Have We Gone Nuts? And Merry Christmas!

Within the past week a newscaster was castigated for stating the historical reality that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus were white. A few days later a school teacher told a 14 year old black student that he couldn’t dress as Santa Claus because Santa Claus was white. This was certainly in the spirit of peace on earth and goodwill toward men, wasn’t it? Could you imagine a Jewish man at a costume party being told he couldn’t dress as a knight because Jews weren’t knights in the Middle Ages? Probably not because that’s not likely to happen.

Its common knowledge that Saint Nicholas was a Greek Orthodox bishop in the early 300’s AD whose gift giving provided the basis for Santa Claus. We say “Santa Claus” from our Dutch colonial inheritance, the British say Father Christmas. The now traditional looking Santa was standardized from a Coca Cola ad in 1931 inspired by Clement Clark Moore's 1822 poem, "A Visit From St. Nicholas" better known as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. But the reindeer may have come from an earlier source. The Roman goddess Diana was believed to sail through the night sky with deer. Some say the basis of Santa is a Siberian shaman high on hallucinogenic plants flying across the sky with the reindeer. If this is the case than Santa is more closely biologically related to the Native Americans than any other group in the USA.

But whatever the mythological or historical origins, Santa Claus, like Jesus, belongs to all of us; including that black teenager and his seemingly racist teacher.

Merry Christmas!

Copyright 2013, Mark L. Bennett

Obamacare: Social Security Redux

As millions of Americans are smarting from the inanities of Obamacare, we must not forget another similar liberal scam that has been perverting our economic lives since the 1930’s: Social Security. Over the past 50 or so years Social Security has returned about 1.6% while the average return on invested capital in the United States has averaged over 8%. One reason for this is the vast Social Security Administration which is so rotten to the core that some of its employees have retired on disability from the stress of going to work and having nothing to do. But the primary reason for the low return is that it’s invested totally in US government debt. In other words, it’s just a scheme for the government to borrow even more money that it has no feasible way to pay back.

Last week I received a letter stating that the Medicare benefit portion of my Social Security will be reduced for 2014 based upon my “income” in 2012. But in 2012 I was negative cash flow and was forced to buy groceries with credit cards. However, I withdrew money from retirement accounts in that year to repair my roof and install a solar energy system. That made me a high income person under their arbitrary criteria. However, my basic monthly Social Security amount is very low because for many years I was engaged in owning and maintaining residential rental properties. I could not have paid into Social Security even if I wanted to because my income was considered “unearned income”.

During those years I routinely cut out rotten waste plumbing pipe. Often I would be covered from the neck down with their contents. (But I won’t be more graphic in describing those contents since I’m not an eloquent MSNBC commentator like Martin Bashir.) At that time I often thought of photographing my effluent covered self, pairing it with a photo of a Senator dining at a fancy DC restaurant with a lobbyist and sending it to Congress with the caption: Which of these activities creates earned income? During the Depression there was plenty of work according to my father, but since wages were so low many people didn’t bother. But he didn’t want to be poor, so he worked three jobs. Two were daytime sales jobs for differing wholesalers and then a graveyard shift as a drop forge laborer. Because his efforts made him higher income, he paid into Social Security at the maximum rate from the day it went into effect until his last paycheck was received after he was already dead and in the ground at age 49. Where did that money go? Probably into the monthly checks of someone who took too much LSD and drank too many beers in the 1960’s and is now “disabled”.

When my mother retired she was unable to collect on my father’s Social Security and instead received the lower benefit my stepfather had earned. But she did get a $500 dead benefit and my brother and I were able to go to college on a benefit that lasted until we were 22. My average check was about $93 a month. These sums received were a small pittance of what my father had paid in without even considering about 30 years of interest or investment income.

In the peak year of 1977 about 900,000 students received the Social Security survivors’ benefit for college. Ending this benefit during the Reagan Administration is certainly a contributing factor to the current student loan mess. How stealing someone’s money is considered by some as a legitimate means to shore up Social Security baffles me. The money we pay into Social Security is our money despite it being called a tax. That is why payments into Social Security are not deductible from the computation of taxable income, unlike state income tax or other items. All these rules, terms and definitions define how we live and hopefully prosper in a manner seemingly divorced from reality. All I can conclude is that

Washington must indeed be a very strange place.

Copyright 2013, Mark L. Bennett

Is this really happening?

This past summer I visited a friend in Colorado. He told me that his seamless gutter business was doing OK, but that he had a new and difficult problem. He now has to order parts from so far away that the freight cost vastly exceeds the parts cost. This is not surprising since Barron’s Business and Financial Weekly recently reported that “…nonresidential fixed investment as a percent of gross domestic product shrank to a 50 year low.” Yet many, including those in government, say that the economy is improving and point to the reviving housing market. But many of the newly sold homes are purchased for cash by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), hedge funds and Sovereign Wealth Funds from “friendly” foreign countries such as Abu Dhabi and rented out. California alone has added 500,000 renters and lost 233,000 homeowners since 2007. But this increased demand, partly due to the investments just cited, has raised the price of the median California home from $274,000 in May, 2012 to $352,000 in May, 2013, a 28.4% increase. To make home ownership more affordable the Federal Reserve is trying to stimulate the economy (under its price stability mandate?) to 2% inflation. This means that prices will quintuple during an average lifetime.

Real economic growth is being stifled at every turn. The Bristol Bay/Pebble Bay project in Alaska, mentioned in a prior commentary with its 42,000 jobs, has been abandoned due to strictly ideological regulation. Almost 300 coal fired power plants are being shut down. President Obama has threatened to veto a House bill that would open the outer continental shelf to drilling with the potential for 1.2 million full time jobs over 30 years. At the same time the Washington regulators seem afraid of foreign powers like China that steal our trade secrets and intellectual property. The National Security Agency estimates the loss at $300 billion which some equate to about one million jobs.

While the capital that is entering the United States is buying assets like our homes our domestic capital is fleeing. Covanta Holdings processes about 5% of our garbage. They recycle the metals with a new, more efficient method and burn the rest to produce energy. But because a waste to energy facility has not been approved since the 1990’s, they are building their new plants in foreign countries. A recent Indonesian government auction received as many as five bids for one bond. This is a county where burning down churches is a popular pastime.

Talk of change continues to eminent from Washington, usually in the form of increased regulation. Recent rules governing initial public offerings (IPO’S) of stock haven proven so costly that middle market companies have been unable to finance themselves. IPO financing has created 92% of all job growth at public companies since the 1970’s. In a likewise manner, the new rules governing speculative trading in commodities contain loopholes for the mega corporations. These mega corporations, or crony capitalists, in turn do Washington’s bidding. They have driven down the price of gold so that China can exchange the depreciating dollars they receive for something of real value. Almost 50% of the world’s annual gold output now lies within China’s borders. Schemes such as this are necessary to finance our increasing deficits since foreign buying of US Treasuries has decreased to $104 billion from $503 billion a year earlier. This slack has been picked up by the Federal Reserve which now holds about $2.1 trillion in US treasuries and about $1.4 trillion in mortgage backed securities. If, or when, interest rates rise the Fed becomes insolvent. Nothing in the world can bail out the Federal Reserve Bank.

But the clever people in Washington, to whom some Americans still trust their well being, have an answer. Instead of the current definition of wholesaler or wholesale trader for an American company like Apple that makes all of its products aboard, the government will now classify them as manufacturers because their product design and production oversight occurs in the US. This definitional change would have added up to two million “American” manufacturing jobs in the study year of 2007.

The picture doesn’t look as bleak now, does it? If this reminds anyone of the torture/finger counting scene in 1984 you are probably not alone. Our situation is called an “enormous doomsday machine” by former budget director David Stockman.

While I have no magic solution, I do know that we have some power locally and that we must exercise it. It is essential to support the Newman Ridge project and the expansion of gold mining. We must assume jurisdiction over our national forests and begin productive ventures. Potential developments such as the portable slaughter house for cattle and a Pioneer biomass plant must be explored. Do we have any choice if we wish to survive?

Copyright 2013, Mark L. Bennett

A Pioneer Biomass Plant?

The cedar mill with its exuberant giant pencils is long gone. The “replacement” greenhouse venture has apparently failed. On the hills above the high tension lines remain like a grim picture of a future Detroit. Isn’t this the perfect location for a biomass energy plant? Every time I drive up Hwy 88 dead trees punctuate the national forest. The Foothill Conservancy has done a commendable job of obtaining grant money and clearing dead trees. (Who likes to fill out government paperwork?) But their effort has two fatal flaws. Firstly, the government money is borrowed from the Chinese for which we have no creditable means of repayment. And secondly, the trees are burned as waste which only adds to air pollution. This additional pollution wouldn’t occur in a state of the art biomass plant as the former waste becomes electricity. And the plant could also produce wood pellets for a worldwide market using nearby ports.

Can the County Planning Department, the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors package this site for biomass? Can the Amador Economic Development Corporation interest an experienced operator such as Waste Management to do a detailed study at their own expense? And while I wouldn’t venture a guess on the final economic feasibility, it seems clearly worthy of exploration. The present Buena Vista plant only serves a 50 mile radius and partly burns agricultural waste.

Along with the employment, tax revenue and forest cleaning benefits, I have a vision of the plant also operating like a recycling center. Individuals with dead trees beyond their fireplace needs could bring them in for money. This would cause a small, but worthwhile, reduction in home refuse burning. With woody biomass going for $20 to $35 a ton and a Ford F-150, for example, having a capacity over one and a half tons it seems quite reasonable that individuals could participate. Those struggling financially could go into the national forest and cut. Perhaps a whole new entrepreneurial generation of loggers would emerge. Why can’t we have hundreds of people in the forest competing for dead trees? This would also require that all the roads be kept open with perhaps some new ones. Amador County could have cleaner, safer forests, new employment opportunities and perhaps serve as a model to other communities.

Copyright 2013, Mark L. Bennett

Chaos & Ignorance

California’s recent pension reform bill conflicts with Federal law regarding union members at transit districts receiving Federal aid. Missing that $1.6 billion in aid has caused a halt in funding that threatens millions of daily bus and train riders. The legislature is quickly adopting the necessary changes which will add even more uncertainty to the budgetary process.  But between the time that bill passes and the aid returns the Sacramento Regional Transit District may lose up to 10% of its current budget. Other transit districts are presumably in the same situation.  Whatever one may think of Jerry Brown’s political positions, he is intelligent and knowledgeable. The same probably holds generally true for his staff and the Legislature. Am I to assume that ignorance is the answer for passing illegal legislation? If that is the only explanation than this is not liberal government or conservative government but rather chaos government. I find this frightening.

Many people question or lose their faith because of some inconsistencies in the Bible. And while most scholars agree that both the New and Old Testaments contain inconsistencies, inconsistencies are inherent in sacred writings from many faiths and traditions. Some may reductively express this as being like a Zen riddle. Personally, I feel that sacred texts are meant to prompt you to resolve the so called inconsistencies. It’s a set up for an internal experience. They are not meant for idle readers. Many people seem to be criticizing from ignorance. 

A very pious physicist once told me something amazing.  Assuming that you accept Einstein’s theory of relativity  that time expands as you move outward  from the center of the universe, then the earth is the billions of years old that official science states. But if you measure that same elapsed time from the center of the universe, what  some call the eye of God  and others ground zero for the big bang, then the earth is exactly as old as the Bible states.   So not only is the accuracy of the Bible reinforced, but the writers- the transcribers from divine intelligence- were in tune with something beyond most current awareness. If what I have said is true, then why isn’t this front page news? Couldn’t this information eliminate much acrimonious and passionate debate which may, in fact, be false?

Are we becoming, as many social critics advocate, more ignorant as a people? Does this create chaos as a natural outcome? Is there more to come?

Copyright 2013, Mark L. Bennett

Frogs, Toads and Best Available Science

As was advertised here on Amador Community News and elsewhere Congressmen McClintock and Nunes held a hearing on August 6th in Sonora regarding the designation of over two million acres as critical habitat for various frogs and toads. What follows is an observation of one element of that hearings’ discussion and a response an environmentalist’s letter to the editor in a Sonora area newspaper.  Since this argument hasn’t changed regular readers will notice that I have repeated prior statements.

At the hearing the US Fish and Game representative repeatedly stated that they would use the “best available science”. In 1930’s Germany the best available science proved racial superiority. In the former Soviet Union the best available science, Lamarckism evolution, would create the new socialist person within a few generations. In present day America the best available science says that a former rat poison ingredient, Sodium Fluoride, must be added to our drinking water for its dental health benefits. Science is in service to the mega corporations and the government (see who funds research). Probably the most blatant example of official science/best available science is the total fraud of climate change.

Climate change is one of the reasons noted by Justin Augustine from Oakland’s Center for Biological Diversity for the designation of over two million acres as critical habitat. He also gives pesticide use as another reason.  Who is using pesticides in the National Forests? I know of no one and if he does he should come forward with that information. Another of his reasons is habitat loss. Not only have the boundaries of the National Forests not changed, but vast amounts of land in California has been added to parks, preserves, conversation easements, etc. Go to the El Dorado National Forest website, look up Indian Creek and see the vast sums of public money being spent on building new frog habitat. He also cites introduced species as a cause. This is correct because California Fish & Game has introduced non native fish into higher elevation lakes. Has this stopped? Has the Center for Biological Diversity lobbied against this practice? His last reason of disease is also true; a parasite from the imported African claw frog is killing local species. But how does the designation fight the disease? It has been fought in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and on the grounds of UC Davis. And while I object to the cost, I would not publicly oppose the breeding in captivity of healthy allegedly endangered or threatened species and their release into the wild.

Mr. Augustine stated that the designation opponents don’t understand the Endangered Species Act and that it won’t cost jobs or restrict access. When he says that “This is simply untrue” I suggest that he look into the mirror regarding who is lying. He has chosen to ignore the track record of the Forest Service and their litigious environmental allies in closing roads and banning logging and grazing.  Grazing is essential for the health of our Sierra ecosystems. Over 40,000 elephants were killed in Africa because the prior best available science said otherwise. Go to Allan Savory’s videos on YouTube for proof.

What Mr. Augustine ignores or is uninformed about is that this designation is part of a larger program to depopulate the rural areas (Agenda 21) and to destroy the middle class as a precondition to a possible totalitarian state. The boisterously clapping participants at the recent hearing are well aware of this reality.

Copyright 2013, Mark L. Bennett

Supervisors’ Discussion: the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and Prop 84 funds

On 7/23/13 the Sierra Nevada Conservancy made a presentation to the Amador County Board of Supervisors. I made the following public comment:

"We are all forced to make decisions within constrained “black boxes” that we did not create and often don’t like.  Therefore, I do not oppose applications for Prop 84 funds. If money is available we should take it. However, I have read the Prop 84 grant history, the material from the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and their allied organizations and wish to make several comments.

All of these documents and projects are to protect watershed, but there is not one mention that watersheds are threatened because the water remains in the overgrown forest canopy and evaporates before it can reach the ground. There is also no mention of reducing overgrown forests through increased logging, which would produce profits rather than subsidy. The Sierra Nevada Conservancy values forests for carbon capture, accepting the fraud of CO2 induced climate change. Today that increased carbon is making deserts bloom around the world. Also the Sierra Nevada Conservancy initiates, encourages and supports efforts that improve, among other things, the social well being of the Sierra Nevada Region.  This is a radically new concept of government responsibility and I wonder about its origin and purpose. There is also troubling god like desires to micro manage nature and other areas of endeavor partly expressed in the inordinate expenditures for studies. The website of the Central Sierra Resource Conservation & Development Area informed me that the ancestry of 46% of the white population of this area is of English, German and Irish origin. That may make a great freshman Sociology term paper, but it seems hard to justify as an expense of over indebted government.

None of what I’ve said is meant to abrogate, among the many millions of dollars and hundred plus projects, the value of some projects such as firebreaks. But can’t existing parts of government do this? How many agencies do we need? Many of the Prop 84 monies have been appropriated to other parts of government such as UC Berkeley, the US Forest Service and to state parks which we know have hidden funds elsewhere.  This process where one government entity appropriates money to another government entity can only lead to government by connivers.  I much prefer the transparent process where the actual appropriations to education, or parks, or forests or whatever are discussed openly. This process also funds unelected bodies like the Association of Bay Area Governments which appears to be usurping local governmental authority with its One Bay Area Plan. Also funded, and among the various stakeholders, are ideological advocacy groups.

Prop 84 has devoted a huge amount of funds to land trusts and easements of various sorts. All these schemes have taken land from private ownership and preclude future subdivision and private ownership. This reverts to the aristocratic land tenure system of the Middle Ages. I find little difference between the omnipotent aristocrats of the past and the replacement omnipotent bureaucrats of today.

The entire American dream of land ownership is being assaulted. The Mokelumne/Amador/Calaveras Integrated Regional Water Management Plan Update, Community Outreach Plan contains appropriate wording protecting economically disadvantaged individuals from changes their plan may create. And while certainly there are some individuals to old or disabled to care for themselves, the vast majority of low income people are best served by plans that make economic growth the priority.”

Copyright 2013 © by Mark Bennett.