Category Archives: Presidents

The Worst Hard Time

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worst-hard-timeI thought this book by Timothy Egan was difficult to review, and perhaps I should refer you to the 402 reviews on Amazon. Saying that, I am of compelled to write my review. The book provides an incredible history of the greatest environmental disaster in the history of the U.S., but the focus is on the people who endured the “Dust Bowl.” Were they brave and tough or just insane to continue to hang on while dust storms destroyed everything including their health and that of their children? I tried to imagine how we would react today. We whine when we are inconvenienced by road detours or when the price of gasoline increases. The people of the Dust Bowl endured while their children died of dust pneumonia and their crops blew away into to next state or even to the East Coast of the U.S. and left them penniless and in debt.

The book describes how the government and developers lured settlers to take advantage of the Homestead Act, settle on 160 acres of prairie, build a shack or dugout, rip up the sod, and plant wheat. There are several of the tough, brave, stubborn people that are followed throughout the book, which gives a sense of connection with them. The problem for someone looking for a less serious read is that the feelings are despair, fear, sadness, loneliness, and several other negative descriptions of desperate people living in poverty and misery.

Between 1925 and 1930 there were 5.2 million acres of native sod that had fed huge herds of buffalo and later cattle that was turned under to make wheat fields. All went well when above normal rains nurtured their crops and allowed the farmers to make what they thought were incredible profits. The price of wheat began to drop, and more land was plowed to try to retain profits by growing more wheat. Then the Great Depression hit, an eight year drought (called “drout” by the farmers) began, the grassless land dried, and fierce and frequent winds ripped off the top soil by millions of tons. The pictures of the rows of dirt collected around houses, fences, or any other obstruction are startling. The only business that seemed to be prospering was bootleg alcohol.

People and animals caught in the open when a dust storm struck often died or were blinded. Those who made it into their meager homes would hang up wet sheets as a last defense. One woman awakened and noted the only part of her pillow that wasn’t covered in dust was where her head had rested. There is even the sorrow for the animals that were often blind and died from malnutrition because their digestive tracts were filled with dirt.

The government had a direct role creating the conditions for the disaster. The 160 acres of prairie land was too little land to make a decent living with average rainfall. Then the government through the Federal Bureau of Soils proclaimed about replacing native grass with wheat land that the soil “…is the one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used up.”

The story of the people who were attracted to the plains is interesting and well told. Many were Germans who had immigrated to Russia and then were driven to immigrate to the U. S. during World War I. They brought the hard wheat that still flourishes in Kansas farms. The book called it “turkey red,” although I had always heard it called “Russian red.” The Germans also brought a few seeds of a thistle mixed in with their belongings. These thistles are well known as tumbleweeds in the plains, and they still pile up and obscure fence lines. The tumbleweeds were one of the few plants that survived the drought, and were mixed with salt to provide the last food many farmers could give their emaciated cattle. The farmers even began canning the tumbleweeds in brine to make food for them and their families.

There are interesting facts about politics. Herbert Hoover won the Presidency in a landslide in 1929 and then became one of the most disliked presidents in the history of the country as the Great Depression deepened and he refused to take government action while advocating that the free market would solve problems. One problem was that nature and not the free market was in charge of at least the center of the country. Even Joe Kennedy was scared by the depression. He told a friend, “I’m afraid I’m going to end up with nine kids, three homes, and no dough.”

I was interested in several aspects of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency mentioned in the book. I’ve often wondered why my parents, who were farmers in the early part of their lives, were “Roosevelt Democrats.” Some economists argue that Roosevelt extended the Great Depression with his policies. My parents only knew, as the book portrays, that Roosevelt tried to do things that would make things better for desperate people. All manner of food sources were destroyed in an attempt to stabilize commodity prices while people were hungry in the cities. My mother often lamented, “I don’t know why they would just kill and bury the baby pigs.” No matter whether the actions of the FDR administration were wise; they gave people such as my parents hope. We moved off the farm for my father to take a government job designing the planting of rows of trees as windbreaks around farmsteads. FDR was a big fan of creating what he called “shelterbelts.”

FDR indeed tried just about everything to avert the poverty being created. The government did buy emaciated livestock to slaughter and bury them after people were allowed to try to salvage some of the meat. He paid farmers $498 to not plant their fields. He established the Civilian Conservation Corps to begin implementing ideas by Hugh Bennett on how to begin restoring grasslands. He was a hero to the poor because he provided money and jobs to millions that had nothing else. Late in the book Will Rogers is quoted as saying, “If Roosevelt burned down the Capital we would cheer and say, ‘Well, we at least got a fire started, anyhow’.”

One effect of the massive dust storms was the static electricity they created. Men avoided shaking hands, because the shock would knock them down. Cars were grounded by dragging chains to keep from shorting out electrical systems.

A man named Bam White settles when a horse dies and strands him and his family. He is eventually hired to be filmed with his horse pulling a plow around for the unheard of sum of $25 for two hours of plowing. He is the star of the movie The Plow That Broke the Plains. The movie was even played in the White House for FDR.

A newspaper writer described the dilemma of the plains saying “Three little words…rule life in the dust bowl of the continent—if it rains.” The term “Dust Bowl” stuck, and was even adopted by Hugh Bennett’s conservation project as “Operation Dust Bowl.” One of his ideas was to tap the “endless” Ogallala aquifer with 500 feet deep wells.

There was enough rain in 1937 to allow some crops and grass to begin to grow. Then grasshoppers arrived and ate everything. They ate every plant to the ground and were even chewing on the handles of rakes and hoes. It was estimated there were fourteen million grasshoppers per square mile.

The book ends with the death of the people followed throughout the story, including Bam White. I couldn’t help but think that they were finally released from their misery.

Joe Biden, Territorial Tax, and Social Security

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I often refer to Vice President Joseph Robinette “Joe” Biden, Jr. as the accidental comedian because of the strange things he says. He says them with such force and vigor that people often are swayed by the emotion conveyed and perhaps don’t notice the absurdity of what was said. During his convention speech he said (with great vigor) that “Governor Romney believes in this global economy it doesn’t matter where American companies invest and put their money or where they create jobs. He then went on to say that Romney was proposing “…a territorial tax, which the experts have looked at, and they acknowledge that it will create 800,000 new jobs—all of them overseas, all of them.” Joe, or his speech writers, apparently did not know that the business leaders on President Obama’s Export Council and his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness have said that the tax system Joe accused as originating with Mr. Romney would be a good idea for the U.S economy.

Those comments by Joe during his speech created a flurry of astonished articles, but it isn’t even my favorite recent “Joeism.” During the Vice Presidential debate he accused Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney of wanting to privatize Social Security and inquired where people’s retirement programs be if that idea had been accepted when George W. Bush proposed it. I did a posting in February in which I analyzed what would have happened to a worker who voluntarily put the suggested one third of their Social Security “contributions” into a S & P 500 index (which was called “privatization by Joe and others) on a dollar averaging basis. It would have been really worrisome to watch the value of the account plummet with the stock market in 2008, but the money being invested during that time would have bought more shares.

The calculations I made were based on a person earning $50,000 a year with $3100 being withheld for Social Security and matched by the employer. One third of the monthly total would have resulted in about $170 dollars a month going into the private account. There would have been about $8300 invested since the beginning of 2005, and the value would have dropped to  $5700 at the worst of the market collapse. However, the investors that took advantage of the lower market value and continued to invest would be pleased with the results. They would have invested about $15,700 by now, and, with the improved stock market, the account would be worth about $17,600.

No one knows what the stock market is going to do in the future, but history has shown it to be a good place to create value for investments. The individual with the private account would have the advantage of being able to use the money however they wished upon retirement instead of having the government calculate how much money they would receive each month. They also could designate the person or persons of their own choice to be beneficiaries who would receive the full remaining value. Social Security payments stop immediately after the death of the person.

All of that may or may not be of interest, but let’s get back to Joe. When he asked where we would be if Social Security had been “privatized,” he apparently didn’t know that the individuals who had voluntarily began the investment process would have more money. What is even more astonishing is that he apparently hasn’t noticed that the stock market has improved since Mr. Obama and he took office. Wouldn’t that be something to brag about?

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.

Selecting a Presidential Candidate

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There were three articles in the Sunday, September 02, 2012 Denver Post that were pertinent to the choice for voters. The first was titled “Evaluating Obama’s grade on economy by Robert J. Samuelson of the Washington Post. People usually “vote their pocketbook,” so the state of the economy is crucial to both Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney. Mr. Samuelson leads his article with, “President Obama’s economic report card is at best mediocre. I’d give him a C-plus while acknowledging that presidents usually don’t much influence the economy…For the first six months I’d award him an A-minus; for the rest a C-minus or D.” The latter grade is based on the insistence of Mr. Obama at focusing on the health care law (for his legacy) despite the fact the complex law discouraged job creators from expanding their businesses. The battle over the health care law also created gridlock between the two political parties that dominates politics in Washington, D.C.  Mr. Samuelson writes that there is no way of knowing whether Mr. Obama’s missteps have weakened the economy. “My guess is that Obama’s errors have had a modest effect.”

The second article is by Dave Maney, and is titled “Third vision needed.” The article proposes that Republicans are good at clearing impediments to economic change while Democrats are good at identifying those needing help. The author writes that Democrats “…prescribe an attack on healthy parts of the body to somehow cleanse it and make the sick parts well again. It’s like stabbing yourself in the stomach because you’re having a heart attack—it brings zero relief but lots of additional pain” But then he turns to the Republicans and says “We just need to go back to the way things were in 1984, and we’d be in great shape.” That is characterized as being equivalent to telling an ailing patient in his 70s that they would feel better if they were still 40. I didn’t read an alternative between the two visions presented by the two parties except something to the effect that we need to do things differently in the different world.

My favorite article was titled “American optimism in eye of the beholder” by Ann Sanner and Calvin Woodward of The Associated Press. According to the article, young people continue to be optimistic while older people are pessimistic. There are examples of those in their 50s who have lost optimism for their retirement goals because of the layoffs and reduced value of investments. One fifty year old woman is quoted as saying that she firmly believes in the American Dream “…but in the sense of dreaming it, not grasping it. I’m not seeing anything to strive for; I guess….I’m settling.” “Nearly two thirds lack confident that life for today’s children will be better than it has been for today’s adults…”

There are several disturbing statistics about the pessimism of older voters and the continued optimism of younger people despite their college debts and the dismal employment situation. Mr. Obama has noticed younger people are happier with the current economic situation, and he has arranged many of his campaign appearances on college campuses. No one can accuse him of not being politically astute.