Category Archives: Commentary

Angry Pigs Ad

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Regular readers of this blog will notice that the first advertisement has been included as a “skyscraper” ad for the book “Angry Pigs Organized Against Gerbils: The Farmer Island War for a simple reason. We are promoting the book I authored based on the ideas and illustrations of our four grandchildren (listed as “Creative Staff and Illustrators.”) I think the way this book was developed by a grandfather teamed with grandchildren is unique, or at least I’m unaware of anything similar.

We’ve had enough feedback from readers of all ages to be confident that you will be pleased if you decide to buy the book either as a paperback or Kindle. Readers have called the book creative, fun, interesting, and intriguing. We’ve also been complimented about the positive messages. One of those is how the pig soldiers develop heartwarming respect for their comrades as they stand bravely together during the battles. They learn compassion is a more rewarding emotion than anger.

I selected the book to be discussed at the Denver Read and Feed book club October meeting held at our home, and have posted the comments by members on the review link of this web site. There were some very positive and interesting comments in that posting that might help you decide whether you are interested in the book.

We have a website that contains even more information. One of the links is “Continuing Adventures,” where ideas for a sequel are being created by the grandchildren and readers. Readers of the web site are encouraged to submit ideas about what happens next on Farmer Island.

We suggest you consider buying the book for your personal entertainment and that you consider it as a “stocking stuffer” for the upcoming holiday season.

Drug Litigation and Tort Reform

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The title of this posting represents a dilemma for the country, and I credit John Grisham’s book “The Litigator” (reviewed on this web site) with the idea for this posting. New drugs have to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after exhaustive testing, but there is no “safe” drug. Every pill anyone pops has side effects, regardless of whether it is aspirin or something used to combat pain, depression, cholesterol, or disease. People want relief from their ailments, and look to the big drug companies to provide that in the form of pills. People with loved ones who have uncommon diseases want the drug companies to spend the billions of dollars required to research possible cures. Lurking in the wings are the law firms specializing in suing drug companies after some people take their pills and suffer ill effects. The ill effects don’t even have to be associated with the pills to make the lawyers looking for cases happy. Apparently the FDA that approved the drug has no liability.

Anyone with a television understands the magnitude of the problem. Television ads are continually searching for people who willing to join a claim about a “bad drug” or a dangerous substance, such as asbestos. I’ve known that “Doug” has meothelioma for months or years now.

Tort reform is a one way of controlling the problem, but a couple of presidents have stood in the way. President Clinton vetoed legislation that had been carefully crafted to control frivolous lawsuits while allowing legitimate claimants their day in court and compensation. When a senator was asked why the bill was vetoed, the three words that were used to explain were, “The trial lawyers.”

Another president who avoided the wrath of trial lawyers was Mr. Obabma. He and his supporters in the legislature emphasized that the reason for “Obamacare” was to control escalating medical costs. One of the most obvious causes of escalating medical costs was and is the cost of litigation and costs of insurance for pharmaceutical companies and medical professionals. The final bill had nothing about tort reform despite the effort of some legislators to include language to address the problem. As to why this was so, once again, “The trial lawyers.”

Mideast Turmoil

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The media infatuation with the “Arab Spring” reminded me of the high hopes when Fidel Castro overthrew Batista in Cuba. There was a celebratory feel to the reporting about that event. The bloom was quickly taken off  when Che Guevara presided over show trials in a sports stadium and the summary execution of large numbers of people. There weren’t that many executions after the overthrow of dictators in the Middle East, although Moammar Gadhafi may have thought there was at least one important execution.

Democracy is always messier than dictatorships, and the recent protests, riots, and U.S. embassy attacks are a good reminder of that. There were two headlines in the Sunday, September 16, 2012 Denver post pertinent to the current events in that part of the world. One that doesn’t require much more explanation is “No Plan for Syria” by Albert Aji of the Associated Press. “The new international envoy tasked with ending Syria’s civil war summed up his first foray to Damascus on Saturday with a startling and frank admission that he has no plan for stopping the bloodshed that he warned could threaten world peace.”

The second headline was “Don’t give up on Arab Spring” by Shadi Hamid. He points out there is irony that Barrack Obama’s decision to intervene in Libya resulted in the overthrow of Gadhafi’s dictatorship. That set up the conditions for the attack on the U.S. embassy and the murder of Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans. Frighteningly, Mr. Hamid observes that Libya is “…the most pro-American country in the Arab world.” He also says anti-American sentiment “…will almost certainly increase after the NATO operations fades from memory. In fact…U.S. favorability ratings have been lower under Obama than they were in the final years of President George W. Bush’s administration.” There might be wisdom in observations that demonstration of strength results in respect and conciliation results in contempt.

U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is in a terrible mess, and that probably shouldn’t be a surprise in an area where the control provided by brutal dictatorships has been removed. People have learned that they can gain political power with violence. I find it curious that the policies of the Obama administration are not being questioned by much of the U.S. media.  Reports seem to focus on Romney “getting in the way” with comments suggesting our foreign policy should not be based on apologies.

Another Reset in Russia and U.S. Relations

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Diplomats had a good time three years ago when Hillary Clinton gave Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a “mock reset button” to symbolize U.S. hopes to improve relations with Moscow. The big news at that time was that the “peregruzka” label on the button that was intended to mean “reset” instead translated to “overcharged” or “overloaded.” The presentation of the button was said to have been in response to one of Vice President Biden’s gaffes. This one had something to do with the new administration wanting to reset ties with Russia after years of friction.

The recent termination of a U.S. aid organization’s activities by the Kremlin represents an ominous reset in relations. The September 20, 2012 English version of Pravda by Oleg Artyukov reported that the “…decision to terminate the activity of the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, in Russia has expectedly caused a great deal of noise. Human rights advocates are in shock…” The Russian Foreign Minister said the decision to shut down the agency was made “…due to attempts of the agency to influence political processes, civil society institutions, and elections…”

The agency had distributed $2.7 billion in Russia since 1992.  A State Department spokeswoman said, “…not very confidently…” that a third of the money went to “…development of democracy.”  A New York Times article by David M. Heszenhorn published in the September 23, 2012 Denver Post said the money funded “…programs touching nearly every facet of society in the former communist state — fighting the spread of tuberculosis and HIV, developing judicial systems and training lawyers and judges, promoting child welfare, job readiness, youth engagement, human rights and democracy, even helping modernize the electric grid.”

It is apparent there is justification for the Russian accusation that the agency was being used to meddle in Russia’s internal affairs in addition to all the positive activities. An association that monitors elections in Russia called “The Voice” put out a statement that “The hastiness and sudden nature of this decision is apparently related to the elections on October 14.” There are continuing protests about that election, and Vladimir Putin has sent another warning to the protestors.

The U.S. media coverage of the story is perhaps as interesting as the story itself. The story was published on page 23A of the Sunday Denver Post, and I found little else about it except on the English Pravda site.  Senator John McCain described the closure of the USAID mission as “an insult to the United States and a finger in the eye of the Obama Administration.”  Is it possible the U.S. media doesn’t want to publish news of a major setback to Mr. Obama’s foreign policies when there is an election coming up?

Romney Remarks About Voter Dependency

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Mitt Romney made the astonishing mistake of speaking freely at a private fund raising event. How could someone who has campaigned for so long have forgotten that everything is says in public will be recorded and analyzed for possible anti-Romney ads? Also, how could he have gotten his facts wrong?

I won’t bother to look for a link to add for the comments, because they are everywhere. I haven’t seen the Obama ads quoting their favorite parts, but I’m certain that’s because I haven’t watched much television in the past couple of days. He said, “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right? There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for the president no matter what. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of lower taxes doesn’t connect. So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean, that’s what they sell every four years. And so mu job is to not worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

People who don’t pay taxes either are those who don’t make much money, have more deductions than income, or have good advisors who can see that income is sheltered from taxes (such as income from tax-free municipal bonds.) Many of those who don’t pay taxes are elderly and young people who can’t find jobs other than perhaps a low-paying part time job. I expect that some portion of those people will be more attracted to Romney than to Obama. I do see that Mr. Obama has a solid 47 percent of the vote, but a large part of that number are people who are loyal liberals/progressives/Democrats. Many of them are very well paid and pay significant amounts of taxes. I’ve seen data that well over fifty percent of lawyers voted for Mr. Obama.

I believe Mr. Romney was onto something. I do think it is true that Mr. Obama believes a primary role of government is to redistribute wealth to “make things fair.” I also believe that there are many voters who will vote for him for that very reason, and that his only challenge is to make certain that those who think he will look out for their “entitlements” will go to the polls.

What Mr. Romney should have done was to read or paraphrase a quote from Thomas Jefferson. “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” Or he could have paraphrased the quote from Adrian Rogers, “You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it.  You don’t multiply wealth by dividing it.  Government cannot give anything to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else.” He also could have mentioned that the top ten percent of earners pay 71 percent of income taxes. Mr. Obama says that isn’t enough to be “fair.”

Climate Change Continues

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I’ve written in previous blogs that I think Al Gore and the others who pound the drum of manmade global warming should change the title of their mantra to “climate change.” They would finally be right this if they predict climate change, because the climate has always changed and it always will. The warnings in the 1970s were that man was going to create a global cooling climate disaster. The climate did change, but there was a warming trend instead of the predicted cooling. Some researchers responded by developing computer models that correlated warming temperatures to carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. They never mention the oceans warm when the sun is more active and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases. Man has no control over the warming of oceans that causes higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A recent Denver Post editorial took both Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney to task for not proposing more aggressive actions to battle climate change. Much of the basis for the editorial is the low level of Arctic ice coverage. The Sea and Ice Data Center indeed does show that ice levels dropped below the average levels and the 2007 levels beginning around the first of August. I expect the Post was also influenced by the record number of over 90 degree days this summer. However, there are other indications that “catastrophic global warming” is not occurring. A web site that has numerous graphs of the average temperature of Gulf of Mexico waters shows 2011 had one of the largest drops in temperature in eighty years.

The book Climatism reviewed on that link of this web site is a good place to start if you want to read details of why man is not the cause of global warming and most if not all of the efforts to develop alternative energy sources are doomed to fail because of simple economics.

Carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. were at a twenty year low last year because significant amounts of power are being generated with recently inexpensive natural gas. Power generated with natural gas creates half the carbon dioxide compared to coal. One report says that it is expected there will be 175 coal burning plants will be replaced by natural gas plants over the next five years.

Michael Mann of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University seemed to be grumbling about the improvements created by the shift from dirtier-burning coal to natural gas. He commented that “ultimately people follow their wallets on global warming.” Roger Pielke, Jr., a climate expert at the University of Colorado had a bit different take. He said, “There is a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources.”

Some environmentalists aren’t happy about the good news. They don’t like the “fracking” that has resulted in production of huge amounts of natural gas and caused the price of the fuel to drop by more than half. They believe the practice will pollute underground water sources and cause leakage of methane to the atmosphere despite the belief by many government officials that the practice is safe if done properly. My suspicion is that those who are grumbling are mostly worried that there will be even less emphasis on development of expensive solar and wind generated energy. “Installation of new renewable energy facilities has now all but dried up, unable to compete on a grid now flooded with a low-cost, high-energy fuel.” The massively advertised “shift to renewable energy” has added scant amounts of power generation. “Wind supplied less than 3 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2011…and solar power was far less.”

I won’t be in the grumbling camp. I find it refreshing that ingenuity and economics have resulted in improved air quality.