Some Thoughts About Socialism

Someone I knew from communist Hungry worked for many years in the office of a vineyard. Everyone was paid the same,and no one could get fired. As a result of the drudgery and banalness, they held contests. At noon, everyone was surveyed. One would say I looked busy all morning and wrote two paragraphs. Pretty good would say another, but I wrote only one paragraph. Then another chimed in saying I wrote only one sentence this morning. They were declared the winner and everyone else chipped in and bought them lunch.

A goodwill tour of the Moscow shocked an American transit official (he was also a retired Air Force colonel and should have, to my mind, known better). All their buses had short life spans and sloppy maintenance. He expected Communism’s puritan quality to lead to a very different outcome.  But there was no bottom line or Judgment Day. (Stalin did have a puritan streak. He edited out the milk maid scene in Dovzhenko’s Earth as too exotic.) 

People like to achieve. If they didn’t we’d all be living in caves and wearing animal skins. To those of faith this achievement is often more inner than outer. But the desire to achieve, to take pride in one’s work, is often about the inner peace of contributing more than merely wealth or fame. If one were to criticize my perspective, they may point to the great scientists of Soviet Russia. Fortunately, there are always individuals like that. However, that doesn’t relate to the vast majority of everyday people and their sense of satisfaction.

But tragedies like the massive cave-ins of apartment buildings in Soviet built Armenia during an earthquake brutally affect everyone. When there are no checks and balances it becomes the short term solution of all participants to cover up. Socialism, or one party rule in much of America, bases itself on these unitary or cohabiting institutions. Many people on both the Left and on the Right agree that we live in an oligopoly. Apologists for our current arrangement point to our abundant consumer choices. We shop at Walmart instead of Sears. We stream movies rather than wait in theatre lines. But is this just an illusion of control while real power lies elsewhere?

While the FAA may finally correct shoddy Boeing software, why did they approve it in the first place? Our Public Utilities Commission allowed PG&E’s negligent maintenance. The Left is now proposing a government takeover of PG&E.  This may be as efficient as California high speed rail construction.

I wonder if people really understand what they are getting into.  Some time ago it was suggested that the giant public pension funds buy large corporations with annuity like income streams. This came closest to fruition when the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan proposed buying Bell Canada. What if all the telephone line workers got cancer from PCB’s in the equipment? Normally the stockholders lose as the company is liquated to pay the injured their claims. How would a situation of the school teachers vs. telephone line workers play out? Would the teachers have their pensions threatened? Would there be an incentive to cover up? Would the union movement’s slogan of solidarity take on a new meaning? 

Are these predicaments a parable of our present day and especially in California?

Copyright 2019, Mark L. Bennett

Define Historic Preservation?

On the surface this sounds like a silly question. No one is proposing tearing down Independence Hall, the Old North Church, the California Missions or Casa Grande. Where I live in the Mother Lode, everyone would be appalled if historic Jackson or Sutter Creek were threatened. Nationally, there has been recent vandalism of statues of those judged politically incorrect by some. And, of course, the historic preservation movement has its lunatic fringe. But that’s human nature and says nothing substantive about historic preservation.

This article is not about political vandalism or the antics of fringe folks. But it is about soliciting opinion on an issue that has troubled me for years. Several decades ago, I was a consultant to the [then] Santa Monica Mountains Comprehensive Planning Commission. Governor Ronald Reagan approved the sale of the 20th Century Fox property, turning it into Malibu Creek State Park. This was to be the genesis of the much larger Santa Monica National Recreation Area which is now a national park service facility. While my consulting was limited to public transit, I did observe the facility’s evolution and have been troubled ever since.

It was decided to preserve remnants of Native American villages without, to my knowledge, any opposition. But the remains of movie sets, including a Chinese village from Steve McQueen’s The Sand Pebbles were destroyed. Certainly some would argue that these were temporary structures prone to quick decay. That danger is real, but how is this different from many other protected ruins? And perhaps the studio didn’t want us to see how they fake things. But I believe that movie making is part of our heritage just like Native American settlements and that the movie sets should have also been preserved. What do others think?

Endnote: The park’s website states under Historic Archeological Materials that their museum includes “…historic archeological material from historic sites related to ranching, homesteading, agriculture, space technology, filming and recreation.”  To what extent and with what commentary the movie sets are documented I have no idea.

Copyright 2019, Mark L. Bennett

The Disunited States of America

Many years ago in the Bay Area I heard a clairvoyant speak.  She hated George Bush II and looked into the future to see the outcome of his policies. But instead, she saw the break up on the United States into a series of regional republics. Shock gripped the audience. When mine subsided, I realized the question was not if this will happen, but rather, are the preconditions here? My own suspicions that they were became confirmed with Bill Bishop’s 2008 book: The Big Sort.  Later, I read a Christian website suggesting leaving high housing cost states like California for low cost housing states. Why be a two paycheck family with added daycare expense when you can be a stay at home parent elsewhere? That seems like a common sense path to family preservation and good parenting.

Locally, two leaders in the former Mother Lode Tea Party have left, one to Idaho and the other to Utah. It now costs $2,085 for a U-Haul from San Francisco to Las Vegas but only $132 for the return journey. I made an emotionally and politically similar move, although within the same state, to Amador County from LA. I documented my tyrannical government experience there while trying to develop affordable housing in my 7/16 Outside the Ivory Tower entitled Reality Intruded. Amador County has since transitioned from loggers and other feet on the ground folks to something very different. Often court decisions now seem made by the judge’s ideology rather than rule of law. Certainly this includes the Obama appointees, but also some judges closer to home. I researched the relevant cases, but was warned by someone with greater expertise than me to not mention names and get sued.  My immediate response recalled my prior visceral response to Obama’s attacks on The Little Sisters of the Poor: I am not living in America anymore.

The data keeps reaffirming the resorting of the American population. Major media and especially social media now commonly use the term "Civil War". While polarization will continue along with political and “random” violence increasing, it wouldn’t be the armies of one state against another. The United States will likely break into a series of regional republics. I’ve read others that share this same prognostication.  Perhaps the national debt will never be repaid with the swamp creatures of Washington migrating to areas of their liking. A breakup is the cleanest way to destroy the power of the United States. The globalists will then have won and proceed to determine the next millennium of human history.

End notes: Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort is worth reading, but it occasionally suffers from his liberalism. For example, he underestimated the influence of Evangelicals and was certainly proven wrong with Trump’s election.

East, South and West conflicts have always been part of American history. But despite one civil war, most people were preoccupied within their smaller region or a city and its hinterland and their respective economics.

Copyright 2019, Mark L. Bennett

The Times They Are A Changed (to paraphrase Bob Dylan)

In the 1970’s I worked 8 to 5 in downtown LA. Following that I took an express bus to Cal State, LA, gobbled down a reasonable dinner in the school cafeteria and started class at 6 pm. Due to situations like that and others in my life I have prided myself as a hard working, self reliant, conservative American. But the realization hit me that I couldn’t do that today given current tuition prices. Also, I ate a somewhat subsidized meal. Today, it’s likely that food service at Cal State, LA is a mall-like court of fast food outlets as it is now at Sac State.

While much discussion has occurred, both pro and con, about college sports subsidy, inflated faculty salaries and benefits, too many foreign students, etc. the largest culprit by many orders of magnitude has been administration especially diversity and similar programs. Not surprisingly, they employ the graduates in fields such as Gender Studies who would otherwise be unemployable.  Our institutions of higher learning have become self-perpetuating organizations with education as the excuse and no longer the reason. The very people the colleges exist to help have, instead, become the victims.

There is no need to repeat the severity and personal hardships of the student loan debt crisis. The Liberals have created this crisis and now advocate high tax solutions such as free college while ignoring the causes. They create problems for the opportunity to offer solutions that increase government and reduce personal freedom with the human suffering induced being irrelevant. I saw this phenomenon in LA. The central city was down-zoned with many developers creasing business or finding themselves bankrupt. Like with student loan difficulties, there is no need to repeat the squalor or disease of homelessness. But the environmentalists thought they were saving the city while the far left knowingly exploited them to create a demand for government control over housing.

But while I was “subsidized” as a college student, it was clearly in the context of someone helping themselves, not surrendering their freedoms to dependency. The goal of liberal democracy (in its historic meaning) is to guarantee opportunity, not to guarantee success. This was well articulated by Abraham Lincoln in his signing the Land Grant College Act (officially the Morrill Act) creating our state university system. Affirmative Action espouses the opposite ideology.

From the far left to the far right, there is now an overly abundant public discussion of our social welfare system. I find it more framed in rhetoric than fact. All societies have had social welfare systems. In 19th century America it was primarily voluntary organizations like the Masons, Elks, etc. Our local Italian Benevolent Society dates from that period. In the Middle Ages, it was the Catholic Church. Religious charities still play a major role in social welfare today, but are and have been under attack by the secular left.  I still cringe recalling Obama’s cohort attacking The Little Sisters of the Poor. Before that, the left vicously attacked Bush for discrimination when he proposed that church-run child care facilities which received government money would be expected to hire those of the same faith or domination. But Bush was right, and endless data shows that religious-oriented social services have higher success rates.

But throughout history until a few generations ago, social welfare was primarily the extended family. It still is, but not to the pervasive extent it was in the past. Now we have care giver programs, etc. that subsidize and partly replace the family.

Today’s situation is “a changed” and our politics seem simply insane.  I find it, except for far left motives of destructive social upheaval, beyond comprehension to have an open border for criminals and terrorists along with granting some of them welfare. That is one of many examples of the impossibilities of today’s discussions. Nevertheless, I refuse to give up hope and make the following proposals. I do this in the context of sadly having to acknowledge the existent government role, the vast number of single parent households and other manifestations of the immediate past than can only change over a generation or two.

Firstly, colleges need to be audited as if they were corporate takeover candidates or Chapter 11 make overs. Costs can be eliminated without sacrificing the clear goal of education. Since most colleges are state run or regulated, but dependent upon Federal aid, there are various issues here. The Federal do- -as-I-say began with New Deal aid programs and has probably polluted America ever since. Given today’s political landscape, the initiative would come from Trump. I don’t like the predicament we’re in of having to further strengthen the federal government, but I am a realist and that’s our only choice.

I’ve always supported public transit, like the land grant colleges, because it helps people help themselves. And the situation there is not unlike universities. Transit agencies with business people on their boards (unheard of in California) run far more efficiently. Again, this could be changed with Federal grant requirements, but we are in the same quagmire as with education. 

Real public discussion seems the only answer, but that possibility seems to diminish daily. But it’s still important to ask in formulating social welfare policy: Does this help people help themselves or does it encourage dependency?

Copyright 2019, Mark L. Bennett 

  

State of our State

A bureaucrat rises in position not by moving up through the narrowing channels of management, but by adding employees below them and therefore increasing their department size and weight within the organization.  Compare the number of HR staff with actual production workers in many small and medium companies and you will be shocked. But at least the marketplace exhibits competitive pressure while the government bureaucrat relies primarily upon propaganda.  And please remember that the privilege of a government agency to use our tax dollars to lobby for its continued existence plus expansion was an innovation of FDR.

While I receive my retirement healthcare from CALPERS, my pension lies elsewhere. But CALPERS continually sends me pension booklets as part of “the CALPERS family” that are irrelevant and trashed.  My CALPERS healthcare also sends me booklets that contain such “startling” new information as regular exercise and eating fresh fruits and vegetables contribute to health. This waste is created by people inventing a need for themselves with likely justification by consultants with rows of PhD’s.

Some years ago a co-worker of mine, a retired corporate executive and a master at corporate/government paperwork, was closing out the affairs of his recently deceased mother.  He sent the appropriate paperwork to Social Security and quickly received a case closed reply. But a California bureaucrat suspected fraud with his filling to end a small state pension. My friend was raked over the coals for months until resolution. But our Sacramento parasite was probably rewarded for suspecting and pursuing possible hanky panky.

Many years ago my partners and I decided to liquidate a corporation we had. The proper documents were sent in sufficiently before the annual deadline. But we never heard back until the following year. The Department of Corporations wrote back that we were late and therefore owned them another fee to exist in the current year to process the dissolution filing. Our lawyer fired back by saying you withheld the filing intentionally and that if you did this to us you are doing this to others. Would you like a class action suit to prove our contention? We then received an apology saying they had made a clerical error and we didn’t owe the fee. But departments and agencies that produce revenue maintain a certain shine.

As deadly as the growth of California’s government has been, it now appears to have accelerated from an arithmetic rate to a geometric rate. Newsom equals oblivion.

Copyright 2019, Mark L. Bennett