The Right Wing Media (Discussion continued)

In my last post dated June 8^th 2015 entitled "The Right Wing Media (Discussion)" I said: “My response to the one from Albert Nekimken ended up being rather long and so I will save that for my next post." As promised it is set forth below:

Nekimken wrote:

This was an excellent commentary for multiple reasons. You've highlighted a kind of "thrust, counter-thrust" parry of political knives that exposes the underbelly of both political correctness and political incorrectness.

 In the end, it reminds me of Shakespeare, "The man doth protest too much." The more that Republicans lionize Ben Carson, the more he alienates himself from the majority of American blacks--which is unfortunate.

 On the other hand, he does serve to warn Democrats not to take the black vote for granted in exchange for pallid slogans: Most blacks want Sanders-style restructuring of the economic order in order to level the playing field.

And here is the lengthy response, referred to in my previous post:

Thank you for your complimentary response. It is indeed an example of thrust and counter-thrust. But that is not what I was trying to illustrate in posting the two articles.

Most people will read an article, whether from Left or Right, and take it at face value. I wanted to illustrate that this is a mistake. I looked for the article by Cynthia Tucker to which the Newsmax article referred, and upon finding that it didn’t say any of the things that the Newsmax article claimed, set it forth to show how extensive the misrepresentation was.

However, I now find that I found the wrong article by Tucker, and so I must make amends, by setting forth below the correct one, which did use the language claimed in the Newsmax article: I set it forth below:

Ben Carson Is in Danger of Losing All Respect

May 07, 2015 

Over decades of a brilliant career as a brain surgeon, Dr. Ben Carson attracted legions of admirers -- black, white and brown; liberal, moderate and conservative; fundamentalist Christian and agnostic. His story is the stuff of legend, the awe-inspiring tale of a poor black boy in Detroit who overcame daunting obstacles and vaulted to the very top of his profession.

 Given that his profession was pediatric neurosurgery, black Americans were particularly proud. Carson, who was the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins attached at the head, stood as stark repudiation of invidious stereotypes about black intellectual capacity. His memoir, "Gifted Hands," has been passed through countless black households.

 But the good doctor's foray into Republican presidential politics threatens to become his epitaph, to overshadow -- perhaps even to overwhelm -- his academic and surgical accomplishments. He will likely be remembered as the GOP's latest black mascot, a court jester, a minstrel show. He'll be the Herman Cain of 2016.

 Clearly, Carson's chances of winning the Republican nomination for president stand at less than zero. No matter how many cheers he attracts at conservative gab-fests, no matter how many of his bumper stickers appear on the vehicles of true believers, no matter how many Fox News pundits suggest he's a viable candidate, he won't come close to becoming the GOP standard-bearer.

 Nor should he. He is dangerously unqualified for the presidency -- a political novice who is happily ignorant of policy, both foreign and domestic, and contemptuous of religious pluralism and personal liberties.

 Carson catapulted to stardom in the ultraconservative firmament in 2013, when he addressed the National Prayer Breakfast with a speech in which he lashed out at the Affordable Care Act as President Obama sat nearby. Though the breakfast has a long history of nonpartisanship, Carson chose to criticize many of the policies that the president supports, including progressive taxation.

 That was enough to cause conservatives to swoon. Since Obama's election, Republicans have been sensitive to charges that their small tent of aging voters has become a bastion of white resentment, a cauldron of bigotry, nativism and fear of the other. They want to show that their fierce resistance to all things Obama has nothing to do with race.

 That promotes a special affection for black conservatives who are willing to viciously criticize the president. As with Cain before him, Carson garners the most enthusiastic cheers from conservative audiences when he's excoriating Obama, the most rapturous applause when he seems to absolve them of charges of bigotry. Why would Carson trade on his reputation to become their token?

 I've little doubt that his conservative impulses are genuine. He grew up Seventh-day Adventist, a conservative religious tradition. Moreover, he has adopted a view popular among white conservatives: that black Democrats give short shrift to traditional values such as thrift, hard work and sacrifice. (Hasn't Carson ever heard any of Obama's riffs excoriating deadbeat dads and promoting discipline, scholarship and parental involvement in their children's lives?)

 But Carson hardly represents the long and honorable tradition of black conservatism in America. Starting with the father of that movement, Booker T. Washington, its adherents have had a healthy appreciation for the reality of racism in America. Carson, however, thinks Obamacare "really (is) the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And ... it is slavery in a way." Washington and his peers, who knew better, would never have countenanced such nonsense.

 Moreover, black conservatism has promoted self-reliance, but it hasn't been a font of right-wing intolerance and know-nothingism. Carson, for his part, has dismissed evolution (giving his former colleagues at Johns Hopkins heartburn); he has compared homosexuality to bestiality; and he has spurned the First Amendment's separation of church and state.

 Given the ultraconservative politics of GOP primary voters, those extreme positions may help Carson in the early campaign season. But those views also guarantee that mainstream Republican leaders and their donors will flock elsewhere, seeking to find an experienced, broadly appealing and electable candidate.

 Carson can only lose in this campaign -- and more than just the Republican primary. He also stands to lose his place as one of the nation's most admired men.

Thus it turns out that the claim by Newsmax that Tucker said of Carson:

"He will likely be remembered as the GOP's latest black mascot, a court jester, a minstrel show. He'll be the Herman Cain of 2016,” is accurate.

The fury by any African-American at one who betrays his people’s aspirations is understandable - such people used to be called "Uncle Toms”, but that term has gone out of favor. A careful reading of what Tucker is saying reveals that she is not so much denouncing Carson for his views, as she would a white politician with similar views, but describing the attitude within the Republican party toward blacks who are prepared to front for them. The racism within the Right is established beyond dispute, and when they embrace one in black skin, who has nothing but contempt for his own race, they embrace him, to try to show to White moderates that their bigotry does not really exist. But one black face on the platform does not erase the missing black faces in the audience, which invariably shows a sea of White. Thus, when Tucker talks of minstrel shows, she is not saying that she thinks he is that, but rather that to the Republican party he represents “their minstrel show”. She points out that Carson has no chance at the nomination, but if he did somehow get it, he would not get the bulk of the African-American vote, which votes on issues, not on identity politics. Backs voted in no greater numbers for Obama than they did for Clinton, and they have been a reliable Democratic constituency since Johnson pushed through the Civil Rights legislation.

As for the constant reference to Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as Hispanic candidates that is a misnomer that is not challenged nearly often enough. Both of these politicians are of Cuban descent and as such have nothing in common with the Hispanic population that hails from south of the border, other than a common language. They are not traitors to their brethren because they do not hail from the same ethnic background. The media is not doing anyone a favor in putting all who have a common language (Spanish) into one ethnic basket. In fact, the true White colonial Spaniards who owned all the land in the Americas, south of the border, were the privileged oppressors of the indigenous people who represent what is today called Hispanic.

Your comment that "blacks want Sanders-style restructuring of the economic order in order to level the playing field” expresses your views, rather than that of most blacks. I predict that in the Democratic primaries Clinton will draw far more black voters than Sanders, who is considered a fringe candidate by most of the electorate, and that includes blacks.

But returning to the racism of the Right, it reveals itself once again in its concluding paragraph:

After all, it’s easier to attack Carson that admit to the fact that in Baltimore city schools 84 percent of eighth graders score below grade level in reading and 87 percent below grade level in math. That’s not Carson’s fault!

The implication is that there is something inherently wrong with blacks who have not, like Carson, been able to overcome the obstacles that our racist society puts in their path by putting their fathers in jail and giving them inferior schools. From the moment they start out they are born with obstacles that Carson, Oprah Winfrey, Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou have managed to overcome, but that most find insurmountable. Except for Carson, the others are not crowing that if they can do it anybody can. They try to help those who are left behind by supporting policies that will help the aspirations of their brethren.

I am afraid that brevity is not my strong suit.

Comments, questions, or corrections are welcome, and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified. However, please give your full name and the town and state in which you reside or have an office.

The Real Battles Are Between Elections

I find it amazing how much the media, and as a result, the general public, focuses on the Presidential elections to the detriment of other events, and how much issues are defined between elections, as well as by the outcomes of so-called off year elections to the Congress, and in state elections.

We have just had a Presidential election and speculation has already started as to who the candidates for President might be four years hence.

Yet what was noteworthy in the just-concluded Presidential election was the extent to which issues were defined before the campaign started. I don’t want to attempt here to catalogue the issues that were, or were not discussed, but to illustrate the point by mentioning some.

We had three debates between the major candidates, yet neither Global Warming (possibly better called Climate Change) nor the carnage of our youth in our inner cities ever came up.

Climate Change did come to the fore toward the end of the campaign because of the devastation of storm Sandy, and guns came to the public’s consciousness and entered the political lexicon after the election as a result of the wanton killing of 20 children (and seven adults) in a suburban town in Connecticut, but even now the atmosphere that has been created by the very profitable and free-spending gun manufacturers, makes it incumbent for our President and others to proclaim their adherence to, and support of, the second Amendment, and for our President to show how he too loves guns by publishing a photo showing him with a gun.

But what of the second amendment? As recently as 1939 the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision held that restrictions on the possession of certain types of shotguns did not violate the Constitution because it has no “reasonable relationship to any preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia”.

So how did we get from there to here? It was not as a result of any election, or the debate or discussion during any election. It was through large expenditures in propaganda by the gun manufacturers, who after taking over the NRA, which used to be a non-political sporting association, used it as a front to propagandize the issue and eventually to intimidate law makers by huge expenditures in opposition to those who did not adhere to their agenda. But this was done over many years, in between elections, and in by-elections, until a bare majority of the Supreme Court  (the usual 5 to 4) in the Heller case accepted the position of the gun manufacturers.

At the same time, the media, as is their wont, misrepresented the views of the public by giving the impression that most Americans were rushing out to buy guns, when, in fact, a small minority were buying many guns, or as Reuters reported: 

“Even as gun purchases rise, the share of U.S. households with a gun has been falling for decades, from 54 percent in 1977 to 32 percent in 2010, according to the University of Chicago's General Social Survey.”

But what else has been going on between elections? One of the things I noticed between elections was that whenever a discussion of increasing inheritance taxes came up, the radio station to which I frequently listened, had a huge up-tick in ads offering counseling for estate planning, which most listeners would not have needed since few had enough assets to be effected by such increases, but which gave the impression that most were likely to be effected. The ads intended to seem non-political, in fact seemed clearly to have that purpose.

And what about the slogans that are so carefully crafted and repeated over and over between elections?

We don’t tax too little; We spend too much.

We want the economy, not the government to grow.

Generational Theft (What greater generational theft can there be then to leave future generations a world of hurricanes, typhoons, rising water levels, forest fires, and tsunamis, or a lack in education, or in infrastructure?)

We are Pro-Life! (Who wouldn’t be) and how does that match up against being “Pro Choice”.

Support the troops!

Cut and run!

Tax and Spend!

These aren’t just slogans during an election. They are repeated over and over again between elections, and they determine how issues are defined and discussed during elections.

In the Presidential “debates” there is an effort to avoid any real discussion. Here is how the Commission on Presidential Debates said the 2012 Presidential debates would be moderated:

“The first debate will focus on domestic policy…The moderator will ask a question, and each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond.”

 “The second presidential debate will be a town-hall style meeting. Voters will be allowed to ask questions directly of each candidate…Each candidate will have 2 minutes to respond.”

 “The format for the third presidential debate will be identical to that of the first presidential debate.”

It should be noted that the candidates cannot even decide on the topics they want to address, and does anybody really think that an enlightening answer can be given in two minutes. Is it any wonder that we have the focus on who scowled, who invaded the others space, or who looked at his watch.

And then the media lauds the small state caucuses that are so important in deciding who gets nominated. Not only does this mean that a small percentage of a small population, has an outsize voice, but these people, according to the media, don’t decide whom to vote for until they have shook their hands. Boy, that really tells us what the candidate stands for!!! Or as the website for New Hampshire lauds its state: “Shake hands with as many Presidential Candidates as possible.”

And then there is the argument that the best government is the one closest to the people. That is supposed to mean that the state government is better than the Federal, the town or village government is better than the state, etc. But what it really means is that the smaller the jurisdiction the fewer people vote, the less information on the candidates and the issues is available, and very few even know who represents them. But that according to these avatars of the Right that is what is best for us. Government closest to the people indeed!!

But the fact is that while we are celebrating the re-election of Obama we have already forgotten the shellacking Democrats took only two years ago. To be sure gerrymandering played a role in the fact that even though Democrats won one million more votes than Republicans in the total votes for House seats, an even greater factor was the turnout was far, far smaller in the “off year election” than in the Presidential one, and there is the rub. Unless we can get people to turn out in the off year elections and in the State governors elections and in the state legislative elections, getting the turnout in the Presidential election will never, never be enough.

Finally, we need run off elections. No country in Europe, or in most of the world, would let a candidates win by less than a majority. It is doubtful that Senator Marco Rubio, who is being touted as the Republican savior, (God only knows why) would have won his seat if there had been a run-off. He won with 49% of the vote, with former Gov. Charlie Crist garnering 30% and Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek polling 20%. It is highly likely that if there had been a runoff that Meek’s vote would have gone to Crist, and Rubio, who was rated by the Koch Brothers-financed group Americans For Prosperity as the “only perfect senator,” would have lost.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

The President’s re-election (Discussion)

I posted my last commentary "The President’s re-election" on November 18.

As coincidence would have it, I received an inquiry from one of my subscribers that relates to it even before I posted my commentary, so allow me to share that exchange with you.

The inquiry came from Barbara Valentino Crowley Baptiste Moreus, of Port St. Lucie, Florida, who asked:

How does one rebut Senator Marco Rubio’s comment that: there isn't much point in raising taxes on the wealthy because they have the money to hire people who would help them get out of paying taxes. The billionaires and millionaires that are going to be impacted by higher rates, they can afford to hire the best lawyers, lobbyists and accountants in America to figure out how NOT TO PAY those higher taxes. Obama's approach will fail and therefore the problem of the huge annual deficit still remains. The President doesn't seem to understand that he is not going to get the "Bang for the Buck" by taxing the wealthy.

To which I responded:

“This is true as long as we have a tax system that has a million loopholes that clever lawyers can exploit. We really do need to close the many loopholes that are now in the tax system, e.g. look at my post "Romney is worse than I thought!" and look at the loopholes that Romney exploited. These need to be closed. Republicans are right that this kind of tax reform probably would raise more revenue than raising tax rates. But are they really prepared to eliminate them. I don't think so. The biggest loophole is that taxes on capital gains are taxed much lower than ordinary income. This needs to be changed. There is absolutely no reason why income from working should be taxed higher than income derived from investment. If we believe in the work ethic then we shouldn't punish people who work and reward those who get passive income by investing. But Republicans are adamant against this change.

But look at the many other loopholes that Romney exploited. When he gave assets to charity, he got a deduction for the value of the assets at the time of the contribution, rather than the price he paid for them, thus avoiding even the smaller capital gains tax. That is wrong. He should have to pay the capital gains tax when he gives to charity, as though he had sold the asset.

Inheritance tax. Aside from being too low under the Bush tax rates they allow a decedent to escape capital gains taxes altogether, since the law now says that assets of a deceased are exempt even from the very low capital gains taxes.

I can go on and on. Yes, Republicans are right that there is more money there than in increased tax rates, but they are phony when they suggest that they really favor tax reform. They will not support any of these reforms.

Extending the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy on the basis that at some time in the future we will have real tax reform is offering a bird in the bush. (No pun intended.) They will never let it happen. But if they have specific ideas along this line, I would like to hear them, and so would the President.

However Rubio is right about how much simply extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will bring. 

To make a real dent in the deficit we would have to extend The Bush tax cuts for all, as Allan Greenspan has been advocating. If none of the Bush tax cuts were extended the deficit would be reduced by approximately $3 trillion over a decade, but extending them, in accordance with Obama's plan, only for those making more than $250,000 per couple, $200,000 for singles, would increase revenue by only 3/4 of a trillion over ten years, not nearly enough. But politically Obama can't be for extending all because he has made a pledge not to do so, and at this point in the recovery, it is not desirable. After we have recovered it would make sense. See here.

The amount that Obama is seeking in additional revenues is 1.6 trillion. See here. The 3/4 trillion achieved by the proposed elimination of the cuts is less than half of what we need in additional revenues. So not extending the Bush cuts for the wealthy gets us less than halfway there. Additional revenue beyond that must be found. The article, which I referenced in US News, is not realistic as to other sources.

This addresses the point made by Rubio.

The other points generally made are that taxing the rich will hurt job creation because it hits small businesses. This is not true. Small businesses and the wealthy are not the same. Please read the article which you can find here.

Finally the argument that taxing business at all will hurt job creation is also nonsense. There is a super abundance of cash in businesses, large and small, that is not being invested. Having more is not going to make a difference. There is only one reason businesses are not hiring, and that is that they have no need for additional employees because there is a lack of consumer demand. When consumer demand picks up, they will start hiring. It is well established that 70% of the economy comes from the consumer. That is why putting money into the hands of people who will spend it on consumer goods is by far the most effective way to move the economy. The stimulus worked, despite all the denials. Look at the figures. Before the stimulus, jobs were being lost at a rapid clip. Right after job losses declined rapidly, and then jobs started being created at an ever faster clip. It is true that the stimulus was too small and did not last long enough, but that is not Obama's fault. The size of the stimulus was the best that could be gotten out of Congress. 

Republicans are right that the best way to deal with the deficit is by growing the economy, but wrong about the way to grow the economy. The economy grows from the bottom up, not from the top down, i.e. consumers drive the economy, not supply side economics. Compare the economy under Bush I lower taxes, Clinton's higher taxes, and with Bush's II lower taxes.

Joel Wiener of Boca Ratan Florida, had this observation:

I found Krugman's earlier column (November 8th - Let's Not Make a Deal) on the Fiscal Cliff interesting, especially his conclusion:  

“Meanwhile, the president is in a far stronger position than in previous confrontations. I don’t place much stock in talk of ‘mandates,’ but Mr. Obama did win re-election with a populist campaign, so he can plausibly claim that Republicans are defying the will of the American people. And he just won his big election and is, therefore, far better placed than before to weather any political blowback from economic troubles — especially when it would be so obvious that these troubles were being deliberately inflicted by the G.O.P. in a last-ditch attempt to defend the privileges of the 1 percent." 

"Most of all, standing up to hostage taking is the right thing to do for the health of America’s political system. So stand your ground, Mr. President, and don’t give in to threats. No deal is better than a bad deal.”  

I just don't think the Obama has the nerve to see what happens. I recall that in the third debate, when asked about the Fiscal Cliff, he said: "It will not happen." That was before the election, however.

To which I replied:

In a sense this is like the confrontation with the Russians in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Don't act too tough; don't overplay your hand, but be tough and offer the other side some kind of concession.

The military wanted Kennedy to immediately order the invasion of Cuba. Kennedy said NO! That would definitely lead to war. But he ordered a blockade. He then contacted Kruschev and said take your missiles out of Cuba and we will take ours out of Turkey.

That’s what we need here. Tough and a signal that we are willing to face disaster (falling off the cliff if we have to) but not so tough as not to offer concessions and to make a deal unlikely.

                       

No deal may be better than a bad deal, but what is the definition of a bad deal. Is a bad deal any that makes painful concessions?

I trust Obama's judgment. This is where Krugman and I part. He does not.

And Rick Pereira of North Adams, Massachusetts chimed in with:

I totally agree with you that gerrymandering continues to be, if not the primary, then at least the fundamental, cause of our perceived political instability. It may well be part of why we have effectively only two parties. In my belief, it will take one or more states to take action against gerrymandering as a political message against it and to raise public awareness of it.  I have long complained of the lack of the words "accountability" and "transparency" in politics (national as well as state) and although I'm encouraged by Cuomo's efforts, I've been very disappointed in New York's lack of transparency in its election laws.  Furthermore: if there is any contingent of citizens concerned enough about this issue, one strategy may be to promote enlarging of political districts in the name of saving money, because technology is now easily able to handle larger districts. This should obviate gerrymandering on a zipcode-by-zipcode basis.

To which I responded:

We need to revise the Constitution as difficult as that may be. We are spending too much time on elections, so that as soon as one election is finished, fund raising begins for the next. I would suggest that both members of the House and the Senate should be elected every four years to coincide with Presidential elections and that state elections for Governor and state legislatures be held at the same time. One election every four years is more than enough and the Presidential election brings out more people voting, so the results are more democratic.

An override of United needs to go with it, saying specifically that the Congress shall have the power to regulate the manner of raising and spending money in elections and the extent to which the government shall finance it. Fewer members of Congress and larger districts are desirable. 

Then Congress needs to legislate how Districts are to be drawn, setting forth the criteria, e.g. contiguous, no more population variation than 5%, geometrically concise such as a square, etc. and that these criteria are to be fed into a computer by the US Census Bureau. That may not be perfect, but I can't think of a better way. The type of voting machine to be used and how many voting machines per registered voter also needs to be mandated.

As for state elections, the above will improve these, but under our federal system, anything beyond this will have to be a state matter, though I would like to see a mandate that judges must be appointed by the governor and not be elected.

And finally I had an extensive exchange with Roger Streit of West Orange, NJ who opined:

I do agree with Paul Krugman’s argument as set forth in his November 11 column  “Contrary to the way it’s often portrayed, the looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage.” 

Why do you “take it from this that Krugman would be perfectly happy for taxes not to go up, even on the very rich, as the President wants, because … he doesn’t specifically say so”? 

From previous columns, it is very clear that he is in favor of raising taxes on the rich. He doesn’t have to make that point in every column. He was debunking the right’s supposed concerns of reducing the deficit. He identified the hypocrisy and also pointed out that they have been consistently wrong in their prescriptions and predictions. 

In short, you have to read Krugman on a consistent basis in order to appreciate his columns. I suggest that you read his blog as well as his columns before you criticize him. IMO, he has been right much more often than not. See also here.

To which I replied:

It is both a fiscal crisis and a political crisis. As I pointed out in numerous posts, the deficit is a phony issue when Republicans raise it, because they are totally insincere. Ryan's budget doesn't even attempt to close the budget gap. All it does is to destroy the safety net and all kinds of other governmental functions and cuts taxes on the higher incomes.

                       

But that doesn't mean that the looming deficit, which is a Bush creation, having inherited Clinton's balanced budgets and surpluses as far as the eye could see, isn't real. The Supreme Court's denial of the election to Gore was one of the greatest tragedies in American history.

                       

It is real. Not immediately. But down the road, but we can't wait till it is an immediate problem. That is too late. We need to put a long-range plan in place now. The President has been trying to do that for quite a long time with his proposals of tax increases and cuts, but the G.O.P. has been adamant for no revenue increases. That has changed. Now it is only how much and how. But cuts must be and will be part of the equation.

                       

Yes, Krugman wants taxes to go up, but he undermines the need for this when he argues that the deficit is irrelevant. If it is irrelevant, then we can just meet the nations needs without tax increases and let the deficit keep going up.

                       

Krugman is simply sloppy in writing his column and columns. Look back on my blog where I have time and again criticized him for undermining our President. He has no sense of political realities, and he is too often more of a polemicist than a thoughtful economist. I hope he does a better job in teaching his economics classes.

And then added:

Roger, let me add that I agree with much of what Krugman says. Erskine Bowles would be a terrible choice for Treasury Secretary, but I am not aware that he is being considered. When he says, "the deficit-scold movement was never really about the deficit. Instead, it was about using deficit fears to shred the social safety net," I agree with him, and I have been saying that all along. But when he says they "don’t even deserve a seat at the table." that is downright silly. The President can't deal with the "fiscal cliff without dealing with 'deficit scolds' in Congress!! To say they shouldn't have a seat at the table is ludicrous. Just because he rightly advocates for  ‘Keynesian economics’ as I do, doesn't give him a license to say silly things.

To which Roger replied:

I agree with you that you have to negotiate with the crazies, but you don’t have to give their arguments any credence. President Obama has given much too much weight on deficit reduction and has not focused enough on reducing unemployment. As Krugman has pointed out, the U.S. can borrow money for free and we have massive unemployment. Why not focus on putting these people to work?

And my rejoinder was:

That is an old but dangerous argument. Our debt has to constantly be refinanced. Three years from now interest rates may suddenly go up sharply, and will if the debt is large and growing. Then we are suddenly faced with a major crisis. We cannot just focus on now. We must also look to the future.

Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.