Education are holed up.

Alan Collinge is the founder of StudentLoanJustice.Org, a grassroots organization.

The Saga of John Kyte Clark

My grandfather, John Kyte Clark, whom I was named after,  was named after his grandfather, John C Kyte. He was born in 1883. I had heard a family story that my great grandfather, Eugene Clark, had left my great grandmother, Libbie, and gone off to the city to pursue a life of wine, women and song. I don’t know if that part was true or not but the 1900 census record shows that my great grandmother had moved back to the family farm with her father and mother along with her two sons, John K and Claud. She was 43 at the time. My grandfather was 16. His older brother was 20. I imagine that my great great grandfather, John C Kyte who was 78 needed all the help he could get on the farm as did my great great grandmother Sarah who was 78 also. This was also the farm where Libbie grew up according to the census of 1870 assuming that her parents farmed the same farm their entire life which was common in those days. People didn’t move around from farm to farm much. The 1870 census shows that Libbie was 14 and living with her father, mother and 7 siblings in the farm house pictured below (picture taken 2006).
      
       I had heard that my great grandfather, Eugene, came from Bucks County, PA. That was only partially true. My great great grandfather Aaron W Clark was born in Sandyston, NJ in 1831. The 1850 census record shows that Aaron W who was 19 was living in Sandyston Township where the Kytes resided. The 1860 census shows Aaron W living in Sandyston with Hannah and oldest son Isaiah. He later moved to Monroe County in PA since the 1870 census shows him living there with wife, Hannah, and sons, Isaiah, Eugene and another with an indecipherable name. So the families might have known each other before the move to PA. Besides the farm was only a mile or so from the border with PA so moves back and forth over the border were probably common.
      
       The 1880 census record shows that Eugene and Libbie were married and farming in Sandyston. Eugene was 19 and Libbie was 22 so my great grandmother was 3 or 4 years older than my great grandfather. They had a one year old child who must have been my grandfather’s older brother, Claud, so Eugene must have been 17 or 18 when they got married. Maybe that had something to do with why he left and went off to the big city. He had gotten involved with an older woman at a very young age. However, he must have stuck around at least till 1883 because that’s when my grandfather was born. Since the 1890 census records were burned, we can’t know whether my great grandfather left before or after 1890, but he had definitely left by 1900 because, according to the census, my great grandmother was living with her parents on the family farm in Hainesville, Sandyston, along with her two sons. That was the same farm where she grew up and where my mother was born and grew up. How many generations back that farm goes in the Kyte and Clark families is unclear, but it was at least 4, probably more.
      
       In 1907, my grandfather’s brother Claud died. I had heard that he had drowned in a swimming accident. He was 28 and must have been living at the farm in Hainesville. By 1910 according to the census record, my grandfather, who was 26, was the head of household which consisted of his mother, Libbie, 53, and his grandmother, Sarah, 80, his grandfather, John C, having died in 1902. So Grandpa lost his brother and grandfather within a 5 year period, and Libbie lost her father and son. Within a 10 year or so period, they had also lost for all intents and purposes their husband and father.
      

By the 1920 census, the picture on the Hainesville farm had changed quite a bit. Grandpa John K was married to Alice Rosenkrans and they had 3 children, Florence, 6, my mother, Winifred, 4, my aunt, and J Earl, 1. Sarah had died, but Libbie was still living. She was 62. My mother was born September 5, 1913. The census listed my grandfather’s birthplace as Pennsylvania which presents something of a mystery because, according to the 1880 census, Eugene and Libbie were married and living in Sandyston. Did they subsequently move back to Pennsylvania in which case the story about Grandpa being born in Bucks County, PA may be true? If so the family sure moved back and forth between NJ and PA a lot. Great grandma Libbie died in 1924, and my mother’s brother, J. Earl, died of pneumonia in 1928 when he was only 10.
      

I know from a letter my mother had saved that Libbie went through hell and high water to get title to the family farm in the early 1900s, probably after her mother died so that she and her son would have a place to live and a livelihood for my grandfather. I think I recall that the lot lines were somewhat ambiguous probably because the farm had never been surveyed since it had been in the same family for so long. And there were probably monetary considerations in order to buy out her siblings.
      
       Eugene had died in 1916 and is buried in the family plot along with Libbie so they must never have gotten divorced. What his subsequent relationship with his wife and my grandfather was after he left the family, I don’t know, but it must have been at least sufficient so that the family was notified when he died. Sadly, by 1928, my Grandpa had lost his father, mother, brother and son. Grandpa never talked about any of this and what little I know was passed down to me by my mother. Other than, that is, what I have been able to dig up from perusing the markers at the Hainesville Cemetery and from my genealogical research online.
      
My grandfather farmed the family farm until approximately 1945 after which he sold it, and he and my grandmother moved to Madison St in Newton. My grandfather worked as a handyman for a department store installing linoleum flooring and window shades in people’s houses. My grandmother crocheted doilies and hankies and sold them through the same store. My grandfather was a good carpenter and he had a full set of tools in his little garage. Now I wish I would have asked him to teach me something about carpentry. I think he would have been glad to do it, and I could have learned something. But I never showed any interest so it was one of those missed opportunities
      
Another story is that my mother and Aunt Winnie (picture left circa 1940) and a friend drove to CA in the 30s to visit a relative, George  Kyte, who was an optometrist in Santa Monica. They must have come over the original transcontinental highway, the Lincoln Highway. He was Libbie’s brother born about 1863. Therefore, he was my grandfather’s uncle. According to the 1920 census he was living in Santa Monica with his wife, Mary, and was an optometrist.  When he died, he left his estate to my grandfather. I don’t know how much money was involved, but it must have been considerable for those days. So my grandfather and grandmother had a nice retirement in Newton. My grandmother’s sister, Mabel, and her husband lived close by, and the two couples played pinochle once a week. They had a garden and chickens. My grandfather had a black 1952 Plymouth for the rest of his life. They were frugal and always had a neat house (pictured below). Even their basement was always neat and clean. My grandmother used to read stories to me and my cousin, Peggy Cole, who was about 6 months older than me, and, unfortunately, died when she was 15. I used to spend a week with my grandparents every summer and would go into work with my grandfather or ride my bicycle around Newton which was and still is a nice town.
      

My grandfather had a stroke when he was 75 or so and then was in a nursing home in Newton until he died in 1968. My grandmother, who never learned to drive, would walk the mile or so every day to see him. When I came home on vacations, my Mom and Dad would always take me to visit my grandfather in the nursing home usually right after I came home and right before I went back. I sort of didn’t want to go so much because the nursing home was depressing, but now I’m glad my parents insisted and that I did go.
      
       My grandfather never talked too much and never talked about his mother’s and his struggle to survive or how they came to live on the farm which had been in the family for generations. It was a small farm, and my grandparents were very self-sufficient. They were both very industrious and provided a lot of their everyday necessities by the work of their own hands as did many people in those days instead of buying everything at the store. The dairy farm provided them with a cash flow so that they did have money for the things they couldn’t provide for themselves. My grandfather never had a tractor on the farm. He used teams of horses to pull the hay wagon and the manure wagon right up to the time he sold the farm. I remember riding on top of the hay wagon once when I was about 4 years old.
      
       That farm is still in good shape today. It has gone through a series of owners, but it still has significance to me. My parents were married there in 1940.  Later when my mother got TB and had to go to a sanitarium, it was my grandfather who came and picked her up while my Dad stayed with my sister and me. We would have lost our house due to the fact that my Mom’s streptomycin shots were $180. a month and my Dad only made $250. in 1946 had it not been for the fact that my grandfather bought out their mortgage and didn’t require my parents to pay anything till my Mom got out of the sanitarium and they got back on their feet. Then I remember my Mom paying Grandpa $50.00 a month. When I was going to school, my grandfather always shook hands with me and there was a $10. bill in my hand when we let go. He was a kind, generous man.
      
       Going further back in the Kyte family Libbie’s father and mother John C and Sarah were born, respectively, in 1821 and 1829. They died in 1902 and 1913, respectively. John C’s father and mother were Jacob Hoornbeck Kyte and Mary Cortright born in 1775 and 1784, respectively. They died in 1858 and 1862, respectively. Both were born and died in Sandyston. Jacob H. Kyte’s parents were Thomas Kyte (1726-1816) and Lea Keator (1739-1827). Lea Keator’s ancestry can be easily traced back several more generations. Thomas Kyte was a dead-end for now as far as my research is concerned. Mary Cortright’s parents were Simon Cortright (1764-1824) and Catherine Ennes (1764-1848).
      
       In the Clark family, Eugene’s parents were Aaron W Clark b.1831 and Hannah. Aaron W’s parents were Samuel Clark b.1805 and Elizabeth b. 1806.

The picture on the left is Johnny Lawrence and Peggy Cole in 1942.

My cousin, Jennifer Peel, has a blog that links here.

Is the War in Iraq Morally Right?

General John Battiste gets on TV and his schtick is that, if we had only had competent leadership, we would have won the war in Iraq by now. Rummy was incompetent so he had to go. We have to win so we need competent leadership. These military generals that get on TV are all the same. There is never any question about the legitimacy of the war in the first place. It's all about competency. Let's go back one step. Was this a just war, a moral war in the first place? Is it moral to invade a country preemptively which is no threat to you and which the Bush Administration knew was no threat? Is this a moral act? In addition they lied about the reasons for the war. They tried to scare people and drummed up a lot of nonsense to make out Saddam Hussein to be the biggest bogieman of all time. As it turns out, removing Saddam Hussein unleashed the sectarian violence which Saddam had succeeded in keeping a lid on for many years.

According to just war theory war can only be a last resort. Force may be used only after all peaceful and viable alternatives have been seriously tried and exhausted. This wasn't the case in Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was an immoral act. This makes it an unjust war. Isn't this what Hitler did which has been so highly condemned by history: invading other countries preemptively, fighting wars of aggression? Hitler had his pretenses too. In the German peoples' minds these acts were justified because they had been led down the primrose path by the Nazis to think so. Certainly, the invasion of Czechoslavakia was more justified than the invasion of Iraq. After all, Czechoslavakia had a common border with Germany and a large minority of ethnic Germans who were allegedly mistreated.

There also is the principle of proportionality. A war is only justified if the wrong to be righted can be done in such a way that the overall destruction expected from the use of force is outweighed by the good to be achieved. In the case of the US invasion of Iraq the wrongs done by Saddam had occurred many years ago. There were no current wrongs being perpetrated by Saddam. As far as bringing the Iraqis "freedom and democracy," a war cannot be justified for material or economic reasons. If the US wanted to intervene in a situation of egregious wrong that was and is being currently perpetrated, it should have intervened in Darfur where there is a genocide going on that has killed almost a half billion innocent people.

Does the perpetrator of an immoral, unjust war deserve to win that war? Not at all, but for General Battiste and all the other highly regarded ex-military flacks, all they can talk about is winning a war the US doesn't deserve to win. If a bully picks a fight in a schoolyard, does that bully deserve to win that fight? In the medieval times, disputes were sometimes settled by a fight to the death under the assumption that the person in the right would fight harder than the person in the wrong and, therefore, win. In other words the person or side in a war or a fight or a dispute that was in the right deserved to win and would fight harder. In addition, presumably, God was on the side of the right.

If there's a God in heaven, do you think He condones a country that causes death and destruction to innocent people of another country unnecessarily, unjustly and immorally? Do you think He wants that country to win? The Bush Administration bears the blame for all the death and destruction, but the American people who elected Bush twice have to share part of the blame. After all the US is a democracy. The people elected Bush, and with their consent, his administration caused the death and destruction of thousands of innocent victims, both US troops and Iraqi citizens. The US doesn't deserve to win, so why is the debate all about competence and getting the right strategy so we can win. We don't deserve to win! And the blood is on our hands as long as we stay there.

Iraq is a country now wracked by sectarian violence. It's a bunch of different factions and militias fighting each other. There is no such thing as the Iraqi people standing up against terrorists. That's another lie. There's no such thing as "the Iraqi people." There's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. The Kurds, by the way, want an independent Kurdistan. It's the Iraqi people fighting among themselves because we took Saddam's lid off and enabled them to do so. And our troops are caught in the middle of it. We stuck ourselves to the tarbaby. So what is winning defined as? It's not up to us to win in Iraq. The whole notion of winning, as far as the US is concerned, is meaningless. We cannot win because there is no feasible definition of winning. We can only lose or withdraw and allow some faction of Iraqis to win. And prolonging our prescence there is losing. Withdrawal is not the same as losing. It's not winning, and it's not losing but it would be the morally correct thing to do. It's the only morally correct course of action. And besides it's in our self-interest to withdraw. It's in our self-interest not to waste any more American lives there, and not to waste any more billions of US dollars there. Each day we spend there, more American lives are lost and more millions of dollars are wasted. So self-interest and the morally correct thing are in total alignment. Then why are we staying? To preserve a fig leaf of face for the Bush Administration. In short: Presidential egotism and vanity.

The Iraqis are going to fight it out among themselves until another strongman like Saddam takes over regardless of what we do. Our prescence there is only prolonging the agony. General Battiste on CNN calls for sealing the borders of Iraq with Iran and Syria. Who is he trying to kid? We can't even seal the borders of our own country. What does it say in the Bible: "Look not to the speck in your neighbor's eye but to the moat in your own." We could stop all illegal immigration and all illegal drugs from entering this country in addition to reducing the threat of terrorists and their weapons coming across our porous borders if we could seal them which is completely technologically feasible. And then he calls for a jobs program for all the millions of impoverished Iraqi youth so that they won't take up arms against us or each other. There are 3 million poor people in Sadr City alone, an inexhaustible supply of unemployed, disenfranchised folk willing to blow themselves up to obtain some vision of justice in the world. General Battiste wants a jobs program for them, but what about all the un and underemployed people in our own country? I thought they believed in the free market which would assign all these poor people in Iraq to the scrapheap. That's why they're fighting for Pete's sake. If they want to have a jobs program and a health care program and this program and that program for the Iraqis why don't they start at home. They don't want any of that stuff for Americans. For Americans it's sink or swim. Charity starts at home.

So he wants socialism for Iraqi unemployed youth. Yeah, let's spend more billions there while we let our own people go down the drain. What these people fail to comprehend is that there are about a billion unemployed, disenfranchised slum dwellers in the world thus providing an inexhaustible supply of fighters. Are they all terrorists? Hardly. They'll fight each other in order to obtain power and ascendency, and that's what they're doing in Iraq. We're only just in the way. Winning for us is irrelevant to the eventual outcome; winning for their faction, if you're a member of it, is tangible. Winning for us is chimerical, something that has no real meaning or substance, a diaphanous veil disguising a hollow microphone intoning "stay the course." When the pretense is stripped away, there's nothing there but a morally rotten core.

There is another line of moral reasoning that goes like this. Sure we got into an immoral war in Iraq, but now we have to stay there until we set things right because to leave and let the Iraqis fight it out would be immoral. I disagree. The same was said about Vietnam. We left, and they settled their differences in short order. Our staying would only have prolonged the agony. The best antidote for being caught in the middle of an immoral and unwinnable (for us) war is to disengage. Then the Iraqis will be able to get down to the business of settling their differences without our interference. I don't think it'll be pleasant, but I do think the violence will be shorter lived than it will be if we continue our prescence there. What you will eventually end up with when the dust clears will probably be a lot like what was there before we went in, namely a Saddam-like dictator who keeps the lid on sectarian violence by means of force. Hardly a democracy which the Iraqis have no interest in anyway.

Even If the Republicans Lose the Election, They're Still Winning!

It looks like the Republicans will be big losers in the election today. I'm voting for all Democrats except Governor Schwarzenegger. But here's why the Republicans will still win.

1) Defeated Congressmen will go to work as lobbyists on K St and make at least 3 times their Congressional salaries. They've been cashing in as Congressmen making $165,000 for working 99 days as well as numerous, creative fundraising scams such as hiring their wives and children as fundraisers. Basically, this allows them to skim off the top of campaign contributions using the money for personal purposes. They wouldn't be able to cash in as lobbyists unless they lose their political campaigns so they are laughing all the way to the bank.

2) Bush has added trillions of dollars to the national debt. Their quest is to make the national debt so massive that there will be no money for anything else except paying interest on the debt. Therefore, they will obtain their objective of killing social security and medicare as well as any other social programs. Giving tax breaks to the rich increases the debt and makes it increasingly likely that only rich bond holders will be the only beneficiaries of the last government program standing: paying interest to rich Republicans who hold Treasury bonds. It's a win-win for Republicans: tax breaks plus the ability to earn high interest on Treasury bonds. Actually, a triple win: the third being their long sought after goal of killing social security and medicare and any social programs for poor people.

3) The war in Iraq. The Republicans win the longer we stay there. Why? Because their ultimate objective is a permanent prescence in Iraq. They want to keep the four mega military bases they're building plus numerous smaller ones. They also want to keep the world's largest Embassy. They want to oversee the installation of a puppet regime that will honor the Iraqi Constitution as it now stands which calls for the massive sell-off of Iraqi assets including oil to foreign (read American) investors. Of course, the Bushies want stability in Iraq (and they're chagrined by the lack of it) because the sooner there is stability the sooner they can get on with their intended business of turning Iraq into a coaling station for American military assets and the sooner they can get on with the business of extracting Iraqi oil. So just staying in Iraq for however long it takes is winning. The only way they would lose is if a new President in 2008 just got out of Iraq with no claim on the military bases we're building there and no claim on Iraqi financial assets. This likely won't happen no matter who occupies the Offal Office and the vaunted Halls of Congress.

Gay, Anti-Gay Republicans Who Love Being Hypocrites and the Straight Scoop on Gay (and Straight) Marriage

Is there no end to the current crop of anti-gay, gay Republicans? From NJ's ex-governor McGreevey, to alcohol rehabilitating Mark Foley to the latest, Ted Haggard, these people all love to be hypocrites. McGreevey was the model of self-assurance while he was pretending to be straight. Now that he is forced into the situation of having to live the truth, he appears to be very uncomfortable. Having seen him boosting his book on the Larry King show, he seemed to be squirming in his seat, seemingly longing for the days when he was able to live a lie. You'd think that these people would be relieved that they could live an open and truthful life. But no, the preferred life for them is one of lies and hypocrisy. They get off on it! Oh please, please don't make me live a life of truth when I want to live a lie, they seem to be saying. They just love misrepresenting themselves and fooling people and, not the least, living dangerously.

These gay Republicans love nothing better than to bash gay marriage. People who want to admit who they are and form a stable relationship are anathema to them. Why? Because they want to sneak around and do stuff behind people's backs. They want to live dangerously. The last thing they want is to admit who they are because this forces them to live honestly, and, frankly, that's no fun!

But let's look at the issue which riles up their constituents and causes them to have apoplectic fits: gay marriage. Aren't we supposed to have separation of church and state in this country? Well? Well? Then any gay couple who can find a clergyman to marry them can be married in the eyes of God without the government having anything to say or do about it. It's none of the government's damn business. Doesn't that solve then at least half the problem? The other half is that gay couples want the same rights and privileges of heterosexual married couples. Well, this is another issue altogether. The issue of civil unions. But I favor the two-pronged approach for heterosexual as well as homosexual unions. There are two aspects to marriage: marriage in the eyes of God and marriage in the eyes of the state. A gay couple can obtain most, if not all, of the rights and privileges of heterosexual couples simply by entering into a legally binding contract between them.

Frankly, I don't think the government should be in the marriage business at all even for heterosexual couples. Marriage should be strictly a religious and/or a contractual affair between the two parties. What happens is that clergymen are in cahoots with the state. They're the ones who file the paperwork with the state thus making the marriage "legal." There's no reason it needs to be legal. What you are doing when you get married, heterosexuals, is that you're entering into a contract with the state, a contract you've never read, a contract the provisions of which you will not even be aware of until you get divorced. Then you will find out about the provisions of the contract you entered into in a most unpleasant way. Why do gay people even want to be a part of this sorry situation? Wouldn't it be better for people, gay or straight, to set up their own contractual relationship thus "legalizing" the relationship without the state even being involved? You might say, well, they can get a pre-nuptial agreement? Why not just get a nuptial agreement? A pre-nuptial agreement modifies the legal arrangement with the state but the state is still involved, still is the final arbiter. Forget the state. The two parties should be consciously aware of any contracts they enter into. Anything else is just state paternalism. In fact a course in the contractual aspects of marriage should be required for all high school students.

A legal contract consciously entered into in addition to a religious ceremony should be the norm for all people, gay or straight, and gay people are certainly in a position to do this now, an even better position than straight people due to the collusion between clergymen and the state. That contract is "one size fits all." A marriage contract should be individually tailored to the couple's wishes. The only place the state should enter in is if and when children are involved since children weren't a party to the original contract, and the state should protect the rights and interests of children, not adults who have freely entered a contract or have opted not to have any contract between them at all.

So the way it would work is this: those wishing to have a religious ceremony and no marriage contract should do so (Option 1). They would be married in the eyes of God but not in the eyes of the state. Those not wishing any religious ceremony, but wanting to enter into a contract should write their own contract with the help of a lawyer (Option 2). The contract is enforceable by the courts in the event of a divorce but, at least it was freely and knowledgably entered into unlike what you have today. Option 2 would be suitable for non-religious people. Those not wishing either a religious ceremony or a marriage contract should choose option 3. Their children will still be protected by the courts as they are today. Those wishing to enter into both a marriage contract and to have a religious ceremony should choose option 4. In every case children would be protected by the state, but adults don't need a paternalistic state to protect them, just courts to enforce their contract, if they have one, a contract that was freely entered into by both parties.

A word about taxes. It seems that gay couples want all the tax advantages that heterosexual couples enjoy. This is a double edge sword because then they will have to subject themselves to all the government interference in their private lives that heterosexual couples now enjoy. As some comedian said: he's in favor of gay marriage because he thinks gay people should have the right to be as miserable as the rest of us. In particular divorce lawyers see a whole lot more business a-coming once gay people have the same rights as heterosexuals. But would it really be worth it to save a few dollars on taxes? I don't think so. A rational tax policy wouldn't discriminate between married and single people, gay or straight. It would be based solely on individual earnings coupled with deductions for dependents. For instance, if there were one wage earner in the household, gay or straight, supporting a non-wage earner, gay or straight, the deduction should be the  same. If there are two wage earners, gay or straight, taxes per person should be the same as for a single person. Different deductions can be made for children and/or other dependents. In fact, the deductions should probably be different for adults, children or senior members of a household. In other words taxation should have nothing to do with the marital status of the people involved, gay or straight, but only with the number of wage earners and dependents per household.