The Man Behind the Rosenbergs Again

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man-behindI recently decided to reread this book by retired KGB agent Alexander Feklisov with Sergei Kostin hoping to better understand why Americans were willing to spy for the Soviet Union during World War II. Communism and “the worker’s paradise” of the USSR was a lure during the crushing poverty created by the Great Depression. There was also the belief by some that Communism was the only viable protection from Fascism, although the mutual defense pact signed by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union confused some of those people. Many of the people recruited by the Soviets were American Jews who were children of Russian immigrants. They were convinced that the United States should share any useful technology with the Soviet Union as an ally in the war against Hitler. Feklisov saw those people as “anti-Fascist activists” who were heroes and not spies.  Feklisov managed large networks of American spies, and his book provides insight into their motivations.

Feklisov mentions that many U.S. politicians weren’t friendly to the Soviet Union. Harry Truman as a Senator expressed the point of view about the conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union, that “…if Germany is winning we must help Russia; if Russia was winning, the help should go to Germany.” The first prize for bluntness would go to the New York Daily News, which published a cartoon depicting the USSR and Germany as two snakes fighting each other. The caption read, ‘Let’s let them eat each other’.” Feklisov portrays FDR as being a moderate whose attitude toward the USSR, which was “…bearing the brunt of the war efforts, was favorable.”  Continue reading →

Big Shot

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Charles Earle Funk, author of the book “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions,” explains that the expression refers to a person of importance. This slang is a recent, but it evolved from the nineteenth century term “a big gun.” That term resulted from the union of “a great gun” and a “big bug.”

Opposing GMOs

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This is our third successive commentary on GMOs, and we usually don’t obsess about any one subject. However, the Denver Post had an editorial that I just couldn’t pass it up. The editorial cleverly begins with the question, “If we could go back in time and avert the Irish potato famine, in which a million people died, who would possibly oppose it. The same blight remains destructive of potato crops today, but a GMO potato has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration that will resist it.

Perhaps even more interesting is that the Campbell Soup Company has announced three fourths of their products contain GMOs and that they will begin labeling their products as such in 12 to 18 months. “The company is betting on the good sense of consumers and their trust in scientific consensus. Let’s hope its faith is warranted.” Campbell supports a mandatory federal requirement for GMO labeling in order to avoid an impossible patchwork of state laws with different requirements. The Post is hopeful that the Campbell decision will “…demystify GMOs and lead to greater public understanding of their potential to battle malnutrition and reduce the use of pesticides.”

I can’t think of a better way to end this post other than to quote final sentences of the editorial. “The anti-GMO movement, fueled by the organic food industry and anti-corporate activists, has maintained for years that all it wants is to provide the public with more information. Campbell Soup is about to call their bluff.”

Okay, I can’t stop myself from adding a bit more. I’ve been a lifetime consumer of Campbell soups, but I now intend to look at their products first while food shopping. They deserve the first look for their approach to resolving a contentious issue. I’m certain they came to the announced approach after carefully considering impact on their bottom line. I intend to do my tiny bit to reward their decision.

Living on Almost Nothing in America

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$2 a dayThis book by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer says something important, though the style isn’t my favorite.

As Steven Pinker says, “if narratives without statistics are blind, statistics without narratives are empty.” My analytical mind leans to statistics while Edin and Shaefer lean to narratives.

The title comes from “one of the World Bank’s metrics of global poverty in the developing world – $2 per person per day… The official poverty line for a family of three in the United States worked out to about $16.50 per person, per day over the course of a year.” Even America’s definition of “deep poverty” is $8.30. I hadn’t expected to discover that 4% of Americans live in the poverty of $2 per day.

The book explains the history of federal government “welfare” in America, starting with States overwhelmed by Civil War widows and orphans, and continuing through the 1990s reform era to today.

Trapped
People are often trapped in $2 poverty by physical and mental health issues – their own or family members they care for. They live in areas where low-level jobs are few, but haven’t the money to move. The authors focus on heart-breaking stories of individuals who surely deserve better – like a young father who presses his shirt before going to a local store to seek a job – even while showing that the individuals deal with addicts, abusers, and craziness around them. But I can understand the difficulty of landing a job at a retail store if your teeth are rotted and your clothes are stained. Applying for government aid can require so much time, jumping through so many hoops, that it prevents individuals from seeking and holding jobs!

Failures throughout history
If you think all the deeply poor deserve their fate, read the stories here. Most $2 poor have a history of work and want to work. While some studies that establish such facts are explained in the book, in other places I wish a reference was included.

The authors say (missing those statistics and references again) that the old welfare system is not proven to create dependency, “indolence and single parenthood,” but that doesn’t really matter. Programs begun during the Great Depression that offered money, penalized mothers who had a husband in the family, and demanded nothing in exchange are “so out of sync with American values” they are “doomed to fail” in the long-term.

A majority of Americans reject “welfare” in polls, but “the number of Americans who thought we were spending too little on help for the poor actually rose” over time. The government is failing to deliver what most Americans want and what the poor need. Even the deeply poor hate “welfare” programs. Continue reading →

So Far, So Good

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Being an engineer, I’m familiar with problems and hate to tempt fate by saying something is going well. “So far, so good” is therefore one of my favorite clichés.On Stackexchange I learned there is an archaic meaning of “so” that means “in this manner/condition.”

FreeDictionary says the idiom was first recorded in James Kelly’s Scottish Proverbs (1721), where it is defined: “So far, so good. So much is done to good purpose.” The title of the book implies the phrase was already well known.

Etymonline offers a detailed etymology of “so” and agrees with the 1721 reference. So it seems Kelly was the first to write the phrase down and publish it.

GMO Labeling Update

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The “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015” has been reintroduced by Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) that would prevent individual states from requiring GMO foods from being labeled. Pompeo explained, “GMOs are safe and have a number of important benefits for people and our planet.” “The bill would also tighten the standards companies must use to designate their food as GMO-free: Crops must not be planted with bioengineered seeds, and animals must not be fed bioengineered food.”

The evidence that GMO foods are safe continues to increase. The Journal of Animal Science describes a study that examined billions of animals fed with non-GMOs and compared the results to animals fed at least 90 percent GMOs. “The study found GMOs completely safe and nutritionally equivalent to non-GMOs.”

The safety of GMO foods is being reinforced by continuing studies, but some GMO advocates worry about unintended consequences of Pompeo’s bill. It would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authority to establish national standards and regulations for GMOs and give the Department of Agriculture full discretion over how to implement the law. That would give anti-GMO activists in the government the power to impose restrictions and unjustified regulatory hurdles.