Which lives matter?

Welcome to the 21st Century's unexpected task.

We thought we'd finished with prejudice and other such wrong thinking at least in our own country.

There remains not a single defensible position for racial discrimination.  All the remnants of those arguments are ignorance, fear, and unreasoning hatred.

Did you know that skin color changes with location and UV levels; your family was probably a different color somewhere in the past.  In a hundred generations (the blink of an eye) and without interbreeding, a population can change color from light to dark or dark to light.  Melanin magic; ensures we can make the vitamin D we need but not get too much UV damage. Pretty cool design. Color is really neat; I'd prefer green next.  Not that it matters.  Color is NOT reliably distinctive of anything other than where your family lived for the last hundred or so generations.  HA.  I wonder if Governor Deal and the Wilcox Georgia town council could stand knowing that.

We so have many reasons to be thankful for the legacy of our forefathers. So much good has been bought and paid for by men and women of good conscience.  Many died that we might live in liberty.

   Not all that has accompanied the process has been noble, however.

      Some of the leftovers like racism were just wrong.

Scientifically wrong.
Morally wrong.

... and we thought we were done with lessons about race.


When western expansion was young, we were told that the lands we saw were ours for the taking, and that we need have no concern for the indigenous savages.  We did that in Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Colonialism.  And manifest destiny.

Slavery and slaughter filled the years.  White superiority made sense to some.

They told us there were quality differences among the races with the white people being superior to the colored ones.

We were told that the dark ones weren't smart and couldn't learn much.  It has taken two hundred years to pull that one down.  So far.

Emerging from the lockbox of cultural constraints, now non-white talent and skill, leadership and erudition have emerged and taken their place at the top of relevance and significance in human history.

Fifty years ago, it was illegal for a white to marry a person of any color.  In 1959, a bricklayer and his wife pled guilty in a Virginia state court. A trial judge sentenced them both to one year in prison, suspending the sentence on condition that they leave the state and not return for 25 years. In considering his verdict, the judge wrote:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

OK, that's embarrassing, but it gets worse.

The US Supreme Court overturned all such laws in 1967, but many laws against interracial marriage actually remained on the state  books for decades.  It wasn't until 2000 that Alabama finally voted to remove that anti-miscegenation provision from their state constitution.  It wasn't a landslide; 40% voted to keep the provision in place.  OK, that's worse.


Of note at the turn of the century, mixed race families have crossed the line from lamentable to admirable in most common public conversation.  Unfortunately, their acceptance is not yet uniform across the country.

Just this year, we hear of a Georgia high school having their first integrated (multi-racial) prom in history.  A group of courageous students are doing it against the expressed will of the majority of residents including the town council and parents groups.  APR 12, 2013, the governor, Nathan Deal (R), declined to comment, saying he didn't want to take sides on the issue.  DIDN'T want to TAKE SIDES on SEGREGATION?!!!!!?  Give us a break gov, it's the 21st century.  (His spokesman called the all-included-prom a "silly publicity stunt.")


  

Got troubles?

There are things about government and the progress of nations that intimidate, even overwhelm us.

We forget that liberty is right and good, but not free for the taking.  Most folks have no such luxury as to expect to be treated fairly. Most of the world, in fact, has no voice in government, no right to petition for redress of grievance.  Justice isn't a given.  We're fortunate, but it requires our participation to continue.

Trouble, as I was reminded by my wife; when teenaged government troops break into your house and kill members of your family and cut off your hands and rape the girls, then you've got troubles.  By comparison, when someone at work hurts your feelings or when someone in the community doesn't acknowledge your contribution, those aren't troubles.  They're not significant, not worth the days of anger and bitterness they're often given, and not an adequate basis for life decisions.  They're small stuff, and so are we if that's what occupies our thinking.  Real troubles are things that interfere in the larger context with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, perhaps.

Can we tackle the big problems?

So then, are we swept along by big business, by big government, by the world order?  Or do we establish ourselves with understanding in a place which we can in good conscience defend?  Then, with clear thinking and good courage, we too can dedicate our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to that which is good, and not just for ourselves and our families, but for mankind.

Can you tackle the NSA issues, the FBI's misbehavior, and Congress?  Can you make your faith relevant? Of course you can, and it's worth a cautionary note that going along with the media hype is inadequate.  Is there risk?  Of course there is, and a price tag as well.

"We can win no laurels in a war for independence," Webster acknowledged in 1825. "Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us ... [as] the founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation."

Vegas Street

Play for money is ancient, but we understand the Vegas mentality today all too well.  High risk, smart plays, and you just might hit it big.  If you could gamble with someone else's money, you'd have a ball!  Someone loses, someone (perhaps you) wins; it's appealing on many fronts.


There's little today to distinguish the casino floor from the trading floor in the financial marketplace.  Over the last century, the similarities have synced up rather nicely.  Two decades of deregulation; then in 2000 with CFMA, we legalized betting (credit derivatives, or credit default swaps; ), removing the last semblance of responsible management from the banking communities worldwide.  (It was illegal during most of the 20th century under the gaming laws, but in 2000, Congress gave Wall Street an exemption and it has turned out to be a very bad idea.) After the change, financial firms went wild.  Countries that refused to play found their national economies battered down by the international activity.  2008 gave us the first price tag; many Americans lost a quarter to half of their savings.  Many elsewhere in the world just went hungry and more than a million died in just the first year of fallout.

Vegas casino floor and Wall Street trading floor, much the same down to the last detail

Many things that happen on Wall Street and in London's financial district are "socially useless," says Lord Adair Turner, chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA). The values that are created there are often not real or of any use to society, Turner adds. Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, once remarked that the only truly useful financial innovation in the past 20 years is the ATM.

"The sector's high salaries tend to attract the best and brightest university graduates. The members of this youthful elite don't devise new products that make people's lives better, nor do they found new companies that further progress. Instead, these young financial wizards invest a great deal of money and effort to develop sophisticated financial products, the sole purpose of which is to generate more profit for both their employers and, ultimately, for themselves -- sometimes at the expense of other market players or even their customers."

"The truth is that the financial markets are controlling the politicians. If Sarkozy interrupts his vacation, the markets interpret his sudden return as a sign that the situation there is worse than they thought -- and promptly set their sights on the country. And if there is an argument between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti, then the markets target Italy, because they doubt that the Italian government is serious about introducing austerity measures. The markets take advantage of every weakness and every rumor to speculate against one country after the next.

In doing so, they aggravate the crisis. Once a country has become the subject of rumors and speculation, other investors become nervous. Fearing further price declines, pension funds and insurance companies also start selling stocks and bonds. In the end, fear nurtures fear and a panic ensues."  ~Spiegel.De DIETMAR HAWRANEK, ARMIN MAHLER, CHRISTOPH PAULY, MICHAELA SCHIESSL AND THOMAS SCHULZ

 

Governments had the chance following the crash to reign in the financial industry and significantly reduce the allowable risks, but they failed to do so.  Regulatory changes, constrained by the influence Wall Street wields in governments, are known to be inadequate.  Title VII of the act is subject to numerous exemptions that will limit its effectiveness.

This morning's news, JP Morgan has posted a $6.5 Billion profit for the first quarter this year.  They provide no goods, no services, no resources, no consumables, no benefit to society.  These are their gambling winnings taken from the world economies.

Wall Street doesn't need to be regulated.  On the basis of behavior, it needs to be walled off, locked down, disconnected, and abandoned until they've zombie-ized and eaten each other instead of us.  Or, perhaps we should move them all from New York's Wall Street to the Las Vegas strip where everyone plays the same games.  At least then we could quit pretending they're somehow different.

The problem with LAW

The law is just a thin floor covering the cesspool ...

The problem with law goes beyond content to its only purpose which is to place a limit on behavior.

The law is just a thin floor covering a cesspool of human wrong.

Down at the bottom is all the selfishness and anger of mankind.  The law is just a hair's breadth above the waste and filth.  A misstep and you're in the goo.

Obeying the law is perhaps a good beginning place, but it's just the first tiny step, and only a short distance away from being disgusting.

The law won't make us great or noble or even nice; it's just to keep us from doing harm.  

Far away, at the other end of the spectrum are those wonderful heights of courage and nobility that we imagine for ourselves; all are wildly far above the law, and nothing connects them to the pit and the slime. Greatness of character and purpose, generosity and compassion, all are so far above the law that to live in one world is to be completely separated from the other.  We hope for the best in ourselves and others, don't we.  Indeed we do.

So, of what use is the law to someone who hopes to be truly, magnificently good?  Rules can perhaps serve as a reminder of the simplest things, like:

'Share, be nice, don't hurt anybody.'  Good stuff we learned at home and maybe in kindergarten.

'Play fair, don't cheat, be a good loser or a gracious winner.'  Elementary school level, but great nonetheless.

Farther up and further in?  Where might that lead?

'Be generous to others, have good manners, be polite and scrupulously honest.'  Absolutely essential pieces.

So then, in our business and life affairs, such foundation principles are visible, ... or not.

And our chance at true greatness follows, farther up and further in,  ... or not.

For those of us who live by 'the rule of law', remember that law is just one microstep above the fecal matter. 

Imagine where that that puts the Wall Street mentality?  How about the political party process?  Or the lobbyists?  Or the pursuit of wealth ...  Time to unlearn some things?  Where is your life invested, by the way?  Great joy is only found on the good road.

Learn Unlearn Relearn

Racial bias.
Gender bias.
Political bias.
Religious bias.
Philosophical bias.
The uninformed arrogance of wealth and position.
The justifications of greed and selfishness, of avarice, of hubris.

Objectivity is often encumbered by day-to-day experience, by business or media pressures,  and much of it is just dung.  Often, it seems that every bad way to reach a conclusion has contributed to modern thinking, and we're challenged to make our way through it with integrity and a good conscience.

Did you know that Mexicans are poor because they're lazy?  They're not.
Did you know that the poor in America are unmotivated?  Not true.
Did you know that girls are poor decision makers?  Nonsense.
Did you know that Texans are tougher than most folks?  OK, that's maybe true, but way too much of our understanding is incomplete or perhaps even just wrong.

We've acquired thinking from our traditions, from the thoughts and behavior of others, and so much of it good.  It has been passed down from parent to child, from community to schools, from churches to adherents. most with thoughtful and gracious origins.  Some however, particularly from popular media, is just the inadvertent stains of life without any virtue or value.  Just dirt you picked up along the way that you need to brush off and leave behind.

Much has changed.
 Is this still democracy?
  Is that justice?
   Are those honest businesses?
    Am I represented?  Are they?
      Is that fair?
Can we think with clarity enough to dump the trash?


If you're out of ideas, go where the world is different than yours.  A different viewpoint can help you change.

Banks; bigger than countries.

Click on the chart to see countries and banks (in yellow), in order of financial size.

If banks were countries ...

Among the world's largest, based on GDP and revenue, many financial companies are bigger than most of the world's countries. Beginning with the 57th largest country in the world, it's Fannie Mae with revenues greater than the 60 countries at the bottom of the list, combined. Bank of America is next followed by other familiar names.

Too big to fail or jail? Of course they are. They wield more influence than most of the world's governments and they are NOT there to serve any citizenry or national interest. They have no granted constitutional role in the countries where they play. They provide no goods or services.

Their business model is competitive, bottom line driven; take wealth and use it to make more wealth. They are willing to take money from anyone in any country regardless of the damage done. There are no policies of benefiting others. They recognize no higher good or greater purpose than their own financial success. And so far, no one is holding them reasonably accountable for their adverse impact on the world.

Mega-banks provide no significant social benefit; there is no correlation between size and performance. Mega-banks do, however, create significant systemic risk and, being profit driven, exert their influence in favor of increased autonomy and against regulatory oversight that might reign them in. When the inevitable crash came in '07, government had no choice but to bail them out for fear of a complete financial system collapse.

In the larger context of a world economy:

“Globalization is the result of powerful governments, especially that of the United States, pushing trade deals and other accords down the throats of the world’s people to make it easier for corporations and the wealthy to dominate the economies of nations around the world without having obligations to the peoples of those nations.” — Noam Chomsky

"The financial debacle has many causes and implications, but it would be wrong to underestimate systemic corruption."  ~Daniel Kaufmann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, formerly World Bank director of governance.

Feel free to inquire, to have an opinion, to fire the bank you've been using and join the credit union, write your congressman, ... and the white house, or join the movement to occupy wall street.   This sort of volatility is a precursor to change; we should consider investing ourselves in the process.  Perhaps we'll be the impetus that provokes change for better.