After dealing with paperwork for "yoU Stay Forever" i will be returning to lay out my "I'm mad as #@(*##@" rant about the schiavo thing
stay tuned
| |
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Some good news from Wizbang
Bang Bang
A Slovenian TV program devised to to prove that top models were brainless bimbos was canceled after an former Miss Universe turned out to have a higher IQ than a the shows female nuclear physicist.
Iris Mulej, Miss Universe 2002, was found to have an IQ of 156 by scientists working for the producers.
If you looked like that and lived in Slovenia you wouldn't have to be a genius to figure out that modeling would your ticket to a much better life...
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
give me some sugar baby
| Shotgun You preferred a weapon with 52% power over speed and 54% range over melee. |
| You use a Shotgun. While not the fastest gun in the west, a shotgun's raw power and ease of use make it an extremely potent weapon. Some shotguns can also be loaded with many different types of ammunition, providing a versatility many guns don't have. Choosing your shots, you fell your opponents immediately and without pause. |
 |
My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
|
| Link: The What's Your Signature Weapon Test written by inurashii on Ok Cupid |
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Jesse Jackson
As many right wingers are patting themselves on the back that Jesse has gotten into the fray
See, this is non partisan...
On that note let me address some other Moral issues and where Jesse has been on them
The State of Illegitimate childbirth's in the African-American Community: Anyone need a road map to find Jesse on that one? Nope didn't think so
The Woefully poor performance of schools in mostly black areas, and the Clinton administrations loss of BILLIONS of dollars to help inner city kids learn how to read: Hmmm No Jesse
The fact black culture encourages kids to talk and act in a way that would make it harder for them to advance: Hmmm No Jesse
Bill Cosby's call to get Black Parents active in their Children's education: **cricket cricket**
The attacks on The Cos for said Call to action: **cricket cricket**
The Brutal Massacre of Christian Africans in the Sudan: **cricket Cricket**
Aiding Michael Jackson in saying "I'm not a child molestor... they just hate me cause i am a strong black man ( that looks like a white woman)": Hey i found Jesse
Aiding black kids who were punished for monsterous behavior in the schools, and bullying the school system to get those kids back in -and aid some greedy RDDB in suing them-: Hey Look it's Jesse again
Prominent democrats embracing racism and racial issues ( the Chris Dodd and Robert KKK Byrd show): Hmmm No Jesse there either
Or Howard Dean's Rascist Joke: Hmmm No Jesse
Or Kwesie Mfume getting pushed out of the NAACP for trying to make it Non Partisan: No Jesse
When DCFS lost allot of children, primarily black, from their system. And when the folks responsible for that neglagence got away with a slap on the wrist: **cricket cricket**
When John Kerry had no prominent African Americans in his Inner circle: No Jesse, but Sharpton was there.
How about praise for the growing African-American Middle Class: Hmm No Jesse
Getting Kickbacks from big corperations: Hey here's Jesse
The Destruction of the African-American family: remember where he was on illegitimacy... yeah
On abortion: Jesse doesn't Err on the side of Life there
I think you guys might want to take a moment and think about this before patting yourselves on the back
See, this is non partisan...
On that note let me address some other Moral issues and where Jesse has been on them
The State of Illegitimate childbirth's in the African-American Community: Anyone need a road map to find Jesse on that one? Nope didn't think so
The Woefully poor performance of schools in mostly black areas, and the Clinton administrations loss of BILLIONS of dollars to help inner city kids learn how to read: Hmmm No Jesse
The fact black culture encourages kids to talk and act in a way that would make it harder for them to advance: Hmmm No Jesse
Bill Cosby's call to get Black Parents active in their Children's education: **cricket cricket**
The attacks on The Cos for said Call to action: **cricket cricket**
The Brutal Massacre of Christian Africans in the Sudan: **cricket Cricket**
Aiding Michael Jackson in saying "I'm not a child molestor... they just hate me cause i am a strong black man ( that looks like a white woman)": Hey i found Jesse
Aiding black kids who were punished for monsterous behavior in the schools, and bullying the school system to get those kids back in -and aid some greedy RDDB in suing them-: Hey Look it's Jesse again
Prominent democrats embracing racism and racial issues ( the Chris Dodd and Robert KKK Byrd show): Hmmm No Jesse there either
Or Howard Dean's Rascist Joke: Hmmm No Jesse
Or Kwesie Mfume getting pushed out of the NAACP for trying to make it Non Partisan: No Jesse
When DCFS lost allot of children, primarily black, from their system. And when the folks responsible for that neglagence got away with a slap on the wrist: **cricket cricket**
When John Kerry had no prominent African Americans in his Inner circle: No Jesse, but Sharpton was there.
How about praise for the growing African-American Middle Class: Hmm No Jesse
Getting Kickbacks from big corperations: Hey here's Jesse
The Destruction of the African-American family: remember where he was on illegitimacy... yeah
On abortion: Jesse doesn't Err on the side of Life there
I think you guys might want to take a moment and think about this before patting yourselves on the back
Three Supreme's
and the nutjob who allowed foriegn laws into our courts.. thankfully is on the wrong side on this one (again)
Lets hope the courts stiff the entertainment industry which has a bad buisness model anyway
Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the same software that can be used to steal copyrighted materials offered at least conceptually "some really excellent uses" that are legal.
Justice Antonin Scalia maintained that a ruling for entertainment companies could mean that if "I'm a new inventor, I'm going to get sued right away."
While seeming leery of allowing lawsuits, the court also appeared deeply troubled by efforts of the companies that manufacture so-called file-sharing software to encourage Internet piracy and profit from it.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy pressed a software lawyer on the question of whether profits from trafficking in stolen property can rightfully be used to help finance a young technology business. "That seems wrong to me," he said.
Lets hope the courts stiff the entertainment industry which has a bad buisness model anyway
this week is
Spring Break -working-busted up foot and ankle-school work i have to do over the week =only slightly less sucktacular then a normal week
and now for the joke of the day
all hail LGF
hmmm Allah would punish a nation who is doing more for his people then his own followers
what a merciful god he is
“The tsunami waves are a minor rehearsal in comparison with what awaits the US in 2007,” the researcher concluded in his study. “The Holy Koran warns against the Omnipotent Allah’s force. A great sin will cause a huge flood in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.”
Silwadi, who is from the village of Silwad near Ramallah — the home of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal — is not a world-renowned scholar. He said he decided to publish the findings of his research “out of a sense of responsibility because what is about to happen is extremely shocking and frightening.” ...
hmmm Allah would punish a nation who is doing more for his people then his own followers
what a merciful god he is
Al-Reuters: Maximum Dhimmitude
CAIRO (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has alarmed many reformist Arabs with comments suggesting a new U.S. approach that promotes rapid political change without regard for internal stability.
Rice said in an interview with the Washington Post last week the Middle East status quo was not stable and she doubted it would be stable soon. Washington would speak out for "freedom" without offering a model or knowing what the outcome would be.
the headline you ask?
Rice Alarms Reformist Arabs with Stability Remarks
Now.. this doesn't refer to national stability but the status quo of the region... bias much?
i'll let you read the dhimmitude of the article
No You like her more
From
Perry: I was just trying to get some po.. I mean care for my constitutency
Rick Perry: Ultra-tool
now ;-) i think Kay should explain her comments like George Patton did "I only made those comments cause she was there..."
Al Press
And on Monday, Hutchison's campaign aides said Perry's letter to Clinton, when she was first lady, showed that he was a hypocrite in making the videotape.
"I think your efforts in trying to reform the nation's health care system are most commendable," Perry said. At the time, some critics were describing the then-first lady's plan of government-sponsored HMOs and health care cooperatives as socialism.
Saenz said there is no comparison between Perry writing a letter on behalf of his constituents in 1993 and Hutchison accepting praise in person from "a rather liberal New York senator."
Perry was state agriculture commissioner at the time, a position he had won in 1990 after switching from the Democratic to the Republican Party. He asked Clinton to take special notice of the health care needs of farmers, ranchers and people in rural areas as she tried to overhaul national health care.
Clinton's efforts at health care reform failed. Perry has since described her plan as "a government-run, one-size-fits-all health system."
Perry: I was just trying to get some po.. I mean care for my constitutency
Rick Perry: Ultra-tool
now ;-) i think Kay should explain her comments like George Patton did "I only made those comments cause she was there..."
From the Email box: and from my local rag to
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20050326&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=503260408&SectionCat=&Template=printart
Article published Mar 26, 2005
TV reporter earned money from state
By Chris Davis and Matthew Doig
At the same time one of Florida's most visible television reporters brought the news to viewers around the state, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars on the side from the government agencies he covered.
Mike Vasilinda, a 30-year veteran of the Tallahassee press corps, does public relations work and provides film editing services to more than a dozen state agencies.
His Tallahassee company, Mike Vasilinda Productions Inc., has earned more than $100,000 over the past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush's office, the Secretary of State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are routinely part of Vasilinda's stories.
Vasilinda also was paid to work on campaign ads for at least one politician and to create a promotional movie for Leon County. One of his biggest state contracts was a 1996 deal that paid nearly $900,000 to air the weekly drawing for the Florida Lottery.
Meanwhile, the freelance reporter's stories continued to air on CNN and most Florida NBC stations, including WFLA-Channel 8 in Tampa.
On Friday, Vasilinda told the Herald-Tribune that his business dealings with state government don't influence his reporting.
"I have processes in place to make sure the products we put out for our news clients are free from bias from any source," Vasilinda said. "We absolutely keep arm's length between the two divisions of our company."
But Bob Steele, a journalism ethics professor at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, said Vasilinda's state government work "certainly raises some red flags."
"Journalists should be guided by a principle of independence, and their primary loyalty should be to the public," Steele said. "When journalists have loyalties to a government office or government agencies, those competing loyalties can undermine journalistic independence."
Vasilinda's stories reach millions of viewers because he sells them through Capitol News Service, the television wire service he founded and runs in Tallahassee. NBC and other stations subscribe to Capitol News Service and then can download and air any segments done by Vasilinda or the reporters who work for him.
Steele said Vasilinda's government contracts are the latest blow to media credibility following the revelation earlier this year that three journalists were accepting government contracts to promote certain programs.
In January, USA Today revealed that President George W. Bush's administration had paid conservative columnist Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote No Child Left Behind, the president's education reform law.
After the Williams flap went public, two more conservative columnists were exposed for accepting money to promote Bush's beliefs on marriage.
Vasilinda said his situation is nothing like Williams' because he has not personally promoted any government programs or appeared in any of the videos his business produced.
In fact, Vasilinda has a reputation for being among the most aggressive reporters covering government in Tallahassee.
"No one has ever suggested that our coverage, in any way, is soft on anybody," Vasilinda said. "The proof is in the pudding."
Steele said that argument doesn't work because being unbiased is only partly about what gets on the air.
"We don't know everything he passed up, questions he didn't ask, issues he didn't explore," Steele said.
Many of the agencies that have contracted with Vasilinda were unable to provide details of the contracts late Friday.
In January, a Herald-Tribune reporter left repeated messages with Gov. Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj requesting information about whether any journalists have received money from state agencies.
Faraj, who worked for Vasilinda at Capitol News Service before she was hired by the Bush administration, never responded. Faraj also did not return calls Friday seeking comment for this story.
State officials from several agencies said Vasilinda Productions has created promotional videos, filmed public service announcements featuring prominent government officials and made copies of videos and compact disks for agencies. Several years ago, Vasilinda Productions produced a back-to-school video featuring then-Education Commissioner Charlie Crist who went on to become Attorney General and is now considered a contender for governor in 2006.
The fact that Vasilinda works for government agencies is widely known among reporters and government officials in Tallahassee.
At a press conference in front of other reporters in 1996, then-Sen. Jack Latvala, a Republican from Palm Harbor, singled out Vasilinda for accepting the lottery contract.
But viewers around the state have never been told of Vasilinda's broad financial ties to state government.
In fact, several television executives at Florida's NBC affiliates -- stations associated with but not owned by NBC -- said they were unaware of Vasilinda's contracts and would not comment on them until they had more information.
CNN, which aired a Vasilinda story on Terri Schiavo on Thursday, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The only NBC-owned news station in Florida, WTBJ in Miami, said it will review the situation with Vasilinda and won't run any stories he produces until they have completed the review.
WFLA News Director Forrest Carr said he knew that Vasilinda had been hired by the state but did not know how many contracts or how much money Vasilinda had been paid.
Carr said Vasilinda's business is separate from his news reporting and does not represent a conflict of interest that concerns WFLA. The station doesn't plan to stop airing Vasilinda stories, Carr said.
"We have discussed this. He assures me he has safeguards in place," Carr said. "He would not allow himself to be in a position where he would allow his journalism to be compromised."
Carr points out that most media companies have government contracts, but they are carried out by people who aren't involved in news coverage. Because Vasilinda runs a small business, he's unable to separate the business and news side of his organization, Carr said.
The Tampa Tribune, which shares some content with WFLA and has cited Vasilinda as a contributing reporter for at least one story, plans to review how Vasilinda separates his contracting business from his news coverage, said Executive Editor Janet Weaver.
"I want to make sure that any journalist that is contributing to our report is not entangled with any sort of government influence," Weaver said.
Vasilinda told the Herald-Tribune on Friday that he is not involved in the production or content for his government contracts. But he said he is involved in business decisions for Vasilinda Productions as well as news decisions at Capitol News Service.
Vasilinda said he would not allow the reporters who work for him to accept state money from government agencies.
The Herald-Tribune's affiliated cable news station, SNN 6, has determined that it ran at least one story produced by Vasilinda. The station will no longer run any stories produced by Vasilinda, said SNN General Manager Lou Ferrara.
"The SNN staff has been alerted not to use that material because it looks like a conflict of interest," Ferrara said. "How do you expect to look 100 percent clean if you are being paid by the government you're supposed to be covering?"
--
Article published Mar 26, 2005
TV reporter earned money from state
By Chris Davis and Matthew Doig
At the same time one of Florida's most visible television reporters brought the news to viewers around the state, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars on the side from the government agencies he covered.
Mike Vasilinda, a 30-year veteran of the Tallahassee press corps, does public relations work and provides film editing services to more than a dozen state agencies.
His Tallahassee company, Mike Vasilinda Productions Inc., has earned more than $100,000 over the past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush's office, the Secretary of State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are routinely part of Vasilinda's stories.
Vasilinda also was paid to work on campaign ads for at least one politician and to create a promotional movie for Leon County. One of his biggest state contracts was a 1996 deal that paid nearly $900,000 to air the weekly drawing for the Florida Lottery.
Meanwhile, the freelance reporter's stories continued to air on CNN and most Florida NBC stations, including WFLA-Channel 8 in Tampa.
On Friday, Vasilinda told the Herald-Tribune that his business dealings with state government don't influence his reporting.
"I have processes in place to make sure the products we put out for our news clients are free from bias from any source," Vasilinda said. "We absolutely keep arm's length between the two divisions of our company."
But Bob Steele, a journalism ethics professor at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, said Vasilinda's state government work "certainly raises some red flags."
"Journalists should be guided by a principle of independence, and their primary loyalty should be to the public," Steele said. "When journalists have loyalties to a government office or government agencies, those competing loyalties can undermine journalistic independence."
Vasilinda's stories reach millions of viewers because he sells them through Capitol News Service, the television wire service he founded and runs in Tallahassee. NBC and other stations subscribe to Capitol News Service and then can download and air any segments done by Vasilinda or the reporters who work for him.
Steele said Vasilinda's government contracts are the latest blow to media credibility following the revelation earlier this year that three journalists were accepting government contracts to promote certain programs.
In January, USA Today revealed that President George W. Bush's administration had paid conservative columnist Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote No Child Left Behind, the president's education reform law.
After the Williams flap went public, two more conservative columnists were exposed for accepting money to promote Bush's beliefs on marriage.
Vasilinda said his situation is nothing like Williams' because he has not personally promoted any government programs or appeared in any of the videos his business produced.
In fact, Vasilinda has a reputation for being among the most aggressive reporters covering government in Tallahassee.
"No one has ever suggested that our coverage, in any way, is soft on anybody," Vasilinda said. "The proof is in the pudding."
Steele said that argument doesn't work because being unbiased is only partly about what gets on the air.
"We don't know everything he passed up, questions he didn't ask, issues he didn't explore," Steele said.
Many of the agencies that have contracted with Vasilinda were unable to provide details of the contracts late Friday.
In January, a Herald-Tribune reporter left repeated messages with Gov. Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj requesting information about whether any journalists have received money from state agencies.
Faraj, who worked for Vasilinda at Capitol News Service before she was hired by the Bush administration, never responded. Faraj also did not return calls Friday seeking comment for this story.
State officials from several agencies said Vasilinda Productions has created promotional videos, filmed public service announcements featuring prominent government officials and made copies of videos and compact disks for agencies. Several years ago, Vasilinda Productions produced a back-to-school video featuring then-Education Commissioner Charlie Crist who went on to become Attorney General and is now considered a contender for governor in 2006.
The fact that Vasilinda works for government agencies is widely known among reporters and government officials in Tallahassee.
At a press conference in front of other reporters in 1996, then-Sen. Jack Latvala, a Republican from Palm Harbor, singled out Vasilinda for accepting the lottery contract.
But viewers around the state have never been told of Vasilinda's broad financial ties to state government.
In fact, several television executives at Florida's NBC affiliates -- stations associated with but not owned by NBC -- said they were unaware of Vasilinda's contracts and would not comment on them until they had more information.
CNN, which aired a Vasilinda story on Terri Schiavo on Thursday, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The only NBC-owned news station in Florida, WTBJ in Miami, said it will review the situation with Vasilinda and won't run any stories he produces until they have completed the review.
WFLA News Director Forrest Carr said he knew that Vasilinda had been hired by the state but did not know how many contracts or how much money Vasilinda had been paid.
Carr said Vasilinda's business is separate from his news reporting and does not represent a conflict of interest that concerns WFLA. The station doesn't plan to stop airing Vasilinda stories, Carr said.
"We have discussed this. He assures me he has safeguards in place," Carr said. "He would not allow himself to be in a position where he would allow his journalism to be compromised."
Carr points out that most media companies have government contracts, but they are carried out by people who aren't involved in news coverage. Because Vasilinda runs a small business, he's unable to separate the business and news side of his organization, Carr said.
The Tampa Tribune, which shares some content with WFLA and has cited Vasilinda as a contributing reporter for at least one story, plans to review how Vasilinda separates his contracting business from his news coverage, said Executive Editor Janet Weaver.
"I want to make sure that any journalist that is contributing to our report is not entangled with any sort of government influence," Weaver said.
Vasilinda told the Herald-Tribune on Friday that he is not involved in the production or content for his government contracts. But he said he is involved in business decisions for Vasilinda Productions as well as news decisions at Capitol News Service.
Vasilinda said he would not allow the reporters who work for him to accept state money from government agencies.
The Herald-Tribune's affiliated cable news station, SNN 6, has determined that it ran at least one story produced by Vasilinda. The station will no longer run any stories produced by Vasilinda, said SNN General Manager Lou Ferrara.
"The SNN staff has been alerted not to use that material because it looks like a conflict of interest," Ferrara said. "How do you expect to look 100 percent clean if you are being paid by the government you're supposed to be covering?"
--
Chris Crain one of the good guys
After reading about the story of gaypatriot being driven out of the blog buisness i got turned onto the In/Out story of RNC leade Ken Mehlman
but Chris went farther in demonstrating journalistic ethics and integrity
While i may not agree with him on the Gay Marriage issue this is exactlly what an Issue advocating editorial should do.
It's good Journalism and it is ethical Journalism
it doesn't matter if Mehlman is gay, what matters is how does he hold to the gay rights/civil rights views of his past in his new position of power
In other Mehlman news, RawStory.com has published a "response" by editor John Byrne to my blog posting that took issue with "anonymous sources" who claim I "spiked" a Blade story that would out Mehlman. Byrne now claims that RawStory did not report, and does not believe, that I "spiked" the story, even though ConspiracyPlanet.com published the RawStory piece with a headline saying exactly that. Instead, I "thwarted" or "stifled" the story by hiding information from my own reporters. I'll leave the difference to semanticists, but the claim is rubbish however it is worded.
More interestingly, Byrne trots out as proof of a pattern in this regard that I declined an offer to investigate alleged audiotapes of a profile recorded by Congressman Ed Schrock on a phone sex line. RawStory suggests that I hid this offer from the Blade staff, as well. His only source for that claim is a former staffer who he knows was not even working at the Blade the time the offer was made. The irony here is that Byrne only knows that the Blade was offered the Schrock tapes because I told him, a fact he conveniently fails to report. Does he think I keep secrets from my staff and then blab to RawStory.com? The same goes for my own personal history with Ken Mehlman. RawStory reported the ties as if they were some secret revelations to be exposed, never informing readers that I wrote a very public editorial with the exact same information almost five months earlier.
Silly conspiracy theories aside, this is really just about a difference of opinion about how much of a public figure's private sex life is fair game to investigate if he has an anti-gay record. RawStory made its view clear when it hired Mike Rogers, who initiated the campaign outing Capitol Hill staffers, to be "editor" of RawStoryQ, the site's gay section.
As the Blade reported last August, those on Capitol Hill in Rogers' crosshairs say they and their offices were subjected to as many as 20 phone calls a day, badgering office staff with details about closeted gays working there. Blade staffers are no strangers to these multiple, harassing phone calls. That's certainly not journalism, and it's not even activism. It's borderline stalking; and it ought to stop.
but Chris went farther in demonstrating journalistic ethics and integrity
We believed in a government that should stay out of our pocketbooks and out of our bedrooms. George W. Bush has certainly steered clear of our wallets — enacting tax cut after tax cut — but he has failed to curb pork barrel spending and even created giant new entitlements. The combination has converted a record surplus into a record deficit and dug the government’s grubby hands into the pocketbooks of generations to come.
Even more fundamentally, the Bush campaign under the strategic direction of Rove and Mehlman used divisive social issues — including gay marriage — to drive deep cultural wedges, just to turn out the evangelical vote.
These GOP “values voters” do not believe in a limited government, at least when it comes to taking sides in the culture wars. They expect the government to impose their particular theological views on the country — and in so doing deprive a minority group the basic equality guaranteed by the Constitution and the freedom promised by the Declaration of Independence.
KEN WOULD PROBABLY respond that the president didn’t pick gay marriage as an issue; that “activist judges” imposed their own cultural values on Massachusetts by requiring the state to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
But marriage is a peculiar institution, in which the government has chosen to create a bundle of protections and benefits for the committed adult couples who form the core of the American family.
Having created the institution, a limited government that respects the First Amendment prohibition on establishing a state religion cannot listen to one particular theological dogma in deciding which couples will qualify — whether or not that dogma belongs to a vital party constituency or even a majority.
Ken Mehlman should understand that, whether or not he is gay
While i may not agree with him on the Gay Marriage issue this is exactlly what an Issue advocating editorial should do.
It's good Journalism and it is ethical Journalism
it doesn't matter if Mehlman is gay, what matters is how does he hold to the gay rights/civil rights views of his past in his new position of power
1984
In the EU; you can be sent to jail for a book you published in your country because of the laws of another. We have the fun British libel laws. And lets not forget the Belgium war crimes court. And if you blog about some one who is a national political figure beware from McCain-Feingold to the FEC rules on regulating the internet... Free speech is being attacked due to the new rules of the "globalization" game. People are going after you, your job, and anything about you if you have the stones to stand up to them.
the first part... I think we may be getting at a point where some king of treaty is required.
for the second part I think we need to as a society work out some sort of standard. What kind of free speech does deserve slash and burn tactics, and which needs to be ignored.
the comments of a Ward Churchill and their ilk are unjustifiable, and if you have sponsors then yeah you become fair game
but I don't think your employer should be targeted if you just speak your piece
the first part... I think we may be getting at a point where some king of treaty is required.
for the second part I think we need to as a society work out some sort of standard. What kind of free speech does deserve slash and burn tactics, and which needs to be ignored.
the comments of a Ward Churchill and their ilk are unjustifiable, and if you have sponsors then yeah you become fair game
but I don't think your employer should be targeted if you just speak your piece
More things from the mailbox: 23 skiddo edition
It's Time to Explode the Myths About the New Deal
By Jim Powell
Mr. Powell, the editor of Laissez Faire Books, is a senior fellow at
the Cato Institute.
Following is an excerpt from Mr. Powell's controversial new book,
FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great
Depression (Crown Forum, 2003).
The Great Depression has had an immense influence on our thinking,
particularly about ways to handle an economic crisis, yet we know
surprisingly little about it. Most historians have focused on
chronicling Franklin D. Roosevelt's charismatic personality, his
brilliance as a strategist and communicator, the dramatic One Hundred
Days, the First New Deal, Second New Deal, the "court-packing" plan,
and other political aspects of the story. Comparatively little
attention has been paid to the effects of the New Deal.
In recent decades, however, many economists have tried to determine
whether New Deal policies contributed to recovery or prolonged the
depression. The most troubling issue has been the persistence of high
unemployment throughout the New Deal period. From 1934 to 1940, the
median annual unemployment rate was 17.2 percent.1 At no point during
the 1930s did unemployment go below 14 percent. Even in 1941, amidst
the military buildup for World War II, 9.9 percent of American workers
were unemployed. Living standards remained depressed until after the war.2
While there was episodic recovery between 1933 and 1937, the 1937 peak
was lower than the previous peak (1929), a highly unusual occurrence.
Progress has been the norm. In addition, the 1937 peak was followed by
a crash. As Nobel laureate Milton Friedman observed, this was "the
only occasion in our record when one deep depression followed
immediately on the heels of another."3
Scholarly investigators have raised some provocative questions. For
instance, why did New Dealers make it more expensive for employers to
hire people? Why did FDR's Justice Department file some 150 lawsuits
threatening big employers? Why did New Deal policies discourage
private investment without which private employment was unlikely to
revive? Why so many policies to push up the cost of living? Why did
New Dealers destroy food while people went hungry? To what extent did
New Deal labor laws penalize blacks? Why did New Dealers break up the
strongest banks? Why were Americans made more vulnerable to disastrous
human error at the Federal Reserve? Why didn't New Deal securities
laws help investors do better? Why didn't New Deal public works
projects bring about a recovery? Why was so much New Deal relief
spending channeled away from the poorest people? Why did the Tennessee
Valley Authority become a drag on the Tennessee Valley?
Curiously, although the Great Depression was probably the most
important economic event in twentieth-century American history,
Stanford University's David M. Kennedy seems to be the only major
political historian who has mentioned any of the recent findings.
"Whatever it was," he wrote in his Pulitzer Prize–winning Freedom from
Fear (1999), the New Deal "was not a recovery program, or at any rate
not an effective one."4
It's true the Great Depression was an international
phenomenon—depression in Germany, for instance, made increasing
numbers of desperate people search for scapegoats and support Adolf
Hitler, a lunatic who couldn't get anywhere politically just a few
years earlier when the country was still prosperous. But compared to
the United States, as economic historian Lester V. Chandler observed,
"in most countries the depression was less deep and prolonged."5
Regardless whether the depression originated in the United States or
Europe, there is considerable evidence that New Deal policies
prolonged high unemployment.
FDR didn't do anything about a major cause of 90 percent of the bank
failures, namely, state and federal unit banking laws. These limited
banks to a single office, preventing them from diversifying their loan
portfolios and their source of funds. Unit banks were highly
vulnerable to failure when local business conditions were bad, because
all their loans were to local people, many of whom were in default,
and all their deposits came from local people who were withdrawing
their money. Canada, which permitted nationwide branch banking, didn't
have a single bank failure during the Great Depression.
FDR's major banking "reform," the second Glass-Steagall Act, actually
weakened the banking system by breaking up the strongest banks to
separate commercial banking from investment banking. Universal banks
(which served depositors and did securities underwriting) were much
stronger than banks pursuing only one of these activities, very few
universal banks failed, and securities underwritten by universal banks
were less risky. Almost every historian has praised FDR's other major
financial "reform," establishing the Securities and Exchange
Commission to supervise the registration of new securities and the
operation of securities markets, but in terms of rate of return,
investors were no better off than they were in the 1920s, before the
Securities and Exchange Commission came along.
FDR didn't do much about a contributing factor in the Great
Depression, the Smoot-Hawley tariff which throttled trade. Indeed, he
raised some tariffs, while Secretary of State Cordell Hull negotiated
reciprocal trade agreements which cut tariffs only about 4 percent.
FDR approved the dumping of agricultural commodities below cost
overseas, which surely aggravated our trading partners.
FDR tripled taxes during the Great Depression, from $1.6 billion in
1933 to $5.3 billion in 1940.6 Federal taxes as a percentage of the
gross national product jumped from 3.5 percent in 1933 to 6.9 percent
in 1940, and taxes skyrocketed during World War II.7 FDR increased the
tax burden with higher personal income taxes, higher corporate income
taxes, higher excise taxes, higher estate taxes, and higher gift
taxes. He introduced the undistributed profits tax. Ordinary people
were hit with higher liquor taxes and Social Security payroll taxes.
All these taxes meant there was less capital for businesses to create
jobs, and people had less money in their pockets.
In addition, FDR increased the cost and risk of employing people, and
so there shouldn't have been any surprise that the unemployment rate
remained stubbornly high. Economists Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E.
Gallaway, in their 1997 study Out of Work: Unemployment and Government
in Twentieth-Century America, reported: "New Deal policies (and some
Hoover-era policies predating the New Deal) systematically used the
power of the state to intervene in labor markets in a manner to raise
wages and labor costs, prolonging the misery of the Great Depression,
and creating a situation where many people were living in rising
prosperity at a time when millions of others were suffering severe
deprivation. . . . Of the ten years of unemployment rates over 10
percent during the Depression, fully eight were during the Roosevelt
administration (counting 1933 as a Roosevelt year)."8 Vedder and
Gallaway estimated that by 1940 unemployment was eight points higher
than it would have been in the absence of higher payroll costs imposed
by New Deal policies.9
Economists Thomas E. Hall and J. David Ferguson reported, "It is
difficult to ascertain just how much the New Deal programs had to do
with keeping the unemployment rate high, but surely they were
important. A combination of fixing farm prices, promoting labor
unions, and passing a series of antibusiness tax laws would certainly
have had a negative impact on employment. In addition, the uncertainty
experienced by the business community as a result of the frequent tax
law changes (1932, 1934, 1935, 1936) must have been enormous. Since
firms' investment decisions very much depend on being able to plan, an
increase in uncertainty tends to reduce investment expenditures. It
should not be a surprise that investment as a proportion of output was
at low levels during the mid-1930s."10
Black people were among the major victims of the New Deal. Large
numbers of blacks were unskilled and held entry-level jobs, and when
New Deal policies forced wage rates above market levels, hundreds of
thousands of these jobs were destroyed. Above-market wage rates
encouraged employers to mechanize and in other ways cut total labor
costs. Many New Deal policies were framed to benefit northern
industries and undermine the position of employers in the South, where
so many blacks worked. "New Deal labor policies contributed to a
persistent increase in African American unemployment," reported
economist David E. Bernstein.11
When millions of people had little money, New Deal era policies made
practically everything more expensive (the National Industrial
Recovery Act), specifically maintained above-market retail prices (the
Robinson-Patman Act and the Retail Price Maintenance Act) and
above-market airline tickets (Civil Aeronautics Act). Moreover, FDR
signed into law the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which led to the
destruction of millions of acres of crops and millions of farm
animals, while many Americans were hungry.
New Deal agricultural policies provided subsidies based on a farmer's
acreage and output, which meant they mainly helped big farmers with
the most acreage and output. The New Deal displaced poor sharecroppers
and tenant farmers, a large number of whom were black. High farm
foreclosure rates persisted during the New Deal, indicating that it
did almost nothing for the poorest farmers. Historian Michael A.
Bernstein went farther and made a case that New Deal agricultural
policies "sacrificed the interests of the marginal and the
unrecognized to the welfare of those with greater political and
economic power."12
The flagship of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act,
which authorized cartel codes restricting output and fixing high
prices for just about every conceivable business enterprise, much as
medieval guild restrictions had restricted output and fixed prices.
That FDR approved contraction was astounding, because the American
people had suffered through three years of catastrophic contraction.
With the National Industrial Recovery Act, it actually became a crime
to increase output or cut prices—a forty-nine-year-old immigrant dry
cleaner was jailed for charging 35 cents instead of 40 cents to press
a pair of pants.
This wasn't full-scale government control as in the Soviet Union, but
it came closer than anybody had thought possible. Although the NIRA
was struck down by the Supreme Court in May 1935, the New Deal
continued to multiply restrictions on business enterprise. "Perhaps
the greatest defect in these limited planning measures," wrote
economic historian Ellis W. Hawley, "was their tendency toward
restriction, their failure to provide any incentive for expansion when
an expanding economy was the crying need of the time."13
While FDR authorized the spending of billions for relief and public
works projects, a disproportionate amount of this money went not to
the poorest states such as the South, but to western states where
people were better off, apparently because these were "swing" states
which could yield FDR more votes in the next election. The South was
already solidly Democratic, so there wasn't much to be gained by
buying votes there. It was observed at the time that relief and public
works spending seemed to increase during election years. Politicking
with relief and public works money got to be so bad that Congress
passed the Hatch Act (1939).
The New Deal approached its climax in 1938 as Thurman Arnold, head of
the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, began to file about 150
lawsuits against companies employing millions of people. Hawley called
this "the most intensive antitrust campaign in American history."14
Whatever the merits of the government's claims, these lawsuits made it
politically more risky for businesses to pursue long-term investments,
and private investment remained at an historically low level
throughout the New Deal—prolonging the Great Depression.
All the highly publicized relief programs and public works projects
couldn't make up for the damage inflicted by New Deal taxes,
restrictions, antitrust lawsuits, and the rest. Indeed, the more money
the government spent on relief and public works, the more tax revenue
it needed, and the more damage done to the economy.
As a cure for the Great Depression, government spending didn't work.
In 1933, federal government outlays were $4.5 billion; by 1940 they
were $9.4 billion, so FDR more than doubled federal spending, and
still unemployment remained stubbornly high. Changes in federal budget
deficits didn't correspond with changes in gross domestic product, and
in any case the federal budget deficit at its peak (1936) was only 4.4
percent of the gross domestic product, much too small for a likely cure.15
The most that could be said in FDR's defense was this, by Donald R.
Richberg, former head of the National Recovery Administration:
"Although the tremendous expenditures and supports for agriculture and
industrial labor that were projected in the Roosevelt administration
did not end a huge unemployment problem, they did raise new hopes and
inspire new activities among the American people which turned them
away for a time at least from even more radical political programs."16
FDR had assumed unprecedented arbitrary power supposedly needed to get
America out of the Great Depression. Although Democrats controlled
Congress, FDR was impatient with American democracy, and he issued an
extraordinary number of executive orders—3,728 altogether17—which is
more than all the executive orders issued by his successors Harry
Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson,
Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George
H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton combined. In the name of fairness, FDR
saw to it that some individuals were treated much more harshly than
others under the federal tax code. NRA codes denied individuals the
fundamental liberty to enter the business of their choosing.
Compulsory unionism denied individuals the right to work without
joining a union. Americans gave up these liberties and more without
getting out of the Great Depression, as had been promised. Principal
legacies of the New Deal have been a massive expansion of government
power and loss of liberty.
FDR's failure to end chronic high unemployment and his increasingly
arbitrary tactics were reasons why, after 1936, his political support
declined. Republicans gained seats in Congress during the 1938
elections, and they gained more seats in 1940. FDR's own vote totals
declined after 1936, and Republican presidential vote totals increased
over both those of 1936 and 1932.
FDR didn't make the recovery of private, productive employment his top
priority. Along with advisers like Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter,
Rexford Tugwell, and Thomas Corcoran, FDR viewed business as the cause
of the Great Depression, and he did everything he could to restrict
business. His goal was "reform," not recovery. Accordingly, the New
Deal taxed money away from the private sector, and government
officials, not private individuals, made the spending decisions. New
Deal laws determined what kind of people businesses must hire, how
much they must be paid, what prices businesses must charge, and it
interfered with their ability to raise capital.
The British economist John Maynard Keynes recognized that FDR's
priorities were subverting the prospects for ending high unemployment.
He wrote FDR a letter which was published in the December 31, 1933,
issue of the New York Times. Keynes warned that "even wise and
necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate
Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and
weaken their existing motives to action. . . . I am not clear, looking
back over the last nine months, that the order of urgency between
measures of Recovery and measures of Reform has been duly observed, or
that the latter has not sometimes been mistaken for the former."18
Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann observed that New Deal "reformers"
would "rather not have recovery if the revival of private initiative
means a resumption of private control in the management of corporate
business . . . the essence of the New Deal is the reduction of private
corporate control by collective bargaining and labor legislation, on
the one side, and by restrictive, competitive and deterrent government
action on the other side."19
The failure of the New Deal seems incredible considering that FDR is
widely rated among America's greatest presidents. Moreover, many of
the brightest minds of the era were recruited to Washington. FDR, who
graduated from Harvard College, filled many of his top positions with
graduates of Harvard Law School. They had clerked with the most
respected judges of the era. These and other New Dealers were hailed
for their compassion and their so-called progressive thinking. They
were widely viewed as more noble than the greedy businessmen and
reckless speculators who were thought to have brought on the
depression. New Dealers wanted to eliminate poverty, abolish child
labor, and right other social wrongs. Many New Dealers saw themselves
as trying to make the world over. How could such bright, compassionate
people have gone so wrong?
This book attempts to explain what went wrong and why. I draw on major
findings by economists about the actual effects of the New Deal—how it
promoted cartels, imposed confiscatory taxes, made it harder for
companies to raise capital, made it more expensive for companies to
employ people, bombarded companies with dubious antitrust lawsuits,
and relentlessly denounced employers and investors, prolonging high
unemployment. Published during the last four decades, these findings
have been virtually ignored by pro–New Deal political historians like
James MacGregor Burns, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Frank Freidel,
William Leuctenburg, and Kenneth S. Davis. In his autobiography,
Schlesinger acknowledged that he "was not much interested in
economics." It is remarkable how such respected historians, writing
about the most important economic event of twentieth-century American
history, could disregard the growing economics literature which
challenges their views.
Unless we clearly understand the effects of the New Deal, we cannot
say we understand it at all—and more important, what the Great
Depression experience means for us now. It would be tragic if, in a
future recession or depression, policymakers repeated the same
mistakes of the New Deal because they knew only the political
histories of the time.
I believe the evidence is overwhelming that the Great Depression as we
know it was avoidable. Better policies could have prevented the bank
failures which accelerated the contraction of the money supply and
brought on the Great Depression. The Great Depression could have been
over much more quickly—the United States recovered from the severe
1920 depression in about a year. Chronic high unemployment persisted
during the 1930s because of a succession of misguided New Deal policies.
A principal lesson for us today is that if economic shocks are
followed by sound policies, we can avoid another Great Depression. A
government will best promote a speedy business recovery by making
recovery the top priority, which means letting people keep more of
their money, removing obstacles to productive enterprise, and
providing stable money and a political climate where investors feel
that it's safe to invest for the future.
Introduction
11.Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway, Out of Work: Unemployment
and Government in Twentieth-Century America (New York: New York
University Press, 1997), p. 129.
12.Lester V. Chandler, American Monetary Policy, 1928-1941 (New York:
Harper & Row, 1971), p. 247.
13.Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, A Monetary History of
the United States, 1867–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1963), p. 493.
14.David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in
Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), p. 361.
15.Lester V. Chandler, America's Greatest Depression, 1929-1941 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 91.
16.Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to
the Present (Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce, 1974), II, p. 1107.
17.http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/2010/econ.htm.
18.Vedder and Gallaway, pp. 128, 131, 132.
19.Vedder and Gallaway, p. 141.
10.Thomas E. Hall and J. David Ferguson, The Great Depression: An
International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 147.
11.David E. Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress: African Americans,
Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 103.
12.Michael A. Bernstein, The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and
Economic Change in America, 1929–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), p. 270.
13.Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study
in Economic Ambivalence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966),
p. 485.
14.Hawley, p. 421.
15."Gross Domestic Product (Millions of 1929 dollars)," National
Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Series 08166.
http://www.korpios.org/resurgent /GDPreal.htm; "Summary of Receipts,
Outlays and Surpluses of Deficits, 1789–2004," The Budget for Fiscal
Year 2000, p. 19, http://w3.access.gpo .gov/usbudget /fy2000/pdf/hist.pdf.
16.Donald R. Richberg, My Hero: The Indiscreet Memoirs of an Eventful
but Unheroic Life (New York: Putnam's, 1954), p. 152.
17.National Archives and Records Administration, Executive Orders
Disposition Tables, http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/eo.html .
18.http://newdeal.feri.org/misc/keynes2.htm.
19.Quoted in Gary Dean Best, Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt
Versus Recovery, 1933–1938 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1991), p. 213.
Related Links
# Are the Revisionists Right About FDR? Alonzo Hamby (HNN)
http://hnn.us/articles/3800.html
By Jim Powell
Mr. Powell, the editor of Laissez Faire Books, is a senior fellow at
the Cato Institute.
Following is an excerpt from Mr. Powell's controversial new book,
FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great
Depression (Crown Forum, 2003).
The Great Depression has had an immense influence on our thinking,
particularly about ways to handle an economic crisis, yet we know
surprisingly little about it. Most historians have focused on
chronicling Franklin D. Roosevelt's charismatic personality, his
brilliance as a strategist and communicator, the dramatic One Hundred
Days, the First New Deal, Second New Deal, the "court-packing" plan,
and other political aspects of the story. Comparatively little
attention has been paid to the effects of the New Deal.
In recent decades, however, many economists have tried to determine
whether New Deal policies contributed to recovery or prolonged the
depression. The most troubling issue has been the persistence of high
unemployment throughout the New Deal period. From 1934 to 1940, the
median annual unemployment rate was 17.2 percent.1 At no point during
the 1930s did unemployment go below 14 percent. Even in 1941, amidst
the military buildup for World War II, 9.9 percent of American workers
were unemployed. Living standards remained depressed until after the war.2
While there was episodic recovery between 1933 and 1937, the 1937 peak
was lower than the previous peak (1929), a highly unusual occurrence.
Progress has been the norm. In addition, the 1937 peak was followed by
a crash. As Nobel laureate Milton Friedman observed, this was "the
only occasion in our record when one deep depression followed
immediately on the heels of another."3
Scholarly investigators have raised some provocative questions. For
instance, why did New Dealers make it more expensive for employers to
hire people? Why did FDR's Justice Department file some 150 lawsuits
threatening big employers? Why did New Deal policies discourage
private investment without which private employment was unlikely to
revive? Why so many policies to push up the cost of living? Why did
New Dealers destroy food while people went hungry? To what extent did
New Deal labor laws penalize blacks? Why did New Dealers break up the
strongest banks? Why were Americans made more vulnerable to disastrous
human error at the Federal Reserve? Why didn't New Deal securities
laws help investors do better? Why didn't New Deal public works
projects bring about a recovery? Why was so much New Deal relief
spending channeled away from the poorest people? Why did the Tennessee
Valley Authority become a drag on the Tennessee Valley?
Curiously, although the Great Depression was probably the most
important economic event in twentieth-century American history,
Stanford University's David M. Kennedy seems to be the only major
political historian who has mentioned any of the recent findings.
"Whatever it was," he wrote in his Pulitzer Prize–winning Freedom from
Fear (1999), the New Deal "was not a recovery program, or at any rate
not an effective one."4
It's true the Great Depression was an international
phenomenon—depression in Germany, for instance, made increasing
numbers of desperate people search for scapegoats and support Adolf
Hitler, a lunatic who couldn't get anywhere politically just a few
years earlier when the country was still prosperous. But compared to
the United States, as economic historian Lester V. Chandler observed,
"in most countries the depression was less deep and prolonged."5
Regardless whether the depression originated in the United States or
Europe, there is considerable evidence that New Deal policies
prolonged high unemployment.
FDR didn't do anything about a major cause of 90 percent of the bank
failures, namely, state and federal unit banking laws. These limited
banks to a single office, preventing them from diversifying their loan
portfolios and their source of funds. Unit banks were highly
vulnerable to failure when local business conditions were bad, because
all their loans were to local people, many of whom were in default,
and all their deposits came from local people who were withdrawing
their money. Canada, which permitted nationwide branch banking, didn't
have a single bank failure during the Great Depression.
FDR's major banking "reform," the second Glass-Steagall Act, actually
weakened the banking system by breaking up the strongest banks to
separate commercial banking from investment banking. Universal banks
(which served depositors and did securities underwriting) were much
stronger than banks pursuing only one of these activities, very few
universal banks failed, and securities underwritten by universal banks
were less risky. Almost every historian has praised FDR's other major
financial "reform," establishing the Securities and Exchange
Commission to supervise the registration of new securities and the
operation of securities markets, but in terms of rate of return,
investors were no better off than they were in the 1920s, before the
Securities and Exchange Commission came along.
FDR didn't do much about a contributing factor in the Great
Depression, the Smoot-Hawley tariff which throttled trade. Indeed, he
raised some tariffs, while Secretary of State Cordell Hull negotiated
reciprocal trade agreements which cut tariffs only about 4 percent.
FDR approved the dumping of agricultural commodities below cost
overseas, which surely aggravated our trading partners.
FDR tripled taxes during the Great Depression, from $1.6 billion in
1933 to $5.3 billion in 1940.6 Federal taxes as a percentage of the
gross national product jumped from 3.5 percent in 1933 to 6.9 percent
in 1940, and taxes skyrocketed during World War II.7 FDR increased the
tax burden with higher personal income taxes, higher corporate income
taxes, higher excise taxes, higher estate taxes, and higher gift
taxes. He introduced the undistributed profits tax. Ordinary people
were hit with higher liquor taxes and Social Security payroll taxes.
All these taxes meant there was less capital for businesses to create
jobs, and people had less money in their pockets.
In addition, FDR increased the cost and risk of employing people, and
so there shouldn't have been any surprise that the unemployment rate
remained stubbornly high. Economists Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E.
Gallaway, in their 1997 study Out of Work: Unemployment and Government
in Twentieth-Century America, reported: "New Deal policies (and some
Hoover-era policies predating the New Deal) systematically used the
power of the state to intervene in labor markets in a manner to raise
wages and labor costs, prolonging the misery of the Great Depression,
and creating a situation where many people were living in rising
prosperity at a time when millions of others were suffering severe
deprivation. . . . Of the ten years of unemployment rates over 10
percent during the Depression, fully eight were during the Roosevelt
administration (counting 1933 as a Roosevelt year)."8 Vedder and
Gallaway estimated that by 1940 unemployment was eight points higher
than it would have been in the absence of higher payroll costs imposed
by New Deal policies.9
Economists Thomas E. Hall and J. David Ferguson reported, "It is
difficult to ascertain just how much the New Deal programs had to do
with keeping the unemployment rate high, but surely they were
important. A combination of fixing farm prices, promoting labor
unions, and passing a series of antibusiness tax laws would certainly
have had a negative impact on employment. In addition, the uncertainty
experienced by the business community as a result of the frequent tax
law changes (1932, 1934, 1935, 1936) must have been enormous. Since
firms' investment decisions very much depend on being able to plan, an
increase in uncertainty tends to reduce investment expenditures. It
should not be a surprise that investment as a proportion of output was
at low levels during the mid-1930s."10
Black people were among the major victims of the New Deal. Large
numbers of blacks were unskilled and held entry-level jobs, and when
New Deal policies forced wage rates above market levels, hundreds of
thousands of these jobs were destroyed. Above-market wage rates
encouraged employers to mechanize and in other ways cut total labor
costs. Many New Deal policies were framed to benefit northern
industries and undermine the position of employers in the South, where
so many blacks worked. "New Deal labor policies contributed to a
persistent increase in African American unemployment," reported
economist David E. Bernstein.11
When millions of people had little money, New Deal era policies made
practically everything more expensive (the National Industrial
Recovery Act), specifically maintained above-market retail prices (the
Robinson-Patman Act and the Retail Price Maintenance Act) and
above-market airline tickets (Civil Aeronautics Act). Moreover, FDR
signed into law the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which led to the
destruction of millions of acres of crops and millions of farm
animals, while many Americans were hungry.
New Deal agricultural policies provided subsidies based on a farmer's
acreage and output, which meant they mainly helped big farmers with
the most acreage and output. The New Deal displaced poor sharecroppers
and tenant farmers, a large number of whom were black. High farm
foreclosure rates persisted during the New Deal, indicating that it
did almost nothing for the poorest farmers. Historian Michael A.
Bernstein went farther and made a case that New Deal agricultural
policies "sacrificed the interests of the marginal and the
unrecognized to the welfare of those with greater political and
economic power."12
The flagship of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act,
which authorized cartel codes restricting output and fixing high
prices for just about every conceivable business enterprise, much as
medieval guild restrictions had restricted output and fixed prices.
That FDR approved contraction was astounding, because the American
people had suffered through three years of catastrophic contraction.
With the National Industrial Recovery Act, it actually became a crime
to increase output or cut prices—a forty-nine-year-old immigrant dry
cleaner was jailed for charging 35 cents instead of 40 cents to press
a pair of pants.
This wasn't full-scale government control as in the Soviet Union, but
it came closer than anybody had thought possible. Although the NIRA
was struck down by the Supreme Court in May 1935, the New Deal
continued to multiply restrictions on business enterprise. "Perhaps
the greatest defect in these limited planning measures," wrote
economic historian Ellis W. Hawley, "was their tendency toward
restriction, their failure to provide any incentive for expansion when
an expanding economy was the crying need of the time."13
While FDR authorized the spending of billions for relief and public
works projects, a disproportionate amount of this money went not to
the poorest states such as the South, but to western states where
people were better off, apparently because these were "swing" states
which could yield FDR more votes in the next election. The South was
already solidly Democratic, so there wasn't much to be gained by
buying votes there. It was observed at the time that relief and public
works spending seemed to increase during election years. Politicking
with relief and public works money got to be so bad that Congress
passed the Hatch Act (1939).
The New Deal approached its climax in 1938 as Thurman Arnold, head of
the Justice Department's Antitrust Division, began to file about 150
lawsuits against companies employing millions of people. Hawley called
this "the most intensive antitrust campaign in American history."14
Whatever the merits of the government's claims, these lawsuits made it
politically more risky for businesses to pursue long-term investments,
and private investment remained at an historically low level
throughout the New Deal—prolonging the Great Depression.
All the highly publicized relief programs and public works projects
couldn't make up for the damage inflicted by New Deal taxes,
restrictions, antitrust lawsuits, and the rest. Indeed, the more money
the government spent on relief and public works, the more tax revenue
it needed, and the more damage done to the economy.
As a cure for the Great Depression, government spending didn't work.
In 1933, federal government outlays were $4.5 billion; by 1940 they
were $9.4 billion, so FDR more than doubled federal spending, and
still unemployment remained stubbornly high. Changes in federal budget
deficits didn't correspond with changes in gross domestic product, and
in any case the federal budget deficit at its peak (1936) was only 4.4
percent of the gross domestic product, much too small for a likely cure.15
The most that could be said in FDR's defense was this, by Donald R.
Richberg, former head of the National Recovery Administration:
"Although the tremendous expenditures and supports for agriculture and
industrial labor that were projected in the Roosevelt administration
did not end a huge unemployment problem, they did raise new hopes and
inspire new activities among the American people which turned them
away for a time at least from even more radical political programs."16
FDR had assumed unprecedented arbitrary power supposedly needed to get
America out of the Great Depression. Although Democrats controlled
Congress, FDR was impatient with American democracy, and he issued an
extraordinary number of executive orders—3,728 altogether17—which is
more than all the executive orders issued by his successors Harry
Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson,
Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George
H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton combined. In the name of fairness, FDR
saw to it that some individuals were treated much more harshly than
others under the federal tax code. NRA codes denied individuals the
fundamental liberty to enter the business of their choosing.
Compulsory unionism denied individuals the right to work without
joining a union. Americans gave up these liberties and more without
getting out of the Great Depression, as had been promised. Principal
legacies of the New Deal have been a massive expansion of government
power and loss of liberty.
FDR's failure to end chronic high unemployment and his increasingly
arbitrary tactics were reasons why, after 1936, his political support
declined. Republicans gained seats in Congress during the 1938
elections, and they gained more seats in 1940. FDR's own vote totals
declined after 1936, and Republican presidential vote totals increased
over both those of 1936 and 1932.
FDR didn't make the recovery of private, productive employment his top
priority. Along with advisers like Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter,
Rexford Tugwell, and Thomas Corcoran, FDR viewed business as the cause
of the Great Depression, and he did everything he could to restrict
business. His goal was "reform," not recovery. Accordingly, the New
Deal taxed money away from the private sector, and government
officials, not private individuals, made the spending decisions. New
Deal laws determined what kind of people businesses must hire, how
much they must be paid, what prices businesses must charge, and it
interfered with their ability to raise capital.
The British economist John Maynard Keynes recognized that FDR's
priorities were subverting the prospects for ending high unemployment.
He wrote FDR a letter which was published in the December 31, 1933,
issue of the New York Times. Keynes warned that "even wise and
necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate
Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and
weaken their existing motives to action. . . . I am not clear, looking
back over the last nine months, that the order of urgency between
measures of Recovery and measures of Reform has been duly observed, or
that the latter has not sometimes been mistaken for the former."18
Newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann observed that New Deal "reformers"
would "rather not have recovery if the revival of private initiative
means a resumption of private control in the management of corporate
business . . . the essence of the New Deal is the reduction of private
corporate control by collective bargaining and labor legislation, on
the one side, and by restrictive, competitive and deterrent government
action on the other side."19
The failure of the New Deal seems incredible considering that FDR is
widely rated among America's greatest presidents. Moreover, many of
the brightest minds of the era were recruited to Washington. FDR, who
graduated from Harvard College, filled many of his top positions with
graduates of Harvard Law School. They had clerked with the most
respected judges of the era. These and other New Dealers were hailed
for their compassion and their so-called progressive thinking. They
were widely viewed as more noble than the greedy businessmen and
reckless speculators who were thought to have brought on the
depression. New Dealers wanted to eliminate poverty, abolish child
labor, and right other social wrongs. Many New Dealers saw themselves
as trying to make the world over. How could such bright, compassionate
people have gone so wrong?
This book attempts to explain what went wrong and why. I draw on major
findings by economists about the actual effects of the New Deal—how it
promoted cartels, imposed confiscatory taxes, made it harder for
companies to raise capital, made it more expensive for companies to
employ people, bombarded companies with dubious antitrust lawsuits,
and relentlessly denounced employers and investors, prolonging high
unemployment. Published during the last four decades, these findings
have been virtually ignored by pro–New Deal political historians like
James MacGregor Burns, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Frank Freidel,
William Leuctenburg, and Kenneth S. Davis. In his autobiography,
Schlesinger acknowledged that he "was not much interested in
economics." It is remarkable how such respected historians, writing
about the most important economic event of twentieth-century American
history, could disregard the growing economics literature which
challenges their views.
Unless we clearly understand the effects of the New Deal, we cannot
say we understand it at all—and more important, what the Great
Depression experience means for us now. It would be tragic if, in a
future recession or depression, policymakers repeated the same
mistakes of the New Deal because they knew only the political
histories of the time.
I believe the evidence is overwhelming that the Great Depression as we
know it was avoidable. Better policies could have prevented the bank
failures which accelerated the contraction of the money supply and
brought on the Great Depression. The Great Depression could have been
over much more quickly—the United States recovered from the severe
1920 depression in about a year. Chronic high unemployment persisted
during the 1930s because of a succession of misguided New Deal policies.
A principal lesson for us today is that if economic shocks are
followed by sound policies, we can avoid another Great Depression. A
government will best promote a speedy business recovery by making
recovery the top priority, which means letting people keep more of
their money, removing obstacles to productive enterprise, and
providing stable money and a political climate where investors feel
that it's safe to invest for the future.
Introduction
11.Richard K. Vedder and Lowell E. Gallaway, Out of Work: Unemployment
and Government in Twentieth-Century America (New York: New York
University Press, 1997), p. 129.
12.Lester V. Chandler, American Monetary Policy, 1928-1941 (New York:
Harper & Row, 1971), p. 247.
13.Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz, A Monetary History of
the United States, 1867–1960 (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1963), p. 493.
14.David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in
Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1999), p. 361.
15.Lester V. Chandler, America's Greatest Depression, 1929-1941 (New
York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 91.
16.Historical Statistics of the United States from Colonial Times to
the Present (Washington, D.C.: Department of Commerce, 1974), II, p. 1107.
17.http://www.colorado.edu
18.Vedder and Gallaway, pp. 128, 131, 132.
19.Vedder and Gallaway, p. 141.
10.Thomas E. Hall and J. David Ferguson, The Great Depression: An
International Disaster of Perverse Economic Policies (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1998), p. 147.
11.David E. Bernstein, Only One Place of Redress: African Americans,
Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 103.
12.Michael A. Bernstein, The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and
Economic Change in America, 1929–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), p. 270.
13.Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study
in Economic Ambivalence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966),
p. 485.
14.Hawley, p. 421.
15."Gross Domestic Product (Millions of 1929 dollars)," National
Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Series 08166.
http://www.korpios.org/resurge
Outlays and Surpluses of Deficits, 1789–2004," The Budget for Fiscal
Year 2000, p. 19, http://w3.access.gpo .gov/usbudget /fy2000/pdf/hist.pdf.
16.Donald R. Richberg, My Hero: The Indiscreet Memoirs of an Eventful
but Unheroic Life (New York: Putnam's, 1954), p. 152.
17.National Archives and Records Administration, Executive Orders
Disposition Tables, http://www.nara.gov/fedreg/eo
18.http://newdeal.feri.org/misc
19.Quoted in Gary Dean Best, Pride, Prejudice, and Politics: Roosevelt
Versus Recovery, 1933–1938 (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1991), p. 213.
Related Links
# Are the Revisionists Right About FDR? Alonzo Hamby (HNN)
http://hnn.us/articles/3800
Saturday, March 26, 2005
Dear Chief Moonbat
The ethnicity issue, however, is far from concrete.
Churchill insisted again last week that he is Indian, saying, "That's my family's understanding of itself."
But a report by acting Chancellor Phil DiStefano said "there is serious doubt about his Indian identity." It said Churchill claimed in writing to be an enrolled member of the Keetowah Band of the Cherokees, but the tribe's principal chief told the university that Churchill is an honorary associate member, not an enrolled member.
Ok ward boobyit works like this
by the standards of old you would count as one of the tribe
but by the legal standards of today... you wouldn't. and you know thats what counted when you filed for your job
Karl Rove Baby: WTF
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President Bush broke his public silence on Saturday about the deadliest U.S. school shooting in six years, touting the government's response "at this tragic time" after some American Indian leaders complained he paid little attention to the rampage
Ok i gotta ask who in the white house thought that the president laying low while the whole tragedy happened but changing his plans around for the schiavo thing would be a good idea?
I mean president bush has talked about making mental health care more accesible in the past? hey isn't this a good place to do it?
also if the schiavo thing went bad he could have used this as a hedge action
If i want my president to do something in a local situation.. expressing the national sense of grief is certainly one of those things
George: I seem to be smarter then the people working for you.. give me a call
Wisdom from TJ
"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." -- Thomas Jefferson
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and
bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny
in Government." -- Thomas Jefferson, Author of The Declaration of
Independence, and Third President of the United States
Our rulers can have no authority over [our] natural rights,
only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience
we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable
for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government
extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But
it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are
twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor
breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Query XVII
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and
bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny
in Government." -- Thomas Jefferson, Author of The Declaration of
Independence, and Third President of the United States
Our rulers can have no authority over [our] natural rights,
only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience
we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable
for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government
extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But
it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are
twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor
breaks my leg.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Query XVII
Reality tv is evil: more stuff in the mailbox
ABC is Looking for Wiccan Families
The reality TV show, Wife Swap, is looking for a Wiccan family to take part
in the show. This thread has gotten a little off-topic with complaints about
reality TV but if you are interested in this project, check it out.
Lord give us strength
More things from the email box
A little something from Larry Elder
Plotting the war curve
By Larry Elder
http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=200503
25-083716-9631r
At a recent White House press conference, New York Times
reporter Elisabeth Bumiller called Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, President Bush's nominee for president of the World
Bank, "a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our
history."
"One of the most unpopular wars in our history"? Hmmm, sounds
like another editorial masquerading as a question. To the history
books.
¢ Revolutionary War: Founding Father John Adams estimated
one-third of Americans opposed independence, one-third were
indifferent or vacillated, and only one-third supported the War of
Indepen-dence. In other words, two-thirds of Americans were not
in favor of the Revolutionary War. Pro-British Loyalists, called
Tories by the American patriots, opposed the war. The Loyalists
came from all social classes and occupations. While they tended
to be foreign-born and Anglican, Loyalists included large
landowners, small farmers and royal officeholders, with a many
engaged in commerce and other professions. The Loyalists were
strongest in the far Southern Colonies and the Middle Atlantic
Colonies, especially New York and Pennsylvania, where fighting
became a bitter civil war of raids and reprisals.
¢ War of 1812: While supported by frontiersmen's desire for free
land, Southerners who wanted West Florida, and Western
militants who wanted the British out of Canada, the war was
voted against by every Federalist member of Congress. The
humiliating defeats suffered by American troops made the fight so
unpopular that the New England states ” which never favored the
war ” considered seceding.
¢ Mexican-American War: Northern abolitionists and Whig
members of Congress widely opposed this 1846 war. The
opposition included then-Rep. Abraham Lincoln, and they called
the war an "unnecessary and unconstitutional" war of "conquest."
In fact, when the war ended, Congress censured President James
Polk for starting the hostilities.
¢ Civil War: Both sides expected the war to last no more than a
few months. The Civil War necessitated conscription of able-
bodied males by the Union, and prompted nationwide, violent
mob protest. In New York City, large-scale, bloody riots raged for
four days, causing 1,000 casualties. The so-called "copperheads"
opposed the Civil War, and staged some of the largest riots in
American history. Widespread Northern antiwar sentiment made
President Lincoln pessimistic about his prospects for re-election in
1864. Indeed, a leading copperhead (or "peace Democrat") wrote
that year's Democratic Party platform. Ultimately, Lincoln won re-
election when public sentiment turned around after the Union
Army took Atlanta.
¢ Spanish-American War: The press heatedly debated this 1898
war, and the war declaration passed with a margin of only seven
votes in the Senate. Popular support for the relatively easy fight
evaporated over the controversial annexing of Spain's colonies,
such as the Philippines. In 1900, Democratic presidential
candidate William Jennings Bryan made his opposition to the war
the centerpiece of his campaign.
¢ World War I: In 1916, two years after the war began in Europe,
President Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election as a peace
candidate who "kept us out of war." Critics pounded Wilson after
the U.S. entered the conflict. Opponents of America's involvement
in World War I filled Madison Square Garden with protest
meetings. War opponents included many Irish- and German-
Americans, trade unions, socialists, pacifists and progressive
members of vocal radical groups. During this period those groups
saw a substantial rise in membership, giving them an even more
powerful voice against the war. Wilson considered existing laws
insufficient to handle antiwar sentiment, and his administration
used various legal tools to deal with the "problem" of disloyalty
” including censorship and imprisonment. More than 250 people
were convicted under the Espionage Act in less than a year.
¢ Korean War: U.S. military involvement began in the spring of
1950 with popular support. By January 1951, however, 49 percent
of Americans believed sending troops to Korea was a mistake, and
66 percent wanted us to pull out. The war's unpopularity played an
important role in the election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
who pledged to end the war.
¢ Vietnam War: In a 1971 public opinion poll, 71 percent called
the Vietnam War a mistake, and 58 percent called it immoral.
¢ World War II: This is the sole major U.S. military conflict with
no organized block of dissenters after America entered the war.
This, of course, happened only after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor
and Germany declared war on the United States.
This brings us to the "unpopular" Iraqi War. Mr. Bush obtained a
resolution from Congress (which passed the House 296 to 133,
and the Senate 77 to 23) authorizing use of force. At the time of
America's entry into Iraq in 2003, a CBS/New York Times poll
found 76 percent of Americans approved of the U.S. military
action against Iraq. Even now, the majority of Americans want us
to stay the course.
Aside from that, the New York Times reporter pretty much nailed
it.
Plotting the war curve
By Larry Elder
http://insider.washingtontimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=200503
25-083716-9631r
At a recent White House press conference, New York Times
reporter Elisabeth Bumiller called Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, President Bush's nominee for president of the World
Bank, "a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our
history."
"One of the most unpopular wars in our history"? Hmmm, sounds
like another editorial masquerading as a question. To the history
books.
¢ Revolutionary War: Founding Father John Adams estimated
one-third of Americans opposed independence, one-third were
indifferent or vacillated, and only one-third supported the War of
Indepen-dence. In other words, two-thirds of Americans were not
in favor of the Revolutionary War. Pro-British Loyalists, called
Tories by the American patriots, opposed the war. The Loyalists
came from all social classes and occupations. While they tended
to be foreign-born and Anglican, Loyalists included large
landowners, small farmers and royal officeholders, with a many
engaged in commerce and other professions. The Loyalists were
strongest in the far Southern Colonies and the Middle Atlantic
Colonies, especially New York and Pennsylvania, where fighting
became a bitter civil war of raids and reprisals.
¢ War of 1812: While supported by frontiersmen's desire for free
land, Southerners who wanted West Florida, and Western
militants who wanted the British out of Canada, the war was
voted against by every Federalist member of Congress. The
humiliating defeats suffered by American troops made the fight so
unpopular that the New England states ” which never favored the
war ” considered seceding.
¢ Mexican-American War: Northern abolitionists and Whig
members of Congress widely opposed this 1846 war. The
opposition included then-Rep. Abraham Lincoln, and they called
the war an "unnecessary and unconstitutional" war of "conquest."
In fact, when the war ended, Congress censured President James
Polk for starting the hostilities.
¢ Civil War: Both sides expected the war to last no more than a
few months. The Civil War necessitated conscription of able-
bodied males by the Union, and prompted nationwide, violent
mob protest. In New York City, large-scale, bloody riots raged for
four days, causing 1,000 casualties. The so-called "copperheads"
opposed the Civil War, and staged some of the largest riots in
American history. Widespread Northern antiwar sentiment made
President Lincoln pessimistic about his prospects for re-election in
1864. Indeed, a leading copperhead (or "peace Democrat") wrote
that year's Democratic Party platform. Ultimately, Lincoln won re-
election when public sentiment turned around after the Union
Army took Atlanta.
¢ Spanish-American War: The press heatedly debated this 1898
war, and the war declaration passed with a margin of only seven
votes in the Senate. Popular support for the relatively easy fight
evaporated over the controversial annexing of Spain's colonies,
such as the Philippines. In 1900, Democratic presidential
candidate William Jennings Bryan made his opposition to the war
the centerpiece of his campaign.
¢ World War I: In 1916, two years after the war began in Europe,
President Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election as a peace
candidate who "kept us out of war." Critics pounded Wilson after
the U.S. entered the conflict. Opponents of America's involvement
in World War I filled Madison Square Garden with protest
meetings. War opponents included many Irish- and German-
Americans, trade unions, socialists, pacifists and progressive
members of vocal radical groups. During this period those groups
saw a substantial rise in membership, giving them an even more
powerful voice against the war. Wilson considered existing laws
insufficient to handle antiwar sentiment, and his administration
used various legal tools to deal with the "problem" of disloyalty
” including censorship and imprisonment. More than 250 people
were convicted under the Espionage Act in less than a year.
¢ Korean War: U.S. military involvement began in the spring of
1950 with popular support. By January 1951, however, 49 percent
of Americans believed sending troops to Korea was a mistake, and
66 percent wanted us to pull out. The war's unpopularity played an
important role in the election of President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
who pledged to end the war.
¢ Vietnam War: In a 1971 public opinion poll, 71 percent called
the Vietnam War a mistake, and 58 percent called it immoral.
¢ World War II: This is the sole major U.S. military conflict with
no organized block of dissenters after America entered the war.
This, of course, happened only after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor
and Germany declared war on the United States.
This brings us to the "unpopular" Iraqi War. Mr. Bush obtained a
resolution from Congress (which passed the House 296 to 133,
and the Senate 77 to 23) authorizing use of force. At the time of
America's entry into Iraq in 2003, a CBS/New York Times poll
found 76 percent of Americans approved of the U.S. military
action against Iraq. Even now, the majority of Americans want us
to stay the course.
Aside from that, the New York Times reporter pretty much nailed
it.
more fun with tests
| Meaphysical Entropy You are destined to be 41 Arrogant and 58 Chaotic |
You are a Chaotic Soul. Although you probably have a lot of faith in the heights and senses of the universe, you're too busy, frantically searching for the explosion. You pour your wisdom to the world, because you cannot stand being tied to a single piece of the true nature, and wish to find it all. However, you move too fast to ever learn from what you find. This will probably be the hardest thing you do, but you must try to expand your vast mental powers without risking your body to the next big bang it (your mind) creates. The Angel of all Chaos smiles in a toothy grin, wide eyed, awaiting your next big move to blow him, and everything else, away... You are the thorns left in his wake, you are the fire dancing at his fingertips... |
 |
My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
|
| Link: The Angelic Destiny Test written by Slasherzero on Ok Cupid |
ummmm...ok
Your Passion is Pink |
 Innocent and naive, you approach sex with a virginal mindset. You tend to enjoy teasing and flaunting much more than actual sex. You're a notorious flirt, and you can pick up anyone you desire. As a result, your reputation is a lot steamier than your real sex life. |
Friday, March 25, 2005
From Al-Reuters: Eu asks Castro to be nicer
HAVANA (Reuters) - European Union Development Commissioner Louis Michel held talks on Friday with Cuba's communist authorities that included sensitive human rights issues such as political prisoners and access to jails....
And now i bet those euro's were tough with him
"The mood is good and the conversations are very frank," he told reporters after his meetings.
"There is an acceptance on the Cuban side (of the need) to discuss all these very sensitive issues, human rights, the prisoners, renewed cooperation between the European Union and Cuba," he said.
errr wait
Michel reported no progress on the issue of political prisoners, but he said he was impressed by the Cuban authorities desire to deepen talks with Brussels and put its relations with the EU back on track.
EuroSpeak: They WANT to be nicer
Europe, which opposes U.S. sanctions on Cuba, has been Cuba's main trade and investment partner. But Havana is increasingly turning to other allies, such as China and Venezuela, and buys most of its food imports from the United States under an exception to the 1963 trade embargo.
wait wait i am confused..... don't the lefties always say we are starving the poor people there?
Perez Roque said Cuba wanted to widen relations with Europe. Earlier this week, he said Havana was open to talks on human rights. But he reiterated Cuba's view that all dissidents are U.S.-paid "mercenaries" and called on EU nations to drop their annual support for a U.S.-sponsored resolution against Cuba at the U.N. Human Rights Commission, currently meeting in Geneva.
and of course what do the euro's do?
At the request of Spain's new Socialist government, the EU lifted its diplomatic sanctions in January and reverted to a policy of engagement that will be reviewed in June or July.
Europe: defending the human rights of.... no wait, that's wrong
It came from the email box II
THOUGHTS THAT COUNT
He shall lift up the ashes remaining from the burnt offering. (Lev. 6:3)
The Kohein (priest) was commanded to remove the ashes left over from the previous day's sacrifices.
This act was symbolic of the fact that after the sinner had brought his offering and truly repented of his sin, one was not allowed to remind him of his transgressions. They are forgotten and erased forever.
(Otzreinu Hayashan)
He shall lift up the ashes remaining from the burnt offering. (Lev. 6:3)
The Kohein (priest) was commanded to remove the ashes left over from the previous day's sacrifices.
This act was symbolic of the fact that after the sinner had brought his offering and truly repented of his sin, one was not allowed to remind him of his transgressions. They are forgotten and erased forever.
(Otzreinu Hayashan)
It came from the email box
i dislike using the Strib
Ironic Strib moments put in bold
Ironic Strib moments put in bold
When Cordell Draeger read that the shooter at Red Lake High School was into Goth subculture, Draeger's world turned dark because he feared that Goth subculture was being misrepresented.
"He may have listened to Marilyn Manson, but he idolized Hitler, and Hitler has nothing to do with the Goth subculture," Draeger, who usually dresses in black, said Wednesday. Black is typical color of Goth subculture. The senior at St. Paul Harding High school said Jeff Weise, the 16-year-old who went on a shooting rampage before taking his own life Monday, was not typical of Goths.
"Please don't talk about this incident and stereotype Goths," said Draeger, 17. "This was a troubled kid. That has nothing to do with what Goths are about."
Weise was "a very disturbed individual who happened to be into this form of music," said Nathan Hall, who hosts a Goth-centered Saturday night music show called "Locust Lecture" and is news director at the University of Minnesota's Radio K.
In 1979, when Goth music evolved from the punk scene, the Goth subculture was first and foremost about music, said Ryan (Frost) Simula, 30, a stage technician from Savage who said he was very much part of the Goth scene. Kids wore black clothing, black lipstick and period costumes.
According to the 2004 book, "What Is Goth?" by an author named Voltaire, Goths tend to be intrigued by "the dark aspects of human existence -- such as death, romance, and feelings of loneliness or isolation."
Sonja Hayden, owner of Pandora's coffee shop, known to be a Goth gathering place in Minneapolis' Uptown neighborhood, said she still sees kids wearing black and chains, but most of the Goths seemed to have migrated to the suburbs. Or to towns outside the metro area, including Red Lake.
"Kids are always looking for the new and the exciting, and for some of them, Goth seems pretty ancient," she said.
"Yes, I'm Goth, and it means going against the crowd," said Grace Stromquist, 19, of Minnetonka, who says she works at a gas station. "It's more than a look," she said glancing at her black nails. "It's a lifestyle."
"We're normal people," said her companion, David McNally, 17, of Lebanon, Pa. Metal chains aside, he was dressed entirely in black -- black arm warmers, black T-shirt, black jeans. "We look different, but inside we're all the same."
Hall estimates that there are only 300 "real Goths" living in Minnesota -- although he says he has no statistical information to back up this claim. He is certain of one thing, though: The incident at Red Lake had nothing to do with Goth subculture.
"This is a terribly sad story about a very troubled young man. It would be foolish to read any more into it," he said.
Read www.startribune.com online
Q and A on the National Psychotic Episode
Q: why do national psychotic episodes have to happen in florida?
A: it is the alternate for California
Q: ah that explains everything
A: doesn't it, though?
A: it is the alternate for California
Q: ah that explains everything
A: doesn't it, though?
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Dear Batty Hooser
19.3.05
Hello America, How Are You?
Hey America. I know there’s been some friction between you and the rest of the world lately and I think that’s too bad. Given that this is the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.
Dear Hooser....
I think the fact your government will play nicey with folks like the Tamil tigers who are horrific terrorists is a problem. Or the fact more Nazi war criminals hid out in Canada then you let in Jews during WWII. I could run off a list of downright unpleasant things Canada has done that I and other nations in the world disagree with. I wouldn't say this causes friction because people could care less if Canada is pissed off at them.
1) How come so many of your citizens thought that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11?
To run with Bill Clinton "It depends on what your definition of DO is" I could make several logical cases for such a belief... And I could also have lines of argument that reflect flat world society people. So if you want an answer to your question you need to be more specific and don't trust polls... As polls ( which this issue came from) are entirely based on perception of the people without context
2) How come so many of your citizens know so little about other places? I’ve met a lot of Americans and only three of them knew that Ottawa was the capital of Canada, and most of them had college degrees.
I've met an equal number of Canadians who think NYC is the US capital
stupid people are everywhere... Especially in Ontario ( because god bless it to many of them come down here)
3) How come so many of your citizens know nothing about the history of US foreign and covert policy? Why aren’t they taught about American involvement in places like El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, and a very long list of other places around the world?
and this is based on ........
bonus for if you know about things the government in Germany did to covertly support the PLO back when they were terrorists
its called CLANDESTINE for a reason. And clandestine matters usually have a lack of a serious papertrail... And we avoid teaching things as much as we can without clear unadulterated facts
4) How come most of your citizens supported the invasion of Iraq? Is it because they didn’t have all the facts or because they just wanted to see someone pay for 9/11 and were open to suggestions?
Or hey because Saddam was a really bad guy and he killed tons of people and he needed to go down. Or how about how he paid all manner of terrorist groups in the region
ya know plenty of good reasons to get rid of him.
oh and why do the Canadians support UN peacekeeping operations when so many of your soldiers rape and torture non combatants there?
5) After the world found out that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and President Bush announced that he was calling off the search for them, why didn’t your citizens demand that President Bush be impeached? After all, they tried to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about getting a blow job – and no one was even killed because of that.
because his statement wasn't made under oath -Bill Clinton's was- to be impeached you have to commit a high crime ... Lying is what we pay politicians to do when they lie in a non criminal matter
I know you have politicians who lie in the great white north
6) How come some Americans think these sorts of questions are bad?
and your basing this off of.... Oh that's right your firm knowledge of the US hey good to know you aren't ignorant of how these questions are hotly debated every day
you wouldn't be in violation of your own question no not you
7) How come your citizens don’t care that the CIA and the Department of Defense don’t have to disclose information to them, even though the Constitution says that they do?
No it doesn't say that... Thank you come again
8) You make more weapons than anyone else in the world. How come America?
because people other then Canada like to buy them
9) How come it’s legal to own an assault rifle but two men or two women can’t get married?
because assault rifle is a made up and meaningless word. Marriage is something that isn't made up and is well defined in law
10) Why do you spend more money on defense than education and healthcare?
because we have treaty obligations our military has to fufill and only so much money we can take from our citizens ( something the folks in Ottawa have no problem doing the opposite of)
Thanks for your time America.
Thanks for continuing the long Canadian cultural history of America hatred
Hello America, How Are You?
Hey America. I know there’s been some friction between you and the rest of the world lately and I think that’s too bad. Given that this is the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.
Dear Hooser....
I think the fact your government will play nicey with folks like the Tamil tigers who are horrific terrorists is a problem. Or the fact more Nazi war criminals hid out in Canada then you let in Jews during WWII. I could run off a list of downright unpleasant things Canada has done that I and other nations in the world disagree with. I wouldn't say this causes friction because people could care less if Canada is pissed off at them.
1) How come so many of your citizens thought that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11?
To run with Bill Clinton "It depends on what your definition of DO is" I could make several logical cases for such a belief... And I could also have lines of argument that reflect flat world society people. So if you want an answer to your question you need to be more specific and don't trust polls... As polls ( which this issue came from) are entirely based on perception of the people without context
2) How come so many of your citizens know so little about other places? I’ve met a lot of Americans and only three of them knew that Ottawa was the capital of Canada, and most of them had college degrees.
I've met an equal number of Canadians who think NYC is the US capital
stupid people are everywhere... Especially in Ontario ( because god bless it to many of them come down here)
3) How come so many of your citizens know nothing about the history of US foreign and covert policy? Why aren’t they taught about American involvement in places like El Salvador, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Iraq, Iran, and a very long list of other places around the world?
and this is based on ........
bonus for if you know about things the government in Germany did to covertly support the PLO back when they were terrorists
its called CLANDESTINE for a reason. And clandestine matters usually have a lack of a serious papertrail... And we avoid teaching things as much as we can without clear unadulterated facts
4) How come most of your citizens supported the invasion of Iraq? Is it because they didn’t have all the facts or because they just wanted to see someone pay for 9/11 and were open to suggestions?
Or hey because Saddam was a really bad guy and he killed tons of people and he needed to go down. Or how about how he paid all manner of terrorist groups in the region
ya know plenty of good reasons to get rid of him.
oh and why do the Canadians support UN peacekeeping operations when so many of your soldiers rape and torture non combatants there?
5) After the world found out that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and President Bush announced that he was calling off the search for them, why didn’t your citizens demand that President Bush be impeached? After all, they tried to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about getting a blow job – and no one was even killed because of that.
because his statement wasn't made under oath -Bill Clinton's was- to be impeached you have to commit a high crime ... Lying is what we pay politicians to do when they lie in a non criminal matter
I know you have politicians who lie in the great white north
6) How come some Americans think these sorts of questions are bad?
and your basing this off of.... Oh that's right your firm knowledge of the US hey good to know you aren't ignorant of how these questions are hotly debated every day
you wouldn't be in violation of your own question no not you
7) How come your citizens don’t care that the CIA and the Department of Defense don’t have to disclose information to them, even though the Constitution says that they do?
No it doesn't say that... Thank you come again
8) You make more weapons than anyone else in the world. How come America?
because people other then Canada like to buy them
9) How come it’s legal to own an assault rifle but two men or two women can’t get married?
because assault rifle is a made up and meaningless word. Marriage is something that isn't made up and is well defined in law
10) Why do you spend more money on defense than education and healthcare?
because we have treaty obligations our military has to fufill and only so much money we can take from our citizens ( something the folks in Ottawa have no problem doing the opposite of)
Thanks for your time America.
Thanks for continuing the long Canadian cultural history of America hatred
Monday, March 21, 2005
Ok the Schiavo thing
I was hoping it would go away, but alas it didn't
let me lay something out on the abortion issue. I think the worst kind of politics are the kind that move into a woman's vagina. I think the use of religous arguments gets you nowhere in a political context. I think abortions are wrong, and i think that they do more harm then good. However i think using government to fix that is allot like using a 12 gage to kill flys. Forget the constitutional side for a moment.. i think the use of government on issues like this is like using a chainsaw to do neurosurgery. the government should be reserved for really big problems... and as the abortion procedure shows us this isn't something really complex.
So i was already biased against the National Political tribes that have lined up with war paint over Terri Schiavo. I thought they all needed a serious dose of some psych medication. However their insanity has forced my government in the dead of night to pass a law which says "We need another judge to say that the law in Florida doesn't say what it actually says". This is banana republic stuff... except they usually just do the honest thing of throwing the judge in jail for crimes against the state.
I like the old tradition started by the jewish priests that one does not make a binding and legal descion under the cloud of night. (yes.. i know rabbis now meet under the cloud of night.. but that is a relatively new thing) In Costa Rica all judicial actions must happen in the light of day. In daylight we are likely to see less government sneakiness then at the dead of night.
take allllll the many "what about this" medical theories about Terri and put them aside. as i pointed out over with Bill at the INDC Journal's crowd... here is the legal skinny
Florida Law says ( and the US supreme court and the State Supreme court in florida agree judge greer is right with the law) that a judge can at a legal hearing make a ruling based on the preponderance of evidence about what a persons wishes are.
that happened
Terri's Law #1) didn't change any of that -it couldn't legally-
and Terri's law #2 hasn't either
until you address this legally binding position of the court of florida you are not addressing the reality
It's over legally...Michael Schiavo can't stop it now. the court has ruled based on evidence ( and both sides put their best show on) this is what she would want
game over people
lets not flop around and try to take part in this horrendous family tragedy
let me lay something out on the abortion issue. I think the worst kind of politics are the kind that move into a woman's vagina. I think the use of religous arguments gets you nowhere in a political context. I think abortions are wrong, and i think that they do more harm then good. However i think using government to fix that is allot like using a 12 gage to kill flys. Forget the constitutional side for a moment.. i think the use of government on issues like this is like using a chainsaw to do neurosurgery. the government should be reserved for really big problems... and as the abortion procedure shows us this isn't something really complex.
So i was already biased against the National Political tribes that have lined up with war paint over Terri Schiavo. I thought they all needed a serious dose of some psych medication. However their insanity has forced my government in the dead of night to pass a law which says "We need another judge to say that the law in Florida doesn't say what it actually says". This is banana republic stuff... except they usually just do the honest thing of throwing the judge in jail for crimes against the state.
I like the old tradition started by the jewish priests that one does not make a binding and legal descion under the cloud of night. (yes.. i know rabbis now meet under the cloud of night.. but that is a relatively new thing) In Costa Rica all judicial actions must happen in the light of day. In daylight we are likely to see less government sneakiness then at the dead of night.
take allllll the many "what about this" medical theories about Terri and put them aside. as i pointed out over with Bill at the INDC Journal's crowd... here is the legal skinny
Florida Law says ( and the US supreme court and the State Supreme court in florida agree judge greer is right with the law) that a judge can at a legal hearing make a ruling based on the preponderance of evidence about what a persons wishes are.
that happened
Terri's Law #1) didn't change any of that -it couldn't legally-
and Terri's law #2 hasn't either
until you address this legally binding position of the court of florida you are not addressing the reality
It's over legally...Michael Schiavo can't stop it now. the court has ruled based on evidence ( and both sides put their best show on) this is what she would want
game over people
lets not flop around and try to take part in this horrendous family tragedy
Saturday, March 19, 2005
great thoughts from a masonic thinker
A man can never have too much red wine,
too many books, or too much ammunition.
- R. Kipling
too many books, or too much ammunition.
- R. Kipling
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Larry’s rant on freemasonry
Larry’s rant on freemasonry
We’ll I’ve been emailing with some folks on the Philalethes list and I’ve seen something come up again and again and I want to kinda do a rant about it.
You non masons stick with me here for a moment you’ll get something out of this
I’ve been seeing people demand the “price” of Freemasonry keep pace with the times. I’ve seen arguments about inflation and what not. Well, other things that had price increases with Inflation had an increase in value. Also the amount of salaries paid to people (yep) increased also. So when you factor an increase in income, this negates the point about the inflated price. People paid more, but they had a lot less the further back in time you go. We have a considerable amount of more money –and more things to spend it on to- so the inflation argument fails. Not so much that because we have more money we should spend more, but because unlike other things which had an increase in price masonry has not increased in its quality. When the quality of something stays the same and the price goes up… people don’t buy it no more and if the quality of masonry as an organization remained the same, but grand lodges jacked up the prices you’d see an exodus from the craft in the US the likes of which you haven’t seen.
And the elitism inherent in that premise goes against one of my favorite Masonic stories. About Teddy Roosevelt a man of huge privilege and his telling the story of how his gardner was also his worshipful master that year… if Masonry fails to be a place where people of every strata can come together in harmony, then I feel the noble message of the craft fails.
My favorite pair of shoes only cost me five bucks on sale. I’d have never bought the shoes if I saw them new, they would cost more then I ever wanted to spend on a pair of shoes… but since they were on sale ( and in my price range) I bought the most comfortable pair of shoes I’ve had in my life. If our lessons are for all men of good character and will, they should be accessible like a comfortable pair of shoes.
The price being to low isn’t the problem… the quality of the product that can certainly be told as a problem.
I hear allot of folks downing on the ritual (and to you non masons reading this part is something you’ll enjoy)
The words of the ritual aren’t what’s important its how you get to them that is Important.
After my E.A Degree Tom and I were instructed by Col. Bob Shaw. Col. Shaw had through force of will and personality become some what of an institution in the lodge. The only instructor at the time who wasn’t going up the line in Lodge (or York Rite or….). The Bald Eagle was also fighting off cancer and the great ills of his aging body. Col. Shaw didn’t teach us the work word perfectly, as he was having trouble from his treatments and the like. But seeing in my mother lodge many other classes, I think I learned allot more from the Bald Eagle.
We learned about Col. Shaw and his military career and how Masonry played a role in the life of many men he served with in the war. He showed us one day his medals, and told us about how he earned them. Bob talked to us about his experiences seeing Masonry in England, and seeing Masonry done in Virginia, and seeing Masonry done in his father’s home territory of West Virginia. We learned about how he came to be an Instructor in our lodge to.
We learned what some of the words meant that we didn’t know, and we discussed somewhat their meanings in our own lives.
We learned our errors, and some of the more comical errors made by other brothers doing the same ritual memorization by rote.
For our later degrees we learned to do more and more of the examination process ourselves, and we learned some of the interesting variations other instructors did.
One of the moments I was most upset at an officer of my lodge, an officer who knew I was in one of the Col’s last classes was forgetting to tell me about his memorial service, or the fact he even died.
All these things, these things other then learning the actual words taught us a great deal about masonry, and about the brotherhood masonry is supposed to impart to its members.
I’ve learned before degrees talking to a brother about some interesting views on the role of the “religion” line on Masonic petitions. And how he put something different on each one for each new organization he joined. And we sat and talked about the role the great architect should play in a Mason’s life. An instructive time with the Tyler happened when I as an entered apprentice was sitting waiting to come back in and hear how my proficiency went.
I learn allot of other Masonic lessons to. Like being at a ritual practice and watching some one slip up and hearing the whole room bursting into good hearted laughter.
Or sitting in the secretary’s office three masons chewing the fat over some fat that needed to be chewed off some brother’s heads at grand lodge.
It’s the sense of community that is built starting with the catechism work, and building into learning about the role of a mason in his lodge. It’s about fraternally bonding with brothers outside the purely Masonic areas.
Each mason is a brick, and that brick is built into an edifice that is the lodge. The ritual matters because it helps bridge the gaps between educated and uneducated. It brings everyone to an equal footing. I already talked about Tom’s problem with English comprehension and I just had the problem of trying to correct grand lodge’s grammar
It helps to bring together rich and poor, young and old
It is a tool that we are given to help build the community that our lodges are supposed to be.
Seeing some of these comments by men who have risen to heights in the fraternity, I am still amused at the fact when I was an EA on Alt. Freemasonry and other Masonic forum I was attacked for saying I had a fun time in my degree.
I look at how a Brother in my lodge ( and a Brother DeMolay) with a generous nature twisted my arm into joining Scottish rite because I’d enjoy myself and he also needed people for the class.
I think some people miss out that an attitude is needed for people to get interested in the craft. And if that attitude isn’t there no form of special lodge, higher prices, or other gimmicks will work.
It starts in your heart. If it isn’t right there then the rest simply is an empty meaningless form.
We’ll I’ve been emailing with some folks on the Philalethes list and I’ve seen something come up again and again and I want to kinda do a rant about it.
You non masons stick with me here for a moment you’ll get something out of this
I’ve been seeing people demand the “price” of Freemasonry keep pace with the times. I’ve seen arguments about inflation and what not. Well, other things that had price increases with Inflation had an increase in value. Also the amount of salaries paid to people (yep) increased also. So when you factor an increase in income, this negates the point about the inflated price. People paid more, but they had a lot less the further back in time you go. We have a considerable amount of more money –and more things to spend it on to- so the inflation argument fails. Not so much that because we have more money we should spend more, but because unlike other things which had an increase in price masonry has not increased in its quality. When the quality of something stays the same and the price goes up… people don’t buy it no more and if the quality of masonry as an organization remained the same, but grand lodges jacked up the prices you’d see an exodus from the craft in the US the likes of which you haven’t seen.
And the elitism inherent in that premise goes against one of my favorite Masonic stories. About Teddy Roosevelt a man of huge privilege and his telling the story of how his gardner was also his worshipful master that year… if Masonry fails to be a place where people of every strata can come together in harmony, then I feel the noble message of the craft fails.
My favorite pair of shoes only cost me five bucks on sale. I’d have never bought the shoes if I saw them new, they would cost more then I ever wanted to spend on a pair of shoes… but since they were on sale ( and in my price range) I bought the most comfortable pair of shoes I’ve had in my life. If our lessons are for all men of good character and will, they should be accessible like a comfortable pair of shoes.
The price being to low isn’t the problem… the quality of the product that can certainly be told as a problem.
I hear allot of folks downing on the ritual (and to you non masons reading this part is something you’ll enjoy)
The words of the ritual aren’t what’s important its how you get to them that is Important.
After my E.A Degree Tom and I were instructed by Col. Bob Shaw. Col. Shaw had through force of will and personality become some what of an institution in the lodge. The only instructor at the time who wasn’t going up the line in Lodge (or York Rite or….). The Bald Eagle was also fighting off cancer and the great ills of his aging body. Col. Shaw didn’t teach us the work word perfectly, as he was having trouble from his treatments and the like. But seeing in my mother lodge many other classes, I think I learned allot more from the Bald Eagle.
We learned about Col. Shaw and his military career and how Masonry played a role in the life of many men he served with in the war. He showed us one day his medals, and told us about how he earned them. Bob talked to us about his experiences seeing Masonry in England, and seeing Masonry done in Virginia, and seeing Masonry done in his father’s home territory of West Virginia. We learned about how he came to be an Instructor in our lodge to.
We learned what some of the words meant that we didn’t know, and we discussed somewhat their meanings in our own lives.
We learned our errors, and some of the more comical errors made by other brothers doing the same ritual memorization by rote.
For our later degrees we learned to do more and more of the examination process ourselves, and we learned some of the interesting variations other instructors did.
One of the moments I was most upset at an officer of my lodge, an officer who knew I was in one of the Col’s last classes was forgetting to tell me about his memorial service, or the fact he even died.
All these things, these things other then learning the actual words taught us a great deal about masonry, and about the brotherhood masonry is supposed to impart to its members.
I’ve learned before degrees talking to a brother about some interesting views on the role of the “religion” line on Masonic petitions. And how he put something different on each one for each new organization he joined. And we sat and talked about the role the great architect should play in a Mason’s life. An instructive time with the Tyler happened when I as an entered apprentice was sitting waiting to come back in and hear how my proficiency went.
I learn allot of other Masonic lessons to. Like being at a ritual practice and watching some one slip up and hearing the whole room bursting into good hearted laughter.
Or sitting in the secretary’s office three masons chewing the fat over some fat that needed to be chewed off some brother’s heads at grand lodge.
It’s the sense of community that is built starting with the catechism work, and building into learning about the role of a mason in his lodge. It’s about fraternally bonding with brothers outside the purely Masonic areas.
Each mason is a brick, and that brick is built into an edifice that is the lodge. The ritual matters because it helps bridge the gaps between educated and uneducated. It brings everyone to an equal footing. I already talked about Tom’s problem with English comprehension and I just had the problem of trying to correct grand lodge’s grammar
It helps to bring together rich and poor, young and old
It is a tool that we are given to help build the community that our lodges are supposed to be.
Seeing some of these comments by men who have risen to heights in the fraternity, I am still amused at the fact when I was an EA on Alt. Freemasonry and other Masonic forum I was attacked for saying I had a fun time in my degree.
I look at how a Brother in my lodge ( and a Brother DeMolay) with a generous nature twisted my arm into joining Scottish rite because I’d enjoy myself and he also needed people for the class.
I think some people miss out that an attitude is needed for people to get interested in the craft. And if that attitude isn’t there no form of special lodge, higher prices, or other gimmicks will work.
It starts in your heart. If it isn’t right there then the rest simply is an empty meaningless form.
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